LETTERS

...I don't see how you can separate the struggle for civil and intellectual liberties from the struggle for industrial democracy...

...I still feel very strongly that the only hope for the radical, the intellectual, the artist lies in the growth and movement of the American working class...

...You can't have one without the other...

...I guess I am a believer in the "perfectability of mankind...

...but it raises an important topic which Kolko in his generally excellent presentation has simply failed to cope with...

...Kolko replied by noting sarcastically that "Mr...

...I am very aware—having been through it once—of the dangers of the quasi-religious solution of mortgaging the present to the future, as the various radical movements in the U.S...

...In the very teeth of this negative truth, there must be at least a search for a positive thought, a positive action, a positive faith...

...Indeed, without industrial democracy I don't see how there can be civil and intellectual liberty...

...And it seems to me the fight must be total...

...May I be permitted a comment on the exchange between Gabriel Kolko and Henry Pachter concerning the "Income Revolution" in America...

...I read this article when it first appeared, but I must admit that only now, a year later, has it really struck me...

...The crisis, as you pointed out, is total...

...To me, born in 1934, the tales of Wobblies, sit-downs, and the organization of the CIO are tales of high drama and romance...

...Being one of the generation who are "untouched and even bored by the rhetoric of the thirties, yet repelled and frightened by the realities of the fifties," I was particularly moved by [Lewis Coser's] article in the Spring '56 DISSENT...

...As is the case with so many young people, I have been deeply engaged in this question of "What should we do" and "How is it possible to disengage oneself...

...by this fact, though he then proceeded to offer a more serious rebuttal...

...Pachter has asserted that some of the poverty cited by Kolko is due to "special circumstances," i.e., the discrimination suffered by racial and other minorities, rather than to the workings of the capitalist system...

...The idea that "sometime and in some places it is a tremendously significant act to stay sane and to stay alive" is certain ly true, and ultimately I suppose it's all any of us will ever accomplish...

...Whether this is true or not, is another matter...

...But despite this apparent lack of large movements—I still maintain that in the working class—in Montgomery and Local 212—in the deepest elements of the population— is the future of mankind...

...DISSENT, Summer 1957...

...I think Kolko has failed to see the importance of Pachter's point...

...However, perhaps because I never experienced this particular disillusionment, there may be hope for the future...

...Yet even while admitting this, it seems just too damnned bleak to be a way of life...

...In general, I sympathize with Kolko's views on this matter, but it seems to me that on one important point he has been somewhat less than fair to—or has failed to understand—Pachter's argument...

...and one of the sad things about the fifties is that few such things seem to be going on...

...For if a considerable part of the remaining American poverty is due to "special [political] circumstances" such as discrimination against against Negroes, then it is at least conceivable that by means of a political struggle against such discrimination the poverty that it produces could also be eliminated—and all within the framework of the capitalist system...

...Pachter is heartened...

...That is why I feel that what is happening on the production line at GM is perhaps more important than what is happening in the classroom at Columbia...

...seem to have done...

...I sympathize most heartily with those who foresaw a brave new world in 1930 and have lived to see only the same old battered world...