Production, Competition, & Words
By Eli Siegel

here has been a great deal of carelessness in the speech of the learned and the high; there has been ever so much careless phrasing. One of the things I like about Samuel Johnson is: when he was asked why he spoke so well, he said, I think every word matters. The way persons, illustrious in political life and elsewhere, use phrases is shameful. And the lie mounts up.

     I'll try to instance what I mean through a rather popular work, published by Ace Books: Retrospect 1965: U.P.I. Pictorial History of 1964.

      Senator Barry Goldwater is mentioned early, in the summary of January. He announced fairly early in 1964 that he felt himself fit for the presidency. And with what has happened since, I guess he was just as fit as anybody else who ran. I didn't believe it then, but I believe it now. Well, this is Senator Goldwater—however, with my willingness to find quality in him I didn't find then, I don't see him as a master of the true word:

Senator Goldwater's first pronouncement of policy as a candidate for the Presidency was that if elected he would threaten to break relations with the Soviet Union unless the Soviets yielded to justified U.S. demands.

     The word here that has been used in a way that is a mess is justified. That word justified has made for so much pain: what we feel is justified is seen as outrageous by another. But Senator Goldwater, like a true candidate, doesn't think of those things. He has his own point of view and that is sufficient. The weltanschauung [world view] is hardly a weltanschauung; it's a Goldwater-anschauung.

Production

n the same summary, we get to a matter which is the simplest thing in economics: production. That is: you go to a field and there's no corn. You go to another field, in New York State, and there are no apples. You go to a lot and there's no house. Production is the art of getting something out of nothing, which other people will buy. It's comparatively simple—it doesn't need all that stock lingo. To produce something is like, really, what a cat may do: you see her without kittens, and lo—she has four. It's very simple. And it's too bad that economic lingo has gone away from this cat-uality.

     At the moment, the matter of the GNP, the gross national product, is crucial. It has gone down; it hasn't increased in the same way it used to. That is very important: how much does a country produce? When you produce something, it means that something which wasn't present three months ago is present. That is the purpose of a factory in Detroit: three hundred Chevrolets have been added to the already hundreds of thousands that exist. At one time there were no Chevrolets; then, after there were some, three hundred were added. In both instances it was production. If you add to the amount already existing, or if you have an amount where there was none at all, there's production. The book has this statement:

The Central Intelligence Agency reported (Jan. 7) that Russia 's economic growth had faltered to 2.5 per cent per year for 1962 and 1963.

That means that while Russia had been increasing its production, its increase in production for the years 1962 and 1963 was only 2.5 percent.

     It was once felt that the only thing the USSR could produce was a speech—that is, it had no more know-how than a crippled tadpole. America could produce cereals and typewriters and adding machines and cars of various kinds and trucks and buildings and elevators and bracelets, but in Russia they had to satisfy themselves with propaganda and vodka. So when it was found out that although the USSR didn't have anything like some of the gowns at Bonwit Teller, it still could put a sleeve together, it was hardly believed, because it was felt there was no incentive whatsoever. How could people produce unless there was the incentive one was familiar with—profit? But the USSR somehow did produce, and people were amazed. In 1920, the Russians produced something like a film. They had a camera—must have stolen it!

     Well, a war in production is going on all over the world. The Peace Corps of the '60s has something to do with it, because once the Peace Corps went to any country in Africa or Latin America , the people there got the idea they could produce something. They became quite technical. Mr. Kennedy in fact thwarted America, because the Peace Corps made every part of the world industry-conscious. That's very dangerous—because we have right now a good deal of competition between American products and products made elsewhere.

     For instance, the Italians, instead of producing paintings, recently have been producing suits. Industry is going on all over the world, while at one time the American manufacturer felt he was pretty supreme. He could tolerate others—Great Britain of course; and France, particularly on cosmetics. Then France began to produce a car, the Renault. Then Sweden—that little car that caused so much of a stir.

Good Will: 3 Examples

1) In trade. An item that has to do with good will is accompanied by a picture:

1/28/64—First shipment of U.S. wheat, bound for Russia, is loaded aboard American-owned ship in Norfolk, Va. Grain is part of $78.5 million cash deal which hinged on use of American ships for transport.

     The American shipping industry has never done so well. That's one of the failures of American industry—the strict shipping industry. Before the wheat went to Russia , the USSR had to agree that it would be taken on American ships. So, that is friendly. The idea of American wheat going to Russia, somehow makes one feel, shall we say, good.

     2) Asked for by a senator. This is an interesting item in the summary of March 1964:

Senator J.W. Fulbright, Democratic Senator from Arkansas and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked the nation (March 25) to "shed 'myths'" and think daringly about such foreign policy problems as Soviet Russia, communist China, Cuba, Panama, and Latin America. He called the Cuba of Fidel Castro a nuisance rather than a menace.

How fairly should we see these countries having a productive system seemingly different from ours?

     3) Demanded by labor. The state of labor is a big thing in any country, whether it's obvious or not. In 1964 something was occurring in England:

120,000 government workers walked off their jobs in Britain's first postal strike in 70 years.

The "Free World"

his is 1964, and that phrase "free world" was used without any attempt at definition. No one knows, still, what the "free world" is. From 1945 on, a certain part of the world had the temerity to call itself the "free world" and to say it so often that people felt the term really meant something. The way the phrase has been used, with greasy, viscous complacency, goes against the idea of freedom that we find in art. Portugal and Spain and Greece, which were dictatorships, belonged to the right wing of the "free world."

     I'll read now from a more sober book. This is by a Harvard Ph.D. in history and former State Department official, Richard P. Stebbins: The United States in World Affairs, 1962 . Stebbins writes:

Other memorable developments of 1962 included the failure of a fresh attempt to halt the arms race by an Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee meeting in Geneva.

     Whenever there has been such a meeting, it is thought that the representatives of the "free world" are virtuous and have good will—all they want is peace and disarmament—while the other side is sinister and though they talk for disarmament they mean nothing of the sort. That's taken for granted; there is no questioning. Here we have insufficient freedom, because freedom without accuracy, without good will, is incompletely freedom. It's just as in painting, where all color is trying to be given definition by line. All expression is looking for precision. Fulness is looking for economy in its manifestation. This is a principle in art. Care is one aspect of expression—just as, in talking, we want to talk with intensity but we'd like to be grammatical if we can be, or at least we'd like to have some accuracy of style.

     So we have: "failure of a fresh attempt to halt the arms race." There is no asking, what do the people of another nation want? What do they think of a nuclear bomb? What do they think of war? What do they want to do?

     Then, another phrase—Mr. Kennedy is being quoted: "'The United States finds it difficult to withdraw when our vital interests are involved.'" What are these "vital interests"?

The Common Market of 1962

he Common Market made for trouble because some nations wanted to come together in Europe and have some economic arrangements of their own:

A protracted and increasingly acrimonious debate on terms for British entry into the Common Market foreshadowed what might be an even more momentous struggle over the future relationship between the Common Market and the United States .

     That there is friction in the free enterprise world is undoubted, because while individuals may oppose something which questions them basically, they can oppose competitors who generally agree with them.

"Responsibilities"

hen you're not sure of your ethics or your notion of freedom, you begin using various words. One of them is the word used here, responsibilities:

International instability and global economic disequilibrium promised the United States no respite from its responsibilities as the world's principal non-Communist power.

     What can happen in the human mind is that a questionable moral or ethical attitude somehow gets changed into a "responsibility."