1943 and After-Which Way for American Liberalism?
Berle, A. A.
By A. A. Berle 1943 and After—Which Way for American Liberalism? 117 E are here to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of « a notable part of the American liberal movement. The time <is ripe,...
...And in the last few years have changed violently...
...He worked with Mayor LaGuardia to revamp New York's tangled finances, he did other important Jobs in the Government...
...In tills room are men who fought the corruption of cities...
...Then are a number of striking examples of this fact After the fall of France, several distingmsbsl personages from invaded countries came severally to Spain in transit to Portugal and to escape...
...A drought ~or_a tidal wave may undo the planned labor of generations...
...When Berle was named Assistant Secretary of State the "liberal weeklies" acclaimed the appointment as a progressive step...
...Returning from a journey to Ital*j»b* went by barge, leisurely, along that mas> nifieent canal—well known to me—•hsfl ** skirts the fringe of the Mediterranean, <*» \ turns up to Toulouse end so to the Atlanta* ^ And so he learned more about Frsnce...
...Tt periodically convulses itself in crises that can only be partially resolved at ever-growing social costs...
...Your enemies were oppression and cruelty and exploitation in any form: whether a tyrannical state, or political corruption, or private monopoly, or unrestrained selfishness, or irresponsible power...
...whereas the if — the total monopoly of power in the hands of the economic planners—depends almost completely upon our faith in democracy and willingness to fight and suffer for it, not only in war buf in peace...
...This illustration is more topical...
...It is the tradition of Washing-2^on» the liberals who made the American Revolution...
...a strength beyond that of limitless productive activity...
...THE trend toward collectivism in the * capitalist economies of all nations in the "world is the result of the ever-renewed quest for profit which is at the basis of these systems...
...That is why freedom is never safe, and intelligence should never slumber...
...Ideas have been gathered from all parts of the planet...
...It is an interesting illustration in political psychology to view the changing attitudes of certain groups towards Berle...
...You have constantly sought the justice which conquers even an enemy...
...This involves a form of planned and continuously planning society in order to provide full employment, equal opportunities of education, and a rising standard of living...
...They are doubly entitled w make such an inquiry when they hear the department's chief spokesman openly rebuking tse people for insisting on their right to know something about their affairs in this particular nasi of public administration...
...They are the failure to see alternatives when they are present...
...It would be unfair both to the question and the author to attempt to settle this problem in a few paragraphs, but since we are using it as purely illustrative of our views on law, freedom, and human action it is hoped that allowance will be made for the apparent dogmatism of our remarks...
...lack of true information in the possession of our diplomaticofficials...
...j* As our Minister to Frsnce, before he bt- ^ came Secretary of State, he poked into mm ? corners of France, went into humble heme* r. fraternized with laborers, associated with sorts of persons who did not know or »sssest ^ his identity, and so got the fscts of Frsm* ,• life...
...He was success** precisely because he was a magnificent reporter who knew how to get at his facts...
...One of tnese admoaiuoas which happens to lie besere sse ws* osfeasd tea* extfcms I wrote for the Pert asp* Hp ef wJamflMc, ami printed in its issue far September, 1936...
...The disproportion becomes progressively acute, resulting on the one hand in the narrowing of the field for profitable investment and in large-scale unemployment...
...When American citizens behold their Stats Department, in the face of that kind of a rsesra, defending its continued appeasement of Franc*'* government on the ground that it has receives that government's solemn guarantees and pledsss, they are entitled to inquire whether that department is conscious of the nature of its msasste from the people...
...the immovable mass leaps into action...
...As opposed to this position it seems to us that the collective control of industry is a "foregone" conclusion, that is, "very probable" independent of our efforts to reverse the trend...
...1 have often thought it and I teal sassy other foreign correspondents will agree wfth me—that what our diplomatic and consular services seed most is a course in factual reporting...
...Today, he is "the man with the horns...
...Our Charge d'Affaires had the most appallingly logical mind I have ever run across...
...A. A. Berle still believes in liberalism...
...Hamilton tells us—and I myself know it for a fact—that our diplomatic and consular agents simply barn no way of checking on this, or even of preventing the direct transfer of these goods tt Franco's senior Axis partner...
...More violent pred-judices exist about him than perhaps any other figure in government...
...Because the problems of today are vast in scope, intense in human significance, and" deep in complication, attempts will be made to convert us to the idea that unlimited authoritarian power^ could provide a solution...
...Every intelligent reconstruction is an experiment, guided by laws already known, to achieve mastery over concrete problems...
...How can American international policy advocate principles of international law and restraint...
...All came under the most solemn guarantees sf Franco's government as to their safety...
...The Kindly Revolution" KJ[R- A- A. BERLE today is one of the most controversial figures in American political life...
...and several notable studies of our economic life which hsve become standard works...
...AH were arrested and most shamefully treated hi , spite of these guarantees...
...which could assure to a culture-loving public enjoyment of the resources of music and art ami education: which could increase the freedom of every individual by putting in Ms hands greater teals of life...
...Certainly it has not been duplicated anywhere else on earth...
...men who have sought to see that their people were informed, so that they could make ap their judgments...
...In this room are men who fought the attempt by foreign political elements to fasten doctrines which have no place in America on the life of the United States...
...But this tradition of finding out about Snap at first hand is obviously not favored in •''"HF matte circles...
...the impossible is done...
...The trend toward collectivism and the intervention of the state into economy are unavoidable...
...What these mistakes amount to is a systematic underestimation of man's power to control his future...
...How can an American Government insist that great private corporations should subject themselves to the needs of the publfe^-snd still not be personal enemies of private industrialists...
...But Mr...
...Therein lies our freedom...
...If the cultural and political horrors of collectivism ns practiced in totalitarian countries, yf the world were the inescapable concomitants of collectivism, even the futile attempt to, return to the agrarian past would be preferbbk...
...Each family in the American colony was asked to bring eight dozen sandwiches...
...However, observations such as these lead ¦* somewhat aside from my theme of Spain and ta» American tradition of diplomacy...
...The evidence is conclusive that our recent Ambassador, Alexander W. Weddell, an estimable and well-intentioned gentleman, was likewise affected by it...
...But in the light of the past we can list the most ¦-¦ommon among them...
...More and more the state steps in as a partner in industry and sometimes as independent producer in an attempt to keep production going, to induce new capital investments, and to relieve the growing burden and political dangers of unemployment...
...Our State Department tells us that it km assurances that the petroleum products, cotton, foodstuffs, and so on...
...It is difficult for some to realize that the principles of American liberalism are not screens behind which self-seeking interests-* national, political or private—are seeking to reap advantage...
...1 have mmf the enlightening privilege of reading European reports from many quarters...
...He was universally praised as a "liberal...
...TPHE illustrations considered indicate how we * «regard the interplay of law and human freedom in social and historical...
...we have been sending to Spain will not be used either directly or indirectly for the benefit of the Axis...
...You were there when the European immigrations settled our cities and when the great struggle for the right of labor to organize was fought and won...
...by definition, these events are not...
...To hark back to the era of free enterprise is just another futile call, of the same kind but not of the same desperate degree as the call to return to an agrarian economy...
...The release of the activities of free men produces a potential 'unmatched anywhere...
...Yet on one thing all of these reports are agreed...
...Good old fashioned Amarmmu wflfcMari in bad form...
...But the folk at the embassy, who should have been aware of facta such as these, even though this particular gesture was unofficial, were so out of touch with reality that they did not even know how their own compatriots were living...
...History and politics, not to speak of personal life, present a daily confrontation of alternatives in which we forge part of our own destiny and for which we therefore assume some, responsibility...
...men who stood together against the oppression of great masses of helpless immigrants, and who mightily assisted in making them, within a few short years, full and free members of American society...
...The time <is ripe, both to celebrate your achievement* of the past twenty years to take counsel in respect of the greater work you have yet to do...
...At the same time* because of the gross inequalities of income between the different classes engaged in the process of production, the effective purchasing power of the masses for consumers' goods is reduced...
...N reading American history, it seems to roe tbs* * our most successful Secretary of State 1JJ our first—Thomas Jefferson...
...To the extent that we are committed to a democratic philosophy, we cannot entrust the present political and social choices before us to an event-making man, or to an uncontrolled elite...
...but the .principles do not: In this room are men who fought the growing tyranny of Jhe truts in the early part of this century...
...nasi who have sought to place public resources at the iMspn sition of the public...
...How then could they be properly informed about Spain...
...I ftesrneatly called attention to the dangers of Fascism in Spain and ita implications tor Europe, i To clear up a misconception among persons familiar with my dispatches to the New York Times, let me mention that my sending of dispatches to that newspaper was by permission of the landbtt Times, my employer...
...By a'Collective system we mean one in which the basic instruments of production—tne great industries, mines, railroads, utilities, etc.—are owned'by the community and operated for public use instead of private profit...
...They sought also to make instruments of local government apt and available as instruments through • which advances in standards of living could be made available to all groups of people who were being excluded from the full benefits of life...
...The Nazis peddled pacifism as a bona fide liberal doctrine...
...But we don't have to define fc that way...
...This seems to have been the kind of stuff that was peddled to our State Department to serve as justification for its hostility toward the Spanish peoples' government...
...Two others were Hubert Pier-lot, the Belgian Prime Minister, sad Pssl Henri Spaak, his Foreign Minister...
...In recent years these have been peddled by various groups in the hope of attracting American liberal support...
...In more recent yean our shapers of diplomatic policy have bean threw-.ng overboard, this good American MMHmm ia favor ef the discredited ways of flMsafl e**a-celleries...
...Berle became one of the original "brain-trusters" in 1933...
...rtook fifty years to make Europe understand that the fatet^mwYlimh fstnSy of nation, was not and is not a sphere of Asnsrmia isflnsnos arte hsiuiifhin of free countries who freely determined to work together...
...Collectivism or Socialism can be so defined that the presence of a.'*et of totalitarian techniques of cultural 'and political rule follows logically fron...
...You were with Louis Brandeis in his lifelong toil to establish decent wage and ^working conditions and to make business a profession of, service, not a means of imposing servitudes...
...For man is limited, and the world he can control is much smaller than the world beyond his control...
...Because Americans know that finance and industrial organization can be...
...Why is it that American social life obstinately refuses to break itself up into permanent and solidified classes and groups, each aiming to destroy the other...
...BASICALLY, true American liberalism can never be ignored because it has never been destructive...
...Fascism win acquire three European fronts...
...N the international field we have taken the same role...
...We have sought, and must continue to seek, an arrangement <*T affairs so that the development'of the industrial arts shall not be bought at the price of unemployment and suffering of the workers' groups...
...Every man knows he will die: yet in how many different ways can a man live!* There is no complete catalogue of the mis-takes men commit wKen'th^iy make history...
...We saw in' boss-ridden corruption not merely an evil thing which had to be destroyed...
...We have supported Secretary Hull in his struggle to assure that foreign commerce should not be channeled by discrimination and trade barriers into national monopolies, or made to become the servant of oppressive cartels...
...It is the heritage of the pioneers who settled the great plains from their covered wagons, and married their children, and buried their dead...
...You, and the many similar groups throughout the United States, have had strength and power and in-:* fluence beyond your numbers, for yon have always spoken with an American voice...
...There are some who, in confusion or fear, will be attracted...
...We may explore theoretically the ideal alternatives to this path and lament that we cannot follow them without risking destruction...
...We, have welcomed the Atlantic Charter, not as a tool of political intrigue, but as a statement of the elementary rights of national groups...
...Their struggle against corruption in cities wai motivated not only by righteous wrath against civic plunder...
...Our representatives abroad more addicted to finding out about things golf coarse er at dhdctau sssf Mmh' fmrslea...
...What I have been citing about the failure m our diplomatic officials to place themselves i» contact with the realities, illustrates another lamentable departure from the American way...
...We can make the attempt, but the overwhelming probability is that we shall disastrously fail...
...the race divisions cannot be fanned in conflict...
...I stated: "If the rebels are successful, Spain will become an appendage ef Mesaslliil and Hitler...
...Through them all runs a thread of bewilderment when they discuss America...
...It is of vital importance that American liberals remember this...
...This flair for placing themselves at the margin of reality to me has seemed all too common among our diplomatic career men...
...Berle was not fully in sympathy with the Russian form of government, the moods shifted...
...Euro-pear, history will take a new course...
...which could give technical public services of transit, power ¦ and light at prices bringing them within the reach of all...
...You bore the brunt of preserving American civil liberties when they were threatened at the close of the last World War...
...Left to the rationale of its own processes, capitalist economy cannot guarantee profits, generate full employment, and provide a standard of living commensurate with the technological potentialities of modern industry...
...Every resolution of a choice involves to some degree a reconstruction of the self, society, and the world...
...more than the force of millions of men in arms...
...the abuses, instead of wrecking the commonwealth, are themselves corrected...
...There is a strength more than the strength of a great population...
...The development of societies as well as of individuals along certain lines is sometimes the result of cosmic or earthly accidents...
...Here, too, are the men who saw the rise of the Nasi danger...
...and that the true safeguard of small nations must lie in the voluntary submission by all nations, great and small, to rules of self-restraint which make for greater freedom...
...Some of the kind-hearted people at our Madrid embassy— and let us recognize that Mr...
...the definition...
...It is a proud tradition...
...For any group of men who had- such power would, in fact, be dictators, no matter how benevolent they were...
...more than the power of matchless natural resource...
...No one here had to find, over night, a will to resist fascism...
...I have preferred in this article to touch on the practical question of our country's relations toward Spain, and how the character of those relations may make the future er mar it...
...The important thing is to determine what is meant by collectivism...
...It ' is the tradition of Jefferson who ended aristocratic feudal--'ism in the United States...
...Even yet Europeans find it hard to understand that Nicaragoa salutes the rriisjrtsn of oar cooperative naval base at Corinto, not with fear of oppression, bat as living pros] that men of good will stand together in the common defense...
...While I was in Spain as the staff correspondent of the London Times...
...who struggled to displace the bosses and machines who need the mechanisms of local government to levy tribute on the peak of American cities...
...It is often not easy for Europeans to understand the true content of the American approach...
...and that every advance in the art of civiliza-•'tioh must make men, not more bound, but greatly free...
...Certainly they should be informed by this time that Franco's word, and the guaraatsM of his government, are worth just nothing, n§ has been demonstrated time and again...
...the tradition of Lincoln, who insisted on preserving the Union and on preserving it all free...
...And like free men, your armor and your weapons have been those of truth and fair dealing: neither hatred nor propaganda nor intimidation, nor deception...
...Wise resignation can be made only before what is certain, and...
...Intelligent policies of planning, directed toward the liberation of diversity of talents, can also safeguard the preservation of areas of personal life in which each personality is free to make his own decisions...
...who could offer every sympathy •and encouragement to the ideals of the French Revolution, and could still tell the intriguers of the directoire that they had no place in.the American life...
...madness may cloud over the well-cultivated mind before it can reap its golden harvest...
...YOU are the joint heirs of the granger movement which fought for open land, and forced the railroads to become' public servants instead of private exploiters...
...That bridge was crossed in the days of the Napoleonic wars when Thomas Jefferson and the liberals, overwhelmingly sympathetic with the objectives of the French Revolution, politely but firmly declined to allow their thinking to be dominated by European currents...
...Your doctrine was that the resources of American civilization, moral and material, were the common estate of all Americans...
...Certainly his pronouncements on his return from Spain showed that he did not understand Spain...
...who supported, urged and aided the work of rearming the United States, often against the fiercest of opposition and the bitterest of personal attack...
...The problem becomes the empirical one of whether these totalitarian techniques in fact would be required for the functioning of such a Socialist system...
...If those ¦who control the state are not interested in preserving the traditional freedoms of democracy, citizens who work in the free sectors will have no greater safeguard from persecution than those who work in the collectivized sector, just as under a Fascist regime professors in private universities have no more freedom of inquiry than professors in public universities...
...His credo is summed up in the speech made last Sunday at The New Leader dinner, outlining America's program in the war against want That speech appears in full in this and next week's issue of The New Leader...
...Only the sussssl intervention of President Roosevelt ssvwi Pad* re w ski and his party from being delivered to the Nazis to end their dsys in some horrible concentration camp...
...As democrats, whatever planning we do must be planning for a free society in which every citizen can participate in the determination of collective policy...
...To avoid the conclusion, we have to foreswear colleotivism...
...Spain is the hoi 1 Me ammtpfe mt this newer diplomacy and its cUusattuelMM...
...I salute you as old friends in years of struggle in the public service, and as resolute men determined to maintain the liberal spirit which has given to America her moral position in the present world...
...The consequence of the quest for profit is the accumulation of huge masses of capital that increase the productive powers of society...
...affairs...
...True American liberals do not need repatriation...
...No one here was ever compromised by joining in Nazi pacifist propaganda intended to weaken the United States...
...It will serve no purpose now to expend en the theme of how amply thee* forecasts hare been fullhlled...
...Rather, we have worked to assure steadily increasing production, end to see that the output should be placed within the reach of every American...
...In this room are men who took the lead in building the American Trade Union movement so that labor might have its share of the growing output of American industry...
...For the end of such a effort would be death,.not the degradation of death-in-life...
...When soon after it became known thst Mr...
...But in a world where we choose to continue to live, it is wiser to explore the alternatives on thi3 path, since it is before these alternatives that we have not only the power to wish but the power to act...
...Social control and intelligence can mitigate the effects of such contingencies and prevent many of them, but they cannot be eliminated...
...In all this there has been a current which is steadily and distinctively American...
...Whether in the collectivist economy there will exist certain sectors of private enterprise will be decided by the state...
...We have had as long and proud a record of resisting fascism as any group in the country...
...No safeguard can be automatic...
...One day the charge d'affaires gave me the amazing news—of which no Spaniard ever had heard—that there were two Popular Fronts in Spain, one fighting the other, so that you had in fact a civil war within a civil war...
...But the state is not an abstraction but a group of men—clerks, bureaucrats, politicians, statesmen, philosophers—call them what you will...
...but that to be free they must accept the restraints' demanded by the freedom of all...
...On top of this, he had as his informant an American of Spanish extraction who went about picking up all the anti-Republican rumors and peddling them as fact...
...Among them were the aged pianist sad statesman, Ignace Paderewslti, his wife sad his secretary...
...France will he Straggled...
...Where our intelligent choice lies is not in trying to contest what seems an irreversible trend but in determining who the state shall be, how it shall intervene, and the extent to which collectivism in production shal1 go...
...e Old and New Roads to Freedom By SIDNEY HOOK (Conclusion) 11/B turn now to the present situation in which ***^Jje°'problem is to preserve the democratic way fcf'life in an industrial economy moving toward collectivism...
...At any period there are no realistic alternatives to certain paths of development because of the number and cumulative weight of "the laws" that stand in the way of our striking out in a new direction...
...Nothing, if such concentration takes place...
...After a long career as an economic expert, service on the American staff at Versailles, teaching at Columbia Law Schol...
...and Mrs...
...There are those who say that ence collectivism in this sense is introduced we have no longer a genuine if but a foregone conclusion...
...HISTORICALLY, we are engaged now in a phase of the pame struggle...
...It is the tradition of Andrew Jackson, and the fight against irresponsible -monopoly of American finance...
...No matter what alternative we take, in time we will come to other alternatives, perhaps less ambitious in scope than those we left behind but not necessarily less poignant or meaningful...
...men warn have worked out the cooperative techniques by which life could be enriched...
...American liberal thought fought for the adoption of the great principles on which the Inter-American family of nations is built...
...Weddell tried to be very kind to the starving people about them, even in the face of rebuffs and insults—decided to give a benefit party to raise money for these unfortunates...
...the facto which must be faced at long last, whatever the issue...
...The fact that the state or community if the employer gives it a great power over the lives of ordinary citizens since it can deny them access to the use of these instruments...
...We saw also, as did LaGuardia, the possibility of developing an institution which could assist in giving decent houses to people living in filthy kennels...
...Our Policy Towards Spain By LAWRENCE FERNSWORTH II ll/HILE I was in Spain during the Civil War " I was dismayed by the fund of misinformation and the...
...In America, men come first: free men seeking free-' dom for other men...
...I ,have tried' to show hew in the earlier part of our history we have established a tradition of forthright realism in such matters which has been our salvation...
...Living in Spain, he was completely at the margin of the Spain of reality —the kind of Spain that could never get past the ramparts of his fixed ideas on the subject...
...but as they are blended and developed, the voice is characteristically our own...
...And in this ream there are men who have patiently built the constructive institutions which have haw the glory of a developing America: Jtssa whs tasp expanded the work of the public schools...
...who never compromised with it...
...It is the strength which stems from an ageless organizing principle: the principle that men must be free...
...the limitation of alternatives to an oversimplified ejther-or where more "than two are present...
...for American liberals insisted that national freedom must be based on rules of justice and law...
...UR State Department has a singularly nan* reliance on the word of Franco and his re*-ernment...
...AH genuine opportunities of choice are specific...
...From time to time individuals and groups try to impose on-'the American liberal movement the passionate perversions and the stale dogmas of foreign struggles...
...From this no counsel of resignation follows, precisely because these events are accidents...
...The names and faces change...
...T. J. One incident is revealing...
...But whether what is written into a constitution will be enforced in fact again depends upon us...
...on free action which give men freedom, without afterthought of political intrigue...
...What is to prevent them from becoming the dictators of the community if all political and- economic and educational power is concentrated in their hands...
...Now the fact that the members of the American colony, far from having eight dozen sandwiches to spare, often were unable to get the single daily roll to which they were entitled on their ration cards—and so had to go without bread...
...false estimates of their relative likelihoods, and, as a special case 'of this last, a disregard of the effects of our own activity in striving for one rather than another...
...opinion, in the height of bitter controversy, demand from its political and economic leaders judgments which they recognize as just and fair, however unpopular the cause...
...On the olher hand, a democratic collectivist society can evolve adequate safeguards against the economic outlawing of heretics by writing intoTts Bill of Rights the provision that every citizen has a vested interest in a job, that trade unions, co-operatives, courts, press, churches, and certain institutions of higher education be organized in permanent independence of the state...
...We have struggled against industrial abuses, not- because we wished to bind or prevent technical development, or because we hated the means of production...
...Why does American pubis...
...He had a pre-conceived notion of the logical pattern of the universe and its inmates, and whatever didn't fit into that pattern just didn't exist...
...It has been successful precisely because it was so different from mm Caplo macy of intrigue, underground maSjssJusat and secret dealing which is traditional with the diplomacy, of old Europe...
...schemes devised by strong and often ruthless men to make the industrial development of the country a tool by which its resources and its labor could be subjected to their will...
...nd have been, abused, attempts were made to entrap us into doctrines of irresponsible statism—forgetting that liberals must oppose irresponsible power anywhere...
Vol. 26 • April 1943 • No. 16
