Great Freedom Budget: Pot of Gold for Liberals

This Friday night and Saturday, some of America's foremost liberal economists will come to Harvard to drum up support for their last and biggest hope, The Freedom Budget.

The Budget is the economic flower of the old civil rights movement. It is outlined in an 84-page red, white, and blue pamphlet entitled "Budgeting our resources, 1966-1975, to achieve Freedom from Want." The study was directed by Bayard Rustin, executive director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and organizer of the red, white, and blue 1963 March on Washington.

Black and White

Rustin has scheduled, in black and white, exactly what steps should be taken to eliminate poverty in the United States by 1975: "We propose and insist that poverty in America can and must be abolished within ten years." Be assured this is no whistling in the dark: "Before we kneel supinely before the false idol of what we 'cannot afford,' we should appraise realistically the potentials of the U.S. economy."

The Freedom Budget maintains the potential is virtually unlimited. Its calculations prove beyond reasonable liberal doubt, with the help of former Economic Council Chairman Leon Keyserling and $185 billion of spending, that guaranteed employment and minimum yearly salary could indeed end poverty by 1975. The means: a huge public works program, the apothesis of New Dealism.

Many more radical reformers disagree that eliminating poverty through The Budget will cause a qualitative change in American life. "It's irrelevant," says Mark Dyen '70, co-chairman of Harvard SDS. "It doesn't get at the real issues. Do you really believe that getting the poor more money is going to give them more of a say in their own environment?"

This is one-half of the reason The Freedom Budget will not have the support of the New Left. The other half is that The Budget's advocates will use conventional coalition politics to secure their ends. "The Freedom Budget is important not only in itself, but also because of the type of political action it calls for to bring about its proposals. It has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO . . . , by leaders of every major civil rights organization in America, leading religious, liberal, democratic radical, and other organizations, as well as by many academics," says the literature.

Forget the War

In a country which is being severely divided over the Vietnam War, it would seem almost impossible to bring about a major coalition which does not take that war into account. But The Freedom Budget does just that.

Throughout The Freedom Budget, pamphlet, there is a total disregard--politically and morally--for the Vietnam War: "Hitching the aspirations and long-denied needs of the poor to the outcome of the Vietnam War . . . is neither economically necessary nor morally defensible. . . . We must plan the allocation of our resources in accord with our priorities as a nation and a people."

This is probably the weakest link of The Freedom Budget campaign, at least from a tactical viewpoint. Doves will argue that while poverty is terrible, murdering thousands of innocent people is worse. President Johnson will simply say there isn't enough bread to go around. The Freedom Budget may well be gored on the fence.

Michael Kazin, a sophomore in SDS, puts it this way, "What they want is welfarism at home and imperialism abroad. That's very nice but it just won't work. They're willing to keep all the defense money intact just so they can get George Meany on their side."

Dead to Life

The organizers of The Freedom Budget believe it is perfectly possible to organize the masses around an abstraction. It is merely a matter of bringing the dead to life. "There's an absolute analogy between the crusade for Civil Rights and liberties and the crusade which The Freedom Budget represents. . . . To the full goals of the 1963 March The Freedom Budget is dedicated," says the pamphlet.

In fact, there exists little similarity between what. The Freedom Budget campaign could be and what the Civil Rights movement was. The latter captured a country's imagination and made activists out of idealists--the same way the war has influenced even more Americans in the last two years.

The campaign for The Freedom Budget is a conventional political campaign: "There is a close analogy to the civil rights movement. This movement started at the grass roots and involved action at every level. But it gained substantial support only through leadership decisions made in a federal courthouse in Washington, a Federal Congress in Washington, and the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. The need for this is even more apparent on the economic and social front," says the literature.

It is true that once a grass roots movement has been established, the final responsibility lies with the bureaucrats--unless there is a revolution. But today there is no grass roots movement directed toward economic reform and asking politicians for such radical changes with nothing on your side except rationality is a tactical mistake. Taking a neutral position on the war means giving up all chances at building a grass roots movement in the near future.

Bayard Rustin & Company agree with the principle of the early civil rights movement, but not with the new spirit of Negro equality. "We must see to it that in rejecting 'black power,' we do not also reject the principle of Negro equality," warns Rustin. Radical blacks today are saying that material equality is not enough, but this seems all that Rustin is willing to give them. They may not know exactly what they're asking for, but it's more than money.

According to this radical critique, not only are the issues of The Freedom Budget out of focus but the organizing methods are misguided.

Steven Kelman '70, president of Harvard's Young People's Socialist