Correspondence

I have read most if not all of the press response to Dissent as of this writing, and I think the comments which most deserve study are those expressed in the February issue of Commentary.

No Slight Recommendation

Editors:

Being a subscriber to Commentary and an admirer of Nathan Glazer’s usual calm intelligence I was surprised to read his angry and erratic review of your magazine. Obviously there is something in your first issue, which his review does not indicate, that disturbed him deeply and led him to drop his usual manner of moderate and close argument and lapse into “the unpleasant tradition of vituperative intemperance.” This is no slight recommendation for your magazine. I enclose a year’s subscription.

S.H.

Oakland, Calif.

Reviews the Critics

Editors:

I have read most if not all of the press response to DISSENT as of this writing, and I think the comments which most deserve study are those expressed in the February issue of Commentary. It is, of course, a hatchet job worthy of the Stalinist press, and the driving force in it seems to be pure malice. But I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this that none of the points made in the attack are valid.

In particular, I would have to agree that there is manifested in our first issue too much of one fault which has long been a characteristic malaise among radicals—the tendency to impugn the motives of those who disagree with our point of view, especially when their point of view is in many important respects close to ours. . . .

There is another point raised in Commentary, on the people to whom the pages of DISSENT should be open. I see no reason why qualifications need to be made beforehand. It might indeed be a good thing to invite a wellknown Stalinist to debate in our pages occasionally. This ought to be a matter not of set policy but of editorial discretion. It is enough to let it be known that we are firmly opposed to Stalinism. There are still people on the Stalinoid fringe who might be attracted to a view of genuine socialism as a result of a sharp juxtaposition of the viewpoint, say, of Sid Lens with that of Leo Huberman. . . .

The same holds true, in a general way, for ex-radicals. Why should ex-radicals be subjected to special treatment? This implies that we have a special grudge against, say, Max Eastman, who in his time and for some thirty years or more of his life wrote some of the best stuff of the anti-Stalinist left; while we view with relative equanimity a lifelong Milquetoast liberal like Stuart Chase (or name your own example) . . . .

When you come right down to it, the fact is that in most cases wild horses wouldn’t drag Stalinists or ex-radicals into our pages, because very likely they are as much aware as we should be that discussing things with them on our own home grounds, so to speak, is much more to our advantage than to theirs. But we put ourselves in a bad light by announcing in effect that we’re out to censure these two particular groups as against all possible others…

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