NO NEW LEFT?

Linda McVeigh is entitled to her evaluations of the "Old" and New" Lefts, but one would hope she could get her facts straight.

There is absolutely nothing in the writings of the democratic Left in America (what Miss McVeigh calls the "Old Left") to suggest a "bland acceptance of the welfare state." If we decline to follow the New Left in total denunciation of the New Deal--a denunciation which often sounds familiarly like that of the extreme Right--we nevertheless feel that democratic participation must expand as well as welfare measures. When Michael Harrington calls for a "3rd New Deal," he is talking about "social investment a conscious and political allocation of resources to meet public needs" (his own words), not-just more social security, as implied in the review.

A further confusion in the review is reflected in Miss McVeigh's sloppy use of the terminology "New" and "Old" Left--terms, invented by one wing of the movement to paint itself in a good light and its opponents in a bad light. There are serious differences in approach between SDS and the democratic Left (the term we us to describe ourselves), but they are not ones between old and new. Take the question of Communism, for example. In the thirties, on the Left there were Communists, anti-Communists, and a third group of anti-anti-Communists who vaguely identified with Stalinism and tended to be apologists for it, while still recognizing its bad features. Those distinctions exist in virtually the exact same way today. We of the anti-Communist Left are still attacked by the others as "red-baiters," and we still reply that one must distinguish between the reactionary anti-Communism of the Right and the anti-Communism of any believer in democracy and civil liberties. To be sure, changes have taken place in the Communist world, but everyone on the Left recognizes that. There is absolutely no question of "Old" and "New" involved here: was the SDS any less the New Left when it said in its 1962 Port Huron Statement that "as democrats, we are in basic opposition to the communist system," as today, when they refuse to make such a definite commitment? Steven J. Kelman '69, Elliot Abrams '69 Co-Chairmen Harvard-Radcliffe Young People's Socialist League Campus Americans for Democratic Action