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C00002 00002	commen[f82,jmc]		letter to Commentary about Irving Howe
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commen[f82,jmc]		letter to Commentary about Irving Howe

	Reading Irving Howe's autobiography and Midge Decter's commentary on
the book and the career it tells about, it seems to me that both
author and reviewer are fighting old battles, and miss the main point
of interest to the 1980s.

	The fact is that Howe that the "neo-conservative" point of
view represented by Commentary and resented by Howe has essentially
one the battle, and Howe has conceded or is silent on
almost every significant issue,
and is left only with historical quarrels - who said what to whom,
and who, among New York intellectuals, are the good guys and who are
the bad guys.  To Howe, Irving Kristol is a "conservative ideolog",
but Howe's present disagreement about fundamental matters is left
unclear.

	There are two main matters where Midge Decter neglected to
point out that Howe is adrift.

	1. Is the Soviet Union, agreed to be an oppressive dictatorship,
a menace to the peace of the world?  If so, what needs to be done
about it?  Commentary has a clear position on this issue, but I can't
make out Howe's position, except in so far as he carps about the
proposals of the bad guys - now the Reagan administration.

	2. Is some form of capitalism the best society that can be
devised at present or is socialism better?  Howe and friends have
plenty to say about the heartlessness and general bad morals of the
aupporters of capitalism but are vague about whether they advocate
a fundamental change in institutions.  This is to be distinguished
from a fundamental change in attitudes away from competitiveness
and towards co-operation.  There are genuine disagreements about
whether this would be good, but I can't figure out whether Howe
still thinks that named institutional changes, e.g. public ownership
of the means of production, distribution and exchange, would produce
the changed attitudes.