LETTERS
White, Christopher & Sugarman, Linda & Norton, Marion S. & Cisler, Steve & Wertheim, Peter & Dworkin, Gerald & Jadhav, Keshav R.
Editors: In the Spring/1961 issue of Dissent your Paris correspondent, Paul Parisot, states that "The FLN is tied to the International Communist bloc and includes an internal tendency...
...I am a recent graduate of Barnard, and one of those "young, middleclass Democratic reformers" about which Mary Nichols wrote...
...He added that the Soviet and Chinese leaders had said to him that "the Algerian fighters were performing a great service for the Soviet group by immobilizing entire NATO divisions...
...Further, if it is correct that Mehta is proposing an electoral alliance with the Lohia socialists in the coming elections (and I do not know whether this is true), would this not indicate the maturity, objectivity and wisdom of Mehta and his friends to our indignant Lohia supporter...
...so do people like Mr...
...I find this statement quite astonishing and offered without any evidence...
...We have called it this partly because we like the title and partly because we admire your publication...
...In September, 1960, Ferhat Abbas was received at Peking with full honors...
...CHRISTOPHER WHITE PAUL Pnxlsor replies: In May, 1959, M. Oussedik, Secretary of State of the GPRA (Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic) went to Peking to ask for help...
...Even the worst enemies of Lohia here don't deny that he is a "brilliant intellectual...
...How can one fail to recognize that in ninty-five per cent of the world there are courageous men, desiring to make prog ress, who seek a way along Communist lines...
...I am, after all, not unacquainted with Lohia's record in the Indian nationalist and revolutionary movement...
...Stanley Plastrik's vicious attack on Lohia...
...And this also is quite natural...
...STEVE CISLER Fraternally Editors: I am writing to let you know that a group made up largely of democratic socialists is starting up a quarterly journal out here and that we are calling it Dissent...
...All the more reason for me (and others) to regret his present activities which include splitting the socialist movement of India and an all-round irresponsible form of "action" aimed at filling up the jails...
...MARION S. NORTON Spring Issue Editors: I would like to compliment you on the Spring/1961 issue of DrssENT...
...As for the existence within the FLN of a tendency influenced by Communist doc trines, this is a fact recognized by all observers...
...Certain totalitarian characteristics of the FLN, however, cannot be explained by Communist influence...
...Several of the articles in that issue are helping me to convince the overwhelming number of conservatives on this campus that liberal ism is not paradoxically stagnant or dog matic...
...We can only be glad that in the case of the FLN the Communist tendency is still a minority and that even after seven years of atrocious war the possi bility exists of a coming together of dem ocratic forces within the FLN...
...One of its leaders, George Fernandes, is widely regarded as the most dynamic trade unionist of India...
...LINDA SUGARMAN Creative Thinking Editors: I am very much impressed with the hard and creative thinking in your pamphlet "Cuba" just up...
...They are aspects of many national revolutions in the underdeveloped lands...
...On October 6, the Tunisian ambassador to Moscow, Mr...
...Eminent public figures agree with him on one or another of his policies toward the problems of caste, language, prices, etc...
...Asoka Mehta who like Guy Mollet has sold out socialism for a mess of pottage...
...In an interview published by the New York Times on October 24, Ferhat Abbas declared that he had no hope of negotiating with France...
...I am also interested in Urban Renewal and saving New York from its only "real" blight—that of "Mosesism" and "real" estate...
...At the end of October, Pravda wrote, "The Algerian provisional government, expressing the interests of a people struggling for its independence, has the right to receive help from states taking an anti-colonialist stand, including the socialist states . . . the West . . . cannot criticize the USSR and China for having offered help, nor the Algerian people for having accepted it...
...Then we shall see what the Communist tendency of the FLN represents exactly, its strength and its possibility of evolving—it also—toward democratic conceptions...
...This article carries the signature "Observer," reserved for the spokesman of the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs...
...The vestiges of collegiate paternalism have not yet worn off...
...But they were--and remain--an honest expression of a rather dismal interview...
...As to Jadhav's charges against the Praja Socialist party of Asoka Mehta, their very wildness makes it impossible to consider them seriously...
...PETER WERTHEIM Victoria, Australia Root and Branch Editors: A group of graduate students at the University of California here in Berkeley, who are concerned about the way in which the Cold War has obscured the real issues and problems that face mankind, and who are fed up with the weak and morally compromised stands of American liberalism (a la Schlesinger) and with the disembodied nature of their own technical training, wishing to bring their knowledge to bear on the crucial issues of our time in a radical way, have formed a press with the idea of publishing a magazine in order to have a platform for their views...
...Its author owes the readers of DISSENT an explanation and proof of what he so baldly asserts...
...let Mr...
...This pos sibility is represented by men like Ferhat Abbas, Francis, Boumendjel, etc...
...This should delight Mrs...
...STANLEY PLASTRIK replies: Mr...
...In fact, I can be further stereotyped...
...It has aligned itself with the Congress and the semifascist Muslim League in Kerela, with the Communists and the communal Hindu Maha Sabha in Marahashtra, with the Gatantra Parishad, a party of exMaharajas in Orissa, and now its leader, Mr...
...A reckoning must be asked of the Western governments...
...Our journal is largely centered at the universities, the three editirs being a political scientist, a lecturer in English and myself, a tutor in philosophy...
...All this may lead to Stalinism, with the Communists, for their part, acting as a factor encouraging such political backwardness...
...The Socialist party of which he is a leader has as many members as the Praja Socialist party...
...Perhaps I am so enthusiastic for selfish reasons...
...I, therefore, offer you my gratitude for giving me some articulate authority to back me up...
...Rereading what I wrote, I do find my comments rather severe...
...The latter made a speech in which he said expressly, "The Algerian people place Moscow in the peace camp...
...These are political judgments...
...It will be realized only if the war ends in an agreement with France...
...Such popularity as comes from compromise is neither healthy nor permanent...
...It has been read widely around my dormitory here at Northwestern University...
...Requests for our brochure, subscriptions ($2.50 for four issues) and conrtibutions towards defraying costs for our first issue (October 1961) may be mailed to The Root and Branch Press Box 906 Berkeley 3, California I was shocked to read Mr...
...The Socialist Party has recently lost a number of its workers through mysterious deaths in jails and murders outside, not to mention the thousands of its members who are arrested and sent to jails on the flimsiest excuses because it is organizing the common people and the landless peasantry against the government's caste, language and price exploitations...
...Mestiri, offered a reception in honor of Ferhat Abbas...
...Where would one expect the FLN to seek out allies in the world if not in the East...
...The policies pursued by the Socialist party have such revolutionary significance that almost all other political parties have been forced to sit up and appraise the situation in their light...
...The links between the FLN and the Soviet bloc are a mystery only for those who would like to see a pro-Western FLN, not committed to the East, which is an impossibility if only because of the fact that the West has never renounced colonialism...
...Is there any way of guaranteeing that it be read by the men in Washington now in charge of Latin American policy —particularly the new one, Robert F. Woodward...
...Nichols...
...As for Lohia being isolated in Indian politics, I don't think there is anything bad about accepting isolation for the sake of certain principles...
...Kossyguine on the subject of the appeal for help ad dressed a few weeks before by the FLN to the Soviet Union...
...In October, 1960, the president of the GPRA then went to Moscow where he held official conversations with Mr...
...Selfish Reasons" Editors: I am now a fan of yours (if the rest of your issues are as rewarding as this summer's issue...
...The PSP, on the other hand, is hardly distinct from the Congress...
...Editors: In the Spring/1961 issue of Dissent your Paris correspondent, Paul Parisot, states that "The FLN is tied to the International Communist bloc and includes an internal tendency whose orientation, thought and fundamental political conceptions have nothing in common with democracy and everything in common with Communism of the Moscow variety (Fidel Castro...
...Jadhav's angry retort to my remarks about Rammanohar Lohia and his Socialist party are regrettable, but understandable...
...Asoka Mehta, wants to have an alliance with the Socialist party of (the "isolated" Lohia) in the next general elections...
...At that time it was announced that, in principle at least, such help would be granted...
...France first of all, naturally, but in the second place and immediately after, the United States...
...They include the policy of the one-and-only party, the refusal to admit variant tendencies within the revolution, the physical extermination of opponents, etc...
...These are concrete, real issues to the people and the government knows its enemy...
...Secondly, Lohia is not an ioslated figure in Indian politics...
...Jadhav reply to them as such...
...He obtained public promises of "total help...
...DISSENT, Spring, 1961...
...We have included in our first issue a short note to this effect which also commends your journal to whatever readers we will have and gives your New York address...
Vol. 8 • September 1961 • No. 4
