Open Letter to the New Left

...There are probably few people in academic communities, and I am certainly not one of them, who would fail retrospectively to approve the systematic violation of the fugitive slave law by the Quakers...

...In contradistinction to the goldfish swallowers, you must be taken seriously-not only because of the good you represent but also because of the political calamities your attitude threatens to create...

...In fact, your mistake is particularly serious...

...You certainly are in a position to make things worse, and you will do just that if you continue to turn your attacks mainly on liberals or "moderates...

...For example, in several electoral districts a fight is being waged now between liberal candidates who want to work for peace in Vietnam, for the war on poverty, for further progress in civil rights, and reactionaries who want to escalate the war, to stop the antipoverty programs, and to reverse the tendency toward equal treatment of minority races...

...I think what divides us most is your rejection of the policy of the lesser evil...

...But I would readily concede that there are situations where the deliberate violation of an unjust law is a morally legitimate weapon...

...Accepting the intermediate steps of amelioration, although they represent legal and factual situations still tainted by imperfection and injustice, is the necessary condition for any movement at all in the direction of justice and general welfare...

...There have been situations -though not very many-in which there was a choice between the slow way of gradual improvement and more violent methods that could be thought to "shorten the birthpangs of history...

...Indeed, I would find these a source of great promise if I were not convinced that you are headed for an impasse, and that on your way to illusory goals you will do great harm-not so much to existing institutions as to the forces which might improve them...

...the choice is between the greater and the lesser evil...

...I recognize the dynamism of your movement and the subjective morality of its motivations...

...I would find it easy to tell you the kind of pleasant things you have heard from others: that your concern about the morality of public life compares favorably with the interest of some previous generations of young people in panty raids and goldfish swallowing, or that many of you have shown courage and a spirit of sacrifice in the struggle for civil rights...

...I know that you are not Marxists, in fact you have a greater horror than I have of the social centralism inherent in Marxist thought and policy...

...I do not mean to say that it is in your hands, or in anybody's hands, to perpetuate these evils ad infinitum, but the lives which will be lost on the battlefields, in the slums and through futile race riots will be lost forever...

...Thus it is unwarranted optimism to believe that extreme badness necessarily carries a remedy in itself...

...No such magic exists...

...If some of you, despairing of your ability to describe your own ideal of society, at times like to believe that Lenin, Castro or Mao has worked out this ideal for you, this is simply a mistake with no bearing upon the essentials of your creed...

...PERSPECTIVES Open Letter to the New Left By Carl Landauer As a teacher at Berkeley, a focal spot of your movement, I have had much contact with some of you and also quite a few conversations...

...You present no such choice, ask no such question...

...You speak of "direct action"referring to methods more drastic than demonstrations that are compatible with the gradualistic concept-but where are your effective means...

...It seems to me that no one should cite Thoreau on the moral legitimacy of violating the law unless he also shares Thoreau's conviction that "the government is best that governs least"-in other words, that property relations and other relations between persons should be left more or less alone...

...But while rejecting the essence of Marxism, you have adopted an extreme version of Marxist dialectics to which Marx himself did not always subscribe: You repudiate partial reforms with a ferocity which implies a belief that for things to get better they must first be allowed to become desperately worse...

...In some instances the liberals may deserve criticism for not being determined enough in their liberalism...

...But far more frequent are the historical examples in which oppression persisted until it was either relieved by gradual reform, as the lot of the industrial workers in Western countries was relieved, or by outside circumstances that had little to do with the degree of oppression, as was the case with the abolition of slavery in the South...

...Allowing for that modicum of diversity in ideas, tastes and styles which is normal in any movement, and disregarding some of your fellow-travellers who quite obviously do not belong to the core of your movement-for instance the Communists, who are travelling with you, not you with them-I find a considerable amount of unity among the various elements...

...The war will be escalated, the poor will remain poverty stricken, and what progress we have made toward racial equality will be undone...

...I am not trying, and I do not feel competent, to anticipate history's full judgment about your movement...

...I am concerned with the dangers of the present, and I feel very strongly that we cannot afford to have them augmented...

...but if you decide to fight them in the face of rising reaction, by starting a write-in campaign for your own candidates who have no chance of being elected, or by staying at home, or by voting for the candidate of the Right in order to make things worse in the belief that they will then become better-all this has been suggested by some of you-I can only assure you that there is no dialectic mechanism that will turn the greater evil into good...

...This is not to say that your actions can have no impact on reality...

...To accuse you of helping reaction may seem harsh and unfair to you...

...Sometimes you speak and even act as if there were a magic in extreme badness which will bring about a turn to complete justice and perfect bliss...

...Since few of you want to go as far as Thoreau toward laissez faire, I think there is more to be said against civil disobedience even in terms of your own convictions than you usually realize...

...Under very special circumstances, when the conditions for change already exist and only the will to bring it about is lacking, extremes of oppression can supply that will...

...I am anxious for a more deeply searching dialogue, or at least for a monologue in which I can tell you what I think divides us, and perhaps suggest some critical thoughts about your own position...

...It is said by some observers, both inside and outside your movement, that your position is an unstable mixture of elements having little or nothing in common...

...and I have, of course, applauded the violation of Southern segregation "laws" by civil rights demonstrators...

...By this I mean not only that I believe in the "inevitability of gradualism,' although I do very firmly, but in addition that I consider the law the most important instrument of social reform...

...Carl Landauer is a professor of economics at the Berkeley campus of the University of California...

...You want to brandish a sword in the face of the "establishment," but the sword does not exist...

...In these rare situations the question arose of whether the violence of the shortening methods would not be too costly in terms of moral and material values, or whether, on the contrary, the pains of the gradual process would be greater...

...To define my own position-an obvious prerequisite to any analysis of the differences in our beliefs-I have occasionally described myself as something like a Fabian Socialist...

...Yet this difference seems to me of basic importance only in context with another...

...You are not the first young generation to believe that people over 30, because many of them accept this choice, are simply too patient with history, but you are just as mistaken as your predecessors...

...In the whole literature of your movement, I find no indication of any practical alternatives, violent or non-violent, to the gradual approach to peace, justice and a better life for all...

...yet it seems to me that the moment does not call for compliments but for criticism...

...This and much else would be true...

...Instead of making history less cruel you will make it more so...

...Wanting to use the law as a means of social amelioration, I am more hesitant than most of you to sanction civil disobedience...

...I do not think this is true...

...There is, however, a great and fundamentally significant difference between us in regard to what kind of situation justifies a breach of the law: From where I stand, it seems you regard it as normal to react to any law you do not like by breaking it in a demonstrative manner, rather than by trying to mobilize for the democratic processes to bring about a change-and this is certainly an attitude I must repudiate...

...It is not even difficult to find some instances where oppression, carried to excess, definitively crushed the liberty of the people or the people themselves...

...while still a German citizen, I have violated Nazi laws without the slightest scruple...