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MICHAEL HARRINGTON
of the corporations has not been so much toward Asia, Africa and Latin
America, which are poor, unstable, etc., but toward American invest–
ment in Europe and European investment in America. Lenin must be
at least footnoted by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.
In short, America did not
need
a cold war as the only way of avoid–
ing a depression. There were many other reasons why it got involved
in one - the reflexes of a conservative power in a revolutionary world,
democratism, the absence of a democratic Left capable of offering a
positive foreign policy and so on - but I do not believe that the evi–
dence supports the old-fashioned Leninist notion. But in a sense that
Leninism is really not central to Williams's case. He is quite right that
there is a profound expansionist tradition in this country even if I think
him wrong in his account of its origins. And just as the capitalists could
adopt some of the rhetoric of the Populists at the turn of the century,
so in the nineteen forties cold-war apologists could adapt the expansionist
emotions to a new situation. However, there is just no point to dragging
a fear of a depression into the analysis.
Finally, there is a very political point to this disagreement of mine
with Williams and I might as well put it out in the open where it can
be discussed rat·ionally. The tough-minded theory that America is basical–
ly and utterly imperialist has the most reformist, even quietist, conse–
quences. For if a socialist revolution is necessary before this nation can
do any good at all, and if, as is rather obvious, that revolution is not
too imminent, then the assumption of a rigid American imperialism
proves that the Left in this country can't do anything significant. Indeed,
it was precisely this line of reasoning which led some of the ultraleftists
to terrorism. They turned, not simply on capitalism and its elite, but
against the entire white working class as well, i.e., against the overwhelm–
ing majority of the people. Given that analysis, they had a sort of mad,
tragic logic in deciding to be fifth column guerrillas of the Third World
within the United States.
And what bothers me about the Williams emphasis is that it tends
to play down the possibilities of fighting to change American policy
from within. For it describes only what is expansionist and crass in the
past and omits what was genuinely anticommercial and democratic. As
a result, the present configuration of American power is made to seem
much more historically inevitable than it really is. And this is a strange
consequence of Williams's analysis since he himself is obviously very
much committed to transforming the nation. But I think his one-sided
and overly pessimistic reading of
The Roots of American Empire
un–
wittingly subverts his own political perspective.
I have been emphasizing my disagreements with Williams but let
