Dear Editor
Dear editor COPYRIGHTS AND COMMISSARS I have read Irving Kristols "Of Copyrights and Commissars" (NL, April 12) with great interest—as indeed I read everything of his that comes to my attention. ....
...There was of course at that time—sixty years ago—an anarcho-bandit underworld...
...And the work itself was cut unfairly to imply a story completely critical of U.S...
...Let me simply say that I think his point is well taken and that American publishers and writers should not join in urging the Soviet authorities to have the Soviet Union sign the Universal Copyright Convention [ucc...
...But we have never felt encouraged to try to do business with the people who represent Soviet authors, and I think our position would be very much that of Mr...
...participation, at the request of the South Vietnamese government, in controlling the civil war inside South Vietnam, and for increased attempts of our own to subvert the sources of outside aid to the rebellion...
...But the pressure from one publisher or even one country, in this case France, can in no way be compared with the pressure of unfavorable public opinion that would be exerted by the nations of the world who are u c c signatories and who would, of course, be interested in the translation and publication of worthwhile Russian literature...
...Either we believe in reciprocal protection of literary and artistic material on a universal basis, or we don't...
...books...
...But it would require us to accept the fact that if we cannot win in South Vietnam against insurgent South Vietnamese without initiating outright attacks on outside powers, then we simply cannot win there...
...The Soviet law does not provide such protection at present, and I suspect it will not in the foreseeable future...
...New York City Max Nomad VIETNAM In his article, "Peace, Morality and Vietnam" (NL, April 12) Zbigniew Brzezinski states that "international morality will come as a last stage in the quest for international world order, and both require, as a precondition, the creation of international stability...
...How could a scholar like Woodcock disregard the difference...
...Further, I feel rather strongly that the case of France's experience would hardly support what would happen on an international basis if ucc were adopted by the Russians...
...Although North Vietnam has admittedly aided and supplied some arms to the Vietcong, recent Administration attempts to blame North Vietnam for the civil war in the south appear more desperate than convincing...
...I would simply say that the rare, hypothetical situation to which he alludes scarcely outweighs the thousands of authors who have been cheated out of what was due them over the many years that Russia has, by international copyright convention (but not by its law), pirated U.S...
...In 1904-1905 my brother (later known as Arnold Roller or Stephen Naft) and I were the only full-time "criminals" among them, smuggling, on our then very skinny torsos, an inoffensive chemical (saccharine) in order to pay the printing expenses of the anarchist periodical which we were editing, and in order to keep from starvation...
...Since I went to the USSR in 1957 for the purpose of investigating the copyright question, I have had a long, and at various points, intense interest in the subject...
...There has been a lot of money in royalties, and a lot of authors are becoming increasingly concerned about this...
...New York City Alfred A. knopf Chairman, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc...
...democracy...
...We can only, hopefully, learn...
...New York City Virginia Held...
...However, at the moment, because of political considerations, I don't think that there is likely to be any immediate embracement of the ucc by Moscow...
...There were of course occasional black sheep and crackpots in the "regular" anarchist movement—no movement is without them— but it is unfair to generalize and to refer to the rank-and-file and the lower echelon "leaders" like myself as bas fonds...
...Cassell's New French Dictionary translates the term as "underworld," "dregs," in other words, criminal scum...
...We can't have it both ways...
...He is right, of course, that our interest in Russia's cooperation is mainly money, but I think publishers must necessarily take a position on this subject that would help American authors get monies due them...
...In formulating the present structure of ucc, we in the United States were largely concerned with making it possible for any country to adhere providing its own laws guaranteed adequate protection...
...President, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc...
...I do not believe that we ever complied with such demands...
...Now, practically all members of the group in which I was propounding a confused mixture of Kxopotkinian and syndicalist ideas were honestly earning their living as skilled workers...
...Under u c c we would be able to insist on such prerogatives in the other direction...
...If the Soviet Union should revise its law, however, and elect to adhere to ucc, I think we should make every effort to cooperate and live with it...
...And the authors would have been paid...
...They may be right, but one wishes more of a debate were now taking place concerning the precedents created by such bombardment, and the consequences of abandoning the meager forward step that seemed to have been taken by a fearful world...
...I am proud of that phase of my life, when even the most respectable members of the Kropotkinian elite treated us as members of the underground and not of the underworld...
...It is possible to argue that the lack of rules controlling subversion makes the rules restricting opening strikes unworkable, and jt is on this basis that conscientious men defend the limited U.S...
...Another point is that the business of a Soviet body exercising prerogatives to approve translations, prefaces, notes, etc., also works both ways...
...I cannot recall ever taking a public position one way or the other on this subject, but I have had a couple of experiences in publishing translations of Soviet books that have demonstrated the preposterous demands that Soviet authorities do not hesitate to make on American publishers...
...My reminiscences, by the way, did not deal with ananchists alone...
...Such rules may or may not be evaluated on moral grounds...
...For example, Seven Days in May was published in serial form in Izvestia with an editorial preface which implied that it was popular in the United States because it was evidence of American dissatisfaction with the government...
...The principle he suggests as a basis for such stability, however, appears but a distant vision: A recognition that "attempts to change the status quo through force of arms"—including any giving of aid to rebellious forces in neighboring states — is "doomed to failure" . . . It would seem more likely that stability itself can only be expected to evolve as the last stage of a process of agreement upon rules gradually modifying the use of force...
...My interest, as a matter of fact, has recently been aroused not only because of the patent thing, t o which Irving Kristol refers in his article, but for other reasons as well...
...And it should be apparent that although subversion, as yet uncontrolled, may be ugly and vicious, it is at least closer to being a political process than is outright military attack: It depends for its success to a considerable extent upon popular acquiescence...
...To meet its threat, or to allow its practice against an even more vicious status quo, the Western powers may have to step back from their hopes for an ordered world in which force is used only in the self-defense of admirable nations...
...bombing of North Vietnamese targets...
...nor restricting the arming, advising, financing and encouraging of rebellious and subversive activities...
...No comparably effective rules have begun to evolve restricting massive intervention by an outside power invited by a ruling group to help it maintain its position against internal threats...
...I must say that he is much more sanguine on the likelihood of the Soviet Union signing the ucc than are others...
...Maintaining that forward step would allow for increased U.S...
...New York City Roger W. Straus Jr...
...They were not worse than the rabid followers of any other millenarian or UTOPIAN faith, who hope some day to jimmy the doors to the terrestrial paradise that, alas, is not of this world...
...I enjoyed Irving Kristol's article and I felt it presented a most interesting viewpoint...
...Under ucc, we would have been able to insist, with legal safeguards, that the story be published as written, unadorned, or not at all...
...New York City John T. Sargent President, Doubleday & Company, Inc...
...The Russians love to make special deals...
...but these "illegalists" or "individualists" took their inspiration from Stirner and Nietzsche rather than from Kropotkin and Malatesta...
...New York City Edward E. Booher President, McGraw-Hill Book Company THE 'UNDERGROUND' From the friendly tone of George Woodcock's remarks (NL, April 12) about my Dreamers, Dynamiters, and Demagogues, I conclude that he did not intend to hurt me when he used the insulting term bas fonds in the sentence in which he says that I "was active in that pullulating world of minor conspiracy which formed the bas fonds to Kropotkin's idealism and Malatesta's dedication...
...But may not a half-step backward into the disorder of counter-insurgency and subversion be better than a full step backward into chaos...
...at least they must be judged for effectiveness . . . The one such rule which had begun to attain the force of a modicum of acceptance, following World War II and Korea, was that one which precluded the initiating of armed attacks against non-belligerent powers, including, it would seem, the kind of action the United States is now taking in sending its own planes to drop bombs on North Vietnam...
...They tried to make one with us, and apparently they succeeded in making one with the French...
...Or does bas fonds have a less derogatory connotation...
...It is on that ground that in 1910 I—alas!—refused to meet Kibalchich-Le Retif (the future Victor Serge), for I did not know that he happened to be a decent fellow who somehow had fallen among crooks with a philosophy...
...Those unsavory sans-scrupiries were shunned by all Kropotkinians and ex-Kropotkinians like myself...
...In Larousse's large (17-volume) Dictionaire Universel du XIXe Steele, the expression bas fonds is explained as "a class of vile or contemptible people" (classe d'hommes vils on meprisables...
...Perhaps Kristol states the case for those who are in disagreement with him better than we can state it ourselves...
...These impractical Don Quixotes, amoralist bohemians, and pathetic saints-and-heroes are actually outnumbered by no less pathetic saints-and-heroes, practical Sancho Panzas, and miniature Borgias and Machiavellis of other brands of radicalism...
...Kristol asks about his position, "Is this fanciful exaggeration?' My answer is, "Yes, it is...
Vol. 48 • May 1965 • No. 10
