REPRESENTS
By Joseph Hansen
The nomination of Barry Goldwater as the candidate of the Republican party sent the greatest wave of consternation and incredulity around the earth since the assassination of President Kennedy, To many it looked like a scene suddenly come real from the sardonic film "Dr, Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb,"
On the eve of the San Francisco convention, The Sunday Times of London [July 12], in an almost subversive allusion to the revolu-. tionary slogan of the former British colony, "No taxation without representation " wrote editorially: "As the San Francisco Convention gathers, the allies of the United States can fairly stake out, in this nuclear age, their claim of no annihilation (or even risk of annihi-~ lation) without representation,"
After Goldwater's triumph, the New Statesman [July 24], looking with apprehension at the presidential campaign, declared that "a victory for Goldwater would be an unimaginable disaster for America and the world,"
The press in almost every country except Spain and South Africa, where elation was voiced, drew analogies between the rise of the Arizona senator and Adolf Hitter ‘in the early thirties, The. sinking feeling in the pits of stomachs on all continents was there- » fore understandable, People, especially in Europe, saw the possibility of a madman like Hitler in the White House with the buttons controlling America's stockpile of nuclear weapons in an entioing row on his desk, .
Political analysts, therefore, have been concentrating on studying the possibilities of Goldwater's winning in November, Up to now they have come up with what to them is the assuring result that the odds are with Johnson. Yet they are forced to place a question mark over the forecast, There have been too many upsets already, not only of the columnists but of the pollsters and even the former masters of the Republican machine in relation to Goldwater, Suppose there is another upset? Suppose the civil-rights issue in the United States changes all the rules of the game? What if the "white backlash" proves unexpectedly powerful? What if another crisis abroad leads the American voters to vote for the Westerner in the buokskin jacket? What if there is really a fascist groundswell in the United States?
As ‘in the October 1962 crisis when the fate of all civilization, even the fate of mankind, was deliberately placed at stake by — one man in the White House, and everything hinged on whether Khrushchev would prove to have at least some sanity, the world is again living in a nightmare, The nightmare, however, happens to be the reality of our times. An accident can lead to a nuclear holocaust -an accident such as a turn in the elections in the United States that Teen. spell victory for Goldwater next November, or, if not then, in 968,
Despite the attention now being paid to American politics, the experts, for all their many cogent observations, tend to draw an unbalanced picture, Goldwater, now in charge of the Republican machine, does not yet head a fascist movement on the verge of seizing
Py ony
Lacking, too, is the deep social crisis stemming from an eoonomic crisis with ruined masses desperately seeking a way out,
Instead, the United States has gone a quarter of a century without a major depression and at the moment continues to ride an economic boom,
It is true that a social crisis is evident -- a crisis involving the thrust of the Negro people toward equal rights but this is only a harbinger of the play of class forces in Amerioa that could make fascism in the true sense of the term an immediate danger.
"Goldwaterism" represents some of the most vicious tendenoies opposed to the "Freedom Now" movement but this is not its main source, "Goldwaterism" arises from the profound insecurity felt by the middle class in the United States, despite their prosperity, in face of the threat of another world war and in face of the irresistible rise of revolutionary movements on a world scale. The latter particularly, foreshadowing the doom of the capitalist system, terrorizes the new millionaires and those who think like them,
In addition to this broad class spectrum, "Goldwaterism" represents the enormously wealthy new sectors of big business in Texas and the Southwest: who seek a bigger voice in ruling America, (H.L Hunt, reputed to be the richest man in the United States, was con-~ spicuous at the Republican convention.) This was the source of the millions of dollars required to take the Republican machine away from its holders on the Eastern seaboard,
As a development strengthening viciously reactionary currents in the American scene, Goldwater's victory is ominous, The unions, especially, should begin a most serious examination of their policies which helped pave the way for this dangerous turn,
What does Goldwater's capture of the Republican machine mean for the two-party system? This is a most pertinent question.
Instead of the two broadly parallel structures that represented but two factions serving the interests of Big Business, with the unions largely attached to the Democratic machine, Goldwater hag: ° driven for the realignment that has long been a slogan in various political circles, In the 1964 election at least, the Republican party will appear as a fairly cohesive grouping. Even with a big defeat, Goldwater would still be able to retain control of the machine for another bid in 1968, provided he has the financial backing he presently enjoys.
In the current election this will strengthen the ties between the Democratic machine and the “.abor bosses -~ despite the open shift of Northern capital, particularly its Eastern sector, into the same camp, With no pressure whatsoever from the left, Johnson's campaign will not at all be like Truman's in 1948, when the Kansas City poli-
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tician correctly saw that his only chance was to outbid the challenge of Henry Wallace's Progressive party. Johnson will seek to reassure the Soutnern racists in ways best known to one of his background, while implying to the Negroes and to low-income brackets that he is the "lesser evil,"
In foreign policy he will seek to exploit the fears aroused by Goldwater's frenetic demagogy while at the same time standing on the record of his reactionary accomplishments in places like Brazil and South Vietnam, If he holds the cities of the North, as seems most likely with both the Negroes and the labor bureaucrats in his oamp, his victory is assured. If he takes the South, and, as a Democrat and the first Southern presidential candidate since the Civil War, his chances are good, it will be a landslide,
After that, however, the American political scene would not. be the same. The highly contradictory forces in the Democratic machine would tend toward a new differentiation, with a development toward the left symmetrical to the development to the right among the Republicans, In brief, the chances for the rise of a Labor party, for a "Freedom Now" party, would be greatly enhanced. The polarization begun by Goldwater's capture of the Republican machine would tend to be counterbalanced by the formation of a dynamic grouping represent- .ing labor and the Negro people.
The world press is so full of speculation about the "white backlash" in the United States, that a most significant study which has just appeared in the United States seems to have been largely overlooked, This is the lead article in the July issue of the Scientific American, entitled "Attitudes toward Desegregation."
Begun in 1942, the study shows a profoundly deep shift in the attitude of whites toward integration, The shift is so deep that it is apparent in all sectors of the country, including the South, and including the areas where racist violence has flared up.
This trend was summarized by the Scientific American in 1956, The studies have now been brought up to December 1965, that is, fol-~ lowing the Maroh on Washington. They reveal that in such a key issue as residential integration, support among whites rose from 35 per cent in 1942 to 64 per cent at the end of last year "among all whites," Among Northern whites support rose from 42 per cent to 70 per cent and for Southern whites from 12 per cent to 51 per cent. This shift is the result -~ even more significantly -- of a conversion of views.
Although the study has some weaknesses, particularly in not clearly showing the attitudes of various classes, the significance of the results is unmistakable. They show that America is not ripe for a fascist takeover, On the contrary, the ground is being pre-. pared for an enormous. push in the opposite direction, Despite the savagery of the racist minority and the fears of the middle class, the average American wants to move ahead,
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THE NEW OAS SANCTIONS