November 20: the birthday of Norman Thomas

[Rick Kissell]

November 20 is the birthday of Norman Thomas, the longtime leader (and presidential candidate of) the Socialist Party.  Here's the text of an interview of Norman Thomas that appeared in the November 1966 issue of Playboy magazine.  (Thomas died in 1968.)  

A copy of the article on Norman Thomas by the Rev. Martin L. King, Jr. that appeared in the June 1965 issue of Pageant magazine can be found at: "The Bravest Man I Ever Met" by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (1965) | War Is A Crime .org

				"The Bravest Man I Ever Met" by Dr. Martin Luther King, ... By the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Pageant magazine, June 1965 Last December, 2000 Americans gathered at New York's Hotel Astor to celebrate the 80th birthda...
				View on warisacrime.org	Preview by Yahoo

from Playboy, November 1966:

Norman Thomas: a candid conversation with the elder statesmen of American socialism, champion of radical reform and outspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam.

for more than half a century, Norman Thomas has devoted his considerable energies to protest – in word and deed. Almost totally blind, his tall frame slightly stooped, he is still the ubiquitous dissenter – writing, sharing a broad range of protest groups, addressing civil rights rallies and peace demonstrations. "The years have given a cavernous austerity to his patrician face," A. H. Raskin wrote recently in The New York Times, "but the wrinkles of laughter still hold their own against the wrinkles etched by time. His pale blue eyes glow… And ideas tumble from his thin lips with the easy eloquence that used to make his campaign speeches entrancing to conservatives as well as liberals."

Although he is now regarded as "the respectable rebel," Thomas has frequently been a figure of turbulent controversy in the past and even now is in the forefront of protests against President Johnson's policies in Vietnam. He remains, as The Washington Post observed on his 75th birthday, "the conscience of the American people… Among the most influential individuals in 20th century politics."

The rebellious odyssey of Norman Thomas began in Marion, Ohio, in 1884. Graduated from Princeton in 1905, he became a Presbyterian minister in East Harlem after studying at Union Theological Seminary. From the start of his ministry, however, he was militantly active in campaigns against social injustices, and his growing commitment to pacifism and socialism led him finally to resign in 1918. From that point on, Thomas was an indefatigable agitator for social, economic and political change throughout the country.

In the years that followed, he engaged in many struggles of the right of workers to organize and was one of the first to focus national attention on the oppression of the sharecropper in the South, going on to help organize the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. A champion of civil liberties, he was also one of the founders of the Civil Liberties Bureau, which became the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. Thomas has also been active in civil rights battles, and in 1935 was a leader in action against the Ku Klux Klan in Florida. Often arrested because of his insistence on translating his radical beliefs into action, Thomas also has survived periods of widespread unpopularity, particularly for his opposition to America's entry into both World Wars.

Six times a candidate for the Presidency on the Socialist Party ticket, he was an advocate in the mid-1920s of old age pensions, public works programs, unemployment insurance and the legalization of collective bargaining. Between his most successful campaign – in 1932, when he won 900,000 votes against Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover – and his last race, in 1948, Thomas saw all of these programs enacted into law.

Among the organizations in which he has taken – and continues to take – a major role are the League for Industrial Democracy, The American Committee on Africa, the Spanish Refugee Aid Committee, and the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. As Allard Lowenstein, an influential New York social activist, puts it, "Any cause I have ever heard about that involve oppression and injustice and in which no one else was interested could call on Norman Thomas for help. He and Eleanor Roosevelt Dunmore through the years than any other American figures to inspire young people to devote their lives to social justice."

In the midst of an arduous schedule of college speaking engagements late last summer, Thomas acceded to our request for an exclusive interview. The six hour conversation took place in Thomas' office on East 19th St. in New York. The furnishings are spare but comfortable. His desk is free of clutter. Bookcases line the walls, and in them are volumes on international politics, civil rights and socialism. Tacked to a bulletin board our leaflets and notices about forthcoming meetings on peace and civil rights. Thomas is listed as one of the main speakers on more than half of them.

The white-haired Socialist leader talk easily and vigorously throughout the long afternoon. He had no need to ask his secretary to refer to notes or to any of the books around him. Although his voice as a quaver of age, his ideas are crisp and lucid. Occasionally, as the urgency of a particular need for action sees him, he would lean forward, his voice rising, and slam the desk to make a point.

His passion against injustice is infused with wry wit, often directed at himself. He is a man utterly without pomposity. Although he appears to have a secure sense of his place in American history, he also speaks with candor about what he terms his "failures." Though his view of the future often seems bleak, he himself is without despair. Vital, continuously curious, he sees no possibility of his retiring, because so much remains to be done.

During our long conversation, Thomas had explored, without euphemism or evasion, the scope of his past achievements and his view of present imperatives. In covering the most current topics, such as the war in Vietnam, it is possible that the fast-moving tide of world events may have overtaken both our questions and Thomas' replies in the weeks since the interview went to press. But what follows will remain resoundingly valid for many years to come – the eloquent distillation of a singularly uncompromising life.

PLAYBOY: in recent months, you've been particularly active – in demonstrations, speeches and articles – as a critic of the Administration's policy in Vietnam. Are you advocating, as some of your critics seem to believe, unilateral withdrawal?

THOMAS: No I'm not. I do feel we had no business getting into Vietnam, but once there we do have certain responsibilities. I would not, for example, want to withdraw at the expense of allowing a subsequent massacre of those who opposed the Viet Cong – just as I was appalled to see that happen on the other side when so many alleged Communists were massacred in Indonesia earlier this year. What I'm trying to work toward is the principle that we can settle disputes like this by negotiation rather than by military action. And I do not believe the President has really tried to enter into serious negotiations. we have not, for instance, agreed to consider the Viet Cong among the chief negotiators. Nor have our two sensations of hostilities then long enough. What I propose is that the President order a cease-fire – meaning that our troops would not fire unless fired upon. It also entail, of course, an end to our bombing. As further proof of our good faith in wanting to negotiate, he should send no more troops to Vietnam. We should immediately call for a reconvening of the Geneva Conference, at which both the Viet Cong and Communist China should be present. Under the circumstances I've outlined, I think they'd attend. The resultant negotiations should allow for elections in South Vietnam under United Nations supervision. Which ever way the election turned out, we should get out of Vietnam militarily. We ought, however, to provide economic and other constructive help. We certainly owe them that.

PLAYBOY: you would be willing, then, to accept Viet Cong control over South Vietnam?

THOMAS: I would prefer a coalition government. I don't like totalitarianism. I don't like terrorism. But if the Viet Cong did win a free election in the South, I would say the Vietnamese have the right to decide their own fate. However, even under those conditions, I'm convinced that Vietnam, if left to itself under its own Communist control, would not voluntarily ally itself with either the Russian or the Chinese empires. Instead, I think we would see it become a Yugoslavian kind of state, and that would help a great deal towards the neutralization of Southeast Asia.

PLAYBOY: In terms of bringing about negotiations to end the war, how did you assess the President's escalation of bombing last July to include the oil depots at Hanoi and Haiphong?

THOMAS: It was quite a blow and certainly does not help toward achieving negotiations. Another bad sign – and this troubles me greatly – is the complete silence of the State Department and the President when Premier Ky, head of the present government of South Vietnam, continues publicly to rule out negotiations with the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front. This continued silence, this failure to contradict Ky, makes Johnson's asserted willingness to negotiate "anytime, anywhere" seem hypocritical.

PLAYBOY: Despite the escalation, do you feel it may be possible, by protesting the war as you have, to influence Administration policy in the direction of a negotiated settlement?

THOMAS: I do – and toward that end, I've been working as co-chairman, with Rev. William Sloane Coffin of Yale, of the National Voters' Pledge Campaign. It's an attempt to collect as many thousands of signed pledges as we can from people who will support and vote for candidates in 1966 who are for a settlement of the war that involves American initiatives to encourage negotiations with all the concerned parties, including the Viet Cong. The signers, moreover, pledge to back candidates who support the use of international agencies to settle disputes among nations, who support the avoidance of unilateral military intervention in the affairs of other nations, and work for the increasing use of our resources in constructive economic and social programs at home and abroad.

I consider this campaign important because it focuses on the key power the people have: political power. What I tell the young is that we're a poor sort of democratic society if we have pretty good success at demonstrating but do not use our power at the polls. That kind of power is appreciated by presidents as well as by town councilmen. Now I'm not denouncing the right to demonstrate, nor am I denouncing demonstrations. What I'm saying is that here we are, making so much fuss about people from other countries having the vote and claiming that our greatest objection to communism is the denial of the direct vote. Well, we have the direct vote, but we haven't used as impressively as we could.

PLAYBOY: How do you reconcile this kind of political approach with public opinion polls – polls that the President often cites – that indicate a large majority of the American public is in favor of the Administration's Vietnam policy?

THOMAS: If you really look at those polls and at a growing number of congressional campaigns, I think you will discover that the majority of the American public is actually in a very confused state of mind. On the one hand, they say they support present policy and the harder line Johnson has been following; but on the other hand, in recent campaigns in New York and California, among other places, Vietnam was the most important issue, and a number of candidates were vying with one another to show how implacably they opposed the Administration's policy. This took place in both the 17th and the 19th Congressional Districts in New York; and in California, although not all the peace candidates won their primary contests, several took more than 45% of the vote. In Oregon, the governor of the state, Mark Hatfield, a Republican, has been campaigning for the Senate on a platform that opposes, in large part, the Administration's approach to Vietnam. Obviously, these politicians sense a considerable degree of unrest, of confusion, among sizable sections of the electorate.

And even if I'm being overly optimistic about the immediate effects of the kind of political pressure I'm advocating, it certainly can serve a valuable educative function. What it comes down to is that if you have strong beliefs, you often have to do things even if you're not too sure they'll bring speedy results. This is one such occasion, and I hope more of the young will join us in the National Voters' Pledge Campaign, and will also organize other kinds of political activity to this end.

PLAYBOY: Do you really feel that the President can be persuaded by a minority, however vocal, to change our policy in Vietnam?

THOMAS: There's an old Puritan saying: "While the light holds out to burn, the vilest sinner still may turn." You can never give up. I cannot rule out all hope when I remember, for example, that De Gaulle got into office on a pledge to hold Algeria for France, and yet it was De Gaulle who gave Algeria its independence. And Johnson himself, for another example, was hardly a model civil rights champion as a legislator, but changed significantly in this regard once he was in office. And I do think, furthermore, that he can be reached politically. If enough of us who oppose the present Vietnam policy can make our opposition clear of the polls, it may be possible to move him in that direction.

PLAYBOY: Those of the young and you are encouraging to engage in this kind of political protest often adopt a non-exclusionary policy in terms of with whom they'll work toward these ends. They have openly stated their willingness to collaborate, for instance, with the Communists in seeking a peaceful solution to the war in Vietnam. You had some bitter experiences with Communists in the Thirties. How do you feel about this tendency of the New Left? Doesn't it leave them prey to manipulations?

THOMAS: I'm not sure, because I think we're confronted with quite different Communists today. I don't know if my Communist friends will like me for saying this, but communism – at least the orthodox Russian and the American Communist Party variety – isn't what it used to be. And that heartens me. I think it has evolved. Gus Hall, now the leader of the American Communist Party, has proclaimed, for example, that you could have a multilateral political system in the United States, and that you can have civil liberties as well. I remember very well when Communists used to seem to be eager to get practice in denying the civil liberties of their opponents– including me. But I always believed in civil liberties for them, even when they would not have allowed me mine if they had been in power. And I've always believed you don't fight communism by emulating it, by passing the Smith Act and the McCarran Act and that sort of thing: and that you don't lick Communists by the methods we're following in Vietnam and Santo Domingo. To get back to your question, I would say I don't know whether it will be dangerous for the New Left to adopt a non-exclusionary policy. I expect they're going to have to find out for themselves.

PLAYBOY: In terms of protest, several commentators have observed that today's dissident younger generation is the most militant of any since the Thirties. How do today's young rebels differ from those of your own youth?

THOMAS: As for my own youth, those of us in dissent then were rather naïve, rather innocent. We sought specific reforms would be more easily achieved than they turned out to have been. And we thought that once achieved, they'd accomplish more than they did. Women's suffrage, for example, was going to save the world. I, however, made myself quite unpopular at the time by arguing for women's suffrage on the ground that they had as much right to be wrong as we men did. But really, there was an almost messianic faith in causes when I was young. We believed in progress with a capital P. But we didn't do so much about them. I mean, in the summer we didn't work in the slums so much as we helped out at summer camps for the poor. That sort of thing.

Then came the 1930s, and the nature of dissent was, of course, quite different. There was less innocence, more bitterness, more action – but still less action by youth than one would have expected in view of the magnitude of the Depression. The Forties were the war years, and in the Fifties there was a terrible apathy in the colleges. But now, in the Sixties, we've had a real awakening and the widespread desire to participate, which I find very admirable. It's been particularly evident in the civil rights movement and also in the peace movement, although the latter was a good deal slower in getting started and never did acquire as much momentum as the civil rights thrust.

But you asked how today's youngsters are different from the dissenters of the past. Well, I'm one of those who think that the present New Left is a good deal more nihilistic than the old. If you were a leftist in the Thirties, you might not be a member of the Socialist or the Communist Party, but ideologically you would have been likely to be a Socialist or a Communist, to all intents and purposes. For the most part, the young now are not. They're not as firm, as sectarian in their ideologies. They're searching for something more than has been offered them by the older left.

PLAYBOY: You mentioned nihilism among today's young. Why does it exist?

THOMAS: It exists because today's young are very aware of how difficult it is to accomplish basic change, to achieve 100% success. They're aware of how complex the problems are, how entrenched the opposition. It's quite easy to be against a lot of things and to be ashamed of a society that permits all kinds of injustices; but as of today, it's much less easy to be certain you have the specific cures for all the ailments you attack. Our work in the Thirties went on under the shadow of at least a highly public idea that answers could be found within set frameworks. The Communists felt they had found the answers, and the Socialists were saying, "No, your way isn't the answer, but we know the right directions." All those clear-cut prophecies from one side or the other, however, it turned out to be imperfect. Russia, for instance, hasn't turned out as badly as some of us had feared. But Russia is also hardly the classless society that others had predicted. And democratic socialism hasn't exactly established a utopian society either.

And overall, there is the terrible feeling of man's capacity for irrationality. We're all afraid of nuclear war, but none of us is very successful at finding a way to prevent it. Even among people who ordinarily don't stop to think, the possibility of nuclear confrontation is a very pressing fact.

PLAYBOY: A confrontation with Russia?

THOMAS: If not with Russia, then with China. The way we were going now, it's just a question of time. I don't think China will intervene directly in Vietnam – at least not in the near future – because it doesn't feel itself ready to do so. But there is the possibility that if we continue to escalate the war, we will force them to intervene before they consider themselves prepared. In any case, if we do continue in this direction, while a confrontation with China may not take place in my lifetime, it will almost certainly during the lifetime of my grandchildren. I was shocked at a recent CBS television survey of a group of 16-year-olds and a prosperous suburb of St. Louis. The majority of them expected there would be a nuclear war in their lifetime. You see, they have accepted the unthinkable. Nobody is so sure anymore that we can even survive.

PLAYBOY: If there should be a nuclear war, what chance would there be of survival in your opinion? Do you agree with J. Robert Oppenheimer's contention that "only the greatest faith could convince us that what was left was human"?

THOMAS: I literally shudder at the prospect. There would be survivors – I can't tell you how many – but they would be in extreme physical misery. Moreover, they would be under an inconceivable sense of oppression that they belonged to a race that could practice such madness. That is why I keep saying you have to work as best you can to avert such a war, and for that I place considerable hope in the young.

PLAYBOY: What influence do you feel you have over the young in terms of moving them away from nihilism and toward more constructive action?

THOMAS: That's hard to determine. I say to audience after audience that I can always get more applause than votes. I do get very immediate response from the student audience, but I don't get an equivalent response with regard to the kinds of activities I'd like them to pursue. In general, so far, I found today's young much more militant in criticism than proposing practical alternatives – let alone in carrying them out. A lot of their protest is just "blah, blah, blah." It's good "blah," but that's all it is. You just don't say, "To hell with the bourgeoisie!" and expect anything to change. But they're beginning to learn how to plan constructive programs.

PLAYBOY: What sort of programs do you think should take priority on their list?

THOMAS: A more specific civil rights program, for one. For example, not nearly enough analysis has been done concerning the steadily dwindling opportunities for everyone, white and Negro, on the nation's farms, and the resultant dumping of these sharecroppers and farm laborers on the big cities, where there is also no work for them. We need practical plans that would help make farming a more viable occupation, and that would also do more for the emigrants to the cities than put them on welfare. Another area in which we need much more specific analyses and programs is how to bring about real integration in schools and neighborhoods. More than government action is required to this and, because it involves changing people's attitudes. I don't really have any ready answers as to how to do this, but this is the kind of activity I would like more of the young to explore.

PLAYBOY: Do you think such activities as stalling cars and spreading garbage in busy thoroughfares – both of which have been done by militant civil rights groups in New York City – help change public attitudes and promote the cause of integration?

THOMAS: That sort of thing, by not being directed specifically at those doing the discriminating, can have a harmful effect in terms of reaching and convincing the large numbers of people you want to improve conditions. I am not saying that I'm opposed to all demonstrations; I've taken part in many and have blessed many others. Human nature being what it is, demonstrations have been and will continue to be a necessary part of the struggle for civil rights. I haven't gone along with some of the more radical demonstrations, but that's in part a matter of temperament. In my old age, I think whether one resorts to moderate or radical demonstrations and programs is not altogether an either/or proposition. I don't know of any historic change that came about without a combination of very radical pressures and much less radical conduct. It comes down to this: You have to make up your own mind as to the kind of person you are. I think that I, being I, have done more in my way, however unsatisfied I am with how much I've accomplished, than I would have accomplished if I had been in the more extreme camp. However, I do have a lot of respect for the people who do take radical positions. I think we need both kinds.

PLAYBOY: You speak of the necessity of "very radical pressures" to bring about social reform. Would the current emphasis on black power fit into your definition of necessary "radical pressures"?

THOMAS: I regret this emphasis on Black Power in terms of a capital B and capital P. I don't deny that Negroes need power; but the present focus, however it may be intended by some of those using the term, appears to be on separatist power. And that is wrong. Now, I'm not making wholesale condemnations, nor do I think that advocates of this kind of Black Power speak for many people as yet. But their rhetoric can have bad results. Certainly you can explain Black Power in reassuring terms; I've been in the Church and in the Socialist Party, and I know you can explain anything away. But there are psychological effects from the use of the term that cannot be explained away.

PLAYBOY: What are the possible bad results and psychological effects that disturb you?

THOMAS: For one thing, it could lead to more rioting – probably, though not inevitably. For another, it could diminish the efforts of many Negroes toward integration in schools and housing. You already hear talk about making Harlem a "beautiful black community" and about working for "beautiful black schools." And you hear of some Negro leaders who say – though I'm not so sure they mean it, entirely, but are rather speaking for effect at meetings – that they have abandoned any belief in integration. They say, "I have no white friends." This is what disturbs me about the possible effects of Black Power – how far it will go to reject all white comradeship. You see, when the civil rights movement began, I found it rather unique as a historical development. All revolutions in the past have been a call for the replacement of one power by another. The civil rights movement started with a call for a sharing of power, for an equality of rights. But now some of the advocates of Black Power are talking of setting up another power, a separate power.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel this development may mean that Martin Luther King and his advocacy of shared power may become obsolete?

THOMAS: I'm still a great admirer of King, and I still have hope he can retain his position of leadership. Large numbers of people still respond to him. But he's got a tremendous task ahead. In some ways, he's trying to out-Gandhi Gandhi. He's trying to lead a minority as a nonviolent pressure group. Gandhi was working with the majority and he was also working against a foreign government that was already showing signs of becoming tired. And even Gandhi's work, with those advantages, did not prevent terrible outbreaks of slaughter when India was partitioned. However, I do not think King is obsolete. He still has his charisma. And he is moving toward politicalizing nonviolence. That's essential if he is to win substantial victories. If King can create enough black political power – without capital letters, without the connotation of separatism – so that he can show Negroes that power can be shared with whites, then I think the civil rights movement can continue in the direction in which it started.

PLAYBOY: But will it be possible for nonviolence to remain an integral part of the movement?

THOMAS: I hope it can continue at least as a tactic. I do not myself put absolute emphasis on nonviolence, as some do. But I certainly favor it as a strategy in the civil rights movement, because the alternative is not going to bring basic, lasting change for the better.

PLAYBOY: When you say you did not put an absolute emphasis on nonviolence, does that mean you can conceive of situations in which violence would be permissible?

THOMAS: There might be such times. It would depend on the degree of violence. A specific example I can give you is that I was for the sending of troops into Mississippi during the worst of the civil rights troubles there. I cannot conceive of police power without the possibility of violence, so in asking for troops, I knew that their going might involve some violence. That's an illustration of why I cannot always feel that nonviolence is the outstanding test of whether a given action should be taken or not. I do feel that the principle often does work – as in much of the activity of Martin Luther King – but I cannot take it as an absolute.

PLAYBOY: A few minutes ago you begin to suggest a few of the specific programs for social reform in which you wanted to encourage young people to participate. Are there any more you'd like to mention, other than in the civil rights area?

THOMAS: Yes, I also feel they should work toward more specific goals in making the War on Poverty a real war, preventing it from becoming enmeshed in machine politics, conducting hard studies on the weaknesses of programs now underway and ideas for new programs concerning job training and the providing of enough jobs after training. But above all, the young ought to consider more specific ways of changing our foreign policy, and that means becoming increasingly involved in political action such as the kind I suggested in order to bring pressure to bear on the makers of our present foreign policy. I'm not diminishing the vast importance of civil rights and of the War on Poverty when I say that the outstanding problem we face is that of finding an alternative to war before it's too late. We no longer have much time. I used to feel, "Well, I did pretty badly defeated in this particular Socialist campaign, but time is, on the whole, on our side." Well, time is no longer on our side. By our blundering, by our irrationality, by our inheritance – and I mean genetic as well as political inheritance – we are being swept along paths that are far more likely to lead to war than not to. And by war, I mean a very big war. I probably won't live to see that war, but the chances are against peace. It's easier to say that than it is to persuade people what to do about it right now.

PLAYBOY: How high would you say the odds are against peace?

THOMAS: I don't like to put it in terms of odds. I would say that if I lived on another planet and if I were a very superior type of being with extraordinary facilities for knowing just what's happening on earth, I would certainly bet that we've come close to extinguishing the human race by war. On the other hand, I wouldn't give too great odds, because I also know that the human race – with all its irrationalities and follies – has always blundered through. So far. You see, the difference is this: if I were looking from another star, I would bet the way I'd bet on a horse race. But I'm on this planet and all I've got to bet is my life. And by no means do I think the odds against peace are so hopeless that I consider it useless to keep on trying to the best of my ebbing ability to do – or to encourage the doing of – those things that may make war less likely.

PLAYBOY: Do you think it's conceivable, as some predict, that world war may turn out to be the only alternative to the communization of mankind?

THOMAS: I will grant that historically – given the nature of man and his institutions – certain wars were probably better than the only alternative to them. But a world war now is not going to be better than the only alternative, whatever that may be. Look, I might say as an individual, "Better dead than Red," but you'd have to be pretty arrogant to advocate that the whole world should say, "Better dead than Red."

PLAYBOY: You said that we are being swept toward the real possibility of war by in our inheritance, "genetic as well as political." What do you mean by our "genetic" inheritance?

THOMAS: What I mean is a recognition of about man that has made me very sober in my later years: the recognition that the long, long evolutionary process has been pretty much a matter of "tooth and claw" – although that's an inadequate and unfair total description. But there's no doubt that we've always lived under conditions of life living on life, someone else's life. There is no doubt that so-called civilization has always seemed to demand an upper-class that could build pyramids, let's say, only by exploitation of the lower class. Furthermore, there is no doubt that, beginning as little children, the destructive instinct in us is very strong. I look at kids laughing as they destroy houses they built of blocks. I once thought that sort of thing funny, but now I wonder what that capacity for delight in destruction shows about us. You know, we both love and hate war. Until recent years, I didn't realize that; but realizing it now, I feel a nuclear catastrophe is more possible than I used to want to think it was. But again I must stress that all these factors – all these irrational drives in man – do not make war inevitable. War is still politics and we come to war by making political mistakes.

PLAYBOY: Do you think peaceful coexistence with the Communist world is possible?

THOMAS: Certainly. I've never taken the position that communism is the same as diabolism or that our main function in foreign policy should be to defeat communism. I think we can coexist with Communist countries, but there are certain features of communism I think we ought to continue to protest, and to hope will be ended by evolution – for example, at this late date in Russian communism, the sending of writers to Siberia for four years because they were critical of certain aspects of Russian Communist society. I protest this. But that doesn't mean that we have to go to war with them.

On the contrary I think we can – and must – seek to broaden the détente that we were undoubtedly developing with Russia before the Vietnam War escalated. One of President Kennedy's men told me that some very hard-faced Russians came to him and said, "Don't bother too much about this neutrality business and all this disarmament. You just go along with us, be partners with us, and you'll be surprised what good partners we are." Well, even if that story were true, I wouldn't go that far. As I said to the man who told it to me, "What would happen to the other nations? They'd be merely observers, and that's not a feasible way to have world peace." But I would still work for more of a détente, and for such things as a central European zone free of nuclear weapons. In the long run, in any case, if there were not a nuclear confrontation, I'm inclined to the belief that economic developments in America and Russia will sweep both societies toward very similar types of economic control. The Russians will become more pluralistic in their economic structure than they are now, and we will become more concentrated, more planned.

PLAYBOY: Do you think this kind of economic evolution – with its softening of revolutionary belligerence – might also take place in China?

THOMAS: Yes, but it would take a longer period of time and would require that China no longer be isolated. I believe that the single greatest mistake America has made since the Second World War – and America has also done some decent things– has been our China policy, which is incomprehensibly foolish and dangerous. I don't know what would have happened if we had played the game properly, but I'm strongly of the opinion that if we had, we would see a picture in China today not too unlike the current picture we have of Russia. I mean a somewhat evolutionary development of revolution, a sloughing off of the more extreme and immediate belligerence and hate, increasing trust in other methods of survival than violence and sabotage.

PLAYBOY: With the damage already done in our relations with China, what would you do now to rectify it?

THOMAS: Well, if I were President – which my fellow citizens have taken the greatest pains to prevent – I would announce my willingness, indeed my anxiousness, to get China into the family of nations. I would propose seating China in the United Nations if she would accept the minimum that the UN Charter requires – and that's a pretty low minimum. I would also make an effort to leave the future fate of Formosa to a plebiscite to be held when peaceful relations were established between Red China and the rest of the community of nations. By that I mean I would propose that a plebiscite be held in Formosa under international supervision, so that the people of Formosa could decide if they wanted to remain independent, if they wanted to be reunited with mainland China, or if they wanted some sort of conditional reunification with the mainland.

PLAYBOY: What makes you think Red China, in view of its present intransigence, would accept any of these proposals rather than continue to foment trouble outside the United Nations and eventually try to take Formosa by force?

THOMAS: We've messed things up so much I wouldn't expect China to accept these overtures out of hand. But at least we would have made the proposal, and thereby we would stand out differently in the eyes of the world than we do now. And we would stand out differently in the eyes of the younger generation of Chinese leaders to come. You have to make a beginning, and this would be the beginning to make.

PLAYBOY: If you were President now, what would your approach be to the underdeveloped nations?

THOMAS: One thing, for sure, is that I stopped giving them second-rate military hardware. In fact, although I suppose one could conjure up an occasion when certain kinds of military aid might be necessary, I would say right now that I wouldn't give military aid at all. Nor would I give much cash, except for specific categories of development aid that would make it easier for them to become self-sufficient – development of agriculture, for example. I would, however, work for better trade relations. It's very important that they have freer trade – trade that will give them advantageous conditions. I also want more Peace Corps varieties of aid. But all of these, I must emphasize, I would like to see handled as much as possible by the United Nations. The unilateral relationship between a rich uncle and a poor nephew is not necessarily the best kind of relationship. Therefore, I would prefer to see aid generally administered by the UN, with that aid funded on the principle of the developed nations' various abilities to pay. That, of course, would involve heavy contributions by us, but the actual handling of the aid would be collective. And there ought also to be aid that would encourage world-wide birth control.

Now, I list these goals more easily than I can accomplish them. And I also recognize that you can't focus on aid without attending to certain other things simultaneously. There's no one royal road to peace. There are certain necessary prerequisites. We've got to get universal disarmament. We're no safer with the guns we've got than kindergarten children would be. We've got to get a stronger UN. We got to disabuse people of the idea that God or anybody else made America a world policeman by virtue of our own righteousness, which may be a disguise for self-interest, right or wrong. We've got to stop interfering in other people's civil wars – in Santo Domingo and Vietnam and God knows where else. That doesn't mean I think there's a sacred right for everybody to have a civil war, but when outside control is essential, it has to be exercised through a much more developed United Nations, rather than by one self-appointed policeman like the United States.

PLAYBOY: Several authorities, including economist Robert Heilbroner, believe that in order to survive, the underdeveloped countries will have to function in socialist or some other variety of collectivist framework. They add, however, that these brands of socialism are likely to be authoritarian, harsh, violent and oppressive. Do you agree?

THOMAS: Whether I like it or not, I'm afraid there's a great deal of truth in that. But I don't think one has to encourage that sort of thing. You can accept the situation as more or less inevitable and still do your best to cooperate with the kind of country building that will include the idea of individual rights. Our present world – through the processes of production and the increasing organization of society – doesn't leave too much to the individual, although he may have relative abundance in the developed countries. Therefore, it's terribly important in times like ours – and it's terribly important in countries with a socialist framework – to emphasize the fact that the state should be the servant, not the master, and that the individual's well-being involves his rights and civil liberties as well as the satisfaction of his material needs. There is no reason why socialism and democracy need be mutually contradictory. There can be socialistic economic planning that is democratically controlled.

Therefore, to be realistic – while I would have to do business, even rather friendly business, with emerging nations under one kind or another of authoritarian rule in which I didn't believe, I would also be aware that it was my job to do everything I could, by precept and example, to encourage the development of democracy and those nations. And that democracy by no means need be the same thing as our own. It could take different forms so long as individuals' rights were respected.

PLAYBOY: How totalitarian would a nation be before he would decide not to do business with it?

THOMAS: I can't give you an absolutist answer. I don't know. We are in the kind of world in which we don't have clear-cut choices about what governments to support or not to support. We would have to feel our way and allow ourselves considerable flexibility in our foreign policy. That does not mean, however, that when it's a matter of a new government trying to form itself we should, as we have done too often in the past, give our support to forces of the right that we know to be authoritarian, as against a revolutionary independence movement, on the grounds that we fear the latter would mean a Communist takeover. Certainly we run the risk in supporting new revolutionary governments; they may turn totalitarian but when we side with the forces of the old order from the beginning we actually help communism by exacerbating legitimate discontent and by pushing rebels who are not presently Communists into underground alliances with extremist groups that will continue to try to gain power and may eventually succeed in a form that will indeed be authoritarian.

PLAYBOY: If Heilbroner's thesis increasingly proves to be correct, what kind of world do you think will have for the rest of the century if most of the underdeveloped nations, socialist though they may be economically, are also authoritarian, no matter what we may do to inculcate the principles of democracy?

THOMAS: I wish I knew. I fear it would be a world I wouldn't like very much. Admittedly, I take a very dim view. Consider Africa, for example. I don't think it's possible for the multitude of states now in Africa to exist healthily, and I'm afraid that instead of the African federation that I had hoped for as the great goal of these African states, there will be amalgamation by conquest by one or another acquisitive African nation, and this troubles me very much. It seems as if the threat of Nkrumah in this regard is now removed, but knowing human nature, it's very possible that someone like him may arise. I still believe men have a capacity to respond to lessons from the past and that perhaps this capacity can be developed in Africa, and developed more quickly than we think. Perhaps the jump they want to make in terms of material well-being may also bring about a jump in the other satisfactions of the individual; I mean his opportunity to be an individual. But I don't think the recent history of Africa is too encouraging in this respect.

PLAYBOY: In the developed countries, particularly in America, do you feel that the growth of our material well-being has increased or diminished those other satisfactions of the individual you mentioned? Some sociologists are convinced that there's been a change for the worse in the quality of American life during the past 50 years, that we've become a cold, self-seeking, materialistic society.

THOMAS: I think it's too easy to generalize about that kind of assertion. You can get facts that will support almost any generalization, including a generalization that would compliment the American people for their generosity, for the way they respond to certain national challenges. I'm tremendously impressed, for example, with a number of things public and private agencies are ready to do for the blind. Now that's a small illustration, but I think it's part of the good side, the humane, compassionate side of America. Even now, there is a sort of wishing among most Americans that we didn't have to do what we think we have to do in Vietnam. These quick comparisons between the quality of American life now and 50 years ago are easier to postulate than to prove.

PLAYBOY: According to such social critics as Paul Goodman, the majority of Americans, instead of striving to retain their individuality, are being dehumanized, becoming personnel rather than people. And these commentators predict that as cybernation increases and society becomes more and more linked to machines, this depersonalization will continue to grow. Is there any conflict between your kind of socialism and the call of Goodman to decentralize, to make more individual decision-making possible before it's too late?

THOMAS: Yes and no. Yes, it's not going to be easy to have the kind of socialism that will allow for real individual decision making. But on the other hand, I would respectfully differ from some of these writers who are so alarmed. I don't by any means think that our present technology and our present ways of making a living are so disastrous to the individual. To start with, they're something you can't escape. And I don't know how helpful it is to make large, gloomy assumptions about where they're taking us. I've never believed that there was an Eden from which the individual was driven by General Motors. I'm more inclined to the doctrine that human life was always, as Thomas Hobbes put it, short, brutal and nasty. It was sort of a sorrow to me when I came to that belief.

PLAYBOY: To what extent do you feel that human life is still short, brutal and nasty?

THOMAS: Well, I don't think it's gotten worse. But certainly, as of right now, two thirds of the world's population live on the edge of starvation. For them, Hobbes' description still holds true. And even others who are not close to starving still act with brutality. Why? Part of the answer, I expect, is just that as there is a sizable amount of innate irrationality in man, so there is also innate brutality. I'm reminded again of recent events in Indonesia. There was no real formal fighting to speak of, but the reaction to the attempted Communist coup against the government led to the killing of upward of 300,000 alleged Communists in cold blood. What kind of humanity is that?

But again, I don't feel hopeless about man. We have wiped out many of the cruelties of the past. Consider all the crimes to which capital punishment applied in England at the turn of the century. We no longer kill people for stealing, and we've come a long way in parts of the world toward abolishing capital punishment on any ground. And now, with increasingly efficient technology, we can produce enough so that we have the resources to prevent starvation around the world. In that basic materialistic sense, man – if we apply those resources to the underdeveloped nations – need no longer live under the Hobbesian description of life. As for the innate brutality of man, that's something we will have to keep on trying to transcend. I can't give you any specific prescriptions in that regard. That's another area to which the young will have to apply themselves.

But to get back to your question about men being in danger of becoming dehumanized and less free, I don't think one ought to romanticize the past. I can remember when William McKinley was President, and I'm not sure the individual was so free then either. For one thing, every man was pretty much bound by his own biases, his racial and religious biases. He's less bound by those now. I'll admit that there are dangers for the future, but on the other hand, I don't think you can go back. You can't go back to the more prosperous of the New England villages surrounded by farms and containing a hundred-odd artisan industries. There were such villages, and the people in them lived relatively happy lives, but their kind of life didn't by any means describe the so-called civilized world at that time. And suppose it had, it's impossible to return. We're too far advanced in the way we produce by concentration and by specialization. We've just got to go on. You have to have centralized controls if you want enough water to drink, if you want air fit to breathe, if you want to encourage the control of population that individuals must practice. I find some of those writers who lament present trends to be much more interesting as dreamers than as thinkers who can give us practical answers.

PLAYBOY: But under socialism, are there ways by which decentralization and more individual decision making could be made possible?

THOMAS: There are if you could wake people up to wanting them. But one of the discouragements of my life is how difficult it's been to do that. I'm a great believer in cooperation, and I've been interested in types of cooperation that haven't been very successful in America. I give credit, for instance, to many labor leaders; but when you come right down to it, it's surprising how few union members take the time to vote in union elections. You can utter ringing indictments about what the individual is being deprived of, and you can make inspirational statements about what the individual needs. But how many individuals can you get involved in doing something about it? Sometimes I think our progress has been miniscule, but other times I think it's been surprisingly good in view of the limited number of people who care. The average person does want democracy as against tyranny. He doesn't want to be shoved around too much. But he doesn't want participatory democracy in the sense that he has to become involved in some of the difficult problems. That's how the Communists used to get as far as they did years ago. At meetings, they'd wait until everyone else had been worn out or had left and then they were able to control the vote. We have to recognize how relatively few people want to get involved.

PLAYBOY: Why don't they, in your opinion?

THOMAS: Laziness, for one thing. There seems to be an innate predisposition in many people to take the easy way out, to avoid spending time in hard work and long discussionsm to be impatient with piecemeal progress.

PLAYBOY: How do you get more people involved?

THOMAS: Part of the fault lies with many of us who are on fire with an idea but who need training and self discipline communicating that fire to others. Too many radicals are better at communicating among themselves – although they fight awfully hard – than they are at communicating with the unconverted. There are people I love and respect who have almost a genius for boring or antagonizing audiences. Also there must be ways to shake up magazines and newspapers and television and radio in the direction of getting people interested in issues unrelated to their own self-interest, and in becoming active in solving them. How one does that I cannot tell you, and once again, I say this is something the young must work on. The basic thing is that a really active democracy involves responsibility as well as privilege, but how were going to convince many more people of that I don't know.

PLAYBOY: Even if more people did become involved, wouldn't their efforts – under your kind of planning of the economy and of society – lead to bigger and bigger government, less and less of a voice for the individual? In your view, how big should government be?

THOMAS: I still believe we have to have a very strong government – a government that does more, not less, than our government is doing now. And that goes double for the federal government, partly because of the way our states have been carved out without reference to economic realities. On principle, however – and I know this will sound terribly inconsistent – I also believe that government ought to do as little as possible. But the question now is to define what only government can do, and what only the federal government can do. I'd much rather that changes came naturally and locally than having to be imposed by government. It would have been much better if the expansion of civil rights had been a natural development in localities, growing out of the warmth of people's hearts or their hatred of bias. But it didn't. We had to get action by the Federal government. There simply wasn't that much warmth in people's hearts or that much hatred of bias.

Recently I had occasion to discuss these matters with Robert Welch, head of the John Birch Society, who told me that our great enemy is centralized government. He went on to say that he and his father and his brothers had built a two-mile road in North Carolina, and wasn't that much nicer than having to depend on the government to do it? But imagine that kind of road building as a substitute for federal highways. I also asked Mr. Welch what he thought about the draft when he worried about centralized government. It seems to me there is no greater denial of civil liberties than when a state is so powerful that it can take a man, and regardless of his personal convictions, moral or otherwise, order him to go out and kill. Oh, said Mr. Welch, the Birch Society was all for the draft. Now, that's fantastic. That's another example of why I'm more and more inclined to the conviction that any philosopher has to take into account the sometimes breathtaking irrationality of man.

PLAYBOY: Are there any current functions of the federal government you think could be handled on a state or local level?

THOMAS: To give you an intelligent answer, I'd have to spend a lot of time researching. As of the moment, I can't give you any illustrations in view of both my concept of what needs to be done and of the alternatives to having the federal government do it. The federal government simply had to step into the over-all problem of education, for example, because of the inequitable distribution of wealth in this country. You can't expect some regions to furnish proper education all on their own. They don't have the resources.

PLAYBOY: How concerned are you about the attenuation of civil liberties under bigger and bigger government as technology makes possible evermore sophisticated surveillance and eavesdropping devices, and as computers make complete dossiers feasible on virtually the entire population?

THOMAS: I don't see why you talk only of the all seeing, all hearing government without adding the all seeing, all hearing corporation. I get very sore at the young people I see in colleges and elsewhere – and older people, to – who talk as if the only thing we have with concentrated power is the United States government. You've got a General Motors that earns a bigger income than any nation except the United States, Russia, England and France, as I remember the statistics. They have an awesome degree of control over their employees – and over the economy. So if you're going to talk about the relation of the individual to the collectivity, you got to talk about a lot more than government, and you've got to recognize that you're not going to smash down undue controls by great corporations unless you have a pretty strong central government.

PLAYBOY: Whether the concentrated power resides in government or in big business, or in both, do you feel there is reason for increased concern about civil liberties in the decades ahead?

THOMAS: There has to be, and it will come – but belatedly, just as the concern for civil rights finally came. Now, I don't want you to think I believe we've cured all the evils that cursed us so long in the field of civil rights, but we have developed a conscience that I wouldn't have expected to develop. And it still seems to be moving ahead. Now, as for civil liberties – freedom from what the state can do to you – we've made progress there, too. And although I feel that we will have to become even more concerned with civil liberties, I'm not ready to predict that technology and concentration of power will inevitably cripple civil liberties. Here again, it's a question of whether we can get enough people involved with the problem. Furthermore, when you talk about the possible dangers of growing technology and the kind of rationalization of government that comes with it, you also have to take into account the benefits that come with these developments.

PLAYBOY: Do you expect that the benefits of technology will outweigh the dangers?

THOMAS: I think the benefits can offset the dangers. Take the potential of television to make possible a wider dissemination of intelligence and understanding. Yes, I know, it doesn't do nearly as much as it could, but if you remember, it was television that defeated McCarthy by focusing on the way he conducted those hearings in which he was investigating the Army. Granted, it's easier to talk about what television can do than is to see what it's done, but I'm talking here about potential benefits. And certainly a major benefit from technology is increased abundance – of food, clothes, housing, all kinds of things. You see, I'm still materialist enough to compare where we are now economically – and where technology can take us – with the kind of poverty and the limitations it imposed that characterized the lives of a lot of Americans in the past. I looked, for instance, that what two groups – the Jews and the Japanese-Americans – have accomplished in America. I don't think they were happier when they first came here as immigrants, living under the conditions of immigrants, then they are now the welfare state, even though our welfare state still leaves a lot to be desired. I think that in this case time will be somewhat on our side. As we solve more of our economic problems, and if we are able to control the concentration of political power, I think we may be able to solve these problems of insufficient individual decision making, dangers to civil liberties and the like.

PLAYBOY: As you say, the welfare state is still imperfect, and considerable poverty continues to exist in this country. A growing number of economists believe that the key to solving that problem is a guaranteed annual income for everyone. Do you agree?

THOMAS: First of all, I do not accept the notion that, because of cybernation, there will soon be so many unemployed that there will be nothing to do but provide a guaranteed income from the rich poppa, the United States government, for everyone, whether he works or not. I think the thing to do as of now is to create jobs wherever you honorably can. A real attack on the slums would create an immense number of jobs. So with much greater emphasis on human service jobs and on jobs that would come with a greater expansion and deepening of education. However, there will also be people who will nonetheless need help because they cannot work or because they cannot earn enough doing what they do. And here is where what has been called the negative income tax makes sense. By that I mean supplanting our troublesome welfare system with government grants to raise individual incomes up to a minimum standard. Of course, I probably think any minimum set would be too low, but that would be a beginning toward a time when everyone might automatically have a guaranteed annual wage – whether they could prove they needed it or not. But I remain in some ways a creature of the Protestant ethic and therefore do not think that the great majority of mankind would be blessed by getting rid of the necessity of taking part in the necessary work of the world on some terms in order to live. So my emphasis at present is on creating worthwhile jobs.

PLAYBOY: Many people feel that, whether we have a guaranteed annual income for the poor or not, President Johnson is so progressive in his domestic program that there is no longer any real need for an organized opposition on the left. Do you agree?

THOMAS: On the contrary, I don't think that the opposition on the left is strong enough. You must know that what Johnson has done has been consistent with a society that protects the fundamental economic structure. Nobody has done anything about the private ownership of natural resources. Nobody has done anything about Texas oil reserves and the taxation on them that favors the oil owners to the prejudice of the rest of society. And by natural resources I don't mean only oil. I mean everything below the ground: all the sources of fuel of energy. We must have those under democratic government ownership, because there is only a limited supply of them. We can't have private ownership using them up indiscriminately. And furthermore, nobody has done much about the rather monstrous doctrine of inherited wealth. Yes it's taxed, but much of it can be passed on.

PLAYBOY: What's so monstrous about the doctrine of inherited wealth? Don't people have the right to transfer their gains, if they haven't been ill-gotten, to their heirs? As it is, the taxes now on inherited wealth appear to many to be confiscatory.

THOMAS: But what is it that is passed on nowadays? Usually it's shares of stocks and maybe bonds. They represent a continuing and indefinite claim on another man's labor. The dead man isn't working any longer. You can say that Andrew Carnegie, for one example, made possible the expansion of an important industry, steel, and so his gains were not ill-gotten. But since his death, his heirs have not participated in the building and expansion of the industry. Let me put it another way. Suppose years ago a man broke the record for the hundred yard dash. After his death, his son comes to the track authorities and says, "Well, I've inherited my father's record." He'd hardly be entitled to it, would he? What I'm saying is that wealth is a social product, and after a man dies, his wealth should be redistributed in the society, taking due account of the needs of dependent widows and children.

So, as I say, these fundamental issues have not been tackled under the Johnson consensus. And I'm not so sure that consensus will be able to last indefinitely. You'll notice the consensus that we're so rich we can provide enough bread and circuses to keep everybody quiet – without changing the fundamental economic structure– isn't going quite so well now. Organized labor and Johnson aren't quite the chums they used to be.

PLAYBOY: In addition to the criticisms you've voiced, how do you assess President Johnson's vision of the Great Society?

THOMAS: His vision isn't exactly 20-20. He makes me feel, in the way he speaks about it, like I'm back in the Church for sure. Such noble ethics, not too eloquently expressed, and so curiously out of line with the limited program that he advances. I think he's sincere, just as I think the clergyman I used to listen to were sincere. But they weren't extraordinarily helpful, and he hasn't been so far, either. Although his overall concept of the Great Society is rather vague and not adequately implemented by anything he has proposed, he has been specific about a few things. He has been more specific on civil rights than any of his predecessors. And whatever criticisms I've had to make of it, he is tried some specific approaches in his War on Poverty. So, except for Johnson's foreign policy, I'm inclined to say there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who has repented than over 99 of the just who needed no repentance.

PLAYBOY: What would be your definition of a Great Society?

THOMAS: I wouldn't define it. I'd try to describe it. I'd describe a society in which it was possible for men to be themselves after having had the educational opportunity to bring out the best in themselves. It would be a society in which men could live up to their own standards of the good life – and of behavior– and yet live together in principles of brotherhood and cooperation. And on an international basis, there would be an end to the anarchy of military nationalism. There must be a better religion than the religion of nationalism. The clash of nations has always been a much more significant – and destructive – factor in modern history than the clash of classes. And it is not communism but nationalism, I am inclined to think, that is really the prevailing religion in Russia and China. From this comes the absolute necessity, I must stress again, of a much more developed United Nations. There is also the absolute necessity of conservation of natural resources for the common good; and the absolute necessity – if you want a really great society– of the operative concept that production should be for the use of all and that the sharing of that production must be a far more equitable basis than exists now; and, of course, the absolute necessity of ending the doctrine and practice of race superiority. In the field of education, I would do many of the things Johnson is doing, but I hope better. And I believe that fundamentally, many other problems would have to be attacked with a zeal he is not shown: the problem of facilitating birth control and teaching people how to use it; and the problem of ownership of natural resources. That's where I begin my extension of public ownership, by the way. How to work these things out? I keep going on but I look to the young to find ways of implementing these answers and to find answers for the questions that remain.

PLAYBOY: When you speak of ownership of natural resources, you are, of course, advocating one element of both socialism and communism. Do you still feel that when you speak of socialism today, there are sizable numbers of people who equate it with communism?

THOMAS: Yes, but I'm not too bothered about it. The doctrine still prevails among many that the way you get authoritarian social control is to permit any social control, even over the great corporations. From that grew such ludicrous fallacies as the one in the Birch Society is dedicated to: that the growth of the welfare state is a growth toward communism. Actually, a democratically controlled welfare state is probably the only alternative to communism.

PLAYBOY: Why?

THOMAS: In the long run, with more and more people and with problems that are more and more complicated, the welfare state is the best way – if it is under democratic control – by which poverty can be ended and people can have the chance to realize their capacities. You could have a kind of welfare state in which only a few people at the top would be making the decisions; but that wouldn't be American-style democracy. That would be like a quasi-benevolent dictatorship. Also I do not conceive of a democratically controlled welfare state only in the sense of it doing something for people. I mean the kind of welfare state in which people would decide for themselves what ought to be done, in which people would continue to participate in the democratic process, but to a much greater degree than they do now in this country – which is, after all, in part a welfare state. Laissez-faire capitalism can't work in the context of the complexity of today's problems. What I want to see are more fundamental changes in ownership of such things as natural resources and more people actively involved in policymaking or the welfare state. The other route is towards some kind of authoritarianism. That's what I mean when I say my kind of socialism is a movement away from communism, and that allows for both economic planning and democracy.

PLAYBOY: But in view of the diversified and changing nature of communism today, it is still possible to make clear distinctions between socialism and communism?

THOMAS: It's less easy than it used to be. In America right now, for example the real hot-fire communists aren't in the Communist Party. They're in the Chinese-style Progressive Labor Party. And they talk contemptuously about traditional communism, the way the old-style Communists used to talk about socialism. So, to start with, it's harder now to define what communism is.

PLAYBOY: In terms of Norman Thomas socialism, however, how would you distinguish between socialism and communism, traditional and Chinese-oriented?

THOMAS: Basically, in terms of civil liberties, individual rights. Democratic socialists are very much concerned with that. Communists are not. I abominate the whole idea of totalitarianism, the whole idea, that's the business of the state to try to impose standards, even in art. I may be a square myself, but it isn't the business of the state to object to abstract painting – or to any other kind of expression, however far out or unpopular. That's a very dangerous business. Just because you need a strong state to see that the hungry don't stay hungry, that the air isn't terribly polluted, it's all the more important to remember that the state has no business doing the kinds of things the Communists have done to their own peoples and have tried to do to others.

PLAYBOY: Despite your differences with Communist doctrine, you've written that you accept Marx' stress on "the evils of the profit motive." What's so evil about the profit motive?

THOMAS: It twists peoples values. You know like: "My son, whatever you do, make money – honestly, if possible." The profit motive also tends to magnify the less valuable forms of work, because they happen to be the most profitable for many people. An example is the tendency of bright young men to rush into certain careers – advertising, Wall Street and the like – because they feel that's where the most money is. By my criteria, there are more socially valuable ways of making a living: teaching, warring on the slums, warring on poverty, among them. And the profit motive has led to a shameful waste of our natural resources. The history of the clearing of forests in America has been pretty outrageous.

On the other hand I don't think it possible or even desirable to eliminate all considerations of financial gain, of material comfort. I think the profit motive does energize society to a considerable extent: but I would like to see more people view it in a proper perspective, so that it isn't the end-all of their endeavors. And when the profit motive becomes contrary to the social good – as in the razing of our forests – I would like to see it under proper controls. We have been able to regulate it to some extent by graduated taxes and by the pressure of organized labor for larger shares of its fruits. But no nation has yet found a perfect formula – within the democratic process – for retaining enough of the profit motive to keep the economy energized without also having the values of many of the people in the community distorted by it.

PLAYBOY: Along with Marx, many Socialists used to believe that the working class would be the primary agent of social change. In view of the relative conservatism of organized labor today, and the concern of most of the rank-and-file with their own security, is there still any justification for this kind of faith in the working class?

THOMAS: I'd like to say there is, and I keep hoping there is, but my hope grows fainter. The working class in America is middle-class in practically every respect. As soon as labor gets well organized, it gets fairly comfortable. The one respect in which the working class is still lives in concerns the right to strike. Therefore, you have a very interesting clash of two principles right now. One is the right of every man to stop working if the conditions under which is working are objectionable to him. The maintenance of that right requires organization, a union. The other is the right of a society, constituted as our society now is, to keep in continuous service a certain rather limited number of operations lest the society be strangled. And I look for lots of trouble to come in the clash of those conflicting rights.

PLAYBOY: Do you think labor should have the unlimited right to strike, even if that means crippling an industry, a city or, if James Hoffa moves to pull all the Teamsters out on a nationwide basis, a country?

THOMAS: I think labor's right to strike ought to be limited, but the limitations should be as few as possible. The criterion should not be whether the work is being done for the state or the city as against private industry. The criterion should be the immediacy of harm done by a particular strike – a strike that would shut down electric power, for example; a strike by firemen. There are certain services, not too many, in which a strike would cause such harm that it ought not to be permitted. I wouldn't include the recent air strike, but I suppose your example of a nationwide Teamster strike might fall into that category.

I'm not smart enough to figure out how you're going to resolve this problem. Passing a law won't accomplish it by itself. The goal is to make workers in these few key industries accept the fact that part of the job condition is the loss of the expectation of striking as a bargaining weapon. In return, however, they must be given guarantees that their wages and fringe benefits will not fall below the levels in comparable industries in which the right to strike is not thus limited. These must be very firm guarantees. In any case, this conflict about labor's right to strike is not the kind of class conflict that Marx envisioned. As I said, it's only on this issue that labor remains really militant. And this dilution of labor's down-the-line militancy has been one of the greatest disappointments in my life.

PLAYBOY: If Marx was wrong, and the working class is not going to be the vanguard of action for social change, who is?

THOMAS: That's the problem. Marx was wrong in this respect and in the others I mentioned, and as a result, what once seemed to be a foreordained process that would fundamentally change society turns out not to be inevitable at all. What makes me pessimistic now, in answer to your question, is that we have not found a substitute for the working class as an agent of change.

PLAYBOY: In discussing this problem in his book The Accidental Century, Michael Harrington, one of the younger leaders of the Socialist Party, adds that we also can't expect the poor to act as that agent, because historically they've never been able to sufficiently organize themselves. Nor, he points out, are there enough Negroes to expect the civil rights movement to turn into a movement for basic social and economic change. Do you agree?

THOMAS: There are not only enough Negroes but there is also, as I see it, no particular evidence that they want to go in that direction. But this I may be wrong about. As for the poor, the trouble is that a large part of the radical struggle has been to abolish poverty. And the more poverty is abolished, you remove the source of potential activists for the kind of changes that will affect who directs our lives, who has power. You've put your finger on something that troubles me greatly. I'm driven back to the old religious doctrine about righteous remnants and the elect. I find myself thinking that if 10 righteous men were able to save Sodom and Gomorrah, we can certainly find more than ten today. I exaggerate, but you catch the point of view.

PLAYBOY: But is much social change still needed?

THOMAS: I don't feel as much change is needed as I did in 1932, nor must it happen as fast as I used to think necessary – except in foreign-policy. In 1932, I honestly believed not only that capitalism was immoral – and I still think that to be pretty much the case – but I also believe it couldn't avert depressions of the terrible magnitude of that time.

PLAYBOY: Why you still believe capitalism to be immoral?

THOMAS: Our society prospers on the basis that hasn't too much to do with real equality or justice; we can simply produce so much that were able to keep them also protest fairly silent with bread and considerable portions of cake. Capitalism also makes it possible for people to yield so easily to the temptation of going after personal gain regardless of the consequences. For instance, it wasn't any essential viciousness in the drug industry that led to the kind of conditions that the late Senator Kefauver exposed – high administered prices and insufficient controls on the efficacy and potential danger of new drugs. Rather, it was that exuberant, excessive emphasis on profits that is endemic to capitalism. Or look at the province that had been made in slum real estate. We are now paying the price for the pernicious explication of land by congestion.

PLAYBOY: But in this country, even though it is become partly a welfare state, capitalism remains deeply embedded in the economic structure. Aren't you, as a Socialist, stuck with that fact of life?

THOMAS: Yes, capitalism will be a basic element in the economic structure here for a long time to come. But don't forget that capitalism has been substantially altered in recent years. It has had to submit to a degree of taxation and other controls, both from government and labor, that I would never have thought possible in my gloomier moments 20 years ago. Therefore, I think that this modified form of capitalism, if it accepts larger doses of the welfare state, can probably avoid the terrible kind of depression we had in the Thirties and can also avoid social revolution in our country, at least for quite a while to come.

PLAYBOY: As an elder statesman of the American left, how do you assess the cumulative impact on this country of your own work for change during the past 60 years?

THOMAS: I wish I knew. I'm reluctant to speculate out loud. I came to the conclusion that the only thing I could do was to plod ahead, just to do what seemed to me to be best and to wish I were omniscient about what the best thing might be. And wish I were powerful at accomplishing it. In any case I do think I've done enough to warrant my continuing to work. There's been accomplishment, for instance, in the field of civil liberties. I don't mean that this has been a Herculean one-man performance on my part, but I've been associated with groups and with points of view that have really accomplished something for civil liberties in America. Admittedly, it's been an uneven development, but I think civil liberties now have reached a fairly high point, as compared with the past. I've been involved with civil rights, too, and in the courts we have reached a stage of recognition that I wouldn't have prophesies 10, 20, 30 years ago. That's the sort of progress that keeps me encouraged.

PLAYBOY: You mentioned civil liberties first. Why have you devoted so much of your time and energy to this cause over the years?

THOMAS: Because civil liberties are at the core of democracy. The actual forms of democracy may change; a parliament, for instance, is not essential to democracy. But the right of the individual to criticize the state and not be penalized for it is essential to any real democratic society area and it is this concept we have to try to spread throughout the world by our example.

PLAYBOY: What about the Socialist Party? How much has it accomplished under your leadership?

THOMAS: That's another one of those questions that PhD candidates will be writing about for a long time. You can't go into laboratory and try it all over again, you know. You have to guess what cause produced what effect. Having said that, I think, yes, the Socialist Party has very definitely been an influence. All major influence I can tell you, and I doubt that anyone else can, either. But it had a very direct and growing influence in this country under Eugene Debs in the earlier part of the century and again during the initial years of the Depression. I think it ceased to have an equivalent influence when Franklin Roosevelt incorporated so many of its immediate demands in his program. Now, you can argue that he would've done those things even if there had been no Socialists. But I don't think it's unreasonable to think we had quite an influence, for example, on the men who provided him with ideas, men whose work led to the present welfare state, such as it is, and to the unlikelihood that we will ever again have anywhere near as severe a depression as we had in the Thirties.

PLAYBOY: What have been your major disappointments is the leading advocate socialism in this country for so many years?

THOMAS: Failure, of course. Defeat. I wasn't running for President for my health. Oh, I never expected to be elected, but I was trying as best I could to build a strong democratic socialist party, which would have been a very useful thing to have around. Now, I don't say the Socialist Party is dead. It isn't, but it's not living in the state of health and growth I'd like to see it in. That, of course, is my main failure. Another major failure – and it's the failure of all of us – has been the inability to establish a peaceful world after two World Wars. I count that a personal as well as a societal failure. Two World Wars, mind you, in which at least the better side won – which isn't always saying too much – and look where we are now. But these failures have left me in despair, by any means. I work now with considerable difficulty because I have a lot of handicaps. But I keep working, because I like it. I'm not bestowing any allocated on myself. Work is my pleasure. I don't want to retire to Florida. To be sure, I might not be doing as much as I try to do now if I weren't so afraid for the peace of the world.

PLAYBOY: Are there any major stands you've taken in the past that now regret?

THOMAS: Well, I wouldn't have started my life in the Church, as a minister, feeling the way I do now. But since I believed very sincerely at the time, I'm not sorry I began that way, and I did learn from it.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel now about religion?

THOMAS: It's hard for me to say, even to myself. I'm not primarily a philosopher, but I find it difficult not to think there is some place where reason and design in the extraordinary development of the universe. My trouble with faith in Christianity is that, as I understand Christianity – at least the kind with which I was quite happy when I was young – it's based on a belief in him all-powerful and all-loving God. That doesn't quite add up for me anymore. It just hasn't been borne out by what I've seen of the world.

PLAYBOY: Do you still believe in God?

THOMAS: There was a time when I used to say I was sort of a wistful agnostic, but I'd go a little further than that now. I can't get rid of the idea that there is a pattern in the universe, but I no longer believe this pattern, this force, is either all-powerful or all-loving. Nor am I sure I would call it God.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the concept, increasingly influential among some Christian theologians, of "situational ethics" – the idea that there are no absolute guidelines for conduct, that any authentic decision must come spontaneously from one's inner sense of what a particular situation demands?

THOMAS: I think, to begin with, that situational ethics is part of the need among certain churchmen to demythologize Christianity, to make it more relevant to the world as it is now. As a philosophy, it seems to me it can serve either as a means of rationalization and self liberation – if you're not honest with yourself in each instance – or it can be a liberating force. In terms of sex, I would say that by my criteria, a deep affection should be present whether you call what you do situational ethics or whatever. As for the overall concept, I have no right to be too critical of it, because my own positions are not absolutist. We live in a wonderful, strange, beautiful, horrible kind of world. We can make it more beautiful and less horrible by the way we conduct ourselves in relation to each other. After all, our greatest sufferings are caused by ourselves. We must develop that side of ourselves which realizes this and which can move toward greater human fraternity. Now, as regards specific decisions in the world as it is, it is very difficult to always apply the highest standard of ethics. The best you can do is to seek the light and admire those who are bolder than you in trying out – in good faith – such concepts as situational ethics. But that doesn't mean you have to go along with them all the time.

PLAYBOY: In addition to starting in the Church, are there any other beliefs or positions you've taken that you now regret?

THOMAS: The one major stand in the past that bothers me a great deal is how sorry I ought to be that I opposed our getting into the Second World War. I was no isolationist, but I was terribly down on war. I had very little confidence in the Allies. I'd been through the experience of the Spanish Civil War and I was pretty cynical about the possibility of anything good coming out of the slaughter that was to come. And I was pretty sure civil liberties would be crushed – partly on the precedent of what happened during the First World War and partly on my general knowledge of human nature. Well, civil liberties weren't crushed, and Hitler was stopped. When I look back now at how hard I worked to keep us out, I'm still not sure if I was right or wrong. But I'm sorry I'm not sure if I was right or wrong.

PLAYBOY: Are there any other stands you' ve taken that you now disavow?

THOMAS: No. But I'd say maybe I was mistaken about this or that, or maybe I could've done this or that better. For example, I was very active in the early days of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a nondenominational pacifist group. Later, and believe me, with considerable sorrow, I had to admit I was no longer as near an absolute pacifist as I had been. And therefore, I was no longer is active in the F.O.R. I'm sorry it happened, but I'm not disavowing either my earlier position or the one I came to take.

PLAYBOY: At this point in time, what political advice would you give to the dissident young, both within the Socialist Party and outside of it? Do you continue to advocate what in essence has been your lifelong approach: gradually influencing the majority? Or do you feel there is no longer enough time for gradualism?

THOMAS: Well, time works both ways. True, we don't have much time in terms of avoiding a nuclear confrontation, but the question is whether a radical approach might not lose us what time we have left. Let me explain it in this way. I would be much more emphatic about pressing for a much more radical program if I thought that being radical would win us the time for peace that we must have. But to have some influence on those who are in a position to avert war, you've got to get into the mainstream of American life. Otherwise we're lost. Therefore, your tactics have to take that necessity into account.

Now, in order to get into the mainstream, I don't think you have to believe what everybody in the mainstream believes. But you have to propose programs that will reach large numbers of people. For instance – and this almost literally keeps me awake nights – how do you best stop the war in Vietnam? I believe that you have a much better chance of accomplishing the end result – withdrawal – by advocating proper negotiations than by simply saying, "Let's get out." In that way you can get the ears of large numbers of people.

PLAYBOY: There are those in the New Left who would consider that to be a "liberal's" approach and might therefore judge you as being insufficiently militant – a failing you've been accused of before from time to time. Twenty years ago, critic Dwight Macdonald wrote: "My objection to Norman Thomas can be put briefly: He is a liberal, not a socialist. A socialist, as I use the term anyway, is one who is taken the first simple step at least of breaking with present-day bourgeois society… Thomas' role has always been that of left opposition within the present society." How would you define the difference between yourself and a Roosevelt-Stephenson-Kennedy kind of liberal?

THOMAS: To begin with, I'd say I did just as well at breaking away from bourgeois society as Dwight Macdonald ever did. Even at the time he wrote those words, I didn't see him doing anything very extraordinary in the direction he advocates. I never said I was going to break with the society in the sense of my becoming either a religious or a political St. Francis. I wanted to show that it is possible to develop within society the forces that would bring about the changes I wanted. And I have no apologies and no regrets concerning the course of action. In other words, I think you have to pretty well accept certain things in life and then try to change what needs to be changed. That's the kind of emphasis I've always made. As for me personally, I have never denied – on the contrary, I've always affirmed – that I was extraordinarily fortunate in the lottery of life. I drew good tickets. To start with, reasonably good health. And even though I rejected a good many of their beliefs, I wasn't even mad at my parents. Not that I know of. Of course, the psychiatrists could probably show me that I was. I was very happy in my marriage. I've lived in New York and therefore rarely face the dangers that many civil rights workers and others have faced elsewhere. I'd known that and acknowledged it. But at this point I'm not much interested in Macdonald's judgment of the kind of radical I've been. I've done what I considered I could best accomplish, given the kind of person I am.

PLAYBOY: In recent years, have you been at all uneasy about having become a "respectable" socialist? Has all the gentle attention you've been getting lately in the mass media made you wonder if you haven't stopped getting through in terms of ideology, that you may have a common example of how, as one commentator put it, "America absorbs dissent without really listening to it"?

THOMAS: Yes, that worries me. I'm not dangerous now; and the Socialist Party isn't dangerous now, I'm sorry to say. I remember a verse in the Bible that says: "Woe unto you when all men speak well of you." But on the whole, I'm happy to say, all men haven't spoken well of me, even lately. I now live with a daughter in Huntington, Long Island, and a Republican councilman in that township recently introduced a resolution of condemnation against me because I had attended and spoken at one of those peace marches on Washington. I cherish that condemnation. However, uneasy as I am at being spoken to well of by too many men, I don't feel I'm obliged to go out and smash somebody's window to prove that I'm not respectable.

PLAYBOY: Several times during this interview, you spoken of yourself as having failed, and yet you don't act as if you really feel your past and present work is been futile. Is "failure" the word you actually mean?

THOMAS: Let me put it this way: I've never been alienated, to use the currently fashionable term applied by some writers to many of the young. True, I haven't done all I wanted to do in life, but I have tried, and I've had satisfaction in the trying. I've always felt, and still do, that the best alternative to alienation, or whatever you want to call it, is to get busy and keep busy, on the thesis that since we've been able to do so much to control natural forces, we ought to be able to do even better with social institutions. I think the joy of life is the acceptance of challenge, and in that respect I've known joy. Nor have I lost faith in socialism. It needs new applications, but socialism – with its emphasis on planning and with its deep desire to make that planning democratic – still points the way to the future.

PLAYBOY: During our conversation, you've dwelled on man's capacity for irrationality. Do you no longer think, as you once did, that man is perfectible?

THOMAS: If you take the literal meaning of the word – capable of becoming or being made, perfect – I do not believe that man is perfectible, to be honest with you. The best I can say is that we are not damned by our gods or by our genes to stay the way we are or the way we have been. We can keep on trying and perhaps the closest we can come to perfectibility is a continual desire to do better rather than worse. After all, didn't Tolstoy say that God is the name of our desire?