democracy that neither the commissars of the Soviet Union nor the corporate executives of

  the United States and often not even the trade union leaders in these countries al ow today.

  To make national decisions directly is not workable, but it is conceivable that a network of

  direct democracy groups could register their opinions in a way that would result in some

  national consensus. Lively participation and discussion of the issues by the citizenry would

  be a better, more democratic, more reliable way of representing the population than the

  present stiff, control ed system of electoral politics.

  There is already experience with special democratic procedures. Many states have

  provisions for initiatives and referenda. Citizens, by petition, can initiate legislation, cal for general referenda, change the laws and the Constitution. That leads to a lively discussion

  among the public and something close to a real democratic decision. Except that so long as

  there are wealthy corporations dominating the media with their money, they can virtual y

  buy a referendum the way they now buy elections.

  There is also the idea of proportional representation, so that instead of the two-party

  system of Democrats and Republicans monopolizing power (after al , a two-party system is

  only one party more than a one-party system), Socialists and Prohibitionists and

  Environmentalists and Anarchists and Libertarians and others would have seats in

  proportion to their fol owing. National television debates would show six points of view

  instead of two.

  The people who control wealth and power today do not want any real changes in the

  system. For instance, when proportional representation was tried in New York City after

  World War II and one or two Communists were elected to the City Council the system was

  ended.) Also, when one radical congressman, Vito Marcantonio, kept voting against military

  budgets at the start of the cold war era, but kept getting elected by his district time after

  time, the rules were changed so that his opponent could run on three different tickets and

  final y beat him.

  206

  Someone once put a sign on a bridge over the Charles River in Boston: If Voting Could Change Things, It Would Be Il egal. That suggests a reality. Tinkering with voting

  procedures—proportional representation, initiatives, etc.—may be a bit helpful. But stil , in a

  society so unequal in wealth, the rich wil dominate any procedure. It wil take fundamental

  changes in the economic system and in the distribution of wealth to create an atmosphere

  in which councils of people in workplaces and neighborhoods can meet and talk and make

  something approximating democratic decisions.43

  No changes in procedures, in structures, can make a society democratic. This is a hard thing

  for us to accept, because we grow up in a technological culture where we think: If we can

  only find the right mechanism, everything wil be okay, then we can relax. But we can't

  relax. The experience of black people in America (also Indians, women, Hispanics, and the

  poor) instructs us al . No Constitution, no Bil of Rights, no voting procedures, no piece of

  legislation can assure us of peace or justice or equality. That requires a constant struggle, a continuous discussion among citizens, an endless series of organizations and movements,

  creating a pressure on whatever procedures there are.

  The black movement, like the labor movement, the women's movement, and the antiwar

  movement, has taught us a simple truth: The official channels, the formal procedures of

  representative government have been sometimes useful, but never sufficient, and have

  often been obstacles, to the achievement of crucial human rights. What has worked in

  history has been direct action by people engaged together, sacrificing, risking together, in a worthwhile cause.

  Those who have had the experience know that, unlike the puny act of voting, being with

  others in a great movement for social justice not only makes democracy come alive—it

  makes the people engaged in it come alive. It is satisfying, it is pleasurable. Change is

  difficult, but if it comes, that wil most likely be the way.

  1 James Michener, "The Secret of America," Parade, Sept. 15, 1985.

  2 "Remarks of Thurgood Marshal at the Annual Seminar of the San Francisco Patent and

  Trademark Law Association in Maui, Hawai ," May 6, 1087.

  3 Leon Litwack, "Trouble in Mind: The Bicentennial and the Afro-American Experience,"

  Journal of American History (Sept. 1087).

  4 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, of which there are many editions. One of

  them is Peter Laslett, ed., Locke's "Two Treatises of Government" (Cambridge University Press, 1969).

  5 The political philosopher C. B. Macpherson analyzed Locke as a theorist of bourgeois

  property rights in his book The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford

  University Press, 1962).

  6 This point is made in John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge

  University Press, 1969).

  7 Federalist #10.

  8 Federalist #63.

  9 See Leon Litwack, North of Slavery (University of Chicago Press, 1961).

  10 Various statements of black defiance in this and other periods of American history can be

  found in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States

  (Citadel, 1973).

  207

  11 Ableman v. Booth, 21 Howard 506.

  12 For excel ent accounts of the resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, see James McPherson,

  Battle Cry of Freedom, (Oxford University Press, 1988), 82-83.

  13 Quoted by Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (Vintage, 1974), 148.

  14 Ibid., 169-170.

  15 Alden Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (The Free Press, 1985), traces the complex and fascinating roots of the civil rights movement.

  16 Article on W. E. B. DuBois by Bob Hayden, Bay State Banner, Oct. 18, 1979.

  17 For the description of DeLaine and the story of the Brown case, see Richard Kluger,

  Simple Justice (Knopf, 1976). See also Wil iam Strickland, "The Road Since Brown," The Black Scholar, (Sept.-Oct. 1979).

  18 Quoted by John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1967), 556. Also in

  Strickland, "The Road Since Brown."

  19 Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19 (1969). The Nixon

  administration had tried to delay court-ordered desegregation of thirty-three Mississippi

  school districts, and the Supreme Court was unanimous in insisting that segregation must

  be ended "at once."

  20 This was reported by Martin Luther King, Jr. The phrase became the title of an excel ent

  volume of oral histories of participants in the civil rights movement by Howel Raines, My

  Soul Is Rested (Putnam, 1977).

  21 Browder v. Gayle 352 U.S. 903 (1956).

  22 Wil iam H. Chafe, in his book Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and

  the Black Struggle for Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1080), makes clear how "civility"

  was not enough to change racial practices in Greensboro, how protest brought some

  progress (by the spring of 1063 approximately 2,000 Greensboro blacks were marching in

  the streets; at one point 1,400 were in jail).

  23 Civil Rights Cases 109 U.S. 3 (1883).

  24 Ralph McGil , The South and the Southerner (Little, Brown, 1964).

  25 See the ch
apter "Out of the Sit-ins" in Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists

  (Greenwood Press, 1985).

  26 Howard Zinn, Albany: A Study in National Responsibility (Southern Regional Council,

  1962).

  27 Howard Zinn, "Registration in Alabama," New Republic, Oct. 26, 1963.

  28 In their account of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, The Longest Debate (Seven

  Locks Press, 1985), Charles and Barbara Whalen make clear that these demonstrations

  played a crucial role in changing Kennedy's mind about the need for a new civil rights law.

  29 Post Mortem Examination Report of the Body of James Cbaney, by David Spain, M.D. (in

  my personal files).

  30 See Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Scbwerner,

  and Cbaney and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi (Macmil an, 1988).

  31 Mary King, Freedom Song (Wil iam Morrow, 1987), 377-398.

  208

  32 Quoted by David Garrow, Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Voting Rights

  Act of 1965 (Yale University Press, 1978), 61.

  33 Ibid., 236.

  34 Ibid., 235.

  35 On the Watts riots, see Robert Conot, Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness (Wil iam Morrow, 1968). On the 1967 and 1968 uprisings, see the report of the National Advisory Committee

  on Civil Disorders. (Bantam, 1968).

  36 Conor Cruise O'Brien, "Virtue and Terror," New York Review of Books, Sept. 26, 1985.

  37 Robert Michels, Political Parties (Free Press, 1966).

  38 From the election of 1060 (Kennedy v. Nixon) to the election of 1988 (Dukakis v. Bush),

  there was a steady decline in voting, from 63 percent of the eligible voters, to exactly 50

  percent.

  39 See Philip M. Stern, The Best Congress Money Can Buy (Pantheon, 1988).

  40 Emma Goldman, "Woman Suffrage," in Anarchism and Other Essays (Dover, 1969), 195-211.

  41 Philip Foner, ed., Helen Hel er: Her Socialist Years (International Publishers, 1967).

  42 Her approach is evaluated, pro and con, in John F. Sitton, "Hannah Arendt's Argument for

  Council Democracy," Polity (Fal 1987).

  43 It is the anarchists (Kropotkin, Bakunin, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman) who

  have been the most eloquent critics of traditional representative government as fal ing short

  of democracy and who have been the strongest advocates of direct action. Note Goldman's

  dismissal of the Woman's Suffrage Amendment and her insistence that women have to

  achieve equality by asserting themselves directly in every immediate situation—family,

  work, society—they find themselves in.

  Marx himself, I believe, would agree with the anarchist critique, and be dismayed by what

  so-cal ed socialist societies have instituted as methods of government—representative

  assemblies that are many steps removed from direct popular rule. Marx's most interesting

  writing in this area is in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. His language is

  somewhat difficult: Political life "is the scholasticism of a people's life… . The republic is the negation of alienation within alienation." But he clearly wants to end "political life" as a separate sphere, wants what he cal s "civil society" to merge with "the political state." He speaks of "the greatest possible universalization of voting, of active as wel as passive

  suffrage."

  209

  Ten

  Communism and Anti-communism

  In 1948 a series of pamphlets was distributed by the House Committee on Un-American

  Activities titled: One Hundred Things You Should Know about Communism. There were 100

  questions and answers.

  Question 1: "What is Communism?"

  Answer: "A system by which one smal group seeks to rule the world."

  When I came across this in my files (the committee probably had files on me, so it seemed

  to me I should have files on them), I thought these men had taken an advanced course in

  political theory, also in expository writing, to be able to sum up such a complicated theory in

  so few words.

  Skipping a number of questions, we come to:

  Question 76: "Where can a Communist be found in everyday life?" (This

  question interested me because there had been times when I was in need of a

  Communist, and didn't know where to find one.)

  Answer: "Look for him in your school, your labor union, your church, or your

  civic club (Real y, everywhere.)"

  Question 86: "Is the YMCA a Communist target?"

  Answer: "Yes, so is the YWCA."

  Anti-communism is part of the dominant American ideology. I am not speaking of a rational

  critique of communism or of countries that are cal ed Communist. I mean by

  anticommunism a hysterical fear that has led the United States to spy on its own citizens, to invade other countries, to tax the hard-earned salaries of Americans to pay for tril ions of

  dol ars of monstrous weapons.

  That hysteria is not just historical fact, going back to the 1950s and what is cal ed

  "McCarthyism." It continues. In 1987 Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to

  President Reagan, said that he was opposed to sending arms il egal y to the contras, but

  "where I was wrong was not having the guts to stand up and tel the President that… .

  Because if I'd done that, Bil Casey (CIA director), Jeane Kirkpatrick (ambassador to the

  United Nations), and Cap Weinberger (secretary of defense) would have said I was some

  kind of commie, you know."1

  The national security adviser to President Reagan "some kind of commie"? A bizarre idea.

  But perhaps McFarlane knew the extent of his boss's paranoia. Reagan, campaigning for the

  presidency in 1980, summed up the world situation: "Let us not delude ourselves. The

  Soviet Union underlies al the unrest that is going on. If they weren't engaged in this game

  of dominoes, there wouldn't be any hot spots in the world."

  Twenty years earlier, in 1960, ex-President Harry Truman reacted to the lunch counter sit-

  ins of black students in the South by tel ing an audience at Cornel University that they were

  inspired by Communists. When he was asked for proof of this, Truman said he had none.

  "But I know that usual y when trouble hits the country the Kremlin is behind it."

  Anti-communism goes back at least to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. But it became very

  intense after World War II, when another huge country, China, had a Communist revolution,

  and when the cold war with the Soviet Union was taking the form of a reckless buildup of

  weapons on both sides.

  210

  In that time, we came to expect bizarre things. For instance, Congressman Harold Velde of Il inois, a former FBI man and later chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee,

  spoke in the House in March 1950 opposing mobile library service in rural areas because, he

  said; "Educating Americans through the means of the library service could bring about a

  change of their political attitude quicker than any other method. The basis of Communism

  and socialistic influence is education of the people."

  It was not just the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, who was spreading wild

  fears about communism. The young congressman from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy,

  reacted to the Communist victory in China by saying; "The House must now assume the

  responsibility of preventing the onrushing tide of Communism from engulfing al of Asia."2

  Talk of spies and traitors fil ed the air in the 1950s. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were
/>
  executed, found guilty of passing atomic secrets to Russian agents, although it is clear that

  even if they did the data were of minor value and the death sentence viciously cruel. There

  is on the record an extraordinary statement made after their deaths by General Leslie

  Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, to a secret meeting of the Atomic Energy

  Commission. Groves said; "I think that the data that went out in the case of the Rosenbergs

  was of minor value. I would never say that publicly … . I should think it should be kept very

  quiet, because … the Rosenbergs deserved to hang."3

  It also appears, on the basis of FBI documents subpoenaed in the 1970s, that the death

  sentence was prepared for them in advance by col usion between the judge and the

  prosecution, and that the chief justice of the Supreme Court assured the attorney general

  he would cal a ful court session to override any single justice's stay of execution (which is

  what happened, after Justice Wil iam O. Douglas granted a last-minute stay).

  The atmosphere of anti-communism spawned al sorts of odd incidents. A navy ensign was

  refused a commission in the naval reserve because he continued "closely to associate" with a former Communist—his mother. A young music teacher in Washington, D.C., was refused

  a license to sel secondhand pianos because he had pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the

  House Un-American Activities Committee.4

  In 1947 an art exhibition, "Advancing American Art," which opened in Europe to rave

  reviews, was canceled by the State Department on the grounds that it was "un-American"

  and "radical." The artists Georgia O'Keeffe, Ben Shahn, and Robert Motherwel were among

  those whose work was in the exhibit. Michigan Congressman George Dondero said, "Modern

  art is Communistic because it is distorted and ugly, because it does not glorify our beautiful

  country… . [It] breeds dissatisfaction … and those who create and promote it are our

  enemies."

  The textbook commissioner of Indianapolis said the story of Robin Hood (who stole from the

  rich and gave to the poor) should be removed from schools because, as she put it: "There is

  a Communist directive now to stress the story of Robin Hood."5

  Hol ywood actors were threatened with blacklisting if they did not give the names of people