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THE LIBERAL POSITION IN 1966

MAY 2, 1966

Keynote address by John Kenneth Galbraith at the Annual Convention of the Americans for Democratic Action at Washington, D. C., April 22, 1966.

I am delighted by your invitation to give this keynote address. This is a good year in which to launch a liberal convention. Almost everyone now describes himself as a liberal. Candidates praise their most obscure liberal tendencies. Even conservatives confess to flashes of liberal perception. These are truly the years of the liberal. We have no problem of quantity. Perhaps there is a slight continuing problem of quality.

This also is a time of introspection as to liberal goals. In both domestic and foreign policy we are by way of completing a chapter. We are making our way, with some uncertainty, into the next.

I am naturally pleased to speak to liberals in this moment of strength. And I am not at all reluctant to supply the missing elements of direction.

As I have said, on both domestic and foreign policy we are at the end of a chapter. Goals to which we have been committed for these last twenty years have ceased to be serviceable. Thus, further pursuit as we have already learned will be both frustrating and damaging. An act of will will be required to release ourselves from these old commitments. Liberals, no less than others, develop a deep vested interest in what they believe and urge. We have often been accused of a rather loose attitude toward economy of public funds. But, with all mankind, we are deeply devoted to economy of thought.

## II

On domestic policy, the heart of the liberal program in these last twenty years, in natural reaction to the miseries of the thirties, has been to minimize unemployment and insure the greatest possible growth in economic output. The test of domestic failure or achievement has been the amount of

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unemployment and the annual increase in the Gross National Product. We have
shared this goal with conservatives; remarkably in these years liberals and
conservatives have pursued the same objectives in both foreign and domestic
policy. The only difference in domestic policy is that we sought to do by
deliberate action--by public expenditure, deliberate deficits, tax reduction--
what conservatives hoped to accomplish by balanced budgets, incantation,
regular prayer and the sense of national dedication instilled by speeches by
Richard Nixon.

High production and low unemployment have not become unimportant. It
is only that we now have them. It cannot be the highest function of the modern
liberal to work avidly to accomplish what has already been done.

Also we are learning that these seemingly admirable goals can acquire
some exceedingly conservative overtones. We achieve full employment and
rapid economic growth by insuring a sufficient volume of demand in the economy--
a volume that keeps production up to the current capacity of labor force and
plant. Under liberal tutelage, conservatives have learned that this can be
accomplished by cutting taxes. And without our help, they have then learned
that defense, war and the ancient hostility to whatever helps the poor are
excellent excuses for cutting socially desirable expenditures.

Indeed, one of our singular achievements in these last years has been
in showing conservatives, who most of us had thought safely immune to any modern
ideas, how they can have Keynes without liberalism and full employment without
Shriner.

Economic growth as a goal has a more serious shortcoming. Though it is a
condition precedent for solving most social problems, there are many it doesn't
solve. And it creates new ones. To be specific, economic growth does not

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provide the new and improved public services that are required by a higher
level of private consumption or which mark our progress toward a more civilized
existence. Nor does economic growth solve the problems of environment and
especially of urban environment. On the contrary, it makes them infinitely
more urgent. And, thirdly, economic growth does not help those who, for
reasons of race, educational deprivation, early environment, location, health,
age, family situation, mental retardation, are unable to participate fully
in the economy and in its gains.

These three areas of need define the domestic program of liberals in
the years ahead. I wish to say a word about each. But first let me note that
on none of these tasks are we starting from scratch. On every one there has
been a substantial beginning in these last years. For this we can all be grateful
to the practical liberalism of Lyndon Johnson. We owe more to his sound
empiricism than to the compelling force of liberal doctrine. Later in these
remarks I will have something to say about foreign policy. It will not be
unfavorable to the President. It will, however, be wholly candid on the over-
age ideas and the tired men on which our foreign policy, as it is known, depends.
I hope that all liberals will keep these things in perspective. The antique
doctrines and humorless misachievements of the unimaginative men who got us
into the jungle of Viet Nam must not be allowed to obscure the merits of far
more liberal and astute achievements here at home. Our gains under the Johnson
Administration on civil rights far outweigh our losses on behalf of Marshal Ky.
I hope that all liberals will have this need for perspective much in mind this
November.

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III

The first liberal task is to work for necessary and urgent public services.
These are still the very center of the liberal program. Increased private living
standards must be matched by improved public services unless we are to have an
obscene contrast between the two. Schools must be as well financed as television,
hospitals as well financed as the sales pitch for cigarettes. Efforts to insure
a minimal supply of breathable air must be in some relation to the output of
automobiles.

But much more important, public services are highly progressive in their
incidence. Almost all --public schools, public colleges and universities,
public parks, good and well-paid police, good health services, good public
transportation, even clean streets--render their greatest service to the poor.
No one who calls for curtailment of public services should suppose the effect is
neutral. And no liberal should fail to point out that it is the poor who pay.

I might add that it pains me to see liberals resisting taxes, including
sales taxes, which would allow of better public services. The income tax is
certainly more progressive than the sales tax. But the sales tax, combined with
the services it provides, is far more progressive than no tax and no service.

The problem of environment, and especially that of urban environment,
must be the next focus of liberal effort.

Liberals have always found the problems of the Federal government invested
with a peculiar glamor. We have regularly left city government to the backs
with whom, on occasion, we have united to nominate a President. The problems
of environment--of air and water pollution; of roadside commerce and billboards;
of land development and urban sprawl--have seemed commonplace and sectarian.
They involve new and disagreeable controls--we desperately need, for example,

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effective controls on urban land use for space is now our scarcest resource. But
these things involve rows. Better save one's energy for the big picture. Along
with questions of beauty and aesthetics they can be left to the middle class
conservationist. After all the soul of the liberal belongs solidly to the
proletariat.

These attitudes can no longer be afforded. This is the age of the urban
crisis. Liberalism will be tested by what it can do in the cities. The day
is coming when no one will be considered really ready for higher office until he
has been a successful mayor.

Liberals must also work to correct a grave and growing defect in our Federal
system--a defect which gives the revenues from increased income and output to
the Federal government and which gives the resulting tasks--the handling of
people, traffic, offal and needful--to the cities. It would be hard to imagine
a worse design. The remedy is an arrangement that passes funds from the Federal
government to the localities. Needless to say, we cannot have any more Federal
tax reduction so long as the cities are as impoverished as now.

Our third task is to insure that the largest possible number of our people
participate in the gains of our economy. This, in substantial measure, is what
improved public services and improved environment serve to accomplish. It is
what a sound educational system of uniform quality will accomplish. And a good
health service. And decent housing. And good community surroundings. And good
and fair law enforcement. And sound and well-enforced laws against discrimination.
More than we realize, the present problem of poverty stems from the past neglect
of the public sector of the economy.

But more immediate efforts to mitigate poverty--the work of the Office
of Economic Opportunity--deserve our strong support. This work is encountering

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the fierce criticism of those who, as a matter of principle, rally in opposition to all efforts on behalf of the poor. We must seek ways of strengthening this effort. And let us abandon what does not work --for experiment was intended. But let us not be impressed by the statesman who reacts to instability in Indo-China by appropriating a few more billions and to instability in a Job Corps camp by asking for its abolition.

We must also now consider measures for guaranteeing minimum levels of income for the poor. Most of the men and women who now survive on inadequate income would work if they could. Idleness is less coveted as a career than most well-to-do people imagine. And it may not be all that more damaging to the poor than to the rich. Our present system of means tests is costly and an affront to human dignity. Often it has the worst of effects on incentives, for a small job means a large loss in welfare payments. So this is the next large item on the liberal agenda. It will be good, in a nostalgic way, to hear once more those worried warnings from right wing philosophers as to what it was that ruined Rome.

Now let us turn to foreign policy.

## IV

On foreign policy we have also had a twenty year agreement on goals. Since the break-up of the wartime alliance, the goal to a singular degree has been to fight international communism. Conservatives have strongly applauded this goal. Communists are casual about property rights. The right wing of the Republican party sets these well above human rights, and a moderate Republican is a man who believes them identical. Freedom, in one current of our political thought, means freedom to make money. Communists are clearly opposed to that. These considerations have caused quite a few thoughtful right wingers to suggest that socialists be made honorary communists.

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But liberals long accepted anti-communism as a goal of our foreign policy. Some have long doubted that individual liberty is compatible with democratic centralism. Some drew on their experience with the communists in the unions. More were wounded by Stalin. During the war years they had accepted the current picture of Stalin as an amiable and avuncular figure. They had believed that our association with him would endure. Then came the great disillusionment which was hardly lessened when the Soviets themselves erased Stalin's name from their sacred tablets. The right gleefully pounced on the error--and the erring. Once burned, American liberals were determined never to let it happen again. ADA was born of these attitudes. Henceforth, quite a few decided, they would be second to none in their war with communism--only more intelligent.

We differed on method. In the third world of Asia, Africa and Latin America, aid and reform have bulked large in the liberal program. As one moves to the right, one again encounters the old objection to helping the poor. And communism, as John Foster Dulles saw it, was a problem not in social deprivation but moral degradation. This manifested itself in all-powerful, all-embracing conspiracies. These attitudes are still influential. Mr. Dulles's followers still make nostalgic pilgrimages to meetings of the treaty organizations he established. Liberals have been rightly skeptical of this arming of the indigent. They have doubted that communism would be effectively suppressed by either nineteenth century diplomacy or twentieth century weapons.

But it has been common ground that our own military power must be great; that communist ambition is unremitting; that it is always probing for weak points and will be dangerously encouraged by any success; and that any non-

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communist leader, however repugnant, would, as a matter of expediency, have to
be supported against the communist conspiracy.

With some dissent from the extreme right, it was also agreed during these
years that foreign policy should be entrusted to the permanent diplomatic and
military establishment and to the New York foreign policy syndicate. The latter--
the Dulles, McCloy, Lovett commission with which, I am sure, Secretary Rusk
would wish to be associated and of which Dean Acheson is a latter-day associate--
has now provided the grace notes for American foreign policy for twenty years.
It has credited itself with a uniquely perceptive and aroused view of, as it has
always called it, the international communist conspiracy. With the permanent
establishment it has now guided our foreign policy for so long that many Americans
unquestionably imagine it to have tenure. Liberals have turned up, on occasion,
in the aid program and at the United Nations. Elsewhere, when they have happened
into high office in past years they have considered it their principal function
to bless with their liberal reputation whatever the State Department wished to do.

For a long while the country went along. Foreign policy, until very recent
times, had no strong clientele group in the United States. Unlike, say, the
Department of Agriculture there was no community with a strong pecuniary interest
to scrutinize action. This gave great power to the syndicate and the permanent
establishment. Truth tended to be what it proclaimed. If there seemed to be
dissent it was sufficient to warn of the risks of inviting another Munich.
Silence then ensued.

V

Now this chapter has also come to an end. The old coalescence on the old
and simple goal of anti-communism is past. And, I venture to think, that the old
syndicate is not far short of honorable retirement. Its policies can no longer
be afforded.

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The first factor making for change has been the arrival of a new generation. It has, I would judge, an adequately sophisticated view of communism. But it is unscarred by the memories of Joseph Stalin and Joe McCarthy. So it is not subject to the scarring fears which caused an older generation to be equally fearful of communism and of seeming to be soft on communism. Reflecting the great expansion of the educated and educational community, it is also a client group on foreign policy of no small size. And it does not accept the official truth on foreign policy with the acquiescence that so many would like to associate with sound Americanism. It will be, henceforth, a powerful force influencing foreign policy.

The growing pluralism of the communist world has also done great damage to the old coalescence. It requires a policy as between communist powers. No longer can it proclaim a holy war against all. It is not surprising that more intransigent members of the old guard still speak rather doggedly of a Sino-Soviet bloc.

Soul searching has also been caused by the number of initiatives that, under the old auspices, have been launched against the communists in those last years and then--when the realities were faced--have had to be reversed.

We launched the great drive to expel the Soviets from the U. N. under Article 19 of the Charter. And we reversed course because the reality was that we wanted them to stay.

And we launched a crusade on behalf of Generals Wessin y Wessin and Imbert in the Dominican Republic. And we reversed it because the reality was that right wing dictatorships promised to be more damaging than the risk of communism. Not surprisingly the man who handled this was sent to Portugal.

We launched the MLF and then reversed this because the reality was that our allies feared the proposal more than they feared the Soviets.

The archons of the old coalition are now busy, in person, saving NATO. We can only hope that the alliance will survive its salvation.

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The meaning of all this is that we have long had a policy of getting along with the Soviets. Having lived on the same planet with the Russians without coming to blows for fifty years, there is a growing disposition to keep on trying. We have become interested not in how to promote conflict but how to reconcile diverse interests without conflict. This, to the old establishment was heresy. Peaceful co-existence was a snare and a delusion. Occasionally, and I think increasingly, the State Department responds to suggestions for keeping peace with cautious approval. But not for years has it been imagined that a Secretary of State could be the source of any such suggestion.

Let us look at some affirmative steps for escaping from this outworn legacy. Inevitably I must conclude with some references to the crowning accomplishment of the old policy. That is our defense of that bastion of freedom, as an anarchist would define it, in Viet Nam.

## VI

The test of policy henceforth must be not the negative one of what fights communism but the affirmative one of what serves the interests of the United States-- and the survival and well-being of all people. As occasion and good judgment require, this will mean that we will oppose what the communist nations seek. And as circumstances and good judgment require, it means that we pursue policies that reflect a common interest in improved well-being and survival.

We must affirm, what we long ago learned, that the only good foreign policy is a liberal policy. The United States has a reliable association with nations only if it has a clear identification with the needs and aspirations of their people. Liberalism does not stop at the water's edge. The assumption that it did--that foreigners would make do with despots, incompetent generals and social

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indignity--was the worst single error of the old syndicate. I hope we have now learned that despots, even though not offensive to well-mannered Americans, rarely go down well with their own people.

The foregoing means that we cannot have a good foreign policy that is run by conservatives--however venerable their service or however estimable their motives. This is a contradiction in terms. It is also denied by all recent experience.

Let us also note moreover that liberalism, in this land, is not exactly a minority position. It is an odd concept of democracy that leads us to work hard to elect liberal governments in order to put our foreign policy under those who couldn't care less. Let us note well that the reputation of what would have been counted the most successful liberal administration since Roosevelt is in danger of being ruined by a foreign policy of men who have never raised their hands on behalf of any liberal cause in their life.

Liberals should, I think, stand equally opposed to the divine right of wealth and the divine right in the field of foreign policy of Sullivan and Crounwell; Millbank, Tweed, Hope, Hadley and McCloy, Lucius Clay, Henry Stimson, Nicholas Murray Butler, and the more impeccably traditional members of the permanent foreign policy establishment. And they are justified in pointing out that this tradition, however excellent in its time, can now get a President and the country into a lot of trouble.

This is not to say that the permanent foreign policy establishment is irrevocably conservative. It will respond, I think, to good and liberal leadership. Its younger members especially are politically sophisticated, liberal and anxious for such leadership. It is a good instrument, and would welcome better employment.

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There is, perhaps, some need to discover that the only menace to its
peace of mind is not from the extreme right.

Liberals are also committed, in international affairs, to the rule of
law. This is a principle and not a tactic. We support the United Nations as an
instrument of law and not as a forum for cold war polonics or as a last resort
in error.

Liberals do not believe that difficult or controversial questions can best
be resolved by putting them in deep freeze or pretending they do not exist. Such
has been our policy on China. Nor, at this stage, are we to be impressed with
infinitesimal gestures that could have been made ten years ago. We should make
it wholly clear that when China is willing to recognize the separate existence
of Formosa and accept the charter of the United Nations we will support her
admission to the United Nations and will accord her recognition.

I see no reason finally why liberals should regret their past commitment
to the aid program and to the principle of helping the poor to help themselves.
That policy has served us well. We are, despite all misfortune, well regarded
in the poor lands. The reason is not the power of our arms, the subtlety of
our propaganda or the acuity of our intelligence organisations. It is not
even the eloquence of our past ambassadors. The reason is the aid program.

VII

Let us now say a word about the most annoying, though not I venture the
most important, of our problems--that of Viet Nam. Viet Nam will be the
graveyard of the old policy. It is worth hoping that the policy is all that
gets buried.

Let us also be clear that most of what I say is not meant to be in criticism
of the President of the United States. The President is rightly held responsible
for his Administration. But he cannot be held responsible for his inheritance.

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President Johnson inherited a good part of the Viet Nam involvement. And he inherited, in the old policy, the attitudes which have led to our present misfortunes. I am among those who regard the President as a force for restraint--and for change in the old policy. I do confess to believing that he could do with more and better help.

Our Viet Nam involvement was a textbook manifestation of the old policy. The elements are all there.

--The reaction was automatic. We did not consider whether we defended viable institutions or fought on favorable terrain. None, I believe, suggests that this is a disciplined warrior race that we must have on our side.

--It was assumed that we faced a unified conspiracy directed according to changing preference by Hanoi, Peking or international communism in general.

--There being no serious social foundation for the insurgency, those who do the fighting are the servants of the external authority. They have no personal stake in the insurrection and can be ignored as a factor in any settlement.

--No social issue being involved, military measures, it was long felt, would suffice for solution.

--Until the moment of their collapse, governments on our side are bestials of liberty and their leaders are pillars of freedom.

--Americans could be counted on to believe what they were told, particularly about the power and integrity of the people on our side and the measures with which we deal. Always, as ever, there is Munich.

None of these propositions has survived the experience. And I think it well that we should reflect on this experience for those who do not learn their

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history are doomed to repeat it. And, I would judge, only Gerald Ford and John
Towers really yearn to repeat this experience. But liberalism is a practical
faith. We must always start from where we are. How do we escape from this
entrapment?

We must, first of all, escape from the entrapment of our own propaganda.
Viet Nam is not important to us. Nor is it a bastion of freedom. Nor is it
a testing place for democracy. It is none of these things. Had it been lost
in 1954 no one would now be thinking of it. Far too many of our officials have
been so persuaded because, much in the manner of a man shouting down a well,
they have heard their own voices. Let us resolve to stop talking this nonsense.

We must abandon the notion--as I am sure most sensible people have in
Washington--that we are going to roll the Viet Cong back from vast areas that
they have controlled now for up to ten years. We must not invest lives, even
those of other people, in an enterprise of such dubious and temporary value
to the Viet Namese who might survive.

Our policy now must be to remain on the defensive in whatever area we
can hold with the present force. This may well be rather small. But it will
provide a refuge for those who have joined our enterprise. This will also
sufficiently establish the one valid way in which resistance serves our policy
which is to show that whatever our error in getting in we cannot easily be
shoved out. Conceivably this might then prevent some future probe. However,
we may remind ourselves that the world did not lose respect for the Russians
because they retreated in Cuba.

There can be no real doubt as to the military feasibility of this
policy. Military men always describe as unfeasible what they do not wish to do.
If we can clear and hold all of South Viet Nam with a large force, one can hold a
very limited area with a smaller force.

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We should, and this is a vital step beyond present policy, now permanently
suspend air attacks on the North. This is not for human reasons although I am
not opposed to humanity. Nor is it because air power is both indiscriminate
and ineffective, although this is also true. We are paying heavily for the
myth of air power. We need only compare the promises of the last year with
the performance. We should stop because these attacks, and the temptation to
extend them, involve the one major and intolerable risk which is war with
China or conceivably Russia. The temptation to extend these attacks is
especially strong when things go wrong politically in the South as they so often do.

It will be no comfort, if we find ourselves involved with the Chinese on
the Asian mainland, that it resulted from a miscalculation. All must remember
that the phrase "calculated risk" is a military euphemism for total ignorance
as to the outcome of a particular action.

Next we must face seriously the likelihood that there will not again be
a government in Saigon which is seriously capable of prosecuting the war along
with us. A government that reflects the interest of the people will reflect
their suspicion of foreigners, their struggle for a national identity, and their
terrible war-weariness. It will not fight. A government that works with us
and fights the war will not have the support of the people. It will not last.
This is not a defeatist assessment. It accepts, only, the developing evidence
of these last months and years.

Under these circumstances the purpose of the holding action is to allow
of the best possible bargain between the non-communist groups in Viet Nam and
the Viet Cong. There is now no longer doubt as to whether negotiations are
desirable or not--although they may not be conducted by us. The ultimate
bargain will not be brilliant. But by any reasonable calculation that is
not our fault. We remained as long as we were wanted.

[L.C.]

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In this part of the world the writ of a central government often runs
only to the airport. What counts is local control of the countryside. What
we should welcome, and in the end will have to welcome, is a regional settlement,
as in Laos. The central government will, at best, be only a loose federalism of
areas under different control. But that is about all Indo-Chinese governments
ever have been.

Let us stress again the present importance of restraint--and of supporting
the President in restraint. Some will certainly suggest covering their
disappointments in the South with more muscular action elsewhere. The purpose
of this, like the demand for manpower to pacify the whole country, is now,
however subjectively, to bale out the reputations of those who for so long
have been committed to this ill-starred enterprise. Let us resolve to save
their reputations and reward them most handsomely but in some other way.

We have paid rather heavily for the myth of the older policy in Viet
Nam. But fortunately the cost in money has so far been larger than that in
lives. And fortunately, also, the lessons--the dangers of automatic and
unselective reaction to communism in accordance with formula, the dangers of
unlimited commitment, the dangers in supporting governments that are unsupported
by their people, the shortcomings of military solutions--are all brilliantly
clear. Perhaps, as a happy concluding thought, these inopportable jungles
were well designed to stimulate a more liberal, more rational, more discriminating,
more collectively motivated and somewhat less paranoid view of our mission
in the world.