LETTERS

...Howe minimizes the the same paragraph, from "the Western trend toward totalitarianism in our World" to "America, a democratic coun-country—"shows some signs of drifting try" with the implication that the demo-toward authoritarianism," is the way cratic qualities inherent in our own he phrases it...

...When the conservative President of our country can warn that we are heading toward a "garrison state" it seems odd to find "radical intellectuals" condoning this trend as a minor, virtually irrelevant peccadillo...

...But this seems startling traditions are similarly inherent through-"analytic carelessness" since even our President in a press conference said that if our current trend continues we would become a "garrison state...

...And such analysis must focus on our own, rather than Soviet, attitudes, policies and trends...

...Mills is one of the few professional social scientists who has had the energy and courage to tackle head on the major issues of today in terms of our own trends, and to note not the "drift" but the purposeful rush toward totalitarianism and militarism in our own society...

...HOWE out the "Western World...

...Commenting on C. W. Mills' "Causes Howe says that "There is a crucial of World War III" in the Spring Dis-difference between America, a demoSENT, Irving Howe charges Mills with cratic country that shows some signs of "a relentless thrust of assertion" and drifting toward authoritarianism and Rus" analytic carelessness and moral disequi-sia, which for decades has been somelibrium...

...Surely this is Editors: "analytic carelessness" of a high order...

...Through black and grey markets, corruption and decentralization, Russia's economy has tried to lubricate points of friction, and just now it is undergoing a veritable revolution in the discovery that capital investment is an economic rather than a political process, and has to be treated as such, with amortization and interest, to prove its worth in terms of its cost and productivity, as in any capitalist country...

...Not before...

...the direction of the trend of developHowe says that Mills underrates "the ment...

...It is admitted by virtually every political and military analyst today that the PROBABLE consequence of the continued arms race and the continued "WestEast" power struggle will be global nuclear war with possible extinction of civilization—and perhaps mankind...

...This is precisely why totalitarian regimes do not evolve, but collapse...

...Surely the ENEMY is totalitarianism (not just COMMUNIST totalitarianism) and its development here is fostered by our government's preparations for war...

...We know that much the same could be said of other, larger, more important projects...

...and the creative writer, artist or philosopher, in his urge toward selfexpression, comes forcibly into conflict with the pressures and narrow demands of the regime...

...And suggestions for constructive alternatives...

...In the economic field, wrong theories and badly conceived measures came up most di rectly and most visibly against harsh facts...

...As policy it has admittedly brought the world to the brink of nuclear war repeatedly...

...It is called "Peace Through Strength," the "deterrent" of "massive retaliation" and so on...

...It seems to me that in this thing considerably worse...

...society...

...May 1, 1959 IRVING HOWE replies: When it will be possible for Helen Mears, or some equivalent of her, to write a letter denouncing the Khrushchev regime with the violence that she denounces the Eisenhower regime and then print it in a freely-circulating socialist publication in Russia as opposed to the status quo there as DISSENT is to the status quo here, then I'll be prepared to take her views seriously...

...One expects this sort of simplicity in a Life editorial but not DISSENT...

...Since Russian society has trarole of Communist ideology...

...A reader of a magazine called "DISSENT" might expect to find such simplistic notions dealt with critically, rather than accepted...

...What the evolution of individuals under the impact of the inner stresses of the system may eventually lead to is a hollowingout of the regime in such a way that, as the example of the Third Reich shows, in the end a thin shell of power conceals a complete "lack, of faith...

...In the field of the intellect, the ups and downs in the "Thaw" have by now become a routine spectacle to be watched like the barometric pressure for indications of the "prevailing winds...

...For such a process to take shape, however, a great deal depends on the alternatives which the outside world has to offer, and on the extent and the form in which such alternatives make themselves known and felt behind the Curtain...

...There have indeed been surprising evolutions—and Fejto is right in mentioning a Djilas or an Imre Nagy as prize examples...

...American socialism, through all its vicissitudes, found in him a tribune, a thinker, an embodiment...

...We of DISSENT can offer our testimony that even before he became a Contributing Editor he helped us in many ways, large and small, intellectual and practical...

...But Howe, by is retrogressive...

...Howe says of Mills' suggestions that "his book is guilty of a high-handed carelessness as to the possible consequences of their adoption...

...This seems to me to turn politics into theology...

...Peace Through Strength" maneuvers...

...By focusing on these conflicts and stresses, and their expressions in print, we may be tempted to overestimate the potentialities of change...

...the tight yet undisputed rule of an Ulbricht, the most despicable and most despised of all Communist politicians...

...Rebuking Mills, Howe says that: "The truth is that Khrushchev and Mikoyan suppressed the Hungarian revolution because they feared the spread of freedom to other satellite countries and to their own borders...

...What IS needed is some tough-minded analysis of the totalitarian trends in our own society...

...Howe charges that Mills makes "excuses" for Soviet policy and to illustrate this charge Howe quotes a brief paragraph on Hungary in which Mills suggested that the problem of Hungary was complex and political, and possibly not unrelated to U.S...

...Wherever, during the past five decades, there has been a need for a voice to defend intellectual and civil liberties, a leader to risk himself in behalf of the oppressed and deprived, Norman Thomas offered his talent, his time, his whole life...

...I should ditionally been authoritarian, any trend say that Howe vastly underrates the toward a lessening of totalitarian con role of anti-Communist ideology in our trols could be considered as progress...

...By compromise, corruption and suppression the regime adapts itself to these stresses and conflicts...

...Tito's tolerance of a Dedijer and persecution of a Djilas...

...and the bloody repression of the Hungarian revolt the minute it began to undercut the power monopoly of the Party and the Russian overlordship...

...Undoubtedly, within this power structure there are and there always have been internal conflicts, and since Stalin's death these conflicts have had more play and more open expression...

...They have been most obvious in the economy and among the intelligentsia...

...It is this fact of the ultimate monopoly of power which gives us the key to understand the varying degrees of "democratization," or lack of it, in the different areas under Communist control...

...Howe says that the only realistic military (and political) view is that both the Russian regime and war are enemies, and that ways should be found to limit the power of the first while preventing the outbreak of the second...

...Americans today do not need DISSENT to explain that "Khrushchev and Mikoyan have committed many evil acts that to put it mildly, do call other characters into question...

...Fejto does in the Winter 1959 DISSENT, that the Communist system is far from being as monolithic as it sometimes appears from the outside, and that there are potentialities and actualities of conflict and evolution...

...Howe's response to this is a "relentless thrust of assertion...

...Perhaps more than any other American of our time, he has represented the claims of social justice and humane conscience...

...What he fails to consider sufficiently, however, is precisely the focal point of Djilas' oversimplified but valid argument: that this "democratization" has limits beyond which it cannot go because then it would call into question the very roots of the system, roots which do not lie in any ideology, but in the power monopoly of the "New Class...

...Other letters on the Mills-Howe exchange have been received, and as many as we have room for will appear in the next issue.—Ed.] Changes in Communist World Editors: It is well to stress, as Mr...

...Doesn't this review it is Howe rather than Mills comment miss the point, which is surely who is guilty of these qualities...

...Howe further com-talitarian nature of Russian society pounds this confusion by shifting, in under Communism...

...But it would be an impermissible jump to conclude from the actual or potential evolution of individuals to a similar potentiality for the regime itself...

...Those concerned with using the term "Western World," ap-the problem of how to protect and adpears to ignore the differences in na-vance democratic and humanistic institure and quality of the various socie-tutions and values must be more alarmed ties and political systems within the na-by the retrogressive direction of our tions which are so loosely called the own society than by the fact of the to" Western World...

...In other words, Howe accepts certain assumptions about the motives of the Soviet leaders and then he equates his own beliefs with TRUTH and FACTS...

...The leash may be longer or shorter at different moments, but there is a leash, and it is held with a firm grip, even if this grip had to become more flexible since Stalin's death...

...Howe says that Mills "minimizes whereas in our own country, since our the differences in nature and quality tradition has been democratic, any trend between the Western World and the in the direction of totalitarian controls Communist countries...

...This is the position advanced by official spokesmen in the Pentagon, the State Department, the VOA etc., and repeated endlessly by our syndicated columnists and editorial writers for the popular press...

...and some analysis of our own government's share in creating the current danger of nuclear war...

...MILLS VS...

...Mills is trying to perform these services...

...This would mean ignoring the limitations set by the monopoly of power...

...His energy, buoyancy, kindness and alertness have helped us, as they have helped others...

...And the first step toward influencing such an evolution from the outside is, of course, to recognize the nature both of its potentialities and of its limitations...

...Howe is disturbed by Mills' statement that the enemy is WAR...

...It explains the surprising amount of intellectual freedom in Poland (and the attempts to confine it to the private sphere...

...the blooming and the wilting of the "Hundred FIowers...

...Innumerable official and unofficial spokesmen— including VP Nixon, David Lawrence, the DAR, Max Lerner and so on and so on—report this incessantly...

...This is the issue American radical intellectuals should be dealing with...

...International affairs today involve moves and countermoves of enormous complexity, and the task of the political analyst must be to broaden the scope of inquiry rather than to shut off discussion with a simple "I believe therefore it is...

...Here is a field for the "serious and sustained discussion" which Howe rightly calls for...

...Or not even noting it...

...That this central fact of our time...