The Big Question

...The former he accuses of failing to distinguish between heresy and conspiracy...

...Even so, he is opposed to repealing the Smith Act, since that would nourish the illusion that the Communist Party is just another American political party...

...It deserves a wide reading...

...The problem troubles a great many liberals, whether ritualistic or realistic...

...If it is a crime to seek to overthrow the government by violence through overt acts, then it must also be a crime to conspire to teach the desirability or necessity of doing the same...

...Faculties should adopt rules dealing with the rights and responsibilities of teachers, publicize them, and set up committees to enforce them...

...Nevertheless, Hook says specifically that while admitted Communist Party membership is prima facie evidence of disqualification, it should not automatically lead to dismissal "without further consideration of the case and of the consequences of acting on it...

...He says that "sometimes, membership will have to be construed from a complex pattern consisting of activities, participation in key front organizations, publications in party-line organs, content-analysis of variations in position establishing close correlation with the official Communist Party line...

...Ill The second part of the book deals with academic freedom, a subject concerning which Hook knows a great deal...

...For the Communist strategy is to make it appear that Communists are an integral part of the indigenous progressive movement, instead of a cancerous growth upon it...

...One final problem remains to be noted...

...Hook does not approve of the method adopted by the Smith Act, though he believes its aim is proper...

...A long chapter on the Smith Act seems to suggest that the thing to do is to prosecute the Communists in the federal courts...

...In other words, Hook is convinced that ritualistic liberals exaggerate the extent to which traditional freedoms have been impaired in this country, and that the cultural vigilantes exaggerate by labeling everything they dislike, from progressive education to public power, as communistic...

...A conspiracy, however, is "a secret or underground movement which seeks to attain its ends not by normal political or educational processes but by playing outside the rules of the game...

...But he insists that the teaching profession ought to be allowed to clean its own house, on professional assumptions, and that loyalty oaths and legislative investigating committees do not provide a solution...

...Reviewed by David Fellman SIDNEY HOOK, well-known professor of philosophy at New York University, and a vigorous argufier, elaborates in this book a theme which he has made familiar to those who have been following the great debate on the Communist problem in the United States...

...In this connection he singles out for special attack and a plague on both your houses treatment "frightened reactionaries" and "ritualistic liberals...

...in fact, "by labeling all progressive ideas as Communist heresies, they help Communist strategy...

...I am not sure that Hook is very cleaV in his answer to this crucial question...

...Hence his major theme: the liberal fears conspiracy, not heresy...

...Nevertheless, there remains room for honest differences of opinion on such matters as the relative seriousness of the present civil liberties crisis, and the relative value of prosecutory and positive remedies...

...Hook believes that the Communist danger is clear and present, within the meaning of the Holmes-Brandeis formulation, overlooking the fact that the jury was instructed by Judge Medina that a present danger is one that will happen "as soon as circumstances will permit...

...Now, Hook believes that the Communist Party of the United States is a conspiracy which a liberal society has no duty to tolerate...

...Hook concludes his book by taking the American Association of University Professors to task for insisting that affiliation with the Communist Party should not be in and of itself a justifiable reason for dismissal or exclusion from the profession...

...Perhaps Hook will elaborate on this point in subsequent writings...

...Some think this is a bad trade...

...II We return, then, to the original question: what shall we do about the Communists...

...He does not directly examine the question whether a statute so worded would have resulted in a conviction on the Dennis facts, but presumably he is satisfied that the evidence would have been sufficient...

...Fearing American fascism more than anything else, these liberals, he argues, failed to take the leadership in the fight against communism, and thus opened the door to the demagogues, who hate liberalism as well as communism...

...McCarthy...

...As a "realistic liberal," Hook tilts his lance against "the racists, the professional patrioteers," and defenders of the status quo against criticism, on the one hand, and the agents and apologists of Communist totalitarianism, on the other...

...Towards the end of the book he writes: "It is not the McCarthys and McCarrans and their allies who can lead the struggle for a free culture against its enemies...

...The question is: what should we do about them...

...He also believes that all present members of the Communist Party are and must be activists of some sort, and therefore all of them are conspirators...

...He is especially impressed with Justice Jackson's argument, in his concurring opinion, about the nature of conspiracy...

...The problems discussed by the author are among the most complex and troublesome of our times...

...But if membership in the Communist Party is denied and then proved by evidence, dismissal should be automatic...

...Another fundamental point in Hook's book is that large sections of American liberalism have always been less concerned with the victims and threat of Communist totalitarianism than with those of fascist totalitarianism...

...On these assumptions, Hook believes there is no place in the teaching profession for Communists, since they are pledged to follow a party line rather than the truth...

...Nor can such leadership be entrusted to ritualistic liberals who stupidly equate 'terroristic McCarthyism' with 'terroristic Communism.' They think they are thinking when they are only reacting with their viscera...

...And I am sure the last word has not been spoken on the subject of the liberal's responsibility for the Communist movement...

...For they have a distrust of freedom of thought and therefore of thought itself...

...The right to profess publicly any sort of heresy is essential to liberalism...

...These are the people who are always talking about "witch hunts" and "guilt by association...

...On this troublesome question Hook devotes one paragraph...

...Thus, in Justice Jackson's view, the doctrine of criminal conspiracy supplants the First Amendment...

...He does not approve of Sen...

...He defends the principle of academic freedom, which he defines as "the freedom of professionally qualified persons to inquire, discover, publish, and teach the truth as they see it in the field of their competence, without any control or authority except the control or authority of the rational methods by which truth is established...

...In general, he approves of the Supreme Court interpretation of the Smith Act in the Dennis case...

...On this point I believe serious research would help to establish the facts...

...A liberal society cannot tolerate conspiracy without "self-stultification...

...I believe this book contributes much to our understanding...

...The author contributes a trenchant chapter on "cultural vigilantism," in education, religion, the arts, and political affairs generally...

...Nevertheless, the Smith Act is not altogether to the author's liking...

...He is certainly opposed to loyalty oaths, the net result of which has been the punishment of non-Communists only...

...The "ritualistic liberals" are those who "ignore or blithely dismiss as comparatively insignificant the mass of evidence concerning the conspiratorial character of the Communist movement," and who regard Communism "merely as an unpleasant heresy...

...He is deeply concerned with protecting "the relative autonomy of the educational process," and explores some of the authoritarian attitudes in education...

...How do you establish that one is a member of the Communist Party, if the person doesn't have a card, or does not admit membership...

...Starting with the assumption that the essence of liberalism is the free trade of ideas, Hook maintains this concept is based on two premises: 1) the free expression of ideas may legitimately be curtailed to avoid a clear and present danger to public peace or the country's security...

...2) a competition in the free market of ideas will be conducted openly and honestly...

...He writes: "Not all of McCarthy's charges have been false, but his indiscriminate use of the term Communist, and insinuation that those who oppose his shotgun methods of fighting communism are themselves infected with communism, has prevented intelligent discussion and terrorized the innocent as much as the guilty...

...Perhaps I am talking like a ritualistic liberal, but this doesn't sound like a description of a clear and present danger to me...

...A heresy is defined as "a set of unpopular ideas or opinions on matters of grave concern to the community...

...There may be sufficient reason to forego taking disciplinary action against the teacher...

...He is confident that faculty committees, if properly informed about the methods and doctrines of the Communist Party, will be able to distinguish between educational heretics and conspirators...

...Academic freedom is good for the teachers, but it is also good for the community, since it opens the door to new knowledge, deepens human wisdom, provides a climate for the solution of technical problems, develops a critical temper among students, and strengthen the vitality of the intellectual and cultural freedom of the community at large...

...But Hook does agree with the view expressed by Justice Douglas in his dissenting opinion in the Dennis case that the question whether the defendants had through their activities created a clear and present danger should have been submitted to the jury...

...He thinks the proper way to proceed is not to proscribe speech but rather to focus on the organization set up to achieve revolution and its control by a foreign power...

...He is opposed to the legal outlawry of the Communist Party, apparently because it will surely reappear under another name...