A First Word on Sputnik

...Perhaps the last word on this topic, a kind of clarifying parody, was spoken by Franco...

...but it is right...

...In some quasi-socialist circles, however, sputnik reinforced the notion that there was some inherent mystical superiority in nationalized economy— an opinion held by people who would have been appalled to be told that the American discovery of the atom bomb proved the superiority of capitalism or the Nazi discovery of the V-2 rocket proved the superiority of fascism...

...Especially is this true for those of us who may be a bit discomfited when the realpolitickers mock us as "moralists...

...And it raises once again, with a sort of chill familiarity, the inevitable reflection that the two dominant power blocs—they form the two dominant societies as well—prove themselves incapable of coping in a humane or imaginative way with the essential problems of mankind...

...The claim that "free enterprise" possessed some inherent mystical superiority which enabled it always to provide 5 not merely a better form of society but greater material power, was beginning to seem a bit dubious these days...

...Politically, sputnik helped destroy one illusion and fortify another...

...Such expectations were a sign of an inner national sickness, an adolescent self-regard reflecting the sort of collective vanity that drives weaker nations into resentment and, no doubt, accounts for the amused spite with which some of them seem to have viewed the blow to American "prestige...

...If one side, that is, possessed a weapon that could destroy ten square miles of Moscow while the other side had just come up with a weapon that could destroy twenty square miles of New York, the military relationship was not vitally effected...

...It was here that the United States found itself primarily challenged, since this country had itself, through a sluggish conservatism and a mindless stress upon the unique material achievements of "free enterprise," laid the basis for the blow to prestige that it suffered from sputnik...

...If its archetypal figure had been Charlie Wilson, it now got back from the population the kind of think 4 ing that could be expected from Charlie Wilson...

...This vague and tricky phase could mean many things...

...II Meanwhile, sputnik was having its effects upon political ideas...

...The tragedy, of course, was 3 that a country claiming to serve the values of freedom and democracy should have allowed itself to be put in a position where its "prestige" depended on military advantage or even material power...

...IRVING HOWE 6...

...Given a situation in which war was unlikely (though not, as some people deluded themselves, forever impossible), the nature of the world conflict became increasingly political...

...The Russians, he said, were the first to develop sput nik because "there is unity and discipline" in Russia...

...And it is right...

...Let us be candid: these were responses shared by all honest and sensitive persons, no matter how long-range an "historical" point of view they might try to cultivate...

...All that sputnik did prove was that a centralized government with great resources at its command could, by ruthless decisions and harsh allocation policies, surge ahead in a particular phase of technology—but this did not necessarily have anything to do with whether that government was capitalist or Communist or anything else...

...Let me simply suggest an opinion...

...when controlled by repressive governments they can cause pain and harm to many people...

...but a world-wide deal, such as Khrushchev kept suggesting, whereby the United States and Russia would arrange, in effect, to freeze the world into firmlycontrolled spheres of influence might well be worse than the somewhat more fluid situation today...

...And that is why one remains a socialist...

...Russia has demonstrated to us what can be achieved when culture is directed...

...This is not exactly a novel thought, but we dissenters dare not allow it to wither in our minds, or to fade from our speech...

...At a time of the most severe crisis in Western history, the administration of this country was largely composed of men who mentally did not even live in this century: (more or Iess) ambulatory anachronisms innocent of complexity...

...For the United States to wrench an already sick educational system toward a massive and, very likely, indiscriminate production of medium-level technicians and scientists, would not solve the immediate "problem" of shooting satellites into the air but might well do enormous damage to the social and cultural life of the country...

...and if they seem to solve certain problems it is only by bringing into existence new and, at times, more difficult problems...

...I Sociologists sometimes speak of "status panic," and this—apart from the more authentic response mentioned above— best describes what happened in America after sputnik...

...The Russians needed large numbers of engineers and technicians primarily to industrialize a backward economy in a short time...

...In a variety of political circles, ranging from Senator Ellender to the remnants of fellow-travelling opinion (who found sputnik so much more interesting to contemplate than the memory of Hungary), the slogan of "competitive coexistence" was again being rewarmed...

...Yes...

...Much of the coexistence talk pointed not only to such a deal but to the notion of accepting politically and morally the totalitarian Russian society...

...but the main reason was politicaI...

...It made sense to say that, since war is now inconceivable and the power of the Russian bloc had to be dealt with somehow, practical diplomatic and political arrangements were necessary...

...The major problem of our world is no longer—assuming for the moment that it ever was—the development of technology...

...but it all depended on the arrangement...

...Advances in technology bring no necessary good...

...All this had little point and much danger...

...The frenetic hysteria which seized a large section of American "opinion makers" rested on the belief that, with sputnik and the ICBM, the Russians had now gained a decisive military advantage over the United States...

...Why should one not want to be a moralist...

...That Russian totalitarianism could, by draconian measures, forced labor and special privileges to technocratic elites, develop a high level of scientific work —did this suggest that authoritarian methods might really have something to recommend them...

...If you could have a Charlie Wilson in capitalist America, you could have his equivalent in Communist Russia...

...Or that it was now necessary to train vast numbers of engineers and scientists in order to meet the Russian challenge...

...Now that the Russians had perhaps even more bulging muscles and were beginning to learn how to manip ulate their "foreign aid," American foreign policy, with its papier-mache "northern tiers" and its hollow "Eisenhower doctrines," seemed increasingly irrelevant...

...and it was here that sputnik did matter...

...sputnik was the consequence not of their vast quantities of technical personnel but of certain specific allocations of resources...

...and to approach or even touch it with "crash programs" would probably lead only to a further aggravation of the trouble...

...The need of our times remains the ordering of a humane society, the creation of human relations among human beings...

...But then what other recent development in American life could have been offered as a counter to sputnik: Little Rock perhaps...

...It was as if in a ferocious arms race between two major industrial powers one could reasonably expect that every technological advantage or discovery could rest only with one side...

...this situation was both the symptom and then an ensuing cause of profoundly serious problems in our socio-economic life...

...Perhaps it is not enough...

...What new way of murder will the rulers of the world now devise?— this is the first spontaneous human response...

...There was reason for alarm, of course...

...American education had already suffered catastrophic drops in quality, and in some areas all but disintegrated into an ineffectual reformatory...

...An agreement, for example, whereby both power blocs withdrew from Germany and allowed democratic elections in a unified nation, had much to recommend it...

...Perhaps...

...For no one considering the nature of the society that controls sputnik, or of the society that will soon launch competitors to it, can simply regard this scientific achievement as unambiguous evidence of human progress...

...but was this an advantage that, in military terms, could be regarded as operatively significant...

...Or that John Dewey had undermined our schools with progressive education and other "frills...

...IF ONE GLANCED at domestic American Iife, there was further reason for concern...

...It is all very well to say that scientific work is morally neutral and can be put to either good or bad use...

...With a peculiarly disingenuous blend of outmoded notions and streamlined public relations, the administration had systematically encouraged the political slumbers of the American public—had, indeed, supplied it with a heavy dose of intellectual sleeping pills—so that even if one could imagine what is so unlikely, a genuine effort by the Eisenhower administration to develop a world-wide strategy for nurturing democracy and helping the underdeveloped nations achieve significant progress, it could hardly count on adequate support from large sections of the American people...

...Having conducted its struggle against Communism with only the faintest comprehension of what the enemy meant and even less comprehension of what could be done to defeat it politically, the United States had relied upon erratic displays of muscle and limited gestures or largesse...

...Shamefully neglected by the federal government, starved by most states and localities, American education might now be the first to feel the full impact of sputnik...

...Erxias, where is all this useless army gathering to go?— It is a bitter fact concerning our time that a scientific development so remarkable as the launching of sputnik should have evoked responses of fear and dread...

...More immediately, there was grave reason to be alarmed over the fate of the American educational system...

...Surely there was good sense in George Kennan s remark that once the two dominant powers had reached the stage of possessing weapons that could destroy each other's cities, 'further military advances did not signally change the balance of military power—though they might affect the balance of political power...

...but when one knows in advance the kind of use to which it is likely to be put, a response of fear and dread has an authenticity that no political analyst can afford to disregard...

...This could never have been carried out in politically divided countries or in countries where there is no order...

...Sputnik was a powerful impetus to the view that Might might just as well make Right...

...III There remains, finally, the question— it cannot even begin to be discussed here—of the relationship between technical advance and social stagnation...