Letters
LETTERS to the Editor Readers Respond to The Party's Over* Iwas happy to see Stanley Aronowitz's "The Party's Over: Farewell to the Democrats" (February issue). It should be apparent to all that...
...No matter how hard the road to revolution, there is no substitute for independent political-party activism...
...Nancy A. Maurer Lennox, California Many of us in Illinois despair of the Democratic Party, but Stanley Aronowitz goes too far when he dismisses Paul Simon as another neoliberal and/or neo-conservative...
...Steve Anderson Salem, Oregon Stanley Aronowitz states that "another way for radicals to establish an independent political force is simply to focus on building mass-based social movements...
...What are the demands...
...Are the men and women who write for Sojourners, which openly advocates tax resistance, militant civil disobedience, and the creation of communities of resistance, not "progressive" because they oppose abortion on demand on moral grounds...
...I am encouraged by the current discussion of independent political action...
...But which feminists...
...The vast majority of votes in Congress against nuclear terror, contra aid, and the dismantling of the welfare state are cast by Democratic legislators, just as the bulk of the votes for them are cast by Republicans...
...Lawrence S. Winner Albany, New York Three cheers for "The Party's Over...
...The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...ganging up on one or another tendency (as people have ganged up on Mixner) makes us look even more divided and self-destructive...
...We will achieve nothing toward genuine disarmament until we find the means to reach those, in America and throughout the world, who are not now of our political persuasion...
...Of course, maybe going to prison doesn't do much good either...
...Later on, he mentions "trade unionists, feminists, peace activists, black and other minority leaders," and says "the Left's responsibility remains to fight for the merger of class, race, and sex interests and help form alliances of these movements againt the common enemy...
...Am I consigned to "other minorities," along with Hispanics, disabled persons, the elderly, Native Americans, and—well, as we all know, the list goes on and on and, no, you can't name everybody everytime...
...Donald Wetzel Bisbee, Arizona These are sad and dispiriting times as I write to you from Sandstone Federal Prison...
...Those who seek their place in the hierarchical scheme of things or those who oppose hierarchy...
...Women are not a single political category...
...So when Aronowitz says "women," he means "feminists...
...quite the contrary...
...I am in basic agreement with Aronowitz's critique of the Democratic Party, but the reasons for the failure of the Democrats' collective imagination go beyond the Party's corporate connections...
...Voters continue their "lesser-evil" voting pattern, and non-voters remain nonvoters...
...This Stanley Aronowitz said, "Yet the traditional left analysis which is content to brand the Democrats as 'one of the two parties of finance capital' leads to a dead end...
...Equal-opportunity feminists, for example, not only clash with many eco-feminists and peace-feminists on various issues (including, for example, the draft, which NOW endorsed in 1981 as necessary to full citizenship for women), but also reject 6/APRIL 1986 the cherished theories of no-growth environmentalists...
...In both states, political movements associated with the Farmers Nonpartisan League operated as factions of the Republican Party...
...Daniel Galpern Chico, California Iam one of the marchers in the Great Peace March so viciously attacked in The Progressive...
...Given the drumbeat of criticism of current welfare policy from many who are not faint-hearted liberals or conservatives but voices of the black community, for those Aronowitz calls "progressive" to ignore this problem is to guarantee that we will be speaking mostly to ourselves...
...Aronowitz should be warned, however, that another author using his name has written in a very different vein in regard to working within the Democratic Party...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain Amherst, Massachusetts Stanley Aronowitz is right on target when he advocates the formation of a third party...
...Michael Klare Director Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies Amherst, Massachusetts Matthew Rothschild charges that the Great Peace March is "undemocratic in structure," as if the monumental task of planning and implementing such a prolonged, sustained, and moving protest could be had without strong, centralized leadership and decision-making...
...2. The time has come for us to question the standard political labels—radical, conservative, liberal...
...We can't even organize the Left on a single cause, so how are we going to begin to develop an effective political vehicle...
...the time is long, long overdue...
...We have no unified leftist base, no politicized labor movement on which to build an independent political party...
...For my part, I agree with the Stanley Aronowitz who began his article in The Progressive this way: "American politics thrives on myths, and perhaps none is so great as the myth that the Democratic Party is the party of and for workers, blacks, women, peace activists, and environmentalists...
...That is more than the entire budget of the organization...
...I urge people like Aronowitz to look more carefully at the North Dakota and Minnesota experience for political role models—successful ones...
...PRO-PEACE may well play a didactic role more significant than even Rothschild has deemed critical: the demonstration of sustained sacrifice and principled opposition to the nuclear arms race that a few thousand persons walking 3,200 miles for nuclear disarmament will manifest...
...There are thousands of women on both sides of the abortion issue (and many thousands more somewhere in-between...
...Under these circumstanLETTERS to the Editor ces, enlightenment becomes improbable, regardless of how often we put forth progressive thought...
...I do believe we need to emphasize the link between inter-ventionism and nuclear war, and I have tried to persuade David Mixner to make this link—just as I have tried to persuade the Freeze (which is equally focused on the nuclear threat...
...Aronowitz calls for a "staunch defense of the social welfare state" without apparent regard for how welfare, constructed through the state apparatus, serves as an instrument for control...
...I have two major comments: 1. Aronowitz calls for "uncompromising support for the demands of minorities, women, and ecologists...
...But the people of Illinois were presented a fairly clear choice between Ronald Reagan's man and a progressive whom The Progressive should be proud of...
...Most people I meet are living inside a bubble to keep out anything unpleasant or not understood...
...As a member of the Socialist Party and a former member of the Citizens' Party...
...The rightward policy shift among some Democrats results from progressive weakness, organizationally and at the polls...
...I would suggest that the Rainbow Coalition should not be ignored as a vehicle for progressive change...
...The Democratic and Republican parties are dominated by corporate interests that are fundamentally opposed to these goals...
...To me, radical politics is all about taking power—not in the structural sense of that word, but in the personal sense of that word, for when we take our own personal power, we can then move with that power out into the world and build truly alternative structures that allow everyone a chance to breathe...
...Matthew Rothschild's article on the PRO-PEACE march shows how much of our energy and resources can be co-opted for a media extravaganza that is probably going nowhere...
...I think there is much idealism in PRO-PEACE that is valuable for our movement...
...Thomas J. Moloney Edwardsville, Illinois For the life of me, I cannot understand why Stanley Aronowitz does not point to the two states where insurgent politics were successful—North Dakota and Minnesota...
...It seems to be a David Mixner happening with questionable goals—an exercise in what I call "elbow massaging...
...What's wrong with working inside the Democratic Party...
...Aronowitz may or may not approve of Jackson, but he did win five primaries and caucus states, and he did receive 3.5 million votes (more than 20 per cent of the total) and almost 500 delegates...
...history of political power being used to enact a quasisocialist platform...
...There are endless possibilities to remake the Democratic Party if its critics will combine their idealism with nuts-and-bolts participation in Party affairs...
...to a large extent it may fail...
...Failing to win in Republican primaries in Minnesota, the Farmers League along with a Labor Nonpartisan League officially formed the Farmer-Labor Party in 1924 after having switched to run as independents in 1922...
...Our movement is too small and divided as it is...
...We need a single, united party of the democratic Left—not just another addition to the third-party circus...
...If they're having trouble being funded, I doubt that it's because of David Mixner...
...Thus, I think we should be more willing to let other people put their ideas to the test...
...But I am also conscious of the fact that the peace movement has lost much of its momentum, and that the Freeze and some of the other organizations named by Rothschild are not providing the degree of inspiration and leadership they once did...
...There seems to be much fragmentation and lack of direction in the love, justice, and peace movement...
...What is also at stake is the collapse of the liberal welfare state and the fact that the Democrats don't know what to do about it...
...Now Stanley Aronowitz has been liberated from the illusion that it is possible to build socialism in the Democratic Party...
...That is where all progressive constituencies in the United States are located, as are virtually all radicals and socialists now holding public office...
...Also, I find it hard to believe that Hart would benefit politically from close identification with a march of 5,000 confirmed peaceniks...
...Stanley Aronowitz correctly states that the Democratic Party has moved rightward, but whose fault is that...
...Worthy issues, yes, but as a political radical and a gay man, I can't help but wonder where I fit it...
...Is the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a long-time critic of the welfare state and one who appeals for self-respect, self-reliance, and other traditional values, suspect for this reason...
...We demand an end to systematic oppression and use street action to empower ourselves, educate the media and public, draw new activists to our ranks, and embolden women who witness our action...
...I am not convinced that a march of thousands for nuclear disarmament is the best approach of the peace movement at this time...
...We need our own independent political party, one not afraid to call for the socialization of the economy, workers' control, and an end to the arms race, poverty, and inequality...
...It is not known whether such funding continues at this time...
...When you rewrite others' bad reporting, your writers should be more careful...
...Can Aronowitz honestly say we are ready to launch an effective, functioning third force...
...While the article comes a year-and-a-half after broad sections of the Left voted for the latest "lesser-evil" Democratic Presidential candidate and a few months after the darling of the Left in the Democratic Party, Ted Kennedy, hung up his Presidential spikes, it is refreshing even at this late date to hear Aronowitz break the news of "the futility of working within the Democratic Party...
...I don't know what Simon did or said during his campaign that so offends Aronowitz...
...We believe organized street action and resistance is necessary to destabilize entrenched patriarchal attitudes and institutions...
...How has the cause of peace been served by these slanders against David Mixner, the March, and, by implication, us, the marchers...
...The time to consider independent political action is not now, as Aronowitz says...
...In the past, AFL-CIO unions have also received CIA funds for overseas activities...
...The AFL-CIO has a clear, long, positive record for helping democratic trade unions in Latin America...
...The price of such opportunism has been to turn them away from radicalism to reformism...
...Bill Denney Detroit, Michigan If the Democratic Party is "over," where do we go from here...
...Its 1985 budget for these operations is $43 million, 90 per cent of which comes from U.S...
...If the Great Peace March is not being organized with the exact methods which groups that Rothschild approves of use, let them organize an equivalent number of people in their own way...
...If you at The Progressive are too doctrinaire to support us, at least you might not mock us...
...Daniel Neubourg Millersville, Pennsylvania Stanley Aronowitz's "The Party's Over" is both provocative and unconvincing...
...It ignores the incontrovertible fact that for most of this century workers, blacks, and a major fraction of professionals and other members of the middle strata have regarded the Democratic Party as their own...
...In North Dakota, victories were won in 1916 and 1918, and this state remains the best example in U.S...
...I can't respond to all of the specific charges made by Rothschild regarding PRO-PEACE, but I do have a feeling he didn't make an adequate effort to check out his suspicions...
...Unlike the parliamentary systems of European nations, America's electoral-college system is ill-suited to third-party ventures...
...Never mind that each prospective marcher had the choice of consenting to the rules of the game or declining to participate...
...James M. Youngdale Minneapolis, Minnesota It is too early to write off the Democratic Party...
...I am a life-long pacifist activist...
...but if many of our compatriots in the peace commu.nity choose to join the march on the basis of its merits, then they deserve our support...
...Pulling them out of that party into another third-party delusion would not radicalize the Democrats, lead to a third-party victory, or swing public policy leftward...
...Donald F. Busky Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Stanley Aronowitz's call to progressives and radicals to launch a third party is misguided, at best...
...After holding two Congressional seats and one Senate seat during the 1920s, the Farmer-Laborites elected Floyd Olson governor in 1930 and held this office until the defeat of Elmer Benson in 1938 in a dirty redbaiting and anti-Semitic campaign...
...The sort of Hollywood personalities he's turned to are not the types who normally sustain the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Mobilization for Survival...
...It'll make some people feel good and productive...
...It should be apparent to all that the Democratic Party is moving to the right, leaving no room for socialists and other progressives to build a movement within its ranks...
...In the book Working Class Hero, this Stanley Aronowitz criticizes those on the Left who have opposed attempts to reform the Democratic Party from within...
...But the sort of untempered hostility shown to Mixner by Rothschild is not helpful...
...I've talked at some length with Mixner, and the name of Gary Hart never came up...
...Murray Seeger Director Department of Information AFL-CIO Washington, D.C Editor's Note: According to Business Week for November 4, 1985, "Through affiliate institutes, the AFL-CIO is active in eighty-three countries...
...It seems to me our peace groups are content mostly to talk to one another, to be "right," no matter how ineffective...
...Information Agency (USIA...
...Some good will come of it...
...environmentalists, or many of them, endorse a steady-state economy...
...Aronowitz's "merger" of "class, race, and sex interests" is not only impossible in the short run but undesirable in the long run...
...Until critics of the Democrats begin their own scrutiny of welfare-state liberalism and the ways it controls the poor as well as assists them, they will flounder in incoherence...
...We talk, we yell, we scream, but who listens...
...But for God's sake, let's try to be more tolerant of each other and recognize those aspects of each other's work that we can support...
...Equal-opportunity feminism turns on the premise of economic growth...
...But I am so tired of reading progressive publications and finding my basic source of identity in a culture that tries to make us all lose our identity (and thus our own source of power) continually ignored or, at best, added on as an addendum...
...Women Take Liberty in '86 will be a celebration of womankind and a statement of our radical beliefs...
...These may not be your unions, but they are representative, brave unions that have been fighting todefend workers' and peasants' interests against fascists of both Right and Left...
...I salute his accomplishment and his courage to speak the truth...
...If no one shows up to march, there won't be a PRO-PEACE march and that will be the end of it...
...Are populists, past and present, suspect, given their emphasis on localism and their fear of concentrations of power, including the sort of concentrated power required for the nationalization Aronowitz endorses...
...Steve Cobble Albuquerque, New Mexico One Step Backward Though I have my own doubts about the wisdom of David Mixner's PRO-PEACE march across the United States, I was disturbed by the overly hostile and suspicious character of Matthew Rothschild's assessment ("One Step Backward," Reflections, March issue)— especially inasmuch as I was cited in a manner that seemed to imply support for his views...
...There are no simple tests for "progressive" politics...
...I agree with Rothschild and others that this "great march" will probably turn out to be just another meaningless event...
...Liberty holds no weapons and broken chains lie at her feet, symbolizing Women Rising in Resistance to all forms of tyranny and oppression...
...on both sides of the pornography debate, and all over the place on the family, peace, comparable worth, etc...
...A loose network of lesbian and feminist organizations is doing just that under the name Women Rising in Resistance...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...In the past, socialists have despaired at the difficulty of building an independent party and have taken the easier path of working within the Democratic Party...
...Rothschild doesn't blink at quoting admittedly "wild speculation" that David Mixner, founder of the march, and his organization are "tied to a political campaign for the Presidency...
...Ignoring more than two centuries of American history is foolish...
...I know why I march...
...I hope left-wing Democrats will engage advocates of independent politics in frank, open discussion...
...Eugene Debs knew this, and the Socialist Party U.S.A...
...The decrepit old donkey is certainly inadequate for the present day, but I can't see anything else that looks better...
...Time and again, progressives and radicals have stubbornly ignored the structure of the American political system by launching new third parties on a national level...
...But it is not nonsense, and most certainly it is not "glitz and hype," and you at The Progressive, of all people, should know this...
...Those concentrating on legalistic change or those seeking wider transformations...
...has known it since its inception in 1901 and its reconsti-tution in 1973...
...I hope I am wrong...
...I don't know where Aronowitz was in 1984, but Jesse Jackson was running for President on a pro-civil rights, pro-labor, anti-military platform...
...Robert Kaplan New York, New York Iwas amazed to note that Stanley Aronowitz went through his whole article without once mentioning the name of Jesse Jackson...
...True, Simon is not a (forgive me) simon-pure socialist...
...The pattern in these two states emerged from building ferment from below and running candidates in primary races in one of the old parties, but not cutting deals with top leaders of the old party to secure a token position...
...It is absolutely impossible to put forth ideas to someone who does not hear or see you...
...I have great respect for Matthew Rothschild and The Progressive, and I think they have every right to criticize elements of the peace movement...
...You owe David Mixner, myself, and the others in and supporting this march an apology...
...A more serious challenge by far is to figure out how we can cherish our differences and individualities and go on to create political movements that dp not turn on fantasies...
...The silent (and sometimes not so silent) homophobia of the Left (where I would think my natural allies would be) is only one more indication of how much work still needs to be done...
...As for the charge that Mixner is taking money away from .other peace groups, I find that lacking in credibility...
...Government sources: the Agency for International Development (AID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S...
...They didn't budge the Democrats an inch, but the Democrats made them give up their socialism...
...John Kirkland Houston, Texas How can the Democratic Party become more vocal about radical change if no one listens...
...After first casting innuendo at his honesty, Rothschild condescendingly grants plausibility to Mixner's emphatic denial...
...Some of Rothschild's specific criticisms of PRO-PEACE are legitimate...
...Yes, you have spoken against the Bomb over the years, but you are not the only ones who have spoken or who care...
...Who's to know...
...Flowing Margaret Johnson Potosi, Missouri Stanley Aronowitz talks about an alliance of "workers, blacks, women, peace activists and environmentalists...
...Such dialogue within the peace movement is appropriate and necessary...
...It seems to be the only "mass" electoral force on the Left...
...This is what Mixner understands and what I understand, and what motivates me to spend eight-and-one-half months walking—not "streaking"—across a continent...
...Simon's 1984 election was one of those bright spots in the national Democratic and progressive scene that Aronowitz celebrates with Tom Harkin and Henry Waxman...
...Isn't it rather demeaning to categorize them collectively, as if they—and women—were pieces to move around on somebody else's chess board...
...Unions, women's groups, environmental organizations, and other progressive forces are in a state of disarray, and this is reflected in their electoral arm, the Democratic Party...
...Minorities, too, are by no means the single category Aronowitz suggests...
...Paul Kabat Federal Correctional Institution Sandstone, Minnesota Labor off Hate In your Comment on AFL-CIO international policies ("Labor of Hate," February issue), you credit the federation with spending $43 million overseas...
...Our first national action will take place at the Statue of Liberty on August 3, 1986...
...In every case—including that of the Citizens' Party, which met its demise only recently— they have been defeated, usually disastrously...
Vol. 50 • April 1986 • No. 4
