PUBLISHED BY THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMUICA CRATIC May-Aug. 1 Vol. XIV, No. 3-4 $1.50 T .411l LETTERS more important than fighting unemploy­ Kids ment, the idea that unemployment is good because labor is cheaper, unions weaker, Miss Us? profits higher. Yes, it has been a while since Demo­ To the Edirors: No, Stanley, dignity does not "derive cratic Left last graced your mailbox. A fi­ Let me take a moment to express my only from a job." But try telling an unem­ nancial crunch forced us to combine the appreciation for Maxine Phillips' fine article ployed worker that it is easy to hold onto May/June and July/August issues, thus in the recent issue of Democratic Left. She dignitywithoutajob. Go ahead, Stanley, try saving on printing and postage costs. Aa concreti?.ed some very important issues it. You might learn something. partial compensation, we've published 24 which have all-too-Often been overlooked. John C. COTt pages rather than the usual 16. The Thoughtful analyses were well integrated RoxlYury, MA September/October issue will be our an­ with practical insights and constructive nual Labor Day issue, and we expect it to suggestions. be our best yet. We hope you will use the I will encourage the Long Island locals form in this issue to place a greeting ad and and the like to take up the problems raised Ditto show offyour solidarity to the whole world. and the suggestions offered. This was one of the most helpful pieces I have ever read in To the Edilms: D. L. (The debate on economic policy was In the latest issue of Democratic Left, also very helpful in shedding light on alter­ Frances Fox Piven and Stanley Aronowitz thier suburban jtirisdictions are largely native approaches.) argue that full employment is not only not removed from such pressures, concentrat­ David Sprintzen sufficient, but not necessary for advancing ing the costs of welfare on those least able Syosset, NY the socialist cause. But their proposed al­ to pay. And in the worst of times, the re­ ternatives are vulnerable to their own ar­ sults of decentralization are still more criti­ guments against full employment. cal. If international competition limits the Full Employment Aronowitz says that full employment autonomy of national employment policy, is "not possible under capitalism., because it then the economic pressures - regional, To the Ediims: results in labor shortages or rising wages international, and internal - on state and Frances Fox Piven laments that "the which squeeze profits. But then how could a local governments to "fall in line" in terms record of full employment as a movement­ shorter work week, accompanied by a of social policy and expenditures are at lea.st building goal has been dismal." Stanley guaranteed income plan explicitly intended equally irresistible in periods of slow eco­ Aronowitz dismisses full employment as to force employers to substantially raise nomic growth. "cockeyed real.ism" and "deeply conserva­ wages, be possible? If "entrenched inter­ Here again, the conditions for the suc­ tive" (March/April issue). ests" resist direct job-creating strategies, cess ofthe policy "alternative" are not unre­ Piven wants us to build social.ism on a why should they react any more benevo­ lated to the conditions for the success of full foundation of welfare rights, Aronowitz on a lently to work-sharing? employment itself. But recognizing the lim­ shorter workday or work week. Remember It would appear in fact that work­ its ofwhat can be achieved independently of the National Welfare Rights Organization? sharing et. al. presupposes radical changes, growth does not require naive satisfaction Where is it today? And where do you see a and if the (prior) policy ("poSSible" now) . with the benefits of growth per se. A colli­ significant movement behind a shorter work that would produce them is not full em­ sion between pragmatism and utopianism week since the New Deal, 50 years ago? ployment, then it remains to be specified. It may be unavoidable on some issues (e.g. Both Piven and Aronowitz make some is in any case hard to conceive of circum­ cherished left ideas concerning planning, good points, but why trash full employment stances under which work-sharing would markets, competition, money), but I don't en route? They might as well complain that become feasible but full employment itself think that full employment is inherently in the USA the record of social justice as a would not. Nothing compels us to regard one of them. movment-building goal has been dismal So the two as competing objectives - or David Belkin the idea that every man or woman has a would the pursuit of more radical aims (al­ New York, NY right to a decent job at decent pay is hard to tering the work ethic and so on) require sell. Try selling the idea that people should Left opposition to full employment where it get good pay for working less or for not actually existed? working at all. Try buildng a movement on Frances Fox Piven criticizes employ­ that. ment policy because, executed at the fed­ . You want a "deeply conservative" idea? eral level, it is not conducive to popular Don't Miss Out­ There it is: good pay for no work. The idle organizing. But this is not grounds for Place Your Greeting in rich have been pushing it for years. canonizing the fact that US welfare pro­ I must be blind and deaf, but I neither grams are locally organized. In the best of the Labor Day Issue see nor hear the Right pushing the idea of times particular central city governments full employment. I see them pushing the may find themselves with the means to idea that 7% unemployment is full employ­ (somewhat) enrich welfare services in re­ ment, the idea that fighting inflation is much sponse to indigenous campaigns. But weal- DEMOCRATIC I.EFT 2 MAY·AUG.. 1- AIDS Health Care American Style by Dennis Altman an end-of-year Readers' Survey, U.S . News and World Report asked: "Which ofthe followingprob­ ems concern you most?: crime, re­ ession, nuclear war, or AIDS?'" IThis represents a measure of the extent to which fear and loathing around AIDS - to botTow Hunter Thompson's phrase coined for another event - has entered the Amer­ ican consciousness. I use the phrase to underline the fact tha.t the most common discourse about AIDS involves panic, even hysteria, about its transmission, rather than any sign of genuine compassion for those who are actually suffering and dying from the illness. Few illnesses have been so clearly politicized as AIDS. Politics, in the most conventional sense of that word, have August, 1985 AIDS Walkathon in Hollywood. played a central role in the ways in which AIDS has been conceptualized, con­ York City, the epicenter of the disease in have done everything that could reasonably structed, researched, treated, and mys­ this country, are not found among gay men, be done to save lives and to prevent both tified, and there is room for a great deal of and this proportion is increasing. In Cen­ the spread of AIDS and unnecessary panic. discussion on the role of ideology and poli­ tral Africa, Spain, Italy, and Belgium the Even in this age of cutbacks and small gov­ tics in both the social construction of illness majority of AIDS cases are not found ernment, no one has seriously argued that and the control and direction of medical among gay men, and as AIDS becomes a the state does not have a responsibility to research. In this brief space I shall focus on global problem there are decreasing rea­ safeguard the health of its citizens. We the res ponse of governments to the sons to think of it as, in the phrase still used have not yet reached a point when anyone epidemic, and to a lesser extent to the role by some journalists, "the gay plague." of consequence is calling for the abolition of of the press and of certain interest groups in Despite this, politicians and journalists the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the conceptualization of the disease. resist seeing AIDS as a public health crisis. the National Institutes of Health. AIDS was first conceptualized by both The public image of AIDS is linked to white There are many, however, who would scientists and the media as a homosexual male homosexuals, while the reality is in­ slash their budgets, and one of the sadder disease, and for a time was known popu­ creasi:ngly that it is affecting nonwhites and aspects of the AIDS epidemic is that it larly as GRID, or "gay related immune de­ nongays. As New York Assemblymember coincided with a determined attempt by the ficiency." Scientists abandoned this char­ Roger Green pointed out recently: "Of the Reagan administration to cut back on acterization as it became clear that there 77 children who were reported to have domestic spending, including that related was no inherent or necessary connection AIDS in our city in 1985, 68 were black and to health. The failure of this administration between AIDS and homosexuality, but Latino.... Thus an inappropriate response to respond promptly and adequately to the neither the media nor most politicians have to AIDS interconnects with the general de­ emergence of a new epidemic disease has been as quick to do so. line of public health."' (Village Voice, been well documented. It took considerable The most pernicious example of this January 14, 1986.) Congressional pressure for substantial view of AIDS is the use by the media of the On one level "guilt" and "innocence" monies to be made available for AIDS re­ term "innocent victim," which is applied to are irrelevant terms when one speaks of an search, and too often that money has come those other than gay men and drug users epidemic disease.