THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Protest Irresponsible Dear Sirs: President-elect Kennedy's razor-thin popularity dramatizes the irresponsibility of "protest" voting advocated by seven of your recent...
...In your September issue your "Notes in the News" refer to the consequence of centuries of arrogant colonialism practiced by the mother country, Belgium...
...How great is East Germany...
...But as more and more American families acquire automobiles, washing machines, and other amenities of a mechanized civilization, the rate of growth of the demand for such equipment inevitably drops...
...Mrs...
...The statement in Mr...
...Again I say wake up—or is this part of the game...
...At a time when world tension might just possibly be lessened by a critical look at ourselves and by a cautious but diplomatic rapport with Russia we find America aggravating the situation at every possible opportunity...
...In our pressure group society the interplay of countervailing forces does tend to lesson injustice...
...Only one-fourth of labor is organized...
...that it is he who chooses ever increasing militarization instead of slum clearance, more classrooms, health, and recreational facilities...
...A perfect score...
...Ellis O. Jones Washington, D.C...
...The problem of technological unemployment has been, and should be, taken care of by a combination of unemployment insurance and a reduction of working hours per year with no reduction of take-home pay...
...Life is a continual compromise from beginning to end, except for the saints...
...Consumer debt has skyrocketed...
...What is expected from The Progressive is some informed comment on the business, and so far this has not been forthcoming...
...Only a dictator could even attempt this...
...If Kennedy scores low when judged by liberal or pacifist standards, then Nixon scores zero...
...David A. Noebel, Pastor Fundamental Bible Church Madison, Wis...
...Richard Greene Brooklyn, N.Y...
...His two articles on Khrushchev's Russia are in the main a penetrating analysis of the situation as I saw it on a visit there last July...
...Lawrence Fernsworth Washington, D.C...
...Has Mr...
...When our individualism and their collectivism "grow up," or reach full maturity, the East and the West may discover that these antithetical ideologies are not inherently and irremediably incompatible...
...This statement is wrong on two points...
...Salute to Helen Mears Dear Sirs: I have only one quarrel with your September issue: You should have given Helen Mears' "Peace by Deterrent" top billing...
...Mrs...
...Schlesinger 'No Liberal' Dear Sirs: I agree with Mrs...
...The problem of bringing to the lower third of the population the material goods that make life easier and more comfortable is a challenging one...
...How blind and stupid can an ostrich be and still live...
...Why the plural...
...Trying to point out similarities between the elections in Formosa and the elections of the Red regime is such a stupid comparison that it makes one sick...
...Milton Mayer's recent issue article on Germany is Soviet propaganda straight from the inner chambers of the Kremlin walls...
...Michal Smith Horbury, Yorkshire England Progressive Never Fails Dear Sirs: Of the thirty magazines and newspapers I take, The Progressive is the most indispensable for keeping a straight mind in a crooked world...
...Keyserling asserts that the rate of economic growth of the United States since 1953 is only half "that needed to "maintain reasonably full use of a rapidly accelerating technology and a constantly growing labor force...
...And now even the strike weapon is being blunted by automation and the removal of factories to low wage areas here and abroad...
...and the Korean war enabled Truman to maintain a high level of production after the country had caught up with the demands that had accumulated between 1941 and 1945...
...He defends the U-2 fiascb as if it were an act of patriotic genius...
...If a few thousand more liberals in key states had indulged themselves in this futile ritual, Nixon would be our next President...
...Audrey A. Rothkop when she asks in the November People's Forum, "What are the special qualifications that make Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a 'liberal...
...Without a completely controlled economy it is inevitable that there should be a considerable amount of unemployment during the time markets are growing to absorb increased production, and while those whose jobs are replaced by machines hunt for new employment...
...And then to state we have no Communism in this country...
...How you can close your eyes to the inhuman acts of Khrushchev and company is beyond me...
...at this stage they become boring and readers give them up...
...He was, for my money, several jumps ahead of McCarthy in this respect...
...He pays no attention to the fact that the growth of productive capacity during this period has been fantastically great...
...With this in mind, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted the Wagner Act to strengthen labor's position...
...There is more intellectual stimulation and enlightenment per page than many other magazines carry in an entire issue...
...I have always understood that active development by Belgian interests throughout the Congo has only taken place within the last 100 years...
...Keyserling's article that every great forward movement since the turn of the century has been sparked by the election of a Democratic President is, to say the least, menacing...
...how anti-Semitic, anti-Communist is West Germany...
...Understanding Venezuela Dear Sirs: Robert J. Alexander's "Two Revolutions," in the October Progressive, provided excellent background material for understanding the recent disturbances in Caracas...
...It should be read by every literate American...
...he has consistently opposed domestic programs like slum clearance and public housing needed for our own impoverished minorities...
...Kempton states that the newly independent African nations ". . . voted in the main with the United States, somewhat to our surprise, against the seating of Mao Tse-tung's Communist China...
...It cannot be solved by deceptive generalities that promise immediate full production under a new Administration, regardless of consumers' demand...
...and his simple-minded chauvinism turns disarmament from a difficult problem into an impossible one...
...They compel the Russians to keep on militarizing and keep down their living standards...
...First, the vote in question was on whether or not to postpone a debate on the admission of Communist China for another year...
...The second error is Mr...
...Liberals will certainly have better lines of communications with a Democratic Administration than with a Republican one...
...Stevenson's analysis of the world situation makes it clear that imaginative and perceptive leadership is needed in the United States today...
...The cold war will last as long as American labor remains complacent...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Protest Irresponsible Dear Sirs: President-elect Kennedy's razor-thin popularity dramatizes the irresponsibility of "protest" voting advocated by seven of your recent correspondents and implicitly threatened by seven others...
...And I suspect that even a few saints voted Democratic...
...he shows no understanding of or sympathy with the revolutions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America...
...Strikes under a Socialist economy would be about as logical as a disgruntled Ford stockholders' group urging the public to boycott Ford cars because the company has an unfair dividend policy...
...Nobody can deny that the Belgians have failed to train Congolese to occupy senior positions in the political, technical, and government services in the Congo...
...But I often wonder what the protest voters really want...
...Your editorials unfailingly throw needed light upon some timely, crucial issue confronting our world...
...Your slant isn't liberal—it's Red...
...A geometrical increase of five per cent per year in the consumption of anything would in a decade or two result in fantastic quantities...
...The trouble with most progressive journals is that they risk degenerating into a vehicle for the expression of well known platitudes...
...The recovery from slack economic times after the first few years of the Wilson Administration took place with World War I; the Roosevelt Administration failed to end the great depression in the six years between inauguration and wholesale preparations for World War II...
...American workers have more gadgets today because more wives are working...
...Lens Illuminating Dear Sirs: Sidney Lens, in the November Progressive, has written the most illuminating article on Russia that I have been privileged to read...
...But American labor leadership has hardly used this advantage...
...Otherwise he is merely phrase-mongering, paying puerile lip service to glittering generalities and copy-book abstract moralities...
...Your whitewash of Communism is superb...
...I may also add that many Western observers at the United Nations believe that next year many of these abstentions will become votes for the Communist nations' viewpoint...
...Kennedy similar plans...
...Stephen H. Fritchman Minister First Unitarian Church Los Angeles, Calif...
...If Americans have been talked into cold-war, soft-on-Communism thinking, then the new Administration must re-mold American thinking to the point where the forces shaping world events are understood...
...However, several new nations, including Nigeria, the most populous independent country in Africa, voted against the United States and with the Soviet Union...
...In my opinion The Progressive is the biggest bargain to be found on the American magazine market, if judged by the significance of its articles and the competence with which they are handled...
...Chester M. Patterson, Jr...
...and the welfare work of trade unions is tremendous...
...Marilyn Gaims Pasadena, California Kempton Mistaken Dear Sirs: In Murray Kempton's article, "Toward the End of Night," which appeared in your November issue, Mr...
...There are liberals and professional liberals, and I refuse to look on Schlesinger as one of the liberals...
...George B. Conner San Bernardino, Calif...
...This consideration overrides even the puny tempest in a teapot that is our national election...
...I doff my hat to Helen Mears...
...Rothkop has been troubled about this since reading his piece in your September issue...
...I haven't found them yet...
...Each issue of The Progressive is an intellectual delight to me—with more articles on significant issues which are handled objectively by responsible and competent writers than are found in dozens of slick, picture-story magazines with circulations of many millions...
...I have been troubled about it since reading his pieces in Life in the mid-forties in which he classified persons as fellow travelers, if not worse, because of their associations or opinions...
...Lens also complains that the Russian workers have no voice as to the proportion of the national income allocated to consumer goods as against capital goods...
...No issue of your magazine fails me, though there are, of course, some that are sharper than others...
...But in his report on Russian trade unions he reveals a blind spot...
...Ira B. Joralemon San Francisco, California Stevenson Needed Dear Sirs: Adlai E. Stevenson is a constant reminder, through his public utterances and his outstanding article in the November Progressive, "The Issue Is Peace," of the political "realities" which permitted this leader to be kept off the ballot in November...
...Reverend Roy W. Pfaff First Methodist Church Harlan, Iowa Lens' Blind Spot Dear Sirs: Sidney Lens has a keen mind and a discerning eye...
...To choose the lesser of two evils instead of defaulting to the greater is no disgrace...
...Kempton's assertion that the African states backed the United States on this issue...
...It also clearly explained the difference between the means used in democratic Venezuela and those employed in tyrannical Cuba toward securing social reform in the troubled Caribbean area...
...Here busy "defense" plants give us the illusion of prosperity while the puffed up red menace provides a rationale for the witch hunt and the suppression of radical views...
...it is vital that he play an active role in the next Administration...
...Growth has been due partly to more effective technology and partly to enormous investment in new facilities...
...C. W. Griffin Denville, N. J. The Progressive Is Red Dear Sirs: I have never read a magazine so pro-Communist (other than Communist publications) as The Progressive...
...It was not a vote on whether or not to seat Communist China in the United Nations...
...In fact, these statistics are hard to find...
...The rationale, I suppose, is that Senator John F. Kennedy's aggressive, Madison Avenue campaign was necessary for victory...
...Are they interested in getting results or in enjoying the egocentric delights of political martyrdom...
...and the average worker's take-home pay buys little more than it did twenty years ago, though production has doubled and corporate assets increased several fold...
...Ike's Lip Service to Peace Dear Sirs: If Ike earnestly and solidly believes in "peace and friendship in freedom," why doesn't he come out boldly against France's long drawn out, bloody, repressive war in Algeria...
...To say, as some protest voters do, that there is no significant difference between the two men reveals an ignorance that could be remedied merely by reading The Progressive, or even a daily newspaper...
...This was the real surprise, because Nigeria, in particular, was expected to at least abstain...
...The cold war and militarization are the curse of labor, but they pay multiple dividends to the power elite...
...I also found excellent Alexander's closing paragraph pointing up the need for the United States to understand and support "the Venezuelan experiment in democratic social revolution...
...Surely he does not mean to imply that the American worker's voice is more effective...
...Do try to avoid this fate...
...And, needless to say, he, like Kennedy, would be oblivious of the statistics of the protest vote...
...Irving H. Flamm Beverly Hills, California Keyserling 'Misleading' Dear Sirs: The article by Leon H. Keyserling entitled "The Economic Case for Kennedy's Election," in the November Progressive, is inexcusably misleading...
...Russian trade unions, on the other hand, are doing a whale of a job for their members, as Lens shows...
...Stevenson can be a large factor in this re-orientation...
...Without doubt the most hopeful aspect of the present ideological conflict between the East and the West is that neither the East nor the West has a frozen ideology in spite of the long cold war...
...The only African nations which backed the United States' position were Liberia, with its special bonds to the United States, and the Union of South Africa, a "white" African state...
...Lens has fallen in love with the term "countervailing force," and repeatedly points out that Soviet trade unions do not exercise that force by strikes but, like the Communist Party, insist that "the prime function of unions is still to boost production...
...What about anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-religious Communist Russia...
...San Jose, Costa Rica Boring Platitudes Dear Sirs: Please do try to get your facts right...
...Most of the new countries abstained...
...Wages have moved steadily upward while prices and hours of labor are moving downward...
Vol. 24 • December 1960 • No. 12
