38
NORM FRUCHTER
of the nature of, and the quality of life within that expanded welfare
state which his coalition politics,
if
successful, would achieve. Given
the changes Rustin's projected coalition would push for,
this
country
would enjoy a more egalitarian income distribution, lower levels of
unemployment, increased scale and quality of public services, and
a more humane administration of social and welfare services. I am
not arguing that these changes would not be meaningful for the
lives of those the poverty literature calls "the dispossessed," or indeed,
for all of us; I think these changes should
be,
and will he, fought
for. Moreover, I agree with Rustin's estimate that these changes can
be made; I tend to think most of them will be achieved even without
a coalition or a liberal-radical movement explicitly designed to press
for them. Implicit in Rustin's argument is an assumption that pressure–
group activity, which seems to be a prerequisite for his projected
coalition, has already effected the passage of the Civil Rights Acts
and the War on Poverty. I would argue that both sets of acts were
passed, and both were expanded, because of the pressure created by
those massive portents of widespread social chaos-the Birmingham
riots in 1963, the East coast riots in the summer of 1964, the Watts
insurrection in August, 1965. I read Rustin's prescriptions for change
as
description
of the liberali+ation of domestic policy which must
take place
if
our ghettoes are not to be consigned to continuous
explosion and repression; I think most Administration officials respon–
sible for domestic policy, and most liberals, already perceive these
changes as necessary for social stability.
But let us assume that a political coalition of liberal, labor,
church and the poor is necessary for that liberalization of domestic
policy. How much would this society's basic institutions be trans–
formed? The priorities which determine the targets for expanded
public works investment, or the locus of new social services, would
still be set by private industry; the entire apparatus of our gargantuan
forced-production and forced-consumption patterns would remain
in–
tact. Our foreign policy would still be imperialist; our media, our
educational systems, and our current modes of institutionally supported
status values would continue to make rational, if not meaningful,
existence impossible. Rustin would be the first to argue that the
basic structural change necessary to transform ownership and pro–
duction in this society so that social values, rather than profit, shape
our public services and our institutional priorities, simply
cannot
be
