Socialists and Grasshoppers

IF STEVEN KELMAN '70 is a socialist, then I am a grasshopper.

Kelman, who jokingly calls himself a "democratic socialist," made his name as a youthful specialist in anti-New Left analysis. He wrote the notorious Push Comes to Shove, a wild-eyed attack on everyone who did not agree that absolutely nothing could be permitted to disrupt the University during the 1969 Harvard strike. Although analytically unsound (students, he said, held radical beliefs because they were either 'crazy' or bereft of feminine companionship), the book was received with predictable acclaim by a sordid mixture of tired old leftists-turned-cold warriors and outright conservatives.

Kelman was billed as a sensible alternative to the 'wreckers' on the left: he was allegedly progressive and committed--he even had long hair--but he vehemently eschewed nasty things like demonstrations and building occupations. By comforting worried old professors, he assured himself of future contacts and undoubtedly made a lot of money. During the 1970 nationwide student strike over Cambodia and Kent State, for example, this model socialist travelled to Chicago, where he wrote a couple of articles for the conservative Chicago Tribune that complimented some local colleges for not succumbing to the reigning madness.

Kelman has since continued to promulgate his peculiar brand of conservative socialism. His second book, Behind the Berlin Wall, is an account of a two-month stay during 1971 in East Germany. Constant fear haunts our intrepid hero as he risks millenial jail terms to uncover the truth about Communism. He cleverly outwits a couple of commissars who accompany him, and returns to report that things are not good in East Germany: everything breaks all the time, there are not enough refrigerators, telephones or good razor blades--and besides, the people are not free.

MOST OF THE BOOK is an over-written compendium of mock-heroics: our hero was scared one night, "I wanted to cry into the pillow of my bed, but there was no pillow. So I cried right onto the sheet." But after pruning the thicket of countless noble deeds, the book does contain a core of political analysis, centered around anti-Communism as its primary tenet. The Soviet betrayal of socialism is the greatest crime in history for the promoters of this brand of politics, and the Soviety offspring, the nations in what was once known as the Communist Bloc, are consequently enemies of the first magnitude. Vigilant criticism of this is necessary least naive Westerners with a progressive bent be seduced by the Communist siren.

This critique of Communism usually centers around two factors: the great extent to which individual freedom is limited in these nations and their lower standards of living. Although most progressive anti-Communists place greater emphasis on the absence of personal liberty, Kelman reverses the priorities. About 80 per cent of the book's analysis is devoted to recounting the economic woes of East Germany: the food tastes horrible, slacks come in off-blue but not deep blue. The poor East Germans don't even have suntan lotion.

Freedom, however, is also in short supply, East Germany severely restricts freedom of speech, assembly and the press. Students are taught only 'correct' doctrines in the schools and universities. The nation is a virtual colony of the Soviet Union, shifting its ideological line in response to Soviet policy and subordinating its own economic needs to the demands of its big socialist brother.

These perceptions are interesting and perhaps even true, although Kelman's botched explanation of the Harvard strike renders suspect anything else he attempts to interpret. What is particularly galling is not the analysis itself, but its central focus in Kelman's political view. Rabid anti-Communism analytically divides the globe into the Free World/Communist Bloc opposition Kelman's elders have seemingly abandoned. Because the Communist enemy is so evil for Kelman, it follows that America must be virtuous, in small ways as well as substantial ones. Witness: Kelman enters an East German supermart and the place looks dull. "I longed for something all my righteous ideas taught me to believe was worthless or even insidious--bright American packages," he laments.

THIS IS INDEED SAD, but when Kelman turns to political analysis, his version of America approximates a high school civics lesson. He explains to an attentive East German that America has problems: unemployment, medical care, urban planning, and something called "the Negro problem." "But," he explains optimistically, "we can talk about our problems, and put pressure on the government to solve them." One wonders what the victims of "the Negro problem," whose rebellions in the late sixties dwarfed the famous 1953 East German riots to which Kelman insistently refers, would say about that.

This kind of specious comparative analysis underlies the analytical parts of the book. Kelman evidently sees himself as a modern Tocqueville, journeying to what he describes as the Communist future in East Germany to warn Americans that they are better off with what they have--nice consumer goods in large quantities, and, incidentally, text-book freedom. When Kelman crosses over to West Germany, he ritually cements his warm relationship with America by self-consciously buying a Coca-Cola.

The hazy analysis in Behind the Berlin Wall would be faulty from any source, but coming from a professed socialist, it is particularly embarrassing. While Kelman was playing spy in East Germany in 1971, his freedom-loving homeland was sending waves of bombers over Laos and much of Vietnam, attempting to annihilate both a people and a just revolution. The American prosperity Kelman lauded, as usual, was getting new infusions from the Third World, while citizens attempting to 'pressure their government' to end the Vietnam aggression often found themselves in jails. Working people in Detroit and Cleveland trudged off to the same deadening jobs as their counterparts in East Germany.

Why was this book written? The effort would be eminently sensible for an unabashed conservative, but surely socialist Kelman could have found a better way to advance toward his goals. It is not necessary to approve of East Germany, or even refrain from criticizing it, to be a good socialist, but some sense of priorities is in order. To pillory the East Germans, Kelman goes through impressive political contortions: he embraces American consumerism, while ignoring the war in Vietnam, he mouths platitudes about freedom, while his government systematically murders a people trying to be free.

In sum, though, Kelman is not dangerous, merely irritating. Even conservatives would gasp at much of his analysis, and the heroics of Ian Fleming's secret agents are more believable. Anti-Communism is a profession on the wane, and Kelman had better make his money while he can.