AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS DEBATE "CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE"
By Arthur Maglin
The deepening antiwar mood among the American people is evident from a whole series of signs, including polls, letters to congressmen, the voting in certain areas and on certain issues like antiwar referendums, and rallies and denonstrations. One of the important indicators is the division occurring among the intellectuals and the tendency of the liberal wing to talk in a more radical language than has been heard since the thirties in the U.S.
A sampling of opinion in these circles was offered by the November 26 New York Times Magazine under the title, "Civil Disobedience, 1967." Those selected for quotation range from prowar "hawks"
to a figure like Paul Goodman, who has actively participated in demonstrations.
The editors, as dependable guardians of the bourgeois order, carefully excluded spokesmen of the revolutionary socialist movement in their round table. They did not include a single one of the key figures active in organizing the mass demonstrations that have begun to have such a strong effect on calculations among all tendencies in the American political scene.
The political purpose of excluding such figures from the symposium is quite obvious. The Times itself has been critical of the course followed by the Johnson administration in Vietnam, but on purely tactical grounds. The editors fear that Johnson has overextended the U.S. and provoked unnecessary dangers both abroad and at home. They are in favor of less belligerency and halting the bombing. They are not in favor of the U.S. withdrawing from Vietnam; in fact, they are in favor of keeping U.S. troops there, maintaining "enclaves."
Their attitude toward the domestic opposition corresponds with this view. They are against any kind of opposition that tends to put in question the capitalist system itself. They condone only an opposition that confines itself to tactical differences with the White House or Pentagon. They insist that even this opposition make clear, both in its declarations and in its deportment, that it accepts the basic premises of capitalism. Anyone who goes beyond polite "civil disobedience" is thus beyond the pale, so far as the editors of the Times are concerned. They are particularly exercised over the young militants of draft, if not voting, age who have engaged in organizing street demonstrations against the war in Vietnan.
The contributors to the symposiun, insofar as they stand in opposition to the war in Vietnam, all come within this frame, at least in the judgment of those who sponsored the discussion.
These limitations deprive the sanpling of opinion of any claim to being genuinely broad or an accurate reflection of the range of current opinion on the question of the U.S. role in Vietnan. Nonetheless it is of sufficient scope to show how the popular opposition to the war is affecting the intellectuals and tending to divide them into opposing camps.
Here are some typical statements included in this long article:
Professor John Dollard of Yale University argues that the Vietnam war is necessary: "For the next times I am in favor of keeping the world peace as much as possible -- which means, in practical terms, not changing the power balance between developed democracies, Communist nations and less technically advanced cultures and peoples. To this end, the Vietnam conflict seems to me a necessary measure in checking Communist China's second aggressive thrust in Asia within 20 years."
Professor Noam Chomsky of Massachusetts Institute of Technology speaks out against the war: "Those who defend American policy speak vaguely of Communist '‘aggression.' Just when did this ‘aggression' take place? Was it in 1959, when Hanoi radio was urging that the leaders of the insurrection desist, when Diem spoke of having an Algerian war on his hands in the South while his agents were being parachuted into North Vietnam? Or was it perhaps in April, 1965, when North Vietnamese troops were first discovered in the South, two months after the bombing of North Vietnam began -- 400 in a guerrilla force of 140,000, at a time when more than 30,000 American troops were helping protect the Saigon Government from its own population? Or is it now, when a vast American army of occupation has taken over the conduct of the war, with about as many South Korean mercenaries as there are North Vietnamese troops in the South? Or does Hanoi's ‘aggression' consist in the sending of supplies and trained South Vietnamese cadres to the South? By these standards our aggression in the South has always been incomparably greater in scale, and we are engaged in such aggression in half the countries of the world."
William F. Buckley Jr., editorin-chief of the right-wing magazine, National Review, supports the war with the following argument: "If the head of the American Bar Association were to decline to support the Vietnam war on the grounds of its shaky constitutional genealogy, that is one thing. But when the Constitution is suddenly discovered by Dwight Macdonald, one puts that down (or at least I put that down) to opportunism."
This argument is countered by Paul Goodman, the author of Growing Up Absurd and People or Personnel, who strongly opposes the war: "The great majority of resisters do not consider themselves as lawless, whether they impede the draft, refuse war taxes, or try to bar recruit-— ers and war contracts from the campuses. We hold that it is the Vietnam policy that is illegitimate. It has been created by a hidden government of militaryindustrial lobbyists and the C.I.A.; the Executive has gone beyond his mandate; there has been no genuine debate and voting in Congress; the public has been lied to and brainwashed."
Professor Herbert C. Kelman of the University of Michigan also takes up the question of who is "legitimate": "The war in Vietnam is inconsistent with certain fundamental values of American society and is, in fact, abhorrent to wide segments of the population. Many of us see it as a violation of international law and morality, as an act of aggression against a small and weak people, as arrogant suppression of the forces of social change in the developing world, and as a resort to brutal means in the pursuit of questionable ends. The Administration's actions in Vietnam are illegitimate, then, because they violate the values that we feel this nation has stood for and ought to stand for."
The well-known novelist, James T. Farrell, who once considered himself a revolutionary socialist, complains: "Have we reached the point in history where civil disobedience is writing dirty words on a fence about the President of the country? Or calling members of his Administration names? I support the policy of the United States in its present commitment. And for my political views, I have been insulted by mail and by students during lectures."
Lewis S. Feuer, a prominent sociologist, gives vehement backing to Lyndon Johnson: “An American departure, as Southeast Asians themselves generally recognize, would probably uproot such fragile growths of democracy as now exist. Draft evaders in World War II used much the same arguments as the draft-card burners today. The New Left is using all the worn arguments that the Old Left used against American involvement during 1939 to 1941. The draft-card burners and the New Left have just as little moral justification."
Irving Kristol, a noted essayist, lines up behind LBJ: "Even were I opposed to the Administration's policy in Vietnan, which I am not, I would not regard this case as one in which civil disobedience is justified. The opportunities for dissent are obviously abundant, and even Ho Chi Minh seems to think they can be effectual."
Professor Sidney Hook of New York University gives his Social Democratic view of the U.S. Vietnam policy: "I do not believe that civil disobedience with respect to American Vietnam policy, if one is opposed to it, is justified. The issues are not black and white, but large and complex, about which intelligent men of goodwill and character may differ. There are no easy solutions. All-out escalation or scuttle-and-run are not the only alternatives to present policy. Those who practice resistance are encouraging the Hanoi regime to persist in its intransigent refusal to negotiate the issues."
Another Social Democratic view is expressed by Bayard Rustin, a conservative civil-rights figure, who shows his dislike for militancy by writing: "No eternal algebraic formula can guarantee that a given act of disobedience will stimulate the necessary political response. What disturbs me, however, about much of the recent antiwar resistance is that it does not seek a political response at all; it therefore becomes self-corrupting.
Even Richard H. Rovere, staff writer for the liberal New Yorker magazine, can improve on the statements of these two Social Democrats: "I cannot in principle oppose any nonviolent act undertaken in response to the urging of a clear and examined conscience. I happen to believe that 'resistance,' as distinct from 'dissent,' will contribute not at all toward bringing the war in Vietnam to an end."
John Cogley, editor of The Center Magazine, publication of the left liberal Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, argues for the use of civil disobedience to protest against the war: "Some Germans, a pitiful few, practiced civil disobedience during the Nazi period. Today we honor their memory. Two decades ago, at Nuremberg, we established the principle that under some circumstances such disobedience is a moral duty. During the war-crimes trials some were sentenced to death for not practicing it and others were given prison terms. We took these drastic steps not because the prisoners were patriotic Germans but because they obeyed inhumane, immoral and reprehensible orders. In their own defense a number of Germans argued that their obedience was unwilling. They had dissented as much as they could, they claimed, until the final showdown, when it was obey or else. But we knew then how to distinguish between dissent and disobedience. Dissent, we decided, was not enough. Is it enough in the U.S. today for the growing number who feel that the nation is embarked on an immoral course in Vietnam? More and more Americans are becoming convinced it is not. They feel an obligation to go beyond the 'good Germans' of a quarter century ago who went along with whatever the Nazis did."
Dwight Macdonald, political colunnist for Esquire magazine, also speaks out against the war and for strongly opposing it:
"When the President responded to the massive April peace marches by escalating the bombing of North Vietnam and setting an ominous precedent by recalling General Westmoreland from the field to justify the war, in full-dress uniform, before the Congress that had not been consulted about its escalation,
then it became evident to me that two years of writing, speaking and demonstrating against the war had not got through to our President, and that we objectors must do a little escalating ourselves.