The Riddle of John Roche

...For time is of the essence The Vietnam war was started by a generation that had suffered history, it had to be fought by a generation that knew no yesterdays Apparently each generation has to learn from its own sentence to life...

...If we could have tamed North Vietnam with some 30,000 professionals or with a half-milhon men on assignment for six months, Roche felt, the "limited war strategy" would have worked delightfully But Ho Chi Minh would not allow such a neat antiseptic solution While we were fighting a limited war against him, he declared total war against us, Roche observed, bringing the costs "to the point where it became politically unjustifiable in the United States " The success of a limited war depends on our capacity to carry it through with a few men for a long time, or with many men for a short time—but not with many men tor a long time, because both the troops and the voters will weary of the exercise Despite Roche's negative findings on how the "liberal" option worked out in Vietnam, he ends, ' I still believe that flexible response is not only a sound but a libeial alternative to the only other strategies I see on the horizon " The title of Roche's essay might well have been expanded to read "Can A Free Society Fight a Limited War—and for a Long Time...

...Keep America Out of War, Norman Thomas and Bertram Wolfe wrote, "If we go in, decency, tolerance, kindliness, truth, democracy and freedom will be the first victims " Out of that noninter-ventiomst stance rose a coalition of Socialist internationalists and conservative isolationists, formally embodied m the Keep America Out of War Committee (The same two groups have joined together on subsequent occasions when both were opposed to American intervention abroad, most notably in the cases of Greece, Korea and Vietnam ) But kaow was shortlived A number of American Socialists rejected the party's line and their own past, violating the Oxford Oath A few of us helped form the William Allen White Committee to aid the Allies, and some of us actively agitated for early intervention When I left the Socialist party m 1939 I felt a compulsion to find a Marxist basis for supporting bourgeois governments in a war against Fascism The rationale I came up with went as follows Since the bourgeoisie of the democracies was more inclined to go along with Hitler than to oppose him, the mission of preserving a nation's integrity fell to the proletariat, hence, by militating tor all-out war against the Nazis, the working class ot the democracies could simultaneously repel Fascism and rise to power—emulating the classic example of the Pans Commune My concocting a Marxist argument for "militarism" was indicative of the '30s Socialist's need for orthodoxy, especially when called upon to do the unorthodox In retrospect, our real motivations were less Marxist than moral, less intellectual than instinctive After all, Hitler seemed about to take over the earth, and there was a moral imperative to stop him What is more, since the only alternatives were a concentration camp or a gas chamber, it was simple self-preservation to fight back And that required more than bright boys in brigades, we needed the mighty arms of Uncle Sam Whatever our orthodoxies, we learned that we were sentenced to life" and that we had to carry on within that painful confine To our discomfort, we prowar Socialists found ourselves in a majority coalition World War II was far and away this country's most popular war lust about everybody supported it, if for different reasons Labor and capital discovered the joys of full employment after the slow and inadequate recovery from the Great Depression in the years up to 1939 The Communists—after initially opposing US intervention—volte-faced to lusty demands for a "second front" once Hitler invaded the Holy Land of Russia The ha!t-hearted came along to avenge the insult ot the Japanese "'sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor Racists backed the War to teach "those little yellow bastards" a lesson The churches invoked the might ot the Almighty in a crusade against the Antichrist who had demanded that their German brethren render their all unto Caesar The synagogues of course The adjustment to being part of the majority was a psycho-political trauma tor many Socialists that changed their self-image and their attitude toward government They no longer telt compelled to denounce everything that came from "the Establishment " They could even accept a role within the capitalist American ' system " The Socialists held no illusions that the end of the War would bring the beginning of a universally tree world, but many did believe a Nazi victory in Europe would spell the doom of democracy everywhere It was not easy for them to accept without suspicion the revived slogan?Make the World Safe for Democracy" —that Woodrow Wilson had coined to justify the U S role in World War I For years, Marxists of every hue, and liberals too, had poked fun at Wilson's hypocritical motto, pointing to the various dictatorships that came to power in the wake of World War I Nevertheless, the Socialists saw democracy as their prime rationale for backing the war For the first time, infact, the word "democratic" took precedence over the word "social" in the Social Democratic lexicon This growing commitment to democracy as a moral absolute was to become the basis for the Cold War mentality among many American Socialists in later years To be sure, the arguments between Socialists and Communists on the subject of democracy did not begin after World War II, they run back to the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks ot 1903 In the U S , the confrontation started in 1919 and continued ceaselessly through the years But until 1945, in this country at least, it was an internal dispute among class brethren over the best way to realize a common dream Now and then, the debate erupted into fisticuffs or the swinging ot furriers' knives and pressers' nons m the needle trades No one, however, advocated war—not even a cold war—against the Communist fatherland of Russia The embittering experiences of World War II turned a theoretical discussion into a practical decision Totalitarianism—including the Red variety—had to be resisted, by arms if necessary The rise of Fascism had proven the fragility of democracy In highly cultured Germany, the birthplace ot Marx and the workplace of Lassalle, the beautiful Weimar Republic had been snuffed out by a loud-mouthed lout who used the word socialist" (the National Socialist Workers' party) to establish a murderous dictatorship The War itself had been the joint product of an agreement between Fascist Hitler and Communist Stalin to partition Poland between them At the end, the Soviet Union carried on like any imperial-minded Tsar, taking Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania by force of arms, and imposing its dictatorship like Hitler through puppet regimes, penal colonies and outright extermination For Socialists it was no longer enough to be socialist," that is, to put productive property under state control, it was equally important—at times, more important—to be "democratic," that is to preserve personal freedom In the post-World War II period, there-tore, many Socialists accepted the need to contain Communism And as John Roche wrote in a 1970 New Leader essay entitled "Moralism and Foreign Policy' "What emerged from the practice of containment was an alliance between those who thought that checking Communist power was a vital American interest (conservatives), and others who believed that the United States was morally obliged to oppose totalitarianism (liberals) " To Roche, the basis tor American involvement in world affairs is morality "We are moralists or we are nothing,' he declared in another New Leader essay in 1964, "and the nub of our dilemma is that the times imperatively require a rebirth of liberal morality" Without such a morality to guide international—as well as domestic—policy, liberals end up in the same kind of cul-de-sac they found themselves in during the Spanish Civil War "Classical liberalism provided a policy of nonintervention' in which decent people and totalitanans agreed under the aegis of the League ot Nations not to intei-vene in the 'internal affairs' ot a sovereign state The Fascists and Communists intervened (paying no attention to the nonintervention agreement) to support their own agents And the pathetic remnant ot Socialist internationalism denounced all states involved and called on the working class everywhere to save the Spamsh Republic in some unspecified fashion ' Liberal morality—as distinguished from liberal cynicism or piety—requires that "American power be employed to protect and strengthen democratic regimes and undermine the undemocratic If one believes that freedom, justice, equality are not subordinate to national boundaries, it seems to follow that we should consciously shape our policy in terms of revolutionary democratic internationalism Nothing is more absurd than the assumption that a dotted line on a map muffles moral principles " Afull decade ago, Roche was aware that the assertion of a moral role by American power would embark this country on a sea of troubles "We are in for a long period of marginal turbulence in international relations," he cautioned "We are going to be confronted by a series of Viet-nams, Panamas, Malaysias-Indonesias, Congos, Cy-pruses and the like " We have to face each of these with moral conviction and "wholeheartedly endorse a strategy of democratic intervention" Yet being a practical man, Roche thinks the U S should reserve the right to go in, stay out, or do something in-between "on a prudential level " In confronting the enemy, he would prefer that we carefully select the right time, place and weapons—if at all possible Though he became infamous in dove circles as a hawk, Roche did not consider Vietnam the right place, nor did he regard the strategy we chose—escalation—as the right weapon His reasoning, spelled out early in 1965, makes especially intriguing reading now and smacks of the prophetic The great struggles in Asia, he argued, involve India-China and Indonesia-Malaysia The U S intervention in Vietnam is a dangerous diversion "Our power is being dissipated in a Balkan War We are in the right war but the wrong place " As tor escalation, said Roche, "I am opposed to it For even if no general war occurred as a consequence of continuous pounding of North Vietnam, Hanoi could drag us from a marginal intervention (30,000 troops) into a full-scale Balkan War without overt Chinese assistance " Roche did not put much stock in the domino theory either "We can keep the South Vietnam domino standing indefinitely if we make the necessary commitments But the other dominos can fall even if South Vietnam remains upright If Hanoi launched a ground offensive, Laos, Cambodia, even Thailand would be vulnerable and—given our full concentration in Vietnam—all the dominos between the Kra Isthmus and the Indian frontier could topple ' Moreover, he recognized that the Vietnam adventure might backfire "In the absence of a viable South Vietnamese state, the U S would have to run this war from start to finish It would soon be known as the 'American War' in Vietnam—and as 'Johnson's War' in Republican circles in the United States " Thus, he concluded, "It is in American national interest to have a mimmal involvement in Indochina " Roche's advocacy of "minimal involvement" in Vietnam followed from his belief m the merits of "limited war"—that is, strategic war, one not rooted in hate To Roche, this is the only practical middle ground between total abstinence and Armageddon The idea, he says, "was conceived of by liberals as the liberal alternative to massive retaliation and/or isolationism " Liberals had rejected isolationism, they had also assailed Dulles' nuclear thunderings Hence, a limited war became the acceptable answer—intervention, yes, annihilation, no In a 1968 New Leader essay entitled "Can a Free Society Fight a Limited Wai7" Roche examined the reasons for the concept's failure in Indochina The chiefs difficulty, he noted at the outset, was that Vietnam was "a war without massive popular involvement a war tor an abstraction American national interest in a nontotahtarian Asian future " How do you ask young men to lay down their lives when you don't really want to wipe out the foe7 How do you explain the growing troop commitments and costs when the limited war appears to be going beyond limits'7 In short, how do you keep up military morale and political support when the little episode becomes a big encounter...

...Thinking Aloud THE RIDDLE OF JOHN ROCHE by gus tyler John P Roche is a paradox a radical who despises extremes, a liberal who respects tradition, an intellectual who distrusts the intelligentsia, an internationalist who loves his country, an optimist who believes in original sin, a fierce polemicist who is never altogether certain that he is on the side of the angels He is a consistency expressed as a contradiction, at one -with himself while appearing to be at odds with one and all, including himself Roche likes to think of himself as a loner, as an 'eccentric" and as unfashionable," to quote his own characterizations He has earned these adjectives by Ins regular refusal to go along just to get along In "his loneliness, however, he has some companions a whole generation of Social Democrats who, like the Bourbons, forget nothing, but unlike the die-hards of the ancient regime, learn or try to learn from everything that has happened since the founding of the First International This breed of radicals is orthodox in its values—equality and democracy—yet heterodox m its politics, constantly breaking with established dogma to carry its "socialist" flag over changing terrain Roche exemplifies its flexibility in practice and rigidity in purpose And he aptly captures its compulsion to live out a faith while living with the facts in the title of his new book, Sentenced to Life (Macmillan, 359 pp , $12 95), a collection of previously published essays Roche uses the phrase only once, in retemng to students who stood uncomfortably on the sidelines during the campus confrontations of the 1960s Convinced that such passivity could not persist, he predicts they will discover that they have been sentenced to life " Sooner or later they must relate to reality For Roche—as writer, teacher, activist, agitator, and philosopher—relating to reality is what politics is all about It is not an occasion tor personal therapy, empty piety or prayerful chant Nor can it be an inert reflex, rather, it is action inspired by commitment Roche's own commitment is to Marx and morals," although he would probably resent being labeled a Marxist Too feisty to enjoy a pigeonhole, he resists "isms" of any kind He doesn't even want to be filed away as a "liberal," despite his repeated references to "us liberals " In short, he likes to take the firm stands of a true believer but is enraged by those who conclude from his passionate partisanship that his next position on anything is therefore predictable Still, it is clear from the essays he has now brought together that Roche is a Marxist in the profoundest sense When he analyzes the origin and clash of ideas, he assumes that universal ideologies spring from non-universal interests of cultures in conflict Similarly, in several brilliant and scholarly dissections ot the Supreme Court, he pierces the judicial veil to lay bare the disturbing truth that law is a function of politics and politics a function of economics—a very Marxist notion Examining the period from 1870-1924, Roche probes the prejudices of the High Court as it obiter dictated the values of an era dominated by crusading capitalists who, in his view, had interests but no ideology of their own This class, he says, was "an elite of businessmen [that] was neither ruggedly individualistic, in terms of classic economic thought, nor conservative' in any acceptable definition of that much abused term On the contrary, this elite lived at the public trough, was nourished by state protection and devoted most of its time and energies to evading Adam Smith's individualistic injunctions It demanded and applauded vigorous state intervention in behalf of its enemies The Constitution was adapted to the needs of the great private governments " Indeed, to serve these "private governments," the Constitution was turned topsy-turvy and inside-out The Fourteenth Amendment, intended to liberate Negroes (Roche shuns the term "blacks" as too fashionable and patronizing), became—m the ratiocinated words of the Supreme Court—a device to liberate corporations so they might pay whatever wages they wished charge whatever pnces they wanted, and destroy their rivals as they pleased If workers dared to use umons as a militant countervailing power, the Court declared such action to be a violation of corporate freedom "The courts effectively sent the workers and the farmers into the boxing ring," argues Roche, "with the injunction that if they used their best punch on the corporation, it would be ruled a foul " (This incidentally, is a good example of Roche's prose style a mix of earthiness and erudition ) In interpreting the commerce clause of the Constitution, the Court was characterized by its contradictory consistency contradictory in its logic but consistent in its subservience to business interests A muckraker digging through this verbose muddle might well conclude that the judges had to be bought to manufacture such patently unreasoning rationales for their conclusions, but Roche is too much the Marxist—or perhaps too sound a political scientist—to accept the conspiracy theory To explain the weird way of the Court, he says, there is no "need for villainous capitalists and meretricious judges Honest and sincere men, like the dishonest and the insincere, simply applied the dominant values of the epoch in their fashions to the world around them " Thus the Court's decisions on the rights ot individuals—especially Negroes—were proracist as well as precapitalist In Plessv v Ferguson, a Negro who was only one-eighth black was denied the right to share quarters with whites on a train Said the Court "We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy's] argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it" In sum, Roche shows us how the Supreme Court turned the Constitution into a capitalist and racist document in line with the regnant mood of the generations from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression Before the men on the bench began to string their words together, a clear majority knew what outcome it wanted The Court was in a quandary only when it had to choose between its predilections for the ruling class and the ruling lace "In the event of such clear conflict of ideologies," remarks Roche, entrepreneurial liberty was even more sacrosanct than racism " The ' class" view ot social relations and reactions is, of course, typically Marxist But what distinguishes Roche is that he prefers to take the kernel of Marx without the metaphysical chaff "The key dogma of the old order was the concept of entrepreneurial liberty," he wrote m 1963 "Put m its starkest terms, it amounted to the notion that what was good for business was good for the nation—more broadly, that the values of the business elite determined the political theory of the community as a whole Aristotle pointed out long before Karl Marx that the character of the political class (politeuma) would establish the core values of the community (polis), and without any recourse to the Hegelian mystifications of Marxism one can assert that the entrepreneurs of the Age of Enterprise constituted the political class " Yet Roche, who sees judicial ideology as the handiwork ot a capitalist class (a radical approach), became best known to many Americans in the mid-'60s as one of the nation's prime hawks (a radical anathema) "I should like to make it clear," he wrote in 1965 in the New York Times, "that I am an unabashed veteran cold warrior' To those with a cheap view of history, he sold out to Lyndon B Johnson for a prestigious job m the White House To those who see history—especially the emergence of ideologies —as a function of societal experiences, the Roche phenomenon reflects the intellectual odyssey of many of America's Social Democrats between the two world wars As a Socialist, Roche was ipso facto an internationalist "Workers of the world unite ' Accordingly, he began with the bekel that to support one capitalist clique in a war against another was a cardinal sin This antiwar feeling, it will be recalled, was once strong in the Socialist party in the United States Unlike most ot their Euiopcan counterpaits, the American Socialists did not support the military effort of their government in World War I In fact, the party's Presidential candidate, Eugene Victor Debs, went to jail tor his opposition to U S involvement overseas In contrast to true pacifism, the Socialists' antiwar stance was not based on a rejection of all wars—or all violence They merely opposed 'bad" wars, namely, those instigated by capitalist countries tor capitalist interests A revolution, on the other hand, conducted by workers to topple their oppressors or by a proletarian movement against a capitalist regime, was a "good" war, worthy of all-out support In retrospect, Roche suggests that the real roots ot Socialist pacifism in the Anglo-Saxon world were more other-worldly than most Marxists would imagine "In Britain and the U S ," he writes "Socialist internationalism was tar more a secularization ot Christian ideals of brotherhood than an exercise m dialectics " Whether inspired by Chnst or Marx, the opponents of war in the period between Versailles and Munich could agree on a day-by-day program Denounce the munitions makers, vote against military budgets, oppose ROTC, refuse to beai arms, take the Oxford Oath not to go along with governmental militarism Through it all, the Socialists regarded the pure pacifists as somewhat fey, and the latter looked upon the former as somewhat false But mutual suspicions were set aside in the interest of the common cause The first rift in the antiwar coalition came with the Spanish Civil War, when Marxists of every stripe rallied to the support of the Loyalists who were battling Franco The Communists organized their Lincoln Brigade and the Socialists formed their Debs Brigade to recruit American boys (m defiance of the law) to fight against Fascism in Spain The pacifists were horrified I remember a letter to the Socialist Call from the revered Unitarian Minister John Haynes Holmes opposing military aid to the Loyalists As editor of the Call at the time, I wrote a snotty reply, redolent with the arrogance of the righteous young, denouncing Holmes as an enemy of the working class But Spam was only a preliminary and indecisive test ot the Socialists' position In the war against Franco, they were enrolling in their own pioktanan units, they were not enlisting in capitalist armies The real test came with World War IF—how to stop Hitler without recourse to capitalist armies I recall writing an editorial advising the Czechoslovaks workers that in the event of a Nazi invasion they should turn the defense effort into a civil war, seize power for the proletariat, and then beat back Hitler The litany was legendary but the logic was lousy—a prescnption for suicide sold as salvation Nevertheless, the unrealistic line did become—in essence—the official policy ot the Socialist party In their 1939 book...