Letters

MILLS VS. HOWE

Editors:

Commenting on C. W. Mills’ “Causes of World War III” in the Spring DisSENT, Irving Howe charges Mills with “a relentless thrust of assertion” and “analytic carelessness and moral disequilibrium.” It seems to me that in this review it is Howe rather than Mills who is guilty of these qualities.

Howe says that Mills underrates “the role of Communist ideology.” I should say that Howe vastly underrates the role of anti-Communist ideology in our society. Howe says that Mills “minimizes the differences in nature and quality between the Western World and the Communist countries.” But Howe, by using the term “Western World,” appears to ignore the differences in nature and quality of the various societies and political systems within the nations which are so loosely called the “Western World.” Howe further compounds this confusion by shifting, in the same paragraph, from “the Western World” to “America, a democratic country” with the implication that the democratic qualities inherent in our own traditions are similarly inherent throughout the “Western World....