The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

Noam Chomsky’s article, “On Resistance” [NYR, December 7, 1967], raises several very important points for anyone who is trying to decide whether to move from “dissent” to “resistance.” In particular, I agree with his statement that “…the days of ‘patiently explain’ are far from over. As the coffins come home and the taxes go up, many people who were previously willing to accept government propaganda will become increasingly concerned to try to think for themselves.”

During the past few months I have noticed an undramatic but steady shift of opinion among people I personally know. I am not thinking of those who from the beginning have opposed the Vietnam war but rather of that large number who supported it, though often with increasing misgivings. Many of these people are politically conservative, others apolitical. What I observe is that one by one they are deciding that the war simply isn’t worth what it costs. This is not a decision based on absolute moral grounds, but on a pragmatic consideration of how a nation can best use its resources of lives, energy, and money. Coupled with the conviction that the war is more expensive (in every sense) than it is worth goes a growing conviction that America’s number one problem is in the cities and the struggle against poverty and racial discrimination, and that no nation has the resources—and psychological energy—to tend to its urgent domestic problems while simultaneously fighting a major war half a world away.

I believe that the number of persons who for pragmatic, rather than absolute moral reasons, are turning against the war is very large, and that their numbers are likely to increase. Any strategy of “dissent” or “resistance” which overlooks these potential millions of allies is very shortsighted. It may never be possible, by even the most dramatic examples of “resistance,” to convince 51 percent of the American people that the war is “wrong,” but I am convinced that by “patiently explaining” it may easily be possible to convince 65 percent that the war is damned foolishness.

I grant that anyone who categorically believes the war to be so monstrous an evil that he must retain his moral purity at all cost is morally justified in taking whatever measures of resistance he can, in order to demonstrate the verdict of his conscience. And young men about to be drafted face this challenge in its starkest form. But I suggest only that in more general situations each person must ask himself, which is more important—to have a pure conscience, or to bring the war to an end?

If the second is more important, the patient effort to win over those millions who view the war in pragmatic rather than moral terms may be more significant than blocking the pathways to Dow interviewers or even than turning the flank of Pentagon soldiers. Sometimes a pure conscience comes at too high a price, if it does not actually help put an end to war.

Chad Walsh

Beloit College

Beloit, Wisconsin

To the Editors:

I write in response to Noam Chomsky’s troubled article, “On Resistance.” I write as one who has engaged in the particular form of draft resistance Professor Chomsky supports—it takes its organized form today in the non-cooperative tactics of “The Resistance.” I also write as one who has subsequently rejected this form of resistance.

Chomsky’s article is unsatisfactory for reasons he himself admits to—he does not see where resistance is going and he does not believe that the organized draft resistance he discusses will be very effective. I feel the difficulty lies in a too narrow view of resistance: while Chomsky feels the Washington demonstrations and anti-war protest generally are aspects of (or only “symbolize”?) the move “from dissent to resistance,” all he writes about is one form of draft resistance and various forms of dissent. Are the current demonstrations a move from dissent to resistance or not? If they are, how is that and are they effective?

The way in which to judge the demonstrations most clearly is to understand what will end the war and to see where demonstrations fit in. The war will end when the American middle class wants it to—if this grates, remember that the Vietnamese have said as much. The middle class is the majority here and this government and both parties belong to it. What will cause the middle class to want an end to the war will be the conjunction of Vietnamese resistance plus the high cost to the middle class in effort and money to deal with taxes, inflation, disruption, and obstruction at home. As proof, imagine the following: a seemingly indefinite continuation of the Vietnam war and other overseas military “engagements” claiming an increasingly larger proportion of monetary, productive, and human resources; each summer more and better organized ghetto rebellions, forcing the government to devote increasingly greater portions of resources to either repression or a real (i.e., expensive) war on poverty; continuing, larger, and more costly anti-war and anti-draft demonstrations and other acts against the war; more and more colleges and universities—the reproductive organs of business and government—periodically shut down by students demanding power, or demanding an end to military ties and war research. Now try to imagine the middle class continuing to pay for all this.

I hope I have begun to make several points clear. The first is that the most effective anti-war activities are those which are the most disruptive, the most costly, those which most undermine the authority of the government domestically and in its war policy. In this light the ghetto rebellions must be seen as one of the activities which most affect the war—and therefore those elements of the white middle class opposed to the war must work to protect participants (whether or not they agree with the aims or means of those involved, I would say). The anti-war and anti-draft demonstrations are also in this category: the Pentagon was not taken, the New York and Oakland induction centers weren’t shut down—but the Washington demonstration cost the government over one million dollars, in New York on one day 4,000 police were deployed to hold 700 demonstrators, and the Oakland demonstration cost over $100,000 and caused the city to seriously consider applying for federal aid. Moreover, the attitude developed and the tactics following from it, the tactics of harassment and disruption, are those which will continue to escalate the cost. To all this should be added the immeasurable affect of the demonstrations on draft-age men who see them, and see that the war mechanism ultimately is upheld by troops and police, that many others “won’t go,” that the government’s authority can be questioned.

Because the above is so, the kind of specific draft resistance Chomsky and “The Resistance” advocate is the least effective—it causes men to volunteer for prison. I agree with these people that the idea of prison should not be allowed to stop anti-war activity, that we should not be afraid of prison, and that prison can be survived by most, however uncomfortable (I did two stretches before getting out of the Chicago ghetto at 22). But anyone who volunteers for prison is saying he has nothing to do on the outside; you don’t see black community organizers burning draft cards, and you don’t see the militant white organizers of anti-draft demonstrations doing it much either. These people have something to stay out for, they have a community they are responsible to, they understand the effectiveness of their tactics.

There was a time when I too did not understand this. Less than a year after my second release from prison I tried to disengage from the whole white middle-class shuck which doesn’t belong to a black man, and I told my draft board (among others) what to do with my draft card. In subsequent letters to me the board made me understand there is no possibility of withdrawal from conflict—it was clear I would be given the choice of the Army or prison, and both belong to the middle-class establishment. Since then, for over two years now, I have lived under an assumed name and have done as much of certain political activities as possible.

I am not the only one doing this; I have met others, both black and white. I think we would agree that Chomsky’s notion of the alternatives—the military, prison, or exile—is too limited, constrained by lack of experience and by lack of a full comprehension of what is to be done. Our attitude is, prison or exile, yes, before the military—but the cost of trying to catch us will be theirs. We have work to do, or simply lives to live, and don’t intend to make their job easier or our lives more miserable (in fact “underground” life is not that difficult to maintain so long as we avoid accidental arrest).

All this argues against the move of white middle-class students to “insist on sharing the fate of those who are less privileged,” not only because we remain free to work, but because every man who successfully avoids establishment-made alternatives takes another man with him by example. Moreover, a poor man does not serve in the place of a middle-class man—another middle-class man does. Selective Service News indicates that 95 percent of the officers and specialists have a college background (the new draft law has a military, as well as a political, point). Middle-class men are not going to turn against the war because their classmates go to prison, but because they do not, thereby placing an undesirable burden on those who lose deferments or do not go into exile or underground. In the end, demonstrations and evasion can mean to the middle class what rebellions and evasion mean to the poor.

Therefore Chomsky and others would be best advised to make them pay the piper, who called the tune. That is what black folks know, who sing and dance all the time.

I trust I will be understood if I use only a trade mark in signing as,

William X

Detroit, California, Canada

Noam Chomsky replies:

Chad Walsh and William X agree that middle-class attitudes will be decisive in determining the outcome of the American war in Vietnam, and that these attitudes will be shaped not by moral but by “pragmatic” considerations, considerations of cost. Yet they arrive at diametrically opposed conclusions regarding the appropriate choice of tactics: Mr. Walsh opposes all forms of resistance and feels that one should try to convince the American people “that the war is damned foolishness,” and Mr. X concludes that “the most effective anti-war activities are those which are the most disruptive.” Viewing the situation from a rather similar perspective, I nevertheless find myself reaching still different conclusions. This is hardly astonishing. No one can evaluate the effectiveness of various tactics with any precision. Furthermore, no course of action open to us offers much hope of preventing the Vietnam tragedy from assuming still more awesome proportions. We are, unfortunately, discussing tactics of limited effectiveness and partially unpredictable consequences.