RADICALS AND REGIONALISM William Appleman Williams, whose article “Empire as a Way of Life” appeared in the summer Clinton Street Quarterly, recently published an appeal for regional resistance In the September 5, 1981 The Nation. In It he invokes the example of Spencer Kimball, president of the Mormon Church, who In May delivered a “devastating proclamation against the MX missile system,” and against the arms race which has swept up the nations of the earth. While the Reagan Administration understandably dismissed Kimball as a spokesman for a vested Interest, Williams Is troubled that left-liberals and democratic radicals had no different response. Williams states: “I would agree that many of them (Mormons) are sexist businessmen who also entertain and act upon other unpleasant prejudices; but I think that It Is a serious mistake to deny or discount the reality of their commltment...we can learn something Important from the way the Mormons have integrated moral, ecological, pragmatic and communitarian values in a clear policy for a specific region” In the following article, Professor Williams explores the roots of radicalism, and why the radical alternative has lost political currency in today’s America. He challenges us to Imagine a different America, and set about building it on our own home turf. by William Appleman Williams one of the central reasons that the United States is in serious trouble involves the unhappy truth that American radicalism has reached a dead end. A few keen observers understood that point as long ago as the draconian recession of 1937: they EGIONAH Cont. on page 6 Bob Benson: Patron of Our Place by Richard Plagge two huge volcanic cones (Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood) punctuate the distant skyline; beneath uring the middle years of the Great Depression, although they were both very poor, Bob Benson and his father bought 150 acres of near-wilderness land on the southwest slope of the Tualatin Mountains, 15 miles northwest of Portland, Oregon. Bob says he is embarrassed to tell how little they paid for it. Bob still lives on this land, alone now, in the house his father build during World War II, while Bob was away clerking for the army. The outbuildings are crumbling, vines have overgrown the remains of a picket fence which must have once squared off a pleasant little front yard. Just as his father did, Bob runs a few cattle and sells a little firewood—he is still very poor. The land, however, is worth a fortune. From a certain hilly clearing on Bob's land there is a dazzling view: perceived that modern radicalism had exhausted its 19th century capital. American radicals must face and answer the naughty question: do they want to manage an essentially unchanged corporate capitalist political economy as little more than especially sensitive and responsible administrators, or do they want to change the world. If the latter, then I suggest that changing the world Bob Benson them, 30 miles adross the rich soil of the the Tualatin Valley, the Chehalem Mountains snake their mild way across the low horizon. hinges on breaking the existing system into human-sized components of Space, Time, Place and Scale. ■ he cornerstone of my argu- I ment is this paradox: the essence and thrust of 20th century American radicalism has been defined by three 19th century giants—Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx. Whatever their disagreements, and we mistakenly educated to emphasize the differences between them, those prodigious individuals agreed on these essentials: On Place: the nation state. On Time: the Present defined as the Future. On Space: the world. On Scale: individual human beings as corporate members of various nation states competing to unify the globe. Within that framework, Lincoln’s determination to create a nationalistic and corporate body politic validated Bonaparte’s redefinition of the French Revolution. Nationalism became the ideal and pragmatic way of achieving liberty, equality, and fraternity—or in the American idiom, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No nation, no viable social system. Nationalistic order or chaos. Evolution from local and regionalism to nationalism— or devolution into anarchy. Once we grasp the impact of Bonaparte (say on Jefferson) and ' Lincoln (say on the Populists), we can see that Marx provided a radical version of an inherently conservative proposition. Do not misunderstand me: Marx deserves all his acclaim. He did the very best anyone could have done within the assumptions shared by his This valley—where, until the epidemics of the 1830s killed most of them, the Tualatin Indians hunted deer and gathered camas roots, where the very first Oregon Trail covered wagons finally came to a halt—is presently one of the fastest- growing areas in the state. Ambitious suburbanites—who have turned the eastern end of the valley into a typical late-twentieth century jumble of jammed two-lane roads and bleakly similar franchise outlets—have made it clear to Bob that selling his land is a duty. Why then does he remain this odd figure, part awkward hermit, part old-world gentleman, who shuffles through spiffy Beaverton shopping malls in rumpled coat and wrinkled pants, when, with a quick land deal, he could transform himself into...a successful man? ob was born in 1915 in Portland, where his parents owned generation about Place, Time, Space, and Scale. Marx’ radicalism was defined by his insistence that the majority—the ordinary folk—should define the terms of corporate citizenship in a nation state creating a better future for themselves and -the world. But the inherent logic of ‘‘Workers of the World Unite” leads inexorably to a super-state organized on Adam Smith’s (that most conservative of political economists) division of labor. Granted the premises, no one could have done better. Nationalism becoming internationalism must be defined from the bottom up or it would be an elitist nightmare. From Marx’ perspective, that was the only conceivable way to transform the nation state from a corporate monster into an international community. Marx proved correct about the ruthless, elegant simplicity of the logic of capitalist industrialization. It is not only, perhaps not even primarily, that the bank controls the terms of trade with the barn. The metropolis sucks people out of their integrated environment and spews them into the morass of the ghetto becoming slum becoming sluburb. The capitalist metropolis is a social vacuum cleaner. It yanks people from their human Place, Time, Space, and Scale. Even more: the sustained and accelerating centralization within the metropolis distorts and even denies any sense- even memory—of a humane set of relationships. But the question is not whether cities are good or evil. The issues concern their size, function, character, and their relationship a rooming house at East Grand and Davis. His earliest memory is of holding his mother’s hand as he toddled across the Sullivan’s Gulch Viaduct. In the early '20s, wanting to leave urban life behind, dreaming of "five acres and independence,” the family bought a small house a muddy half-mile from the railroad stop at Valley Vista, a tiny community located about halfway between where Bob lives now and the notorious Rock Creek Tavern. Bob’s word for Valley Vista’s educational edifice, the two-room Rock Creek School which he attended through sixth grade, is “palatial”: it had a concrete-lined basement, a furnace, a piano, and even a P.T.A. Bob’s parents tried to supplement their income with various ventures: chickens one season, goats the next. Nothing proved to be very lucrative. But then it wasn’t a very lucrative town; to be well-off in Valley Vista Cont. on page 31 4 Clinton St. Quarterly Photograph by Steve Johnson
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