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491
can be lifted to pay for these programs, except by assuming that a reduc–
tion of the military budget will solve the problem? How are we to under–
stand the readiness of the left to proclaim its indignation against
Salvador, while muting its objections to Afghanistan?
Surely this kind of political response has not been created by the
normal process of debate and inquiry. In saying this I am not suggesting
that it is a party line, or that it is simply the product of a world-wide
conspiracy. On the contrary, it is a complex and unique phenomenon,
probably unprecedented in this century, in that it has the appearance of a
party line, without the organization and discipline of a party. In fact,
these attitudes that make up the radical mind are subscribed to by thou–
sands of people who are not pro-Soviet or procommunist and whose ide–
alist impulses are not dictated or controlled by the communists. Many
are explicitly anticommunist. This is not to say that communists are not
active in radical movements and don't try to manipulate them. But they
have learned to use ideas and forces that are not communist yet coincide
with their interests in other respects. Indeed, it is precisely because con–
temporary radicalism lacks a body of theory or a political program that it
is able to accommodate views that are contradictory and have no basis in
accepted socialist theory. Yet in some mysterious manner, at least so far
not explained,
all
these stances that make up the popular, radical mind,
some connected, some unconnected, have become a global tide of
opmlOn.
I am not talking only about simpleminded people. The force of this
intellectual swell is such that it has affected very able and independent
radical thinkers. For example, Richard Wolin, a respected political scien–
tist, in an editorial in the July 1982 issue of
Derrwcracy,
points out that the
peace movement is sterile because it separates the cause of peace from
other political considerations. But then he goes on to the radical stereo–
type that American armament is to be opposed because it is aimed at the
destruction of another nation-the Soviet Union. Much of this issue of
Democracy
is given to a discussion of the failures of the Democratic Party
and the need for creating a Social Democratic Party. But this new party
is envisaged, as Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward put it, as a
way to purge America of its "nationalism" and "imperialism," and the
costs of its "empire." Nowhere in the entire issue do any of the contribu–
tors deviate from the assumption, taken to be the basis of social demo–
cratic theory, that domestic reform and opposition to American military
and economic "imperialism" alone will produce a better world.
Nowhere is there any reference to the power and political aims of the
