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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in at; reprints.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: JEFFREY GOODMAN
Freer Men in Automated Future?
Professors Speak Out
On Students' Rights
ADVOCATING STUDENT RIGHTS is a
custom as ancient as writing student
rule handbooks. In the past, alienated
students have done the advocating; un-
heedful administrators have done the
writing. But now,a third group is clam-
oring to absorb both functions. A group
of academicians is arguing that faculty
members should define student rights-
and establish procedures to protect them.
At worst, their pronouncements on stu-
dent freedoms provide reinforcement to
heretofore scanty student voices. At best,
they should prove as embarrassing to the
complacent faculty as to the rule-making
Office of Student Affairs.
Their statement, a tailor-made exam-
ple of faculty concern for student rights
has been drafted by a committee of the
American Association of University Pro-
fessors. Guised as a declaration on the
faculty's role in student "academic free-
dom," it actually campaigns for student
rights on and off the campus, academic
and non-academic.
Even if the AAUP approves this state-
ment next year at the national conven-
tion, its utility will be limited. It will
remain, however, a carefully defined list
of freedoms-from student government
to non-censorship. And even more im-
portant, it will be persuasive evidence
that these rights can only prevail on
campuses where administrators and fac-
ulty members care enough to see them
defined and protected.
ITS UNIVERSAL yet specific adaptabil-
ity is immediately apparent when held
up to the Office of Student Affairs. Start-
ing with the first section, the issue of
confidential files is discussed.
The document implores faculty mem-
bers to make sure personal files don't get
too personal when they are intended for
outside reference. At the University, the
list of non-academic evaluations of stu-
dents is overwhelmingly unnecessary.
House-mothers, administrators, facul-
ty members are continually thrusting
their peripheral impressions into the
files. What the future boss sees is never
quite clear. The student never sees or
knows of any of these confidential re-
ports. University officials, who incidental-
ly, hang onto the files for several years
after a student leaves the University, say
the files are opened only for academic
purposes. Disbelieving Joint Judiciary
Council members last year tried in vain
to find out what goes to employers.
Into non-academic portions of the files,
the AAUP statement would place only
the record of suspension or dismissal ac-
tions-no other disciplinary actions or
A Moral Issue?
BOSTON'S Richard Cardinal Cushing
made known his feelings the other day
on the civil rights bill just passed by Con-
gress: "The civil rights bill is entirely a
moral issue," said the cardinal.
Eh? The fact is that all informed ob-
servers think there is a good deal of the
political in the civil rights bill: the main
argument is over extension of federal
power, and many believe the bill is an
unwarranted extension. Wrong though
they. may be, there is an awfully good
chance they have as good a sense of mor-
als as you or me, or even Cardinal Cush-
ing.
The cardinal added, "My friend, Jack
Kennedy, fought for the civil rights bill,
even though he knew it would lose him
votes." But the record shows that Ken-
nedy only proposed the bill after the
demonstrations in the South last sum-
mer; just that spring, he had submitted
what many thought a rather weak and
watery civil rights message to Congress.
MOST INFORMED PEOPLE maintain
that Kennedy put forth the bill for
two main reasons: 1) he was afraid he'd
lose Negro votes, and perhaps many oth-
ers, and 2) he needed to keep order in
the country, and needed law to do it.
They believe that "the moral issue" was
probably not his primary motivation, and
personal evaluations. Currently, even a
harsh-toned word to a housemother after
a flunked exam, qualifies the student for
negative comment in the file system.
FOR ITS SECOND SECTION, the AAUP
statement sprays harsh words on stu-
dent affairs administrators in general.
The OSA could well take heed.
The statement argues against all the
nagging trimmings to managing student
groups-membership lists, faculty advis-
ors and sponsored-speaker clearance.
(They are all maintained at the Univer-
sity with bureaucratic delight.)
But the vehemence of the student or-
ganizations section is directed toward the
perennial campus controversy: students'
rights to regulate student conduct.
Student Government Council does not
have this prerogative here. Compound-
ing its inadequacy, the scope of SGC au-
thority varies from situation to situation.
It depends on the specific wishes of the
vice-president for student affairs and the
Regents. Ramifications of this policy
have been detrimental to students.
THE JOINT JUDICIARY Council con-
stitution was formulated over the
1962-63 school period under OSA supervi-
sion. But in what OSA member John
Bingley called "the student's constitu-
tion," his office managed to make the
last imprint.
While supposedly typing the final doc-
ument for distribution last summer, an
addendum to an appendix was quietly
slipped in. It gave the vice-president final
authority in all judicial cases, if he wants
it, a power which had supposedly been
given the students. Bingley tried to ex-
plain it, then hinted that the appendix
had been inserted by administrators
above him. Whatever happened, student
rights to control their conduct were sud-
denly dissipated.
Other violations of freedom alleged in
the remaining sections reveal the univer-
sality of University issues. The AAUP doc-
ument would tear down speaker bans and
censorship boards, erect off-campus safe-
guards and provide due process in the
handling of alleged misdemeanors. In
the case of "due process," the Joint Judic
constitution provides it; other freedoms
are not so liberally granted by the Re-
gents.
BUT"WHAT DISTINGUISHES this state-
ment from the assertions of student
leaders is the panacea. Each student
right must not only be defined. It must
be protected, the" statement emphasizes.
With this aim, each section is prefaced
"Responsibility of the Teacher."
This assignment of responsibility may
sound fanciful to University students
aware of faculty attitudes. The academi-
cian here has demonstrated that he
wants very little contact with the student
on an extra-curricular basis.
The best example of this attitude is the
failure of student-faculty government ef-
forts.
Attempts to forge a student-faculty
government have aborted for a combi-
nation of reasons. Faculty apathy has
been one of them. This was evident when
SGC formulated a joint student-faculty
government structure which was design-
ed to put student representatives on fac-
ulty committees pertinent to student is-
sues. The plan suffered when student
participation was placed at the discre-
tion of the faculty chairman involved. At
best, some student members were given
speaking privileges. Other chairmen re-
fused students altogether.
Had the faculty given the students
privileges on their committees as re-
quested, the results might have been more
favorable. In its watered-down discre-
tionary form, "student-faculty govern-
ment" has withered away to a crustless
venture which only a few students may
profit from.
IN THE WAKE of administrator-facul-
ty indifference, the AAUP statement is
important for what it says. As a declara-
tion of student rights, it makes a clear
and insightful appeal to administrators:
get off their backs.
The statement is also imnortant for
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first
in a series of articles evaluating the
analyses and proposals of the re-
cently-formed Ad Hoc Committee
on the Triple Revolution.
By JEFFREY GOODMAN
'THE ECONOMY of abundance
can sustain all citizens in
comfort and economic security
whether or not they engage in
what is commonly reckoned as
work.
"We therefore urge that society,
through its appropriate legal and
governmental institutions, under-
take an unqualified commitment
to provide every individual and
every family with an adequate
income as a matter of right."
That assertion is the basis of a
document on automation and
America's future written by a
group of 26 economists, sociolo-
gists, journalists and businessmen
called the Ad Hoc Committee on
the Triple Revolution.
THE AHC is a sort of convoca-
tion of mainly liberal thinkers
who recognize and want to deal
with threerevolutions in Ameri-
can society: cybernation-"the
combination of the computer and
the automated self-regulating ma-
chine," weaponry-recognition of
"the final futity of war," and
human rights -"a world-wide
movement toward the establish-
ment of social and political re-
gimes in which every individual
will feel valued and none will feel
rejected on account of his race.~
It had itsbeginningslast fall
when President of the United
Packinghouse Workers Ralph L.
Helstein, Vice-President of the
Fund for the Republic W. H. Ferry
and economist and authorRobert
Theobald decided in a hotel-room
conversation that some broad
statement was necessary on these
three problems, for which all of
them felt deep concern.
The first statement, issued in
March, is devoted to the cyber-
nation revolution. The document
received widespread press cover-
age, as well as equivocal reaction
from President Lyndon B. Johnson
and Labor Secretary Willard A.
Wirtz.
*' * *
ITS SIGNERS-besides Ferry,
Helstein and Theobald-were such
people as Roger Hagan, editor of
the Correspondent; Michael Har-
rington, author of The Other
America; Todd Gitlin, president
of Students for a Democratic So-
ciety; Thomas Hayden, SDS mem-
ber and past Editor of The Daily;
Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish econ-
not entire agreement with the
omist (who was in "broad" but
statement); Michael Reagan of
the Maxwell Graduate School at
Syracuse University; David T.
Bazelon, author of "The Paper
Economy" and Linus Pauling,
Nobel laureate for peace and con-
sultant to the Center for the
Study of Democratic Institutions,
to name only a few.
Its major thesis is that the ex-
tensive advent of automation in
industry has made it impossible for
the United States ever to reach
full employment;thatvthe current
longstanding high rate of unem-
ployment is due to continue and to
swell the ranks of a permanently
jobless, poverty-stricken class and
that the traditional method of de-
riving income from work is there-
fore no longer viable.
Since society no longer needs "to
impose repetitive and meaningless
(because unnecessary) toil upon
the individual," the statement
argues, the cybernation revolution
enables and requires a funda-
mental and pervasive change in
our society.
THE FIRST and most basic
aspect of that change is a dis-
tribution of the products of an
automated, private economic sec-
tor so that no citizen will have to
suffer with a low income because
he does not possess sufficient
skills to get a job.
Even more important and far
reaching, however, the AHC sees
the possibility of using the na-
tion's industrial capacity to free
man from the necessity of work
and allow him to pursue the
course of his own personal ful-
fillment. Thus the government
would guarantee a minimum in-
come to anyone who wanted it,
with no questions asked. And that
wage might be claimed not only
by those who were unable to earn
their upkeep in a cybernated so-
ciety but, theoretically, by any
one desiring "to make his own
choice of occupation and vocation
from a wide range of activities not
now fostered by our value system
and our accepted modes of 'work.'
"Cybernation at last forces us
to answer the historic question:
"THE CYBERNATION revolu-
tion profers an existence qualita-
tively richer in democratic as well
as material values. A social order
in which men make the decisions
that shape their lives becomes
more possible now than ever be-
fore; the unshackling of men from
the bonds of unfulfilling labor
frees them to become citizens, to
make themselves and to make
their own history."
This foundation for the AHC's
prognosis begins with their recog-
nition that "a growing proportion
of the population is subsisting on
But this situation is only the
present manifestation of a grow-
ing trend toward the eventual
preemption of production-prob-
ably at all levels of skill-by ma-
chines. It is only prophetic of the
day when machines-even now
possessing the equivalent of a high
school diploma, Secretary Wirtz
judges-will dominate the private
economic sector and leave great
masses without the. skills neces-
sary to find jobs, and therefore
unable to live on anything but
"minimal and unrelated govern-
ment measures."
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More specifically, the AHC
statement offers the following su -
porting evidence for its analysis:
-In 1961, 1962 and 1963, dur-
ing the first visible upsurg:e of
cybernation, productivity per man-
hour rose at an average pace of
above 3.5 per cent-"a rate well
above both the historical average
and the post-war rate."
-Costs for many companies
have already been lowered to a
point where the price of a durable
machine may be as little as one-
third of the current annual wage-
cost of the worker it replaces.
-The official rate of unemploy-
ment has remained at or above 5.5
per cent during the 60's. Statistics
for special subcategories are high-
er: for teenagers te rate is cur-
rently 15 per cent- for Negroes
in general more than twice that
for whites; in depressed areas, as
high'as 50 per cent
-'Even more serious is the fact
that the number of people who
have voluntarily removed them-
selves from the labor force is not
constant but increases continuous-
ly," the document goes on. These
people include so-called retired
workers; workers forced onto re-
lief and finding It extremely dif-
ficult, because of the social and
psychological alternations brought
about by their situation, to begin
seeking work; and teenagers, es-
pecially dropouts.
-"Well over half of the new
jobs created during th peried
1957-1962 were in the public sector
-predominantly in teaching, Job
creation in the privatesector has
now almost entirely ceased ex-
cept in services; of the 4,300,000
jobs created in this period, only
about 200,000 were provided by
private industry through its own
efforts,"thestatement declares.
-If human beings are to com-
pete with machines in the future
they will have to have at least a
high school education, acco)rding
to Labor Secretary Wirtz. Yet
Wirtz estimates that as many as
30 per cent of all students will be
high school dropouts in this dec-
ade.
"A permanently-depressed class
is developing in the U.S. Some
38,000 Americans almost one-fifth
of the nation, still live in poverty.
The percentage of total income
received by the poorest 2 per
cent of the population was 4.9 per
cent in 1944 and 4.7 per cent in
1963."
* * *
TO THE AHC, these figures all
point up the "problems of job-
lessness, inadequate incomes and
frustrated lives." Their solution,
not only to eliminate within three
to four generations people's de-
pendence upon jobs for their in-
comes but to help them change
from a work-oriented to a self-
development-oriented way of life,
is broad and monumental. It in-
volves a revolution in all mean-
ings of the word-a revolution
ending in a society where man, no
longer having to produce his live-
lihood, is free to pursue "con-
structive, rewarding and ennob-
ling" activities.
Even if a man still desires to
do the same thing he nowdoes for
his living, he will do it only be-
cause he really wants to do it.
The activity could no, longer re-
ceive the label "work" as we now
understand it.
* * *
SPECIFIC PROGRAMS indi-
cated by the AHC for the transi-
tional period, before the ultimate
solidification of the revolution, in-
clude the following:
-A massive program to build up
the educational system, designed
especially with the needs of the
chronically under - educated in
mind.
-Massive public works. The
committee estimates that 150,000
to 200,000 jobs can be generated
for each $1 billion spent on public
works.
-A massive program of low-
cost public housing.
-A major revision of the tax
structure aimed at redistributing
income as well as apportioning the
costs of the transition period
equitably.
-Activities by trade unions to
negotiate with business for the un-
employed as well as the employed,
to bargain for prerequisites such as
housing and recreational and edu-
cational facilities and to organize
the unemployed.
-Establishment of representa-
tive planning agencies at the local
and national levels to collect data
on social conditions, work toward
optimal allocations of human and
natural resources, develop new
transitional programs and general-
ly "to give direction and content
to the growing demand for im-
provement in all departments of
public life."
THE CYBERNATION revolu-
tion as the AHC sees it has vast
and far-reaching implications,
both in its dangers and in the po-
tential it affords for a new and
better social order.
It is not a Utopia dreamed up
by radicals nor a fantasy dashed
off by naive students. The signers
of the document are astute and
- -nn eii im n
' 1VE AtWAN'S TRitC> TO B3E
ST'S{ LUE-CoNSCici3S. °
What is man's role when he is
not dependent upon his own ac-
tivities for the material basis of
his life?" according to the AHC
statement.
minimal incomes, often below the
poverty line, at a time when suf-
ficient production is available to
supply the needs of everyone in
the United States."
IMMENSE TALENT
Iarenboim Performs
Beethoven Sonatas
DANIEL BARENBOIM perform-
ed a program of Beethoven
Sonatas last evening in a concert
presented in Rackham Auditorium.
This youthful Israeli artist has an
immense talent and a dazzling
technique. He opened the program
with the popular and quasi-pro-
grammatic Les Adieux Sonata
written in 1809 forhBeethoven's
friend and patron, the Archduke
Rudolph.
The tonally ambiguous intro-
duction to the first movement
pointed up immediately one of
Barenboim's shortcomings during
the first half of the program. He
didn't seem to be able to control
his soft passages. After beginning
the Allegro section he seemed to
settle down and easily cope with
the difficult technical aspects of
the movement.
Barenboim handled the second
movement adequately but again
seemed to have a little difficulty
with the piano and pianissimo
passages. The third movement,
marked Vivacissimamento, w a s
taken at the recommended tempo
and with a little added speed to
boot.
THE SECOND sonata on the
program was the equally popular
Appassionata Sonata. This work
comes from an unusually produc-
tive period of Beethoven's life, if
indeed, any one period should or
could be cited as being more cre-
ative.
Barenboim had a technique
which more than matched the vir-
tuosic demands of the first move-
ment, but unfortunately, his inter-
pretation was a little erratic and
a bit immature. The second move-
ment, in variation form, is a par-
ticularly beautiful piece of music.
The variation form has been popu-
lar with composers from the Ren-
aissance to our own day and Bee-
thoven is the unsurpassed master
of it.
The third movement, marked
Allegro ma non troppo, was play-
ed presto-too many pianists fail
to heed Beethoven's advice. This
movement was marked by too
much pedal and the coda, marked
presto, lost its impact because of
the opening speed.
* * *
THE SECOND half of the pro-
gram was given to the Sonata Op.
111 in C minor. The introduction
to the first movement, so remin-
iscent of the Pathetique Sonata,
and the following Allegro, were
handled adequately from a tech-
nical standpoint. The second
IN THE LIGHT of this pos-
sibility the AHC nevertheless re-
jects the suggestion advanced bf
some that the pace of technologi-
cal change be slowed down:
"We assert that the only way
to turn technological change to
the benefit of the individual and
the service of the general welfare
is to accept the process and to
utilize it rationally and humanely.
"The new science of political
economy will be built on the en-
couragement and planned expan-
sion of cybernation ... Cyberna-
tion itself provides the resources
and tools that are needed to en-
sure minimum hardship . ."
YET at the same time numerous
facts about the current economic
situation indicate to the AHC that
much more will have to be done
than simply to harness automa-
tion. And conventional economic
analysis, the AHC declares, does
not allow for what is needed.
According to current thought,
"potential (consumer) demand,
which if filled would raise the
number of jobs and provide in-
comes to those holding them, is
underestimated," the AHC says.
Conventional analysis holds that
all of the available labor force
would be required to meet current
needs of consumers and industry
and to provide adequate public
services.
Finally, traditional economists
assert that "demand could be in-
creased, by a variety of standard
techniques, to any desired extent
by providing money and machines
to improve the conditions of the
billions of impoverished people
elsewhere in the world," the AHC
states.
* * S ,
BUT the committee's analysis
is hardly as optimistic. While the
AHC does notquestion that cy-
bernation increases the potential
for "the provision of funds to
neglected public sectorr" or that
it would "make possite the aboli-
tion of poverty at home and
abroad," the statement asserts
that the industrial system doeo
not possess any adequate mech-
anisms to permit these potentials
to become realities.
"The industrial system was de-
signed to produce an ever-increas-
ing quantity of goods as efficent-
ly as possible, and it was assumed
that the distribution of the power
to purchase these goods would oc-
cur almost automatically.
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