Cuba And Radicalism
Kolko, Joyce & Walzer, Michael
Reading your special issue, Cuba: The Invasion and Its Consequences, was indeed a painful experience. In the aftermath of the Cuban "fiasco" surely more could be expected from a magazine that...
...approach to the problem of decolonization...
...has consistently followed a conservative policy or what forces could change it in a radical direction...
...The purpose of her polemic is to establish her leftist credentials and discredit my own...
...An American radical should welcome such a "grim necessity...
...But how can a radical naively picture Eisenhower stumping in the Cuban villages or the Kennedy Administration actively assisting the nationalization of U.S...
...Is this the alternative a radical commends...
...As an American magazine with pretensions of radicalism, DISSENT'S primary focus should be on the forces that shape this policy and on its specific implementation—and not building pipedreams of a miraculous leftward swing of the Kennedy Administration at the very time its policy is hardening into a jingoistic and belligerent stand throughout the world...
...Michael Walzer replies: In what way has Kennedy's Latin American policy since April suggested the elements of a new U.S...
...In a perverse way...
...The CIA will continue its operations of training and equipping local forces for the overthrow of governments it disapproves of...
...I assume that also is a polemical technique...
...The simple fact of the matter is that Cuba and Latin America are not unique cases, but only examples of the conservative foreign policy the U.S...
...I have heard that confident prophecy from Americans many times...
...In a perverse way, however, they suggest the elements of a new United States policy toward Cuba...
...it is possible to be angered and dismayed by the reactionary and jingoistic state of mind of many Americans today—and it is possible at the same time to argue for new policies which are at least conceivable in the America we know...
...Would it be presumptuous to ask, in what way...
...Kolko does not understand, but I will do her the honor of assuming that the misunderstanding is a technique of her polemic and nothing else...
...I believe that there are and that they do not require the revolutionary transformation of American society...
...Reading your special issue, Cuba: The Invasion and Its Consequences, was indeed a painful experience...
...It is a weary business when so much else is at stake, and I am not terribly eager to debate that topic...
...throughout its history has treated Latin America as a colony, he continues to assume that Castro's anti-Americanism was a "fantasy-ridden world view" and some kind of xenophobia...
...Castro's fantasy—I suspect Mrs...
...3) There is a conservative assumption regarding the role of the middle classes in Cuba...
...What, for instance, was the lesson learned from the CIA role in the Cuban fiasco...
...Kolko paraphrases my remark but drops the negative...
...I won't debate at this time the question of the Cuban middle classes...
...There are several underlying assumptions in the article which are completely incompatible with democratic radicalism...
...I call its intellectual basis pseudo-Marxism and I find the delight with which it is usually made morbid...
...What are the "vested interests" of this class that might have opposed the Fidelistas...
...Are there alternatives to current American policy...
...Kolko ever encounters real anti-Americanism, she will quickly discover that her radicalism will not save her from being hated...
...it is possible to study its consistency and not merely express indignation at particular follies...
...Certainly there would be alternative if there were a radical and progressive movement in the United States to make basic changes in foreign policy...
...1) The assumption that a complete and unequivocal condemnation of American foreign policy is "morbid anti-Americanism...
...It is possible to condemn American policy...
...There is little else to do, except abandon politics altogether...
...Kolko shared it—was to believe from the beginning that the marines were on their way...
...Then she will realize that supporting, or living with, an angry and usually demogogic anti-Americanism is in fact a grim necessity...
...2) The article simply assumes Kennedy has had the wrong advice and perhaps he will call a few DISSENT editors to Washington to set him straight...
...Reassuring...
...Although Walzer opens the article by pointing out that the U.S...
...Even Business Week, which supports the Administration plan for government reimbursement of future nationalization, did not have the audacity to suggest such a proposal...
...Such a transformation may be desirable for countless other reasons...
...investments...
...BEFORE GIVING his ten point program for the New Frontier, Walzer blithely dismisses a few discouraging factors indicating Kennedy has given no sign of a change of policy...
...Perhaps then your magazine will be worthy of its name...
...He also comes to the unsupported conclusion that the Government has learned its lesson with the Cuban invasion and that we may now expect a radically different policy...
...Self-indulgent (and self-destructive) venture...
...4) And why assume that supporting radical reformers is "a matter of grim necessity" when they are anti-American...
...One final point: if Mrs...
...Hatred, even when it is a matter of ideological zeal, is also an undiscriminating and intolerant passion...
...The only change will be the transfer of paramilitary operations to the Pen tagon...
...My chief complaint, however, is the total vacuum in which the article is written and the facile dismissal of any attempt to set a context for U.S...
...What does the writer mean in commenting on their "tragic" exodus, or that the middle class possessed "the numbers and social power to control" the revolution...
...It would inevitably be a sectarion...
...That is true fantasy and it does nothing to show why the U.S...
...What then would she do with them...
...But I would doubt the value of a politics which assumed that he was shortly to be replaced from the left...
...That would be a difficult test, indeed, for my internationalist virtue...
...It is not necessary in order for us to co-exist with Cuba or to support genuine social reform...
...It is necessary, for example, to attack Kennedy sharply from the left and to attempt to bring pressure upon him...
...has been consistently pursuing around the world...
...Or does she mean to suggest that the palm of progress having passed 'forever from the hands of the US, we (as radicals) ought to encourage people to hate us (as Americans...
...But "about such things, there is little to say...
...In the aftermath of the Cuban "fiasco" surely more could be expected from a magazine that claims to be democratic socialist and radical than this equivocal scolding of the Administration and the recommendation of a set of proposals, the first of which is to reimburse the American investors in Cuba for their losses...
...I wrote that a radically new policy was unlikely—though possible— given the present atmosphere in Washington...
...Kolko wirtes as it they can have no part in a socialist society...
...foreign policy as "pseudo-Marxist" or "corrupted Marxist," etc...
...A radical draws distinctions when he discusses alternatives...
Vol. 8 • September 1961 • No. 4
