NEW RADICALISM
351
Cold War) and if goods and services were infinitely available without
regard to cost. But since neither happens to be the case, and since
in addition the government is required to keep its hands off the
market mechanism, I can only forecast chaos as the result of Theo–
bald's poorly thought-out proposals.
It is doubtful that output will increase continuously at an in–
creasing rate because of technological change, and there seems to be
no mechanism in Theobald's scheme which will keep aggregate de–
mand in balance with the total supply of goods and services. Indeed,
it is highly likely that monetary demand will far outstrip changes in
real output. First of all, the American economy is moving more and
more in the direction of services which, unlike Yo-Yos and bottle caps,
are less susceptible to automation. In short, once full employment is
reached the increase in labor productivity may well lag behind the
increase in monetary demand under the guaranteed annual income
plan.
In admitting Theobald so warmly and so prominently into the
ranks of his liberated radicals, Hentoff seems to have missed an
important point. Pov,erty, as we all know, is relative, and changes
in the price level will quickly reduce the basic income of the poor
below the minimum. And Theobald's bourgeois liberalism will only
serve to perpetuate the gap between the "poor" and the middle class
in this country.
If,
as I would expect, Theobald's proposal results in
inflation, the poor will become poor all over again until an upward
adjustment is made in the basic economic security payment and
hence in the guaranteed income of the middle classes as well. There
is,
in other words, a built-in danger of progressive escalation in
monetary demand.
In the Winter, 1965,
Partisan Review,
Martin Duberman, like
Hentoff, commented that "radicalism is returning to American life"
and attributed this radical resurgence to a civil rights movement which
is
"now moving beyond the race problem to broad social criticism."
Michael Harrington sees the tilt towards the left as having come
earlier, in November, 1960, with the election of John F. Kennedy and
his
commitment to peaceful coexistence, deficit spending and the
welfare state. Though I have already expressed my doubts about the
efficacy of the "new" radicalism of Hentoff, I have doubts of another
