Letters

...William Anthony Pezet Portland, Maine By placing the arms control issue on the ballot for the first time, the Nuclear Freeze in the United States and Operation Dismantle in Canada have produced the largest, most active, most influential peace movements in the history of both countries...

...The precedent for this approach is the Farmers Nonpartisan League of North Dakota, which organized as a faction of the Republican Party, took control of the state government by winning primary elections in 1916 and 1918, and instituted quasi-socialist reforms...

...Although the crunch is on, as Gordon says, you'd be hard-pressed to find a major U.S...

...But this does not mean we must be silent on populist issues...

...Tony Mazzocchi and Ed Ott have the right idea when they state in your November issue that the time has come to build a workers' party...

...Kurt Dreifuss Clearwater, Florida As Sidney Lens points out in your November issue, the American Establishment wants us to limit our political activity to the act of voting...

...Your magazine nourishes my spirit...

...A significant third-party vote, combined with action in the streets and on smaller, local levels can effect changes in attitude as well as policy...

...Many activists are currently linking the issues by pointing out that poverty, austerity, and joblessness are the end result of thirty-five years of Cold War militarism...

...Insofar as that sort of thing doesn't happen today, Gordon is right...

...There are other signs of dialectical movement...

...In the 1960s, my beaded and bespectacled biology professor once interrupted a lecture on the Krebs cycle to encourage the class to attend an antiwar teach-in...

...The concrete fact is that these groupings today are as traditional a part of campus life as fraternities and sororities...

...made the good point that a Jesse Jackson candidacy would sharpen and mobilize a progressive Left...

...Considering the outstanding women in public life in the United States, there need be no dearth of strong and well-informed candidates, highly principled and politically experienced...

...It is noteworthy that no one mentioned either Alan Cranston or George McGovern, both of whom articulate a peace progressive point of view in opposition to the long tradition of Cold War politics ingrained in the Democratic as well as the Republican Party...

...Betty L. Johnson Honolulu, Hawaii As the farm editor of a rural daily in a predominantly agricultural area, I found Daniel Zwerdling's conclusions timely and accurate...

...The cost to dismantle these large reactors, in my opinion, will more closely approximate their billion-dollar construction price tag than the $73 million estimated for dismantling the much smalller seventy-five-megawatt Ship-pingport reactor...

...They raise money, sponsor speakers, hold rallies, register voters, charter buses to demonstrations—in short, they're active political organizations of the Left...

...R. Michael Kip McMinnville, Oregon Impaired Faculties My own experience both corroborates and contradicts Suzanne Gordon's assessment of the state of the Left on America's campuses ("Impaired Faculties," October issue...

...In the introduction to their collection of essays, The Left Academy, Bertell Oilman and Edward Vernoff note that more than 400 courses are offered today in Marxist philosophy, but in the 1960s hardly any were...

...Second, there is the division between those populists who stress programs for economic democracy while paying little attention to foreign policy and those who urge that preventing Armageddon must take precedence over domestic concerns...

...And I'm talking 1980s, not 1960s...

...progressive academics now keep up a more moderate decorum...

...Jim Goldstein Norwich, New York Correction The editorial gremlins have been at it again...

...My own bias is that nuclear madness must stop as the first priority of politics...

...That we have not realized its potential is due to a failure of imagination and motivation on the Left...

...Gregory Gibbs Chicago, Illinois Aticket composed of George McGovern and Jesse Jackson would satisfy the constituency searching for candidates who address the issues of peace and domestic welfare...

...For the flaming radical—or the admitted homosexual—tenure tracks just aren't available...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...As radicals, we must intensify our efforts to persuade our fellow citizens that there is political responsibility beyond the ballot box, and that massive nonviolent civil disobedience can achieve great gains for democracy, for peace, for the ultimate survival of humankind...

...The university of today—despite continuing attempts to purge faculties—is a more favorable terrain for progressives than yesterday's university...

...In my article, "Buried Alive" (December issue), the line, "Assuming that burial places can be agreed upon, the undertaker's bill for each defunct nuclear power plant will add up to about $75 million," should have read, "Assuming that burial places can be agreed upon, the undertaker's bill for each defunct nuclear power plant may well approach what it cost to build it in the first place...

...college or university without an avowed Marxist somewhere on the faculty...

...Sybil Sticht Walnut Creek, California After enjoying and learning from the November issue's articles, "Which Way in '84...

...C. H. E. Ault Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Down on the Farm What particularly attracted my attention in Daniel Zwerdling's "Down on the Farm" (September issue) was the statement that while it would be desirable to have smaller, more diversified farms, "the equipment that would replace [heavy machinery]— nimble machinery, powered by renewable fuels, that can plant and harvest a variety of crops—hasn't been developed yet...

...Irrespective of one's conviction that neither of the two old parties can work for basic economic change because both are closely tied to corporate interests, the 1984 crisis demands voting for the lesser of two evils...

...He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks, to be sure...

...This is an important difference...

...Michael A. Prusak Keshena, Wisconsin Forgive me if I express my opinion rather bluntly in contradicting Sidney Lens's article, "Our Real Strength Is in the Streets...

...Even at tiny Occidental College, the conservative liberal arts school where I finished my undergraduate work, there are half a dozen faculty members with open radical tendencies...

...We must resist immoral foreign and domestic policy, resist military intervention, resist White House deceptions...

...It is impossible to be a liberal (or even a moderate) Democrat in conditions of capitalist austerity and war fever, which shift all bourgeois politics to the Right...

...The award-winning film Northern Lights is about the 1916 primary victory...

...Every day we waste by failing to work vigorously for a huge voter turnout to oust the dangerous Reaganites from Congress and the White House increases the chances of their reelection in 1984...

...Union members and officials, the unorganized and the unemployed, should begin running independent labor candidates for various offices in black and working-class areas...

...The Progressive should devote some space to those progressive farmers and homesteaders who are managing to produce good food cheaply and without chemicals...

...Absolute nonsense...

...Both parties are accomplices in maintaining America's holier-than-thou attitude in world affairs and in adding to the obscene glut in nuclear weaponry...

...However, at this crucial moment in human history, I see such democratic discussion as a waste of precious time...

...That ticket would allow human rights and human needs to take precedence over fear and greed...

...Barbara J. Foster Amherst, Ohio To expect the Democratic or Republican parties to pay more than lip service to labor, minorities, women, the unemployed, and government reform is simply wishful thinking...

...Electoral politics has the capacity for involving, informing, and organizing more people than any other political tool...

...The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of $50 to $100 million for decommissioning a large reactor, which I mention at the end of my article, is based on the cost of dismantling the tiny fifty-eight-megawatt Elk River reactor in 1973...

...and they cannot well be separated...

...As a long-range strategy, I suggest that the "party within a party" approach might be a sensible meeting ground for those who wish to stay within the Democratic Party and those who wish for political independence...

...As radicals, we must reject the advice of the Establishment and listen to our conscience, which bids us to carry on with street politics...

...First, there is the polarity between the advocates of a third party and those who advise staying within the Democratic Party...

...This lesson is completely lost on Sidney Lens when he turns his back on electoral politics in favor of taking to the streets...

...In your essays, John Con-yers Jr...

...But to bind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right today and wrong tomorrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove...

...Still, you'd have a hard time finding one without an active peace movement, or antinuclear movement, or anti-intervention movement, or feminist movement, or minority movement...

...He gave one hesitant student a quarter—the donation requested for the teach-in— with the jolly advice that if the teach-in were canceled she could at least buy a joint with the money...

...Was there anything comparable on campus in the 1950s...

...That could gradually form the basis for an independent workers' party...

...You are twaddling about interesting social philosophies while a cataclysm is about to strike us all...

...Nicholas V. Seidita Northridge, California To vote for Democrats or try to build a "Left" within the Democratic Party is Utopian...

...Moreover, they have links to broader regional, local, and national movements...

...That means, as one of your discussants put it, voting for any Democrat...

...I ran across James Boswell quoting Samuel Johnson in the former's Tour to the Hebrides: "I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party, that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that, to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though in particulars it may be wrong...

...The cost of constructing today's typical nuclear power plant runs in the billions, not millions...

...In comparison to the frantic 1960s, today's campuses are dull indeed...

...November issue) make it apparent that certain fissures continue to exist on the radical side of the political spectrum...

...Catherine Thiel Quigg Barrington, Illinois The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...And this trend is mirrored in other disciplines...

...James W. Youngdale Minneapolis, Minnesota Your articles on the 1984 Presidential race have the old virtue of invoking democratic discussion as the proper means of finding sound answers to complex socioeconomic problems...

...Afterwards, we can resume work on establishing a meaningful third party...

...Voting Democratic in 1984 for the express purpose of ending Ronald Reagan's reign is merely acquiescing in four more years of no substantial change...

...What, pray tell, ever happened to mules and horses...