LETTERS
Irving Howe asks the question, "a new political atmosphere in America?" in the Winter 1959 DISSENT. The responses of the other editors (save perhaps Plastrik) are not encouraging. Mailer...
...Quite obviously you can hold on to an instructor or assistant professor under sweatbox conditions and on a series of one-year contracts (after which he may be conveniently dropped) if the man is feeding four or five little mouths and looking forward with pleasure to the sixth...
...In 1940 I was touring Norman Thomas thru Iowa...
...But the academicians have a whole bundle of answers for that one, many of which turn on such myths as those of the gentlemen scholars and the ancient prerogatives of academic leisure...
...Because liberals aren't necessarily going to be elected in the next period (which may be the last period) then Dissenters (we are advised) should ignore the struggles now developing within the Democratic Party...
...Following a broadcast over a local station the sympathetic manager told us he had voted for Thomas three times —in 1928, 1932, and in 1936 when he didn't vote...
...In order to dispel this systematized illusion, you have to do what Miss Arendt calls "pushing your way in where you are not wanted," That is to say, you have to force situations of equality where the Caucasians can learn at first hand that there is no sense or reason to an automatic rejection on the mere ground of pigmentation...
...How some of the other editors square the defeat of these proposals with their feeling that the election results showed merely a substitution of slick for clumsy politicians...
...You have got to start some where and to many it seems the colleges are the place to start...
...Isn't this the core of the criticism...
...It probably takes less time to grow a scholar than an oak, but there must be some provision for growth .. . It would occur to any group of exploited men except professors to organize...
...In the 30's radicals were convinced that eventually you could and would win...
...Even in his select sample of 3 states—all within the shadow of the Empire State Building, as it were—one of these actually gained the nomination and waged a good campaign...
...Man, I'll say he has off-spring...
...The references in the DISSENT discussion to the New Deal ignored the important lessons which could be learned from the 30's: What was valuable in the New Deal benefited in many ways from radical the ory, organization and propaganda...
...Indeed, if there was one issue that raised "class lines," this was it...
...Meanwhile it looks to me as though the fate of our culture hangs on the lonely individual who somehow contrives to think and write honestly and courageously .. . Claremont, Cal...
...the book does seem to have caused a few ripples on the still pool of academic complacency .. To me the most significant remark in Coser's review was to the effect that the new thing we learn about the academies is the extent to which the professors have taken the commodity view of themselves...
...for further information...
...MARY DANIELS As a reader of Dissent I would very much like to meet other Fresno readers of the journal and would much appreciate if you could direct such possible contacts to me...
...Apropos of segregated schooling, Miss Arendt says that if she were a Negro mother, she would not push her child into a situation where it was not wanted...
...Dignified withdrawal may be a beautiful gesture, but it has the effect of cutting you off from the life of your time...
...But one has increasingly the impression that the administrators don't want to hire anyone seriously until he has become a full professor with a big reputation...
...I think the colleges may be among the very last places where any new spirit of free dom will arise because of the entrench ment of time-servers and orgmen in them...
...Surely the 30's and early 40's are litered with these bones) But the encouraging thing about Howe's piece is that it illustrates some lessons learned...
...After all how can thought compare with a definitive bibliog raphy...
...There were by his own admission some people struggling within the Democratic ranks whom he feels were pretty tolerable folk...
...and that Jim Burns, a liberal, did run . . . getting walloped...
...Pragmatic philosophy was a fighting intellectual position as compared with the varieties of analytical logicism now prevailing in our universities...
...Political activity means a lot more than voting, but among other things it does mean party organization, campaigns and candidates, programs and platforms, elections and voting...
...But inadvertently he does recognize Howe's main point...
...If you are a Negro and "they" do not want you, it is because "they" are operating under the spell of fantasy, folk lore and mythology...
...Coser repeats some of the cliches of DISSENT of five years ago: the mass-manipulating boogie men have got us...
...This would certainly tend to support his view that the elections showed a decided, though ambiguous, reassertion of liberal sentiment...
...With this doctrine gone, does it necessarily mean that all "mass work" is gone too...
...Actually the whole tone and purpose of his article shows that it is he who is too "cultural," not I. That is, his approach is to point out that I am a Columbia professor, that I have certain friends, and so on: ergo—and the attack proceeds from the cultural symbols, rather than from the objective weighing of ideas...
...ARNOLD SAMUELS Ann Arbor I had fond, foolish hopes of not being murdered in the pages of DISSENT, a magazine to which I have contributed and for which I have respect...
...And the fact of the matter is that however little one may be interested in having anyone advocate revolution or violence—or say homicide or pornography—as soon as there is any law about what one may legally advocate, freedom of expression begins to dry up .. . What is to be done...
...EDWIN HALSEY A small group of Socialists is in the process of forming a discussion group to study current issues...
...Rosenberg's impossibilism is just that— the 1959 version of the tired radical's "dialectical" justification for his own isolation from the arena where people live and where, as Howe suggests, some viable decisions might have a chance of being made, or at least of being decently considered and fought about...
...But Hilton Krasner has done the job in his article on my book The Democratic Vista, called "To Hell With Culture...
...But the significant point escapes Coser...
...But this didn't stop the educational work, the struggles, the maneuverings, even when these meant defeat...
...Oh, well, the hell with Kramer—until he produces the incisive and convincing book on the modern situation which he says my book isn't...
...He was not candid or attentive enough to report that I myself deplore this contemporary form of obscurantism (for example, at the end of chapter 3...
...But by passing laws—and enforcing them —you can change the situations in which people find themselves, and that very often has the effect of changing the way they feel...
...Regrettably a fair number of radicals have always been too "pure" to communicate, or too naive to realize they weren't making contact...
...We know of course that it would cost the non-attacked rabbit his place to express sympathy for the martyr...
...Sacramento 21, Calif...
...I am alarmed by Mailer's apparent hope that a non- or anti-political deus ex machina is the only way of rescuing the radical from his isolation...
...Ann Arbor Boa MARSHALL Concerning the discussion among the DISSENT editors [Winter, 1959] on "a new atmosphere" in American politics: Irving Howe omitted mention of the fact that in several states "right-to-work" proposals were defeated by popular vote...
...I am inclined to think that the failure of American philosophy is germane to this problem—as well as the social, economic and political causes which operate in the Eisenhower age...
...John Galbraith is representative of liberal opinion in pin ning his hopes for social improvement on education...
...But as for "culture," one of the main charges Kramer brings against me is that I obscure ideas with cultural, sociological, and psychiatric symbolisms...
...The Smith Act, however leniently or harshly inter preted by the courts, is a law against cer tain forms of advocation...
...Mrs...
...The deepest cause for this feeling, as I see it, is the prevailing weltanschauung of our society...
...Kramer has made some good criticisms of it, with which I agree...
...The responses of the other editors (save perhaps Plastrik) are not encouraging...
...It is therefore sheer opportunism and culture-mongering for Kramer to pretend that it is an important document showing the bankruptcy of the liberal mind, etc...
...And I do not mean anything like "the pragmatic acquiescence" of which Lewis Mulford was wont to speak...
...Stringfellow Barr's acid satire on sociologese in his novel Purely Academic is not a bit unfair to the average sociologist (although the real sociologists are still writing in English) . Then one must mention the lack of professional esprit de corps as a cause of the current situation...
...One can safely say that John Dewey lost his battle for a reconciliation of science and value .. . The prevailing ideal of specialization and strict adherence to narrowly defined "fields" or "disciplines" is another anti intellectual force, There is a prevailing technicality and pomposity about the spe cialist which is deeply built in to the or ganization of the curriculum itself...
...Of course, the book is a failure: it has sold only a few hundred copies and has not had, nor is likely to have, any ostensible influence...
...Matilda Robbins...
...directive, during World War II, was issued less for reasons of idealism than because it was necessary to tap every last resource of manpower...
...At that time a "plague on both your houses" attitude didn't seem anti-political per se since there seemed to be a third one...
...in the Winter 1959 DISSENT...
...Has off-spring...
...But the question for the Negro is not one of pride...
...And yet, there is something about it more disturbing than stimulating...
...And I realize that in any period (such as the immediate post-war days) where much attention has to be given to basic re-orientation and re-examination one can fall into this kind of pitfall if one is not very conscious of the danger and temptations of the "ivory tower...
...and the nonattacked is poor and has offspring, and hopes of advancement...
...We may be back in the age-old back to the catacombs situation again, pro vided one does not confuse the catacombs with the well-heeled and complacent churches and synagogues...
...If the DISSENT experience indicates anything hopeful it is that ranks can be reformed, errors and ommissions reappraised, new programs for a new period considered (vide Howe), and new and younger recruits discovered...
...This indicates a view of life as a race between worldwide garrison states headed for atomic destruction and the lumpen-proletariat mob headed for god knows what...
...Coser informs us there were a few genuine liberals prepared to run in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts...
...MARGARET HALSEY Just wanted to say how stimulating I found the recent issue of DISSENT...
...Radicals and even lots of liberals used to recognize that mass organizations like political parties, trade unions, co-ops, and the like were inevitably a long ways from perfect...
...However, the actual effect of that directive was to show a great many white people that nothing disastrous would happen if they worked in a war plant next to a Negro...
...Roosevelt's F.E.P.C...
...Perhaps a discussion group could be formed...
...Splinter-itis dogged our ranks "to the left," while the New Deal picked us off one-by-one "on the right...
...Much better hire a retired professor from one of the big universities for a year or two, at a reduced salary, than risk an investment in some unknown who claims to be writing a book...
...It is no longer merely the contempt of the trustees and the administration, but self-contempt...
...One of the oldest and most hackneyed arguments for preserving the status quo of inequality is that "you can't change the way people feel by passing laws...
...John Jay Chapman summed it up very adequately: "The average professor in an American college will look on an act of injustice done to a brother professor with the same unconcern as the rabbit who is not attacked watches the ferret pursue his brother up and down through the warren...
...ist with the notion that the destructive anti-political mob is our last best hope, is scarcely "rethinking the radical position...
...Now it's discouraging to lose, certainly...
...I do not agree...
...he is sim ply too busy to think...
...There is not only the great pressure for notoriety and prestige, as remarked first by Veblen and now by Caplow and McGee, but there is also a total lack of responsible provision for developing younger men to replace the present glamor boys...
...One is reminded of the problems of the reforestation service...
...Irving Howe asks the question, "a new political atmosphere in America...
...This is very possibly the reason why Negroes are not at the moment much interested in repealing the laws against intermarriage...
...that was implied by the nature of the subject...
...No book could be more obviously open to attack...
...The college presidents love children, especially the children of their junior faculty members and in large numbers...
...The humanities have virtually dropped out of the picture because they lack the lead of a meaningful philosophical concern with values and ethics...
...This may yet prove to be an accurate appraisal of the 20th Century, God knows) But to counter Howe's suggestion that perhaps a potentially creative direction might ex...
...Professor Maclver has written a good book on Academic Freedom in Our Time, but there is one point that he has neglected...
...I don't understand...
...But if the end result of current furor at the DISSENT level is prayer for an Apocalypse, nothing has been gained from the lessons of recent decades...
...Finally there needs to be a word about the inflammatory subject of academic freedom...
...The professor is not only fantastically preoc cupied with committee work and letters of recommendation and grinding out ar ticles for professional journals...
...My address is: 955 E. Cornell Avenue, Fresno 4; my telephone: BAldwin 9-1963...
...Like all American in stitutions, the colleges must currently operate under the Smith Act...
...Regardless of the mystique invoked—human nature, the dialectic of history, the efficacy of education, pragmatic awareness of ends and means, the rewards of perseverance—the road to power would eventually be ours (or at least our program's...
...Not only that, but how can you talk to your colleagues about their work or about your own if you have to cope with a separate technical vocabulary in each field...
...The question for the Negro is the much more practical one of: How do you make them want you...
...Most of the comments are surprisingly "antipolitical...
...Moreover the social sciences seem all too often to settle for description and objectivity in accordance with what I would consider a mistaken notion of scientific methodology...
...their apparent decision not to take any broad view of the causes and cures of the phenomenon you so accurately call "the professor as commodity...
...Mailer didn't vote, Rosenberg "could care less but with some difficulty...
...but it has little relevance in this decade...
...RICHARD CHASE [Quotes were inadvertently omitted from the word "Culture" in the title of Mr...
...Kramer's article.—Ed.] Is it too late to get into the Hannah Arendt War...
...All persons in the Sacramento area who might be interested in joining such a group are invited to contact Elmer and Mary Daniels, 4420 Ravenwood Ave...
...Howe's suggestion that the Democratic party sometimes offers a sort of meaningful arena is encountered by Mailer's apocalyptic vision of a movement "which may be in its origins hostile to politics itself," and Rosenberg's observation that "American politics has become the art of the impossible...
...For men who are dedicated to a form of "open society," DISSENT gives the impres sion of a closed in, confined space...
...There appears to be a fundamental assumption underlying these criticisms of Howe's modest suggestions...
...I have the feeling that a group of able men are fiercely arguing with each other in a bathysphere .. . New York JOSEPH R. STAROBIN [A bathysphere is an object by means of which it is possible to reach and see what would otherwise not be visible.—Ed.] Thank you for your fine review of The Academic Marketplace...
...One prediction I'll make in advance: he'll play it cozy...
...Once there is a genuine equality of job opportunity and school ing, the laws against intermarriage will collapse of their own weight...
...DISSENT, Winter 1959.] Despite the curious "objectivity" of the authors and their lack of "moral imagination...
...In all cases we are told—you can't win, you can't get the votes...
...In the 50's of course such simple faiths in the inevitability of progress have been relegated to the ash can— or have they merely come in through the back door to emasculate us...
...All this was buoyed up with the feeling that "victory" was inevitable...
Vol. 6 • July 1959 • No. 3
