LETTERS
Hook, Sidney & Cooperman, Dan & Foster, Charles H. & Rhyne, Laura H. & Malkin, Edward E. & Steed, Robert & Puzzled & Blanck, Betty & Berigan, Alexander
In the Winter 1959 issue of DISSENT, Miss Hannah Arendt quotes in the preliminary statement to her article, "Reflec tions on Little Rock," some remarks I made about Negroes being less...
...Arendt excels in describing the condition of the totalitarian victim...
...The nuances of meaning in suggesting his characteristics, the fine distinctions she makes among the various stages of his disintegration and murder, have rarely been equalled...
...Much of what he said was quite true and needed to be said, but a number of his statements were so unfounded and ridiculous that I can nev er accept right off the bat anything he might write...
...So she suggests that without the grace provided by the state in the form of civil rights, "Men become human beings and nothing else...
...At all events, you have the best wishes of every intelligent social ist who knows your journal...
...Finally, after the February Revolution, Lenin had an exchange of correspondence with Ganetsky and Kozlovsky in which he alludes twice to transmissions of funds (these letters have been published) , but this is a matter of personal relations and modest sums without any bearing upon the enormous subsidies that the German government is alleged to have given the Party...
...Despite Miss Arendt's behavior, I thought this would be an unsportsmanlike thing to do...
...The most systematic attempt to establish a realistic table of priorities is that of Myrdal and his colleagues in An American Dilemma...
...Arendt has joined them (us...
...On this last point, two works have recently appeared (i.e., since my article was reprinted in DISSENT) which would have to be analyzed specifically...
...Her criticism of the civil rights bill for its failure to include "the most outrageous law of Southern states— the law which makes mixed marriages a criminal offense" is shocking in its politi cal naivete...
...dancing, eating...
...My article was set up in galleys and a copy sent to Miss Arendt...
...In the Winter 1959 issue of DISSENT, Miss Hannah Arendt quotes in the preliminary statement to her article, "Reflec tions on Little Rock," some remarks I made about Negroes being less interested in abolishing laws against miscegenation than in combatting segregation...
...In fact the whole import of the letter is the insinuation that Pius XII's theol ogy is the only possible one...
...Reject every kind of mystic union by which the faithful would in any way pass beyond the sphere of creatures and rashly enter the divine even to the extent of one single attribute of eternal Godhead...
...If they are power-blind, I fear that Dr...
...I would like to have Boris Souvarine's comments on Lenin's denial of any dealings on his part with Ganetsky...
...Liberals have been strangely reluctant to accord him comparable recognition in their own gallery...
...The first time I offered to withdraw my article from Commentary was in a letter dated November 23, 1957, long before Mr...
...Teresa de Avila or Luis de Leon...
...Hook's New Leader article was that I had been told by people who had read the original galleys that it had been virtually unchanged, except for elimination of my name...
...He was quite assured as to the results of such a verification...
...Among Ourselves continued from page 106 its members could join the Socialist Party...
...The reader is referred to my article "Democracy and Desegregation" in The New Leader of April 13, 1958...
...all his deeds are now explained as 'necessary' consequences of some 'Negro qualities...
...Her misleading metaphors oversimplify the complexities of power distribution in the American Federal system...
...Nothing would be as effective in hardening and inflaming opposition to lowering the barriers as ad vocacy of repeal of anti-miscegenation measures...
...S In some cities friends have agreed to serve as DISSENT representatives: checking expired subs, seeing that the magazine gets into bookstores, etc...
...That is why there is no treatment of the subject in my New Leader discussion and why the sentences quoted by her do not appear in it...
...CHARLES H. FosTER LAURA H. RHYNE Williamsburg, Virginia Yes, as to Tone...
...Central to Miss Arendt's article is the order of priorities in the struggle for civ il rights...
...It would appear that in the time of the Tumins, for a distinguished lady to offer a dissenting opinion in DISSENT will be to ask for a punch in the nose...
...storm the citadel first...
...Those discriminations the whites seemed most willing to give up were the very discriminations the Negroes resented most...
...however, very few can be found who teach the physical union of the believer with Christ...
...Loumenson, Ganetsky's Petrograd correspondent, so as to determine the destination of funds received from Stockholm, payments made, etc...
...all italics mine...
...As for Parvus' relations with Ganetsky and with several other socialists of various tendencies, there is nothing mysterious about them...
...You can still get bundle orders at special rates...
...ROBERT STEED, Associate Editor, The Catholic Worker HENRY PACHTER replies: 1) I should have said Pius XII "discouraged," rather than "forbade" remarriage...
...Hook's present letter is both distressing and illuminating...
...In the article in question he even invites the prosecutor to verify the account books and the banking transfers of Mme...
...I find this behavior strange in one who lectures Americans about their intellectual standards...
...ALEXANDER BERIGAN Meridian, Miss...
...What is more important for our pur poses, however, is that Dr...
...Minneapolis, Minn, DAN COOPERMAN Please permit a couple of small-town Virginia residents to comment on Hannah Arendt's reflections...
...It's such little details that make an enormous difference to our welfare and survival...
...This letter again had nothing to do with Mr...
...The reason I did not refer to Mr...
...First of all, I could excuse the remark about the Pope's toilet if it were made after too many martinis at a cocktail party, but to say it in sober print is to my mind vulgar...
...In that book Dr...
...Isn't it more plausible to adopt this view within the context of Dr...
...In turn, DISSENT has tried always to satisfy requests for speakers made by these local forums which often represent a modest resurgence of interest in socialist thought and are organized by persons selflessly devoted to such thought...
...It is a commonplace for liberals to be accused by conservatives and realpolitiker of being blind to the realities of power...
...but where, on concrete and practical matters, we can cooperate with democratic socialist groups, we are glad to do so...
...I. Lenin, "Works," volume 25, 4th edition, Moscow, 1950, page 197...
...There will be that one Nature in all...
...Arendt's principal writings rather than her ideas concerning southern state's rights...
...As to who he is: Tumin, Mel teaches at Princeton, where as it happens Miss Arendt is also teaching this semester...
...Ardent may have the greatest concern for political outcasts...
...She interprets the decision of the Supreme Court as an invasion of "rights of privacy" and not as providing equal protection of the laws...
...Given this view, however, Dr...
...Hook, I believe, was rather well informed of the unusual scenes which took place in Commentary's offices in 1957 and eventually resulted in my final withdrawal...
...It is false to assert, as do the Editors of DISSENT, that "an earlier op portunity to print her views had been withdrawn...
...Parvus was a businessman who employed several former comrades such as Ganetsky, Kozlovsky and others who made a living through his enterprises...
...In spite of all the libertarian statements in her larger work, and granting her concern for the Negro as victim of southern law-violators in the DISSENT article, she balks completely on the issue of segregated education...
...It is good to get a breath of fresh radicalism, even if it is only once every three months...
...And we wish that our friends would check to be sure that their local libraries have ordered the book, available in hard cover too...
...Paraphrasing this passage in its context my un-theological mind has interpreted this to mean that it "excludes individual istic and mystical religiosity...
...Miss Arendt's priorities may be summed up: Never mind the bulwarks...
...My fi nal decision was stated in a letter dated February 1, 1958, long after I had read it...
...I am a student at Pomona College which reflects the typical gooey conservatism in its thought and mores...
...Arendt's arguments highlight the paradoxes of her general political thought...
...In saying so, I was quite aware that the Pope in this very encyclical has tried to monopol ize the term "mystical" for the Catholic church...
...Puzzt En BORIS SOUVARINE replies: Lenin never denied having had relations with Ganetsky...
...Dr...
...It never occurred to me to withdraw my article because of his reply...
...Speak, 0 oracular who in bloomin' hell is Tumin, Mel...
...If, 0 outraged reader, you are granted the right to become angry with his tone, may not Tumin, Mel also be granted the right to become angry with the content of Miss Arendt's article...
...There can be no real opposition or conflict between the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit and the juridical commission of Ruler and Teacher received from Christ...
...Write us if you are interested...
...Copies of our anthology Voices of Dissent are moving along steadily...
...BETTY BLANCK [We'll try.—Eds.] Best Wishes The "Free World" obviously has a uni fied ideology now...
...EDWARD E. MALKIN Ann Arbor, Mich...
...March 4, 1959 SIDNEY Hong HANNAH ARENDT replies: Mr...
...Catholic authorities have interpreted this as an allusion to the well-known theological difficulty of continuing monogamy in Heaven after "successive" polygamy on earth...
...Arendt's anxiety about weakening the Republic by upsetting the federal balance is understandable...
...he recently published a study of desegregation in a North Carolina community.— Ed.] The Pope...
...I had just been officially informed that the editors were not ready for publication and were indeed very doubtful that they would be able to pub lish the article at all...
...Segregation in education was topical in December, 1957 (when I was first approached) but not in February, 1958 (when she withdrew it...
...the trend of his pertinent encyclical "Casti Connubii" emphasizes the "eternal" or "perpetual" union of "flesh and soul" in matrimony...
...Miss Arendt's article was originally sent to me by the Editors of Commentary with a request to discuss the theme with spe cial reference to her position...
...Under what conditions would we have a "good balance" in the Union...
...Sorry—my contention that Pius XII demands "surrender to the Church itself rather than to the spirit of Christ" was based on articles 92-94 of the encyclical where "false mysticism" and "false quietism" are condemned: "They want the divine Redeemer and the members of the Church to coalesce into one physical person...
...Pachter ob viously knows nothing of Catholic the ology so that for him to presume to make pronouncements on it is dishonest...
...Editorial difficulties did not play a role in my decision because, except for minor corrections, the article had been set up in galleys as I wrote it...
...The attitude of many whites that Negroes are only members of a black class—the violation of basic laws by policemen thus generating a sense of constant terror—the image of the Black Other-Society as great BeastEnemy...
...Lenin had nothing in common with any of that...
...Yet it accounts for her apparently curious position on school segregation...
...My only criticism of DISSENT is that it doesn't come out often enough...
...She said she regretted I • The reference to the New Leader was inserted by the editors through a misunderstanding...
...3) It is charged that I failed to read the encyclicals before paraphrasing them...
...Liberals fail to understand that the nature of power is such that the power potential of the union as a whole will suffer if the regional foundations on which this power rests are undermined...
...I also have read VOICES of DISSENT and was much impressed by the quality of the articles and the breadth of subject and opinion reflected...
...If on the basis of the encyclical this beauty will have to be purged from the next edition of the Catholic anthology from which I have quoted it, the Church will be that much the poorer...
...For example: does your library subscribe to DisSENT...
...Knowing that she had had some difficulties with the Editors of Commentary about the editing of her article, I proposed that her article and mine be published in the Partisan Review or any other magazine she suggested...
...I've gotten a great deal of pleasure and thought out of each issue...
...If recent Constitutional history suggests anything, it is that some of the states have been usurping national rights guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution, and hence have been trying to pinch in on federal powers...
...Here is a singular accord among Southern Negroes and whites...
...Lenin & the Sealed Train In the Autumn 1958 issue of DISSENT Boris Souvarine, in his article "A Point of History," quotes Lenin's letters to Ganetsky arranging the former's trip to Russia in 1917...
...For unless I could document such views, they would seem incredible to those who had a sincere desire to win the struggle against segregation in American schools...
...High on the list also are social etiquettes involving personal intimacy, e.g...
...I have a name for it: Beat Fascism...
...Arendt, public education is the proper function of the states and any weakening of "states' rights," (read states' power in this case since a legal right does not exist if the Supreme Court rules it doesn't), unbalances the Federal structure...
...Myrdal found further that the "rank order of resentments" among Negroes was almost exactly reversed...
...I was shocked when informed that Miss Arendt had withdrawn her piece from publication after she saw the galleys of my critical reply...
...like Burke, however, when it is feared the state may be wounded, she approaches it "with pious awe and trembling solictude," thus breaking with any liberation conception of politics...
...Tumin's assault on Miss Arendt [DisSENT, Winter 1959] will cause many to wonder if it is really better to be clubbed to the ground by those "who share one's essential world view" than by the foe whose insolent savagery is taken for granted...
...DISSENT is still superb—one only wishes it were a monthly instead of a quarterly...
...I cannot forego the pleasure of quoting a passage from the latter's poetry: "When Christ unites not only His virtue but His body with the faithful, mingles His soul with their souls, His body with their bodies, He looks through their eyes, speaks with their tongues and works through their senses...
...they were commonly known...
...The less intimate, such as voting, equality in the courts, economic opportunity, rank much lower...
...We regret our error, and offer our apologies to Dr...
...had been put to the trouble of replying to her but that she did not wish to publish her article in Commentary or anywhere else because the subject was no longer topical...
...I con sented, after much urging, because of the crucial importance of the subject...
...Hook.—Eds...
...In this denial Lenin admits that Ganetsky had dealings with Parvus who, in turn, did have dealings with the German government...
...they begin to belong to the human race in much the same way as animals belong to specific animal species...
...From their careful investigations, Myrdal and his team derived a schedule of discriminations ranked in order of the unwillingness of the whites to relinquish them...
...Whatever the course of her previous negotiations with the Edi tors of Commentary may have been, at the time she withdrew her article it was ready for publication together with mine, for the March 1958 issue of Commentary...
...Problems of Youth I have recently become a subscriber to DISSENT...
...Why...
...Mr...
...both He and they will be one and the Same in Himself...
...If the various sources from which it springs are dried up, the whole structure becomes impotent...
...If Mr...
...they don't take much time but they do a great deal of good...
...That she would offer this seriously as even a possible point of at tack is indeed to reassert her admission of "difficulty of understanding" and to emphasize how little Europeans under stand our race problems...
...The doctrine which the encyclical seems to condemn is the poetical creation of enraptured saints, such as Sta...
...Hook might have known from other sources, he knew my true reasons well enough since I had explained the situa tion to him myself in two lengthy tele phone conversations, when I also tried to persuade him to let the controversy rest until the issue became topical again so that both our articles could be pub lished in some other magazine...
...Distressing because he is a philosopher, not a social scientist, and therefore should be aware of the importance of principles and be able to grasp such elementary distinctions as that between a law and a custom...
...their faces, countenances and movements are Christ's Who occupies them wholly— so intimately . . . . that nothing will be seen in them on the Last Day, nor will any Nature be found in them than His...
...Since the article appeared shortly before I left for Europe, I have never read it except in the original version...
...the order of priorities is to be determined by the Constitution and not by public opinion or by majorities...
...Intermarriage, of course, ranks at the top...
...Unfortunately it is also misplaced in this case...
...Hook...
...Hannah Arendt's "Reflections on Little Rock" [DISSENT, Fall 1958] are particularly perplexing when we recall some of the passages in The Origins of Totalitarian ism...
...I think that if DISSENT were to devote an article or two to this problem and its solution (if any) that it would be quite helpful to youth...
...In the article referred to above he denies any relations with Parvus and he denies having had any financial dealings with Ganetsky (dienezhny diela) . Anyone can verify this for himself...
...They would attribute the whole spiritual life of Christians and their progress in virtue exclusively to the action of the divine spirit . . . . But that men should continue consistently in their good works, that they advance generously in grace and virtue, that they strive earnestly to reach the heights of Christian perfection and at the same time do their best to stimulate others to gain the same goal—all this the Spirit from above does not wish to bring about unless men contribute their daily share of zealous activity" (which in articles 95-100 then is explained as "frequent confession," prayer" and "love of the Church...
...Is it too implausible to describe— very loosely certainly, but with some justification nonetheless—the human condition of many people in the United States as bearing some resemblance to the totalitarian victim...
...DISSENT Of course, remains entirely independent in character...
...I telephoned her and tried to persuade her to reconsider...
...but mysticism not only is older than the church, it has flourished outside it for centuries...
...My use of words conforms with common usage, and I will not be intimidated by theological Beckmessers into using the word mysticism only the way orthodox, obedient Catholics accept it...
...Among Gnostics and Mystics whom earlier encyclicals have condemned...
...This would definitely prove that Lenin did have dealings with Ganetskyl However, David Shub's book on Lenin quotes from an article by Lenin denying any dealings with Ganetsky (article by Lenin from Rabochii i Soldat, July 26, 1917...
...I thereupon rewrote my entire article, carefully eliminating all reference to her...
...One thing though, there was practically nothing about the problem of the young radical in our society...
...Hook misrepresents the facts...
...Quoting Augustine it says that "a husband or wife, if separated, should not be joined to another even for the sake of offspring," and after further quoting the Council of Trent to the same effect, that "they are one flesh," it continues: "Nor did Christ wish only to condemn any form of polygamy . . . whether successive or simultaneous...
...I even left uncriticized some extreme positions she took to the effect that Negroes should give priority to agitation for equality in the bedroom rather than to equality in education...
...He did not even take the trouble to go to the original sources before stupidly accus ing the Pope of having forbidden widows to remarry, and his remarks on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ are non sense as anyone could find out by read ing Pius XII's encyclical on the subject...
...It is illuminating because by calling abrogation of racial legislation "the equality of bedroom" (I did not believe my eyes), he reveals much more clearly than in his article how little he understands human dignity, however much he may be concerned with social opportunity...
...I have not misquoted the encyclical, but the evidence seems clear that the encyclical has, however, misquoted the heretics...
...She maintains that "the op pressed minorities are never the best judges in such matters...
...Because, writes Dr...
...In many instances the SP and YPSL have helped DISSENT considerably by featuring the magazine at meetings, getting subscriptions, and promoting our paperback book, Voices of Dissent...
...I was offered an opportunity to publish my critical reply to Miss Arendt with an explanation that she had withdrawn her piece after she had read my rejoinder...
...I therefore continue to claim what I wrote...
...There is definitely a problem for any youth of radical opinion in today's America, and this is closely connected with the amorphousness and indefinite apathy which pervades our culture, making the formulation of any real values and the shaping of any concept of history very difficult...
...Pachter has such contempt for the papers (one that is well founded) why does he accept so uncritically their garbled reports of Papal statements...
...Henry Pachter's recent comments on the late Pope Pius XII seemed to me quite unworthy of a magazine of the cali ber of DISSENT...
...Does it carry a file of back issues (some of which are still available...
...I did not have the New Leader piece in my possession when I wrote the preliminary remark for DISSENT...
...But there's a need for more...
...In The Origins as well as in her article, there are fine statements expressing sympathy for victims of state power juxtaposed with Burkean doctrines implying that only the state can protect us from the vicissitudes of natural existence...
...But he will search in vain for these remarks or similar ones in my New Leader article.* She therewith provides the evidence of a scandalous abuse of the decencies of intellectual exchange...
...Is this possible...
...Myrdal has been elevated to the position of devil-in-chief in the Southern whites' pantheon of saints and devils...
...2) To readers interested in theology I submit the following quotations from the encyclical "Mystici Corporis Christi": "They err in a matter of divine truth who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely pneumatological......—" They walk the path of error who look upon it as a mere human institution with a certain disciplinary code and external ritual but lacking power to communicate supernatural life...
...Such an attempt would have retroactive force, slamming, locking and barricading doors that have previously been cracked...
...It is one thing to say that contemporary political systems have deprived humans of their civil and human rights...
...Who is doing what, with which, to whom in the south...
...it is quite another thing, which does not follow from the first, to hold with Burke that only the state can provide a "right" to the human condition itself...
...And the continual violence of it all, as violation of rules, stands out...
...She even mentions the special case of the Negro in this context: "If a Negro in a white community is considered a Negro and nothing else, he loses along with his right to equality that freedom of action which is specifically human...
...Whatever Mr...
...After she read my reply she withdrew her piece from Com mentary...
...After my article was safely out of the way Miss Arendt has the Chutzpah (or should I say unerfrorener Frechheit) to quote not from the article as published but from my original galleys, which were still in her possession, without explaining to the reader how I could be "replying" to her own, not previously published, article...
...Murray Kempton's articles, by the way, contained even more errors since they were more extensive...
...It is substantially the same in Paris, Washington, Little Rock, and Algiers...
...Also Mr...
...Hook wrote his reply...
...She had been apprised that I would be invited to comment and had agreed...
...Nor does Miss Arendt her self make this claim...
Vol. 6 • April 1959 • No. 2
