NEW RADICALISM
531
first of all, on a recognition of who we are and where we are today.
It is easy to get caught up in semantics. In the spring PR Nat
Hentoff speaks of the new radicalism as "a political and economic
movement."~
That we can even speak of the phenomenon as a
move–
ment
shows how far we have come from thinking seriously about
power. One may speak of the trade unions as an economic (and
political) movement, because here are discernible millions of people
organized behind a more or less specific program. On the local union
level that program consists of demands relating to wages and working
conditions-demands which, when won, lift in a thousand ways the
daily lives and dreams of working people. On the national level, the
AFL-CIO has a definable program for reforming the national econ–
omy in the direction of full employment, social security, better schools
and the rest. This program is surely inadequate to meet the conditions
described by the signers of the Triple Revolution statement. It
is
at
the same time the most advanced and rightminded program being
pressed by any of the mass institutions of the country.
Now this is simply a fact, and it is difficult to participate in
discussions with people who will deny facts. When Nat Hentoff writes
that "labor's demands for higher minimum wages and higher social
security benefits, moreover, are
irrelevant
for those who have no jobs
and no prospects of jobs" (italics mine), he takes us to the heart of
the problem: all-or-nothingism. Because these demands are not the
total cure, they are irrelevant. Well, of course they are not. At least a
part
of the unemployment problem can be cast in terms of insuf–
ficient aggregate demand, which would be increased
if
labor's call
for a $2.00 minimum wage and extension of the Fair Labor Standards
Act to more than five million presently uncovered workers were met.
To say this is not to deny the technological revolution (except in the
eyes of the monoists, variants of the all-or-nothing school); the
problem is largely that the fruits of the technological revolution have
been snatched by corporate interests and held back from workers and
consumers (hence the lag in demand).
For reasons I have set forth elsewhere
(Commentary,
February
1965), I do not believe that the current demands of the labor move–
ment go far enough or deep enough. But that is a far cry from saying
that they are
irrelevant.
I suspect that there are millions of working
1
''The
New Radicalism: Round I," PR, Spring 1965.
