BLACK POWER
215
The arguments of
The Freedom Budget
persuade me that, with full
utilization of our economic resources and with appropriate fiscal policies,
this country can afford both a war in Vietnam,
should we choose to pur–
sue it,
and a war on poverty. To argue the incompatibility of the two
"wars" on economic grounds is to obscure a basic political issue: the
resistance of the affluent middle classes to heavier taxation. The cut–
backs in poverty programs are attributable less to Vietnam than to
class relations and the way they influence the distribution of political
power in the United States. These relations were not forged in Vietnam,
and they will not be altered there. To focus on Vietnam as
the
obstacle
(at least economically) to domestic progress is to let a lot of privileged
people off the hook.
Meanwhile, I suspect that the same future historians who will
see in "Black Power" a reversion to Booker T. Washington's philosophy
will see an equally ironic parallel between those who today would
tie the Negro's liberation to peace in Vietnam and those in the
early Socialist movement who saw the "Negro question" as simply a
phase in the class struggle. Like the case for the existence of the class
struggle then, the case for a peaceful settlement in Vietnam now is
sufficiently cogent without appending the "Negro question" as a tail to
its kite. Now as then it is a question demanding attention and action
in its own right.
7) Aside from the probability that this war, like most, tends to
bring domestic violence to the surface, the Vietnam war has affected
the ghetto more indirectly than directly. By dividing the liberal move–
ment and giving excuses to the conservatives, it has made massive new
programs less likely. And by intensifying feelings of powerlessness, aliena–
tion and guilt among many white liberals, it has increased their emo–
tional vulnerability to the most extreme Black Power denunciations and
accusations. (After all, if you are seriously entertaining the thought
that the white American government is committing genocide in Vietnam,
then is it not conceivable that. ... )
It is by no means clear that the domestic stalemate will be broken
when the war in Vietnam ends. A slowdown in the war on poverty and
racism was evident before the Vietnam escalation, and the danger is
that peace in Vietnam would bring, added problems of employment
and conversion with which the nation may not be politically prepared
to cope. We have a better chance if the liberal coalition is still around
and
if
it is united on a far-reaching program of social and economic
reconstruction.
8) In this connection, I think Mr. Duberman makes a serious
mistake in writing off the bulk of the organized labor movement, a
