Hastening the GOP "Dunkirk"

Hastening the EDTTED BY MICHAEL HARRINGTON GOP "Dunkirk" By Michael Harrington INSIDE NTER THE REAGAN ADMINIS· Feb. 1981 Vol. IX No. 2 $1 tration. In response to this event, the democratic left must Road to Solidarity, p. 4 follow a double strategy: to or ganize immediately to defend The Socialist International has been through the gains of the past against some rough times. But in the last few years it the most reactionary onslaught has taken directions that have brought it new in a generation ; and to develop life. Jack Oark talks with SI General Secre some basic concepts of the future that tary Bernt Carlsson about its revival. will serve as the demands of an offensive Anticorporate Unity, p. 6 which must come, sooner or later, the sooner the better. Will the citizens' movement coalesce around I have explored some of these ideas anticorporate activities? George Wood de here before, but there is much to be scribes an Illinois group that has begun the added, not the least because some of process. Reagan's most powerful advisers have Special Report: now conceded a good part of the argu Tax Free Zones, p. 8 ment made regularly in these pages. If we set up "little Hong Kongs" in our inner When conservative thinkers borrow cities, will we see economic growth? Or, as from, or at least agree with, democratic Richard Mounts suggests, does this latest pro leftists, that is worthy of note. This Economists posal from the "supply siders" spell more strange phenomenon occurs with regard profits for real estate interests ? to those basic concepts about the future and that is where I will begin this double Winter Youth Conference, p. 12 pronged discussion of immediate tactics It's becoming a tradition, and this year's win and middle-range strategy. ter youth conference lived up to expectations. There was a Burry of activity in De ''Traditional fiscal and Patrick Lacefield reports. cember among the right-wing populists (but not limited to them) in the Reagan monetary manipulation What's Left to Read, p. 13 camp. David Stockman, scheduled to be no longer suffice! . ..,, New Leftist Tom Hayden has written a good director of the Office of Management and book, says Ron Radosh, but marred it by an Budget (OMB) under Reagan, and Rep attack on socialism. resentative Jack Kemp, co-author and principal advocate of the Kemp-Roth bill, On the Left, p. 14 released their famous paper, ".Avoiding New chapters, lots of rallies, campaigns, ac a GOP Economic Dunkirk." The press tivities. Harry Fleischman surveys DSOC and focused upon the Stockman-Kemp call other left events. for a declaration of a national economic emergency, but some material in their an Stockman-Kemp said. Precisely. The rea New York Times: "$c\-ec:y-OT'e percmt alysis was, and is, extraordinarily radical. son is that the costs of joblessness and of the explosion of goyemmcnt spending, Our economic crisis, they said, in a num economic failure are so extraordinarily government debt, goyemmcnt credit pro ber of ways, is not caused by government high. "The federal budget has now be grams, growing pension bills, is not the spending; rather, the deficits are caused come an automatic 'coast to coast soup fault of 'big spenders,' as most Republi by the crisis. Here, readers of DEMO· line' that dispenses remedial aid with al cans like to charge. Rather, climbing CRATIC LEFT will recognize one of the most reckless abandon, converting the spending results from the v.·eakoess and central themes of this 'publication, and of traditional notion of automatic stabil volatility of the economy. It is the result the democratic socialist movement. izers into multitudinous outlay spasms of the misery index." Between June and throughout the budget." November of 1980, Kemp said, the fed. Right Issue, Wrong Analysis In a press conference called to an eral deficit exceeded projections by $36 "Weak real Gross National Product nounce the "Economic Dunkirk" docu billion. Of that sum, $5.9 billion was due and employment growth" are the issue, ment, Kemp told Leonard Silk of the to inflation (the cost of indexed beneJits To the Editor: United States to follow. It succeeds in of its earlier "guest workers," whose un A story has found its way into some doing this only because fundamental fea employment now shows up in the statis newspapers that the Pope has let it be tures are omitted from the European tics of their native countries (which lack known to Moscow that if Soviet troops model. the blessings of Eurosocialism) . The dis were to invade Poland, he would imme One would not know, reading Ms. tribution of income in the major West diately By to Warsaw and, in a gesture of Lieber's report, that Stalinism and fas European countries is no much less in protest, be there to receive them. The cism inflicted defeats of historic dimen equitable than in the United States, ac story also has it that this is one of the sions upon European social democracy in cording to a recent report by the Euro factors which has led Brezhnev and other the twenties and thirties. Of World War pean Trade Union Institute (ETIJI) in Communist rulers in Moscow to decide II, which spelled vast suffering and fur Brussels, Keynes, Plus a Participatory that, at least for now, they would not in ther defeats for European workers and Economy (p. 60). True, in countries like vade. their leadership, Ms. Lieber makes no The Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway, We have of course no way of know mention. True, the foundations of the it is significantly less inequitable than ing whether the story is true. But it is welfare state were laid in the twenties here. But these are small countries, with wonderful, nonetheless, and it may serve and thirties-and expanded by the Nazis homogeneous populations totaling about a useful purpose even if not true. for reasons of their own, after the de one tenth of the United States' in num It would be at least as wonderful if struction of German social democracy. ber, and with small economies. Willy Brandt, the head of the Socialist The restoration of a bourgeois capitalist The ETUI report is much more real International, were to make, either pub system in Western Europe after the war istic in appraising the situation of Euro licly or privately, a similar statement of featured the continued expansion of the pean workers than Ms. Lieber, albeit less intent. The head of Catholicism and the welfare state, largely in response to the far-ranging. "Except in some small north spokesman for socialism standing side by pressure of Stalinist Russia-another de European countries," writes ETIJI, "the side (or at a reasonable distance) in pro velopment Ms. Lieber does not mention. ideology of the entrepreneurial class still test against a totalitarian invading force No one would learn from Ms. Lie largely dominates society, both economic that is something to conjure with! ber that unemployment rates reached ally and politically" (p. 44). The goal Irving Howe post-depression heights in Western Euro of full employment that dominated the New York, N.Y. pean countries-in Great Brita.in, they policy of European governments since the • • • stood at 6 percent earlier in 1980, al war has been abandoned" (p. 21). The To the Editor: though 47 percent of the Bricish labor report conveys a sense of European trade Nancy Lieber's special report on force is organized; in Germany (5 per unions, of European social democracy and Eurosocialism (December 1980) seeks to cent), with 42 percent organized, it was of the working class at large, being in- outline a welfare-state paradigm for the lower only because of the exit of many Continued on page 7 Michael Harrington DEMOCRATIC LEFT is published ten times a year EdiJM (monthly except July and August) by the Dem ocratic Socialist Organizing Committee, 853 Formerly the Maxine Phillips Broadway, Suite 801, New York, N.Y. 10003. Newsletter of the Managing &iitor Telephone: (212) 260-3270. Subscriptions: $15 Democratic Left sustaining and institutional; $8 regular. Signed Jam Chapin articles express the opinions of the authors. ,\'a/1n11:1/ Dirtctor ISSN 0164-3207. Second Class Permit Paid at New York, N.Y. 2 DEMOCRATIC LEFT Feb. 1981 under Social Security; the increase in Heller debunked some of the current ogy to the successful Kennedy-Johnson federal fuel bills) ; interest charges cliches (the federal government is get tax cut simply ignores that the underlying (which provide the rich with handsome ting bigger; Washington's debt is rising rate of inflation now is about five times rewards for shooting fish in barrels) faster than any other form of debt; what it was then and that the cut pro added an extra $2.8 billion ; unemploy· America spends more of a percentage of posed in 1980 is almost twice as much, ment maintenance (includmg new eJi. GNP than any other advanced industrial in percentage terms, as the one enacted gibility for food stamps and Medicaid) society; and a series of other idiocies that in the sixties. Stockman and Kemp also came to an adqitional $9 .15 billion; and make totally unproved assumptions about so on. the increased productivity and investment Kemp's basic point is on target: that will result from their proposal, for government spending is the consequence, getting that most workers in this society not the awse of stagflation. Unfortun. do not determine their own pace and ately, this critically important fact is not that most rich people are interested in recognized throughout the Reagan ad· profits and inflation hedges.

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