New Styles In American Social Protest

...But when some of these display a mindless admiration for Castro's totalitarian bravado, then we believe it our duty to criticize, for we remember the somewhat similar admiration of an earlier generation of young radicals for the "future that works" in the Soviet Union...

...In the Fall 1960 DISSENT, Irving Howe and Lewis Coser have aptly seized a political mood which is characteristic of many young Americans and offers the potentiality of a new upsurge of the idea of social protest...

...but this is not at all the same as accepting a gradual blurring of intellectual and moral issues...

...Many years ago Sidney Hook put the matter well: "There is no wisdom in saying men must act...

...She appears to suggest that if only men engage in right action it might be as well to call a moratorium on theoretical reflection...

...what characterizes the latter is a feeling that the United States has contributed just as much to our present posture on the brink of annihilation as the Soviet Union and so a refusal to believe the current rationalization that all our own weapons' developments have been absolutely necessary because of the Russians...

...Thus, when we criticized the lack of historical perspective among some younger radicals we did so in the spirit of Santayana's remark that "those who have forgotten the past are doomed to repeat it...

...they may mean simply a pragmatic acceptance of the fact that no society ever really reaches its ideals...

...Howe and Coser criticize us for our lack of historical perspective...

...but like them we know that social movements of the left as well as the right can become rigid and bureaucratized or even terroristic and this may account for the reluctance of many of us to join them...

...It was anything but our intention to engage in a general attack on the new radical generation...

...We also know that Communist ideology leads to expansionism and that sometimes the methods used for expansion have been far from subtle...

...They always do...

...If pragmatism is meant by Miss Parsons to suggest a moratorium on intellectual distinctions in the name of our perilous times, we cannot go along with that...

...We were happy to see the spontaneous upsurge among students which led to the Freedom Rides and Lunch Counter demonstrations...

...Nor have we been the most recent to say such things...

...For this very reason, one can doubt that the mood will throw very many into the arms of the Communist party...

...At the same time, societies do change and just as capitalism in the advanced industrial countries no longer exploits the worker in the way described by Marx in his famous chapter on the working day, we also have the impression that even if it is not yet up to our standards of liberalism, Khrushchev's Russia is a great improvement over Stalin's...

...The title of our article was perhaps ill-chosen, and lifting the few pages of it from the chapter in which it will appear may have created some ambiguities...

...There is really no insuperable reason why it should not be possible for us to criticize denials of liberty and acts of inhumanity either here or in Russia, in the colonies of the West or the satellites of the East...

...A man as far from being a political radical as Dwight D. Eisenhower has recently warned us about the power of this military-industrial complex...

...And we also remember the profound collapse of hope, the sheer self-disgust and wasted lives of many radicals of this earlier generation when they finally realized that their gods had failed...

...The backdrop of the newly awakening social protest movement is provided by the threat of nuclear holocast...

...FROM THE MOOD TO political action can be a big step, or at least it seems that way to those of us who have come of age in a time of widespread distrust of utopian movements and in a time of seemingly dull domestic peace...

...It simply is not a question of giving-in to Communism but of trying to settle a particular problem with the hope of a sensible compromise...

...Molotov, after all, when he became politically inconvenient was simply given an agricultural post in an obscure part of Siberia and such methods of solving problems have also been used in democracies, and many of the more sensitive and critical intellectuals both in Russia and in the more liberal iron-curtain countries such as Poland seem now to be directing their energies towards pointing out how actual reality departs from Marxist ideals rather than futile attempts to overthrow Communist power...

...We do know enough about history to realize that the Russian Communists did not achieve their present power position by acting like boy-scouts or by playing parlor socialism and we also know that at certain periods in its history, such as the Stalin purges, the Russian regime has gone far beyond the limits any humanitarian can tolerate...

...Like any myth, this one can produce a variety of social views—it is certainly as responsible for current thinking on the extreme right as it is for other points on the political spectrum...

...says Kennedy, "it's not an American problem, it's not a Soviet problem, it's a human problem...

...To rephrase a bit Coser and Howe's list insofar as it is relevant to my own views and those of a number of persons I know, these are some of the relevant sources and components...

...But in honesty we feel some disturbance at her way of noting the differences between Stalin's and Khrushchev's Russia...

...There may also be a small minority who have concluded that because of the dangers we should simply lie down and Iet the Russians brainwash us, but one can suspect that the importance of this segment of public opinion has been greatly exaggerated by those for whom it provides a handy projection for their own fear...

...THIRD IS AN EXTREMELY CRITICAL, although not wholly negative, attitude with respect to recent trends in American foreign policy...

...WE TRIED TO DESCRIBE a political mood from which a good many different conclusions can be drawn...

...how can she be certain that if they had freedom these intellectuals might not, as in Poland and Hungary, speak in quite other terms?, and, second, is unwittingly to indicate that the ground for opposing the Communist regimes remains a fundamental one, namely that of a democratic opposition...

...It may be necessary to make a "deal" with Khrushchev here or there, if only in order to avoid a world war...

...Obviously, we ourselves share some elements of that mood, and we did not engage in a mere denunciation of it, but warned against a wilful suspension of critical faculties in the name of overriding practical needs and against that tone of Schwidrmerei which so often accompanies the suspension of critical faculties...

...in a recent reform coup d'etat attempted by an ex-student of the University of Wisconsin in Ethiopia, our diplomatic representatives simply abstained under a directive in Washington to stay neutral while our military representatives participated, of course, on the side of the status quo...

...Second is the belief that the Soviet bloc has reached a point of stability, or at least is here to stay...

...Like any political mood, this one takes many different organizational and ideological forms which may have in common nothing more than a crystallized sense of opposition to the status quo...

...This is why I have used the word "left" in quotes, for whether or not the new mood of protest will ever give rise to anything so organized is a matter one can question, and even if it does it is difficult to predict what particular form it will take...

...The fact that Khrushchev's Russia differs significantly, and for the better, from Stalin's has also been noted many times in DISSENT: not everything can or needs to be said in each article...

...One case in point concerns our role in the underdeveloped countries...

...Cynically, one could observe that even socialists may have difficulty in keeping up with the next generation...

...It seems to us splendid that young people should protest the bomb tests, support the Freedom Rides, etc...

...Besides, through the past summer one could compare the proclamations of the neutralist countries, so amazingly like those made by Roosevelt at the time when America stood for ideals against pure power politics, with the statements of the American press to the effect that these too represented a giving-in to Communism...

...We agree with Miss Parsons that in the realm of power politics the search for compromise on specific issues is necessary...

...On the contrary, and this should have been clear to so sympathetic a DISSENT reader as Miss Parsons, we regard the emergence of this new generation as among the few hopeful events in recent American political life...

...The point at issue is: what shall they enact and how...

...For some, it has led to the conclusion that the United States must take an absolutist stand in the face of any pressure for change, for to do otherwise would be a proof of our lack of will...

...And that, in a word, is what we were trying to say to those young radical friends with whom we have so much in common...

...It would be as wrong to be "morally neutral" about Castro's infringements of human dignity as to be "morally neutral" about the John Birch Society...

...First and foremost is a very serious concern about the implications of weapons' technology developments and the threat of nuclear war...

...It is not exactly weariness and disillusion with the Cold War— though one can feel that any anti-ideology is by definition a bit wearing—but rather fear of its potential consequences...

...John Dewey, who knew something about pragmatism, wrote: "While the solution has to be reached by action based on personal choice, theory can enlighten and guide choice and action by revealing alternatives, and by bringing to light what is entailed when we choose one alternative rather than another...

...The critical remarks we offered were meant not to denigrate these activities but rather to portray certain intellectual moods which are sometimes near to, sometimes distant from such radical action among the young...

...Miss Parsons surely knows that we too oppose the "cold war," we too are discontented with major aspects of American life, we too are extremely critical of American foreign policy...

...But to pass over the anti-libertarian features of Khrushchev's Russia, or Castro's Cuba, because to do so would "increase understanding" is not befitting intellectuals or any other kind of serious people...

...Howe and Coser reply: We are glad that Miss Parsons has submitted her interesting communication, both for its own sake and for the opportunity it gives us to clarify our views...

...For a third segment, in which I count myself, it means that it is now more important than ever before to see our very real conflicts with Communism in a pragmatic fashion, directing all the energies of social protest against those who see us as engaged in a life or death struggle...

...We owe it to our many friends behind the Iron Curtain to speak clearly, never to relent in our criticism of those denials of human rights concerning which they must keep silence...

...The most immediate and important situation is, of course, that in Berlin, where we have seen the United States making a kind of absolute stand as if trying to tempt fate to the limit, while only a few small voices such as those of Senator Mansfield and Walter Lippmann have put forth any proposals more concrete than the general dictum that whatever was in 1945 shall remain so forever...

...However, it is a great shame that this mood and some of its underlying dynamics should be described under the title "New Styles in Fellow-Travelling," particularly given the quite accurate observation that it "has little to do with any interest in Communist ideas or Communist organization...

...To say that Khrushchev's Russia "is not yet up to our standards of liberalism" is certainly a striking instance of understatement...

...Although some see them that way, such views are by no means equivalent to fellow-travelerism...

...But sometimes she seems to use the term pragmatic in ways that are disturbing...

...It is this rather than any belief that Communism provides the ultimate utopia that makes us tend towards neutralism...

...We are moved by the efforts of young radicals on and off the campus, in the peace movements, and in the protests against bomb tests and the insanity of so-called Civil Defense...

...If, then, we criticized similar tendencies today, it is from a desire to avoid similar consequences...

...When Miss Parsons argues for the need to consider foreign policy in pragmatic terms rather than as moralistic crusades we agree with her...

...If it never occurs, this threat at least will have served the function of having provided the myth of our times...

...Too many signs point toward the view that the United States has indeed become a status quo power...

...To say that East European intellectuals restrict their opposition "to ways in which actual reality departs from Marxist ideals" is, first to raise the question, how does Miss Parsons know...

...But the idea of dissent only makes sense in the particular historical perspective in which it is used...

...Where we do differ from some people who share something of the political mood we described is in our insistence that intellectual clarity, precision of thought, remains a necessity for which we should strive, no matter how urgent is the other imperative of action on concrete political issues...

...Fourth is a concern about what is going on in American society as the military becomes increasingly prominent as a power force, more and more linked with certain segments of industry via weapons contracts, and increasingly looking for intellectuals to express its views and to help out in its search for an ideology...

...This concern is not restricted to social protesters...

...after all it originated in a religious context in which people who saw themselves as non-conformists professed a rigid orthodoxy which few intellectuals would find sympathetic today...

...Perhaps we are different from earlier "lefts" in that we never really fell for any utopia...