Letters

...Michael Lippman, M.D...

...In its lead editorial about abortion ("The Wire Next Time...

...But that would most likely only mean that the states would be allowed to make laws on the subject, which means that the decisions could be made democratically instead of by the dictates of six or seven men...

...Indeed, in engaging in such talk, The Progressive is guilty of precisely the same charge it levels against the President: helping "to perpetuate and intensify a particularly corrosive and disruptive social conflict...

...Moreover, the number of maternal deaths would almost certainly not rise dramatically: The pre-1973 statistics on abortion-related maternal fatalities are persuasive...

...Imputing ulterior motives to the advocates of early screening simply rings false...

...Many on both sides are not hypocritical—anti-abortionists who recognize the responsibility to help those who choose not to abort and need help, who would feed the hungry everywhere, who oppose racism and capital punishment and the arms race and contra aid, and pro-abortionists whose social engineering and self-interested ethical views are reflected in their politics and foreign policy postures as well...

...You claim it is a regressive tax, that removing it will have no effect on health, and that, worst of all, workers should be allowed to smoke to survive their meaningless jobs...

...20015 The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...This does mean that the feminist perspective is necessary to ending widespread abortion, and that provision of alternative services and pressing for alternative attitudes is crucial...

...the other is rooted in a commitment to human power that rejects the nature of things or would change it...

...Sometimes, a real benefit of early diagnosis/intervention may be difficult to prove because of this statistical wrinkle (especially since properly informed patients, once some preliminary evidence for benefit has been gained, are reluctant to be assigned to a control group...

...The risk of going under is worth taking for the goal of constructing "an avowed, proud socialist movement...

...Stephen Wangh Northampton, Massachusetts A Regular Army In the Editor's Memo (October issue), you say, "Idi Amin couldn't build an H-bomb if he wanted to...

...But don't throw the baby out with the bath...

...and 'labor,' " Aronowitz disregards his own good advice...

...Aronowitz is right—we must strike out on our own...

...On one hand, the editorial makes it clear that the right of women to choose abortion is not, at present, in any real jeopardy, calling the President's attempts to raise this specter an "utterly cynical maneuver" which should have caused his popularity to plummet...

...11 Adenocarcinoma of the colon, Ronald Reagan's tumor, is one for which the necessary simultaneous control data have been collected to demonstrate quite convincingly that early diagnosis and treatment improve outcome...

...When the cigarette excise tax increased in January 1983, it resulted in a 10 per cent rise in the price of cigarettes...

...is the claim of public support for abortion on demand...

...The U.S...

...In a period of high and unyielding levels of unemployment, when capitalism increasingly proves to be incapable of tackling the "much work that needs doing" in contemporary society (including "the mammoth task of refurbishing our decaying cities and countryside, building millions of homes at prices ordinary Americans can afford, providing such services as child care for working parents and health care for all"), the suggestion that the Left's new political imperative should be a call for guaranteed income, rather than a demand for unionized full employment, seems strategically flawed...

...Nor is it self-evident that a "genuine respect for life" requires giving more value to a handful of women's lives than to those of the 1.5 million unborn who now die by abortion annually...

...You are wrong on all counts...

...Courage is, indeed, needed on the Left—the courage to be socialists not "radical" reformers of capitalism...

...The horror stories haven't stopped, but there is a remarkable reticence in the media about them...

...It implies that the Left should abandon a radically transformative demand whose goal is the strengthening of the working class both at the points of production and social reproduction, in order to pursue a phantom post-industrial "radicalism" and yet another round of "electoral efforts to save the welfare state...

...Nature didn't make us unequal...

...I don't know how the lawyer who defended Jack Limle or the judges who "absolved" him of rape and murder charges, much less their wives or daughters, can sleep at night...

...Rachel MacNair Feminists for Life of America Kansas City, Missouri Buying Trouble Philip Mattera's "Buying Trouble" (September issue) is one of the very few reports pointing out the serious problems of worker ownership, particularly the often insidious Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs...

...What an excellent solution to the worst of capitalism...

...This should not only be recognized, but I do wish more people would join these efforts, rather than pushing the violent "choice" of abortion as a quick-fix solution that hurts the child, the mother, the father, and the rest of us...

...South Burlington, Vermont The Cancer Panic Your editorial Comment "The Cancer Panic" (September issue) has shown again that a bit of knowledge and a firm bias can lead to unreasonable conclusions...

...The infamous "necessity" of "working within the system" is not a position at all—it's a cover for not having a position...

...The power of the 1960s lay in the convergence of cultural and the economic-political revolutions...

...The assertion that "the worth of early treatment remains to be proven" simply doesn't apply to this disease...

...In faulting the Justice Department for helping "to perpetuate and intensify a particularly corrosive and disruptive social conflict," you join in the brain-paralyzed Funding Exchange's unfounded righteousness: There is nowhere near a national consensus espousing Ellen Willis's brave new world...

...That position is held by only one American in four...

...The traditional patriarchy argued that nature provided for inequality, and the concept that the modern technology of abortion is required to provide equality suggests acceptance of that premise...

...This is not a regressive tax...

...The first step may be to observe, as Aronowitz does, that "the Left remains uncomfortable with a political movement that doesn't regard economic or class issues as primary...

...But parts of his article lead me to fear that Aronowitz may not have grasped that full significance either...

...Employee-owned ventures where the workers have full voting rights and participate in management (or hire their own managers) are a far cry from the powerless worker-owners in large corporate castoffs...

...That power is there for us to rediscover if we can truly listen to the cultural (psychological, spiritual, humanistic, sexual) radicals—and vice-versa...

...Those who were doing them then do a higher volume now, and an abortion mill is less safe than a doctor who does them one at a time and doesn't want to be caught at it...

...I quickly discovered that there are powerful interests who know that ESOPs can be of real benefit to large corporations, at the expense of their workers...

...The idea that female "biology makes us constantly vulnerable" is an unwarranted insult to female biology...

...The Supreme Court has changed since, and is waffling...

...Minneapolis, Minnesota Sisters of Justice After swallowing a scream of anger and horror, I finished reading the Datelines article on Sisters of Justice (November issue...

...Your editorial is particularly obtuse in its denigration of women's intelligence...

...and inasmuch as society has used our biology to make us so, it is society that should be changed, and not our biology...

...Bernard Kamoroff Laytonville, California Poor Sin Tax Iwish to take issue with your stand on the cigarette excise tax ("Poor Sin Tax," Comment, September issue...

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

...Supporting abortion for the convenience of the mother rejects the traditions from which our liberties derive...

...The laws (which always had a life-of-the-mother exception) were against the abortionist, not the mother...

...Aronowitz apparently shares with the liberal welfare-statists of the early 1960s the erroneous belief that the best way to empower the poor and unemployed working class is to strengthen their potential consumption without systematically altering their power at the point of production...

...As for the tender mercies of back-alley butchers, nothing in Roe v. Wade put any physician abortionists out, of business...

...How dare you put the Irish Republican Army in the same category as the Mafia, a bunch of the lowest criminals the world has ever known, and the PLO, who were originally displaced persons and have, unfortunately, now become a menace to the civilized world...

...Aronowitz contends that though we could use more jobs, and a reduction in the length of the working day, "we need most of all a guaranteed income for all Americans...

...For openers, socialists should advocate nationalization of major military manufacturers, of dominant financial institutions, of radio and television, and of health services...

...They follow army discipline and regulations and are supported by the people...

...Eileen Neil Bayside, New York The Wire Next Time...

...In fact, since the early detection techniques also often pick up pwancerous lesions, screening for that colon cancer actually decreases the incidence as well as the case mortality rates...

...Without legal sanction and the insistent propaganda of the abortion industry, the rate of abortion on demand could be expected to drop substantially...

...Martin Wolfson Middletown, New York Stanley Aronowitz is saying something important when he points out that "socialists still have not grasped the full significance of new social movements that argue for cultural and social freedom...

...Small businesses come and go pretty much the same as ever, and they are just as powerless as they ever were...

...Let's do some consciousness-raising on these issues, postponing to a later time detailed analysis of workplace democracy...

...Chris Brandt Tepostldn, Mexico It was depressing to read an article by an avowed socialist and find in it not one word about social ownership and control of production...

...By September 1983, domestic consumption of cigarettes had fallen by 4 per cent (compared to the same period the previous year...

...To the extent that large corporations point proudly to independent entrepreneurs, and wave the flag and all, in order to pressure their workers into taking over the ailing company, then indeed "the current wave of entrepre-neurship" is detrimental to the duped workers...

...Such instances involve fewer than 1 per cent of all pregnancies...

...Edward M. Corbett Commerce, Texas Pro-lifers are not as nasty as you portray us in "The Wire Next Time...

...Reflections, September issue) that if leftists are to have the courage and imagination to be truly radical, they must disabuse themselves of the political notion of, and strategic demand for, full employment...

...the health potential is enormous...

...Mary Ann Smith New York, New York Author's Query For information to supplement an oral history of the Peace Corps, I would appreciate hearing from friends and relatives of Peace Corps volunteers, and anyone who has historical reminiscences, personal knowledge, letters, diaries, memorabilia, drawings, photographs, recordings, or other material...

...In a society in which the culture of acquisition drives workers, even those with much more than adequate incomes, to take second jobs, to work overtime, etc., so that they can continue to move up the Great American Ladder, a "guaranteed income" will serve to free us for "self-fulfillment" only if it is linked to deep changes in the culture...

...In practice, Roe v. Wade has not struck some acceptable compromise, but legalized abortion on demand throughout pregnancy and infanticide when the newborn is unwanted...

...When workers are forced to become powerless owners of a large, antiquated, and usually troubled business, where they wind up with no voting rights, no pensions, and no guarantees—as is often the case in ESOP conversions— they are, as The Progressive points out, getting the shaft...

...with public ownership, all things are possible—not guaranteed, but possible...

...Left desperately needs to hear and to follow in action...

...You are perpetuating a myth that the British propagandists have worked hard and long to establish...

...Aronowitz does not mention this menace, and that makes his essay trivial and meaningless...

...Finally, how ironic that a publication asserting a socialist heritage should devote its energies to the promotion of selfishness...

...Without public ownership, only cosmetic improvements can be made in society...

...They are the only force defending the Irish nationalists, in their own country, from a foreign oppressor...

...There is only one way to eliminate this enormous power for evil—nationalization of the great banks and factories...

...Contrary to Ellen Willis's fantasy of what it means to be free, perceptive American women increasingly acknowledge that real liberty is inseparable from responsibility...

...More likely is that the Supreme Court may let Roe v. Wade stand, but allow states to regulate abortion...

...The "wave," however, is more media hype than anything real...

...As a whole, we refuse to take so much as a firm position, much less any sort of risk...

...More than ever, religion is the poison of the mind...

...The single greatest threat to the continued existence, let alone welfare, of mankind stems from the skillfully coordinated efforts of the great capitalists—producers and bankers—to keep the world safe for transnational corporations...

...Worker-ownership has a positive side that has little to do with ESOPs and union-management conflicts...

...In fact, among women (the fastest-growing group of smokers), the rate of smoking tends to increase with income (although this is not so among men...

...Dale E. Hammerschmidt, M.D...

...Yet one looks in vain to the writings of present-day socialists for any recommendations along this line...

...One view is rooted in a sense of the nature of things that includes respect for the dignity of every human being...

...But on the other, it insists in milking this im-plausibility for every last ounce of indignation, even to the point of running the piece under the title, "The Wire Next Time...

...Many women have died from legal abortion, but have been listed simply as maternal deaths...

...Many, too, are hypocritical—Reaganite anti-abortionists who deny the living poor and opt for violence in Nicaragua, and pro-abortionists who try to rationalize away the violence they espouse and who ask for freedom for themselves but would then impose the cost of their abortions on those who find abortion immoral...

...Department of Agriculture attributes this drop in consumption to the price increase...

...Brad Rose San Francisco, California Stanley Aronowitz's splendid call to radicalism is one the anemic and timid U.S...

...When he argues that "most of all we need a guaranteed income for all Americans" because then we "would rediscover the distinction between 'work...

...Comment, September issue), The Progressive may have placated some of those it offended by exposing readers to a pro-life advertisement, but it did nothing to raise the level of debate on this issue...

...You correctly point out that early detection and treatment of a disease may lead to a longer survival (measured from the time of diagnosis) without materially influencing the natural history of that disease...

...The National Abortion Rights Action League shares our "fantasy" that Roe v. Wade can be overturned relatively soon...

...The very vision that sustains us has as its fundament that "our" own is everybody's own...

...1 Your snide asides against equipment manufacturers, drug suppliers, and the like may have a hint of validity, but these interests have not been the source of the push for early diagnosis and treatment...

...Neither could the Mafia or the PLO or the Irish Republican Army...

...If we, as a society, are unwilling to protect the most basic right of the weakest among us, then we embrace the anarchic principle of everyone for him/herself and to hell with everybody else...

...In their determination to keep and enlarge that which they have, they seek to undermine every socialist economy, new or old, on the face of the globe, brazenly utilizing the political and military power of the United States and other capitalist countries to challenge any and all threats to their continued domination of the earth...

...But a huge portion of the pro-life movement—even in the minor Moral Majority segment of it—is devoted to non-headline-making services to pregnant women...

...William H. Slavick Portland, Maine Among the more glaring inaccuracies in "The Wire Next Time...

...it does not hit mainly the poorest members of society, primarily because they have lower smoking rates than the middle class...

...There is only one cause in America and in the world: the fight against all forms of revivalist and evangelist and militarist religion...

...As News-week's January 14 cover story pointed out, Gallup surveys for over a decade consistently show a majority who reluctantly accept abortion in cases of rape, incest, or maternal health...

...Our ability to act in the world is hopelessly compromised by our sexual being...

...In the fighting labor movement of the 1920s and 1930s, the strategy of "boring from within" made sense...

...A few years ago I wrote and published a book, We Own It: Starting & Managing Co-ops, Collectives & Employee Owned Ventures...

...Approximately a half million teenagers stopped or never began smoking during this time...

...To begin with, it never was illegal to obtain an abortion, only to provide one...

...See, for example, the revealing quotation from Ellen Willis in the Village Voice...

...H Similarly, in such articles the cost of false positives is routinely factored in, not "unacknowledged," as you would have it...

...You imagine "utter social chaos" and predict a return to "the tender mercies of wire coathanger wielders" if Roe v. Wade is repealed, when the more likely result would be a return to the status quo ante, in which virtually all abortions were performed by doctors (in violation of their Hippo-cratic oath) and only a handful died, as today, as a result of botched abortions...

...It is as if financiers were paying annual retainers to prominent socialists to assure that they discuss anything and everything except nationalization of the means of production—the heart and soul of socialism...

...Ailene S. Goodman Box 42539 Washington, D.C...

...Ruth Fowler Knittel Denver, Colorado Stanley Aronowitz's radicalism is a call for banality...

...And those who call themselves pro-life should stop trying to turn back the LETTERS to the Editor clock on Roe v. Wade and do the same...

...The book's warnings against ESOPs—very similar to those in your article—were severely criticized by the National Center for Employee Ownership, this country's corporate ESOP mouthpiece...

...History provides some somber reminders for a society imbued with that philosophy...

...Also, please let's not blame independent contractors, free-lancers, and individual entrepreneurs, who were subtly linked to the problem in your article...

...ordinary complications of hemorrhaging, infections, later miscarriages, premature births, ectopic pregnancies, and sterility (including hysterectomies) add to legal abortion's toll on women...

...What is most appalling is your veiled claim that workers need a drug such as tobacco to help them survive their meaningless and "ulcerating" jobs...

...But when the system itself is basically corrupt, when it corrupts even the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the articles of Constitution by using them to justify our current Government's policies, then to enter the system is to submit to its corruption...

...The time has come for those on both sides to recognize that what Roe v. Wade created, a multi-million-dollar abortion industry, will not allow to be destroyed...

...Therefore, contrary to your premise, all Americans—including women—reject unrestricted abortion three to one...

...And why not...

...That push has come, for the most part, from nonprofit groups such as the American Cancer Society, and from national granting agencies such as the National Cancer Institute...

...Let's get on with it: Those who are truly pro-choice should get to work on improving the social and economic conditions that make many women feel they have no choice but to undergo an abortion...

...Finally, I take strong exception to the concept of a surgical procedure being my "principal instrument of liberation...

...Since most smokers die five years earlier than their nonsmoking counterparts, this enables them to escape the rigors of their jobs most finally and thoroughly...

...A second step might be to notice how the arguments of the "new social movements" impinge directly upon our most cherished economic programs...

...The Irish Republican Army is a regular army in the tradition of George Washington's Continental Army, whose guerrilla tactics were not so far removed from those of the Irish Republican Army today...

...Your association of the Irish Republican Army with these dregs of society biases a reader's judgment without any supporting evidence...

...Vapid talk about the day when "millions of women" will be driven "back to the tender mercies of wire coat-hanger wielders and back-alley abortionists" serves no one...

...Bill Lueders Milwaukee, Wisconsin The abortion controversy is so intense because it pits those who see legalized abortion as a heinous disregard of the sacredness of human life against those who would extend female liberty by devaluing or denying the unborn child's claim to life to avoid the consequences of sexual intercourse...

...Perhaps you might try to put the abortion issue in perspective by contrasting it with the possibility of decriminalizing robbery...

...However: H This statistical problem is routinely recognized, and its influence on the statistical power of a study estimated, in the vast majority of early detection/treatment papers published in front-line journals in the past two decades...