LETTERS
Puerto Ricans and Sentimentality Editors: I suppose if one were to total up the comments of Stanley Plastrik in his review of my book, Island in the City, [DISSENT, Spring 1959], the...
...Instead of asking others to imagine what might be achieved if all industry were managed by Govern ment bureaucrats, it would attempt to suggest what might be achieved if each private enterprise did business on a cooperative basis...
...The Hobson's choice which Seligman offers us would appear to be a deriva tive of the notion that socialism is syn onymous with government ownership, or at least dependent upon it...
...In the July-August 1959 issue of Problems of Communism, K. A. Jelensky (a pro-revisionist) stresses another important aspect of Poland's dilemma—the western frontiers along the Oder-Neisse line...
...American mass society—New York— does not attempt to "integrate" the Puerto Ricans...
...If Mills is a little too careless about the totalitarian attributes of the Communist world, perhaps Howe is a little too careless about the signs of democratization therein...
...May I say, as a long time member of one of the larger Eastern coops, that I firmly believe in the Rochdale principles, but he will have to write a pretty persuasive piece to prove that these can establish a viable socialism...
...Still, Mr...
...His letter nevertheless remains a huge non sequitur...
...It is easier to dismiss this plan with a catchword than to suggest an alternative policy, but in fact it represents a serious effort to think out a solution to problems of 1959—problems to which the 19th century debate on protectionism versus free trade is completely irrelevant...
...I think this is the nub of our disagreement and accounts for what I described as his failure to grapple with real issues...
...I have neither the tools nor the inclinations to talk about such questions as Mr...
...The fact is that socialism does imply a movement away from the private market and central control of at least the investment process...
...Polemical conflict eases the pain...
...Puerto Ricans and Sentimentality Editors: I suppose if one were to total up the comments of Stanley Plastrik in his review of my book, Island in the City, [DISSENT, Spring 1959], the scales would be slightly more weighted on the "favorable" than the "unfavorable" side...
...But still the whole thing depresses me, and not because of its "favorable" or "unfavorable" aspects...
...This notion seems to pervade the socialist and liberal intellectual world, from the Authoritarian Left to the politely Dis senting Right...
...though to admit this possibility is not necessarily to conclude that "critical support" (whatever that may mean) should be given the regime—which, by the way, keeps hardening toward a Khrushchevite authoritarianism and steadily whittling away the liberties won in 1956...
...I am aware that townspeople form the bulk of the migration to New York, but I am also aware that these are not really modern city people, with the background, formation, and education generally associated with the city...
...There does exist, however, a considerable amount of material dealing with this matter, in the form of teacher experiences, studies, etc...
...And surely he knows about the custom by which for many centuries in England hangings of criminals were held as public spectacles...
...My interest, in the short piece from which he quotes, was to specify the central attitude Western socialists and democrats, who unlike the Polish "revisionists" are free agents, should take toward the Communist bloc...
...And I still believe it's a book that ought to be read, although I must add that Wakefield's remarks only underline, for me at least, my criticism...
...or does he deny this...
...Lewis Coser having so nicely demonstrated that progress derives not simply from cooperation but also from conflict, we now possess a cogent intellectual rationale for looking rather benignly upon radicals temporarily in arms against each other...
...I am talking about individual people, in specific situations, in a particular neighborhood Did you ever sit down in a man's kitchen, with his wife and kids, and ask him if he feels his troubles stem from the fact that he is from a pre-industrial minority group, entering our mass society...
...My failure was in giving as little as I did, and if I had it to do over again, my aim would be not to give less but more, and not to quote from any documents— only people...
...This is both surprising and regrettable to me, particularly since I felt (and still feel) that I had been considerably more sympathetic to it than the several other reviewers I had read...
...Perhaps the difference between Mr...
...What a piddling thing it is you can give at all...
...No "position" in politics permits one to dispense with common sense...
...On the contrary, they are responsible...
...He then quickly says that "It is a little on the sentimental side...
...I would be most appreciative if Irving Howe would offer his answers to these questions...
...Howe's criticism every intelligent union member would agree...
...I have no special knowledge of education in Puerto Rico itself and I don't doubt that Wakefield is right...
...At the heart of radicalism is a profound commitment to philosophic anarchism...
...This clash is intensified by the lack of sympathy— downright hostility—which the white host culture bears toward the immigrant culture...
...We desperately need both Mills and Howe in harness, even when they disagree...
...But that is not the point...
...That's good enough for me...
...Plastrik begins by saying that I have written a "fine human document," and I suppose that's an inevitable label for a book on such a subject, even though no man in his right mind would want to read a "human document...
...Wakefield can easily be forgiven a tendency to overplay his hand...
...If not, what then is the qualitative and quantitative difference between their attitude and the position of "critical support...
...Hall evidently admires this careful approach which leaves things quite as they are...
...What does he propose to do about the automobile, steel, rubber, machine tool, aviation, printing, construction, railroad, glass making, coal, electric power generation and myriad other industries that account for the larger part of the gross national product —let alone the newer atomic energy and space travel industries...
...His common sense tells him that the answers are to be found in more sober sources—statistics, graphs, interaction studies...
...Can one be a principled moral-political opponent of the Gomulka regime without calling for its overthrow...
...If these three unions had thought only of the immediate interest of their own members they would have done what Mr...
...Nevertheless, in order to avoid still another split in the ranks, the prime curse of democratic radicalism, conflicts between influential polemicists must be subject to a certain discipline...
...But those problems, which I talk about specifically, Plastrik doesn't go into...
...In view of these widely recognized facts of Polish political life, how adequate is Howe's sweeping generalization that everything in the entire Communist world, that helps to disintegrate the rule of the regime, is "good...
...Production for use has been achieved in a great many instances by privately incorporated consumers' cooperatives...
...there are special problems of motivation and attitude here...
...Waller and myself is that he is writing as a kind of fraternal adviser to the Polish "revisionists" while I was trying simply to indicate a general moral-political attitude toward Communism as a power in the world...
...In both Britain and Norway, to cite but two examples, the cooperatives (as well as the unions) have supplied much of the restraint on nationalization...
...Apparently he is referring to the plan offered by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the ILGWU and the Textile Workers, to establish import quotas which would rise or fall with wage levels in the country of manufacture...
...More erudite scholars may even recall the existence of a Cooperative Party in Great Britain which, in alliance with the Labor party, governed the country for several years...
...I'd suggest that Hall look up some of the recent interesting Polish discussions on the matter...
...But such commentary should be couched in carefully understated and tactful language...
...not, as Wakefield assumes, "statistics, graphs, interaction studies...
...A victory for me by close decision, if not a knockout...
...Quite true, But he doesn't mention one of the main, recurrent themes of the book—that most of the difficulties we have come to know as "Puerto Rican problems" are problems that were already a part of our own society and that the migrants have inherited from us when they came to New York...
...Waller for raising his questions, but in a brief comment cannot pretend to answer them...
...Both clearly recognize that Stalinism is intolerable...
...The few radicals who remain should not begin clawing at each others' throats...
...In Santurce, a basic place in the family and home, as part of the open family system...
...Surely he knows about Roman gladiators, and the public fascination with their blood...
...Washington, D. C. LURT HALL BEN SELIGMAN replies: I find it rather puzzling how to deal with Mr...
...the book I reviewed, after all, is about Spanish Harlem...
...It is just not enough to state that all sincere socialists and democrats instinctively solidarize themselves with the harassed Polish revisionists, as opposed to "cultural spokesmen" for Gomulka...
...two ways of life meet...
...It should be designed to make the essential points clearly without encouraging —inciting might be a better word—the readership to open breaks and calls to the barricades in behalf of either Howe or Mills...
...Perhaps Hall felt the discussion somewhat truncated, but it did concern itself only with a specific, limited area of the problem...
...I still don't find any intellectual or political sustenance in her letter, but that was no reason to be nasty about it...
...They obscure the issue at hand...
...How could he have missed this...
...1) My reference to the reader's "common sense" meant that and precisely that...
...God help us, I am sure that Plastrik is right...
...Should we, as socialists and democrats, ceaselessly attack the Gomulka regime, even in our way, without first clarifying what kind of an attack is called for under the circumstances...
...Hall's complaint, since it is obvious from my article that its subject was the economic theory of socialism, not the cooperative movement...
...Until we settle the question of the nature of the East-West conflict, we cannot get on to other tasks...
...Plastrik says that there are a number of problems about the Puerto Ricans that do present difficulties...
...2) Wakefield claims that most of the so-called Puerto Rican problems are problems that were already a part of our own society which they have been inhering from us...
...If many of our Polish comrades, known and unknown, with whom we instinctively solidarize ourselves, believe that the disintegration of Gomulka's rule (at this juncture in world events) would be national suicide—should this not make us all more cautious about excursions in sloganeering...
...one, infinitely more powerful and domineering, imposes itself upon the other, but not without violence and desperation...
...While Hall's thrashing about for alter natives is commendable, he does himself a disservice by cutting away from the major questions in any discussion on socialism, for these remain in many ways economic and political in character and must be worked out in a much broader arena than he would allow...
...Well, I doubt it, since—as I stated in the book—the majority of migrants to the mainland are not, as is commonly believed, from an agricultural society, but from the cities and towns of the island, and most of them have worked in industries (which are multiplying on the island every year...
...I think the report I quoted of a New York teacher's experience in teaching a year on the island, and finding the immense interest and stimulation in education among the students there...
...Yet for Seligman—and for many others—it is not worth con sidering...
...Before answering his remarks I might mention the fact that my review ran barely a page in length and was hardly intended to be exhaustive...
...May I point out that it is a misconception...
...With much of Mr...
...Oh no...
...The price system and the system of competitive marketing do not achieve this goal and will not achieve it even though all economic enterprises be governmentally owned...
...The DISSENT article was obviously part of this projected analysis...
...If you are sitting in that kitchen, in Harlem, such questions don't enter your head, and if they did, you would have to laugh...
...It is true that the Polish "revisionists" may have to work out tactical adaptations...
...While on this matter, let me add a word of regret for the ill-tempered tone I took in replying to Helen Mears' letter in the last DISSENT...
...good judgment...
...I resist the temptation to employ a harsher word...
...it wants to beat them over the head...
...As such it is entirely desirable...
...Yet I can't help wondering at his assumption that this sort of thing is somehow unique to mass society in our day...
...in New York, more often than not the breadwinner, the worker...
...That is why I stressed that we should support the dissenters of the east, not those who suppress them...
...Had I addressed myself to the problems he raises I should probably have said at least some of the things he does...
...A socialist intellectual has even less justification than an academic economist for ignoring the cooperative approach to socialism...
...4) Finally, a comment about Wakefield's insistence that it is "people" we must talk about...
...I consider it imperative that these points be more adequately clariffed if we, socialists and democrats, are exhorted not to yield a single political inch to Gomulka...
...Dobb's opposition was not of fered in the spirit of serious intellec tual inquiry but as a highly sophisti cated, but intellectually dishonest, apol ogy for Stalinism...
...In fact, maybe we need them most when they diverge, provided they debate their differences in a careful way...
...PAUL WALLER IRVING HowE replies: I am grateful to Mr...
...Can Wakefield dispute this point...
...and I wish to apologize to her...
...a careful reading of their remarks in the Summer 1959 issue of DISSENT confirms this impression...
...Granted, the idea of a "cooperative commonwealth" has never cut a wide swath among intellectuals in this country, but surely even the Dw SExx-type thinkers have heard that there is a socialist party in Canada that bears a strangely familiar name, and that this very party is, essentially, a political ex pression of the cooperative movement...
...Washington, D. C. On Crossing Pens Editors: The disputation between C. Wright Mills and Irving Howe concerning The Causes of World War III was an entirely predictable event...
...In Jelensky's view, "as long as these frontiers remain unrecognized by the Western powers, many Poles will feel themselves condemned—quite aside from any other considerations—to remain faithful to the Soviet alliance...
...Wakefield's equation with the paraphernalia of pseudosociology is a false one...
...It is not the controversy per se between Mills and Howe which causes some alarm...
...It is true that present-day technology permits you to witness such gory spectacles while sipping beer in your armchair...
...But how, in principle, is this different from or worse than previous public displays of cruelty which also deprived victims of their privacy...
...They fail to practice what they preach...
...The political backwardness of the coops here and the patent record of unwillingness to move toward a "socialist" goal on the part of the European organizations, fails to lend support to Hall's curious optimism...
...This description implies a transitional phase between the former status of Puerto Rico as a depressed, impoverished agricultural community and a modern society...
...Now clearly ideas are not easily divorced from personalities...
...What should be a conflict designed in the end to resolve differences or clarify unresolvable points of view could all too easily become a source of permanent divisions...
...An economy "commanded" by Government bureau crats might achieve it, but is not likely to...
...Now, I don't want to bring our disagreement down to the level of who sat in more Puerto Rican kitchens (he wouldn't, in any case, have much of a chance with me on that score) but I think this illustrates perfectly what I meant by his "sentimentality...
...Co operation's most widely noticed successes have been in the field of wholesale and retail distribution—the very field as to which both Seligman and Galbraith as sert socialism's unworkability...
...But it is different here...
...On the point of education, which Plastrik feels I do not face candidly, he says that "the fact is, and much teacher experience substantiates this, the children of this people are undermotivated or little interested in education either for itself or for social advancement...
...The entirely gratuitous comments each directs at the other's personal foibles cannot fail to excite and irritate readers...
...3) Education: Clearly, my remarks about education refer to New York City and New York City alone...
...We will not settle it by indulging in a kind of debate which ultimately divides rather than unites...
...Without questioning this point in the slightest degree, I believe that the issues are somewhat less clear-cut when considering the following: 1. Many Poles (including revisionists and their allies) contend that, at present, there is no realistic alternative to Gomulka's foreign policy...
...When considering the Gomulka regime, Howe substitutes praiseworthy libertarian catchwords, in place of a more thoughtful appraisal of Poland's complex political, geographical and moral dilemma...
...It reflects the contemporary radical dilemma—the inability to reach a consensus on the Cold War—which is exacerbated by the sense of powerlessness which engulfs us at the moment...
...Are there not some specific qualifications that are in order when considering the Polish situation...
...it is the mood and the language of it...
...Common sense is defined in my dictionary as "sound, ordinary sense...
...Cincinnati JosEPH GQLDMARK LEwis CosER replies: Cruelty, of course, is a generically human trait—animals are never cruel...
...Carefulness does not mean absence of passion...
...The effect of this alone upon the male Puerto Rican is of major significance...
...If radicals organize collectively for given purposes, it is an imposing concession to reality, and the act conjures an imposing burden of guilt...
...Yet the deliberate exploitation of human suffering for public amusement, while not entirely absent in other periods, seems to me a characteristic of mass so cieties, Roman or modern...
...No other conclusion is possible from any reflection upon the problems of the Puerto Ricans as a group...
...Every civilized person will share his response...
...How ought we to view the Mills-Howe controversy...
...I simply want to point out that the term "people," employed in this way, tends to become an abstraction, and an abstraction that can blind us, quite as much as any sociological notion, in the search for understanding and sympathy S. P. Unions & Import Quotas Editors: In his introduction to the Autumn DISSENT, Irving Howe notes that "Recently the garment unions, disturbed by competition from low-wage countries, have urged the reinstitution of tariff barriers"—a demand which he labels as "protectionism" later in the same paragraph...
...Waller may be right in saying that at present there is no alternative to the Gomulka regime...
...Is it because this is the first instance of a preindustrial minority group having to enter our 'mass society...
...A simpler and more direct method would be to make all import duties inversely proportionate to wages in the country of manufacture, but this is barred by the most-favored-nation clause in practically every commercial treaty to which the United States is a party, which bars discrimination against any particular country by higher rates...
...Seligman concludes, or at least implies, that we must choose be tween a "command economy" and the "competitive solution of market social ism...
...Does Hall really believe that retail-wholesale cooperatives will achieve "production for use...
...He says the major problem is one I do not discuss: "The interaction between Puerto Rican culture with that of postwar America is different from all previous relationships between immigrant groups and the host culture of the U.S...
...Somewhere, in one of the socialist periodicals, I would like to see an article urging that socialist theory be recon structed in accordance with Rochdale principles...
...I agree with this sense of the complexi ties of the Polish situation, as well as his judgment that my "fleeting remarks" on Poland during my polemic with C. Wright Mills were inadequate...
...but never mind...
...Connecticut DAVID F. TRASK Polish "Revisionism" Editors: In his otherwise cogent reply to C. Wright Mills, on the attitude of intellectuals toward the Soviet bloc [DISSENT, Summer 1959], Irving Howe's fleeting remarks about the Polish area of this bloc are, in my opinion, most insufficient...
...Plastrik does not point out what I am at great pains to make clear in the book—that I am a reporter, not a sociologist...
...When I wrote that I found "good" those forces in the Communist world which "help to crumble the party's monopoly of power," this does not mean that I fail to recognize that there may not be moments when socialists and democrats in Poland, as elsewhere, may have to act with restraint...
...Instead they have offered a plan that would introduce a new principle into tariff policy, the use of import quotas to encourage the improvement of social conditions in the nations with which we trade...
...If he is really interested in what I have to say about the broader issues of socialist economic theory, may I urge patience on his part until my larger treatment of the question will have been published some time in the future...
...I bother to put this down because I feel that the kind of attitude expressed in the review is one of the things that most needs dissenting against in American life today...
...It is therefore especially unfortunate that he has missed the significance of this plan—heartening evidence that the labor movement is still producing new ideas and fresh thinking on the problems of our time...
...Cooks and Socialism Editors: Ben B. Seligman's "Socialism without Marx" (DIssENT, Summer 1959) rehashes the celebrated fight between Lange and Dickinson on the one hand and Dobb on the other...
...The point is that an obvious cultural clash is here involved...
...The reader who might begin to feel some emotion, some guilt, some disturbance at his lack of connection or understanding of these people [the Puerto Ricans in New York City], some relationship to them as human beings, need have no fear that he will be moved anywhere near the region of the gut rather than the brain: his common sense will redress the balance...
...Let us hold a conference, establish a foundation, offer grants for further study "in the field...
...The key questions become: What are the chances for liberalizing change in the USSR...
...Can you live in Harlem and write a book about the people around you, people struggling to survive, children stunted from malnutrition, intelligent young boys hooked on heroin, and give too much of yourself...
...I must further add that the thing I liked about the book was precisely its distance from the type of pseudo-scientific "sociological" surveys which have been done on Puerto Ricans...
...Plastrik poses...
...It depresses me because it exhibits exactly the kind of "approach to the problem" on the part of right-thinking, well-meaning men that the book, in its highest purpose, was designed to destroy...
...All books are failures, to a greater or lesser degree, and mine is a failure precisely because I didn't give enough of myself...
...There has, apparently, been enormous progress but the very fact that it has been so recent must suggest that most of the people in its towns and cities have come but recently from the soil, with all that that implies...
...Finally, doesn't the attitude of our Polish comrades imply some variety (however grudging and resigned) of "critical support" to Gomulka...
...Mills has remained truculent about the West (a reflection of his commitment to the impossible ought), whereas Howe has regained a sympathy for the best as pects of the Western tradition .. Given these differences, a clash—a crossing of pens— naturally suggests itself to such polemic-prone individuals...
...Now Lange did not offer his theory as the one true image of socialism...
...With gov ernmental encouragement (but without governmental ownership or planning), it has worked near miracles in rural electrification and in rural telephone communications...
...Howe is doubtful that the recent changes in Russia indicate important changes, and is much more sympathetic to a bumbling but morally oriented Western strategy...
...it does mean a specific attempt to avoid undue emphasis on personalities rather than ideas...
...But I think the heart of our differences lies in Plastrik's statement that "Dan Wakefield has given of himself—probably too much of himself—in this effort...
...Both Mills and Howe recognize this fact...
...Mills believes the USSR is in the process of reconstituting itself into a viable society and he is severely critical of western democracy...
...Whatever countries reach full industrialization first will find their power and prestige greatly increased, and their social system will be the model their neighbors will imitate...
...2. This implies that there is no alternative to many of the domestic consequences of Poland's remaining within the Soviet orbit...
...Instead of extolling "national plan ning"—a most unattractive notion—the ar ticle might recommend a rewriting of the corporation laws...
...In any case, he offers no information to the contrary...
...but that is no reason why one should qualify one's principled opposition to Communist society...
...It is obviously an episode in the painful search for a radical consensus concerning the struggle between totalitarian and non-totalitarian societies...
...they may even be reduced simply to waiting...
...As a general re-definition of a socialist program, the article might not succeed, yet it would force even the most thirties-bound intellectual to recognize the possibility of cooperative control of the retail-wholesale industry...
...Socialism is an effort to achieve pro duction for use...
...A clash of cultures results, and must result...
...The future happiness of mankind depends not so much on how fast this process takes place, as on whether it results in a higher living standard in these countries or merely in strengthening oppressive governments and promoting a dozen local arms races in dif ferent parts of the world...
...Surely, some speculation about the future of cooperation is in order if we are seriously attempting to review the socialist tradition...
...Just one additional point—I haven't seen anything yet to suggest that Maurice Dobb has abandoned the position described in the article, while Lange, after having made dutiful obeisance to Stalinist economics prior to the famed 20th Congress, seems to be getting back to his earlier American views on the usefulness of market socialism...
...the reader's common sense will redress the balance...
...It appears to be more of an excuse to protest against the alleged neglect of the consumer cooperatives rather than a reasoned, intelligent discussion of the socialism article...
...This calls into play a whole host of political as well as economic impulses and requires action that goes far beyond the retail-wholesale yardstick economy of the cooperatives...
...Instead of seeking to national ize economic enterprise, such an article might contend, let us seek to democratize it...
...T. S. HOLMAN Recording Secretary, Passaic County Industrial Union Council (CIO) Roman Holidays Editors: I was interested in, and moved by, the note by L. C. called "No Exit" in the summer 1959 DISSENT, in which he expressed his horror at the way the Cuban government postponed the execution of several prisoners so that arrangements could be made for full TV coverage...
...Barring some unprecedented world catastrophe, more and more of the socalled underdeveloped nations will become industrialized in the next 25 or 30 years...
...S. All of which boils down to the hard and cruel fact that, according to these anti-Communist Poles, there is really no alternative to the Gomulka regime at this time—short of another blood-bath in the Hungarian style...
...How real is democracy in the West...
...Howe accuses them of doing, and called for a simple rise in tariff, without regard to what foreign industries were hurt...
...I described Puerto Rico as a "pre-industrial" society, a description to which he objects without offering a better one...
...he merely endeavored to prove that a com petitive market could be retained despite government ownership of economic en terprise...
...DAN WAKEFIELD STANLEY PLASTRICK replies: Evidently, Dan Wakefield is nettled by by review of his book in the Summer 1959 issue of DISSENT...
...destroy them) Take but one example: the complete reversal of the woman's role as she migrates from one land to the other...
...plus the conditions of life of these children in New York, as stated throughout the book, as well as the description of their specific problems in New York schools, are an answer to that question...
...they should pick each others' brains critically with sympathy and respect...
...Now that both Lange and Dobb have abandoned the positions they took then, there seems little reason to take the dispute seriously...
...The outstanding merit of this plan is that it would give an advantage in the world's biggest consumer-goods market to those countries which have free government, a vigorous labor movement and a rising standard of living...
...This is not to deny that responsibility for the present troubles rests upon the New York City administration and its white residents...
Vol. 7 • January 1960 • No. 1
