Buckminster Fuller and Robert Pickus

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Go back to Gene Keyes home page Gene Keyes 1970-11-23 2009-08-15 reprint in HTML cc 2009 by Gene Keyes; fair use and all that. Contact: gene.keyes _AT~ gmail _DO_T com Bucky and Pick: Two Grand Designers of a World Without War An Essay-Review of Robert Pickus, To End War and R. Buckminster Fuller, Utopia or Oblivion Note, 2009-08-15: Having recently posted a detailed critique of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map, I now offer this paper as an antidote, given that I am generally a devotee of Fuller. I wrote it 39 years ago as an undergraduate at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where Fuller was then loosely affiliated as a University Professor. Fuller himself sent a handwritten letter to Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review , urging he publish this; but it was not. Fuller and Pickus were both highly influential in my thinking. The paper remains quite germane, and now the Internet can give it wider visibility. I have left it mostly in its original typewritten form, as converted to HTML, plus hotlinks, and added a few updates in italics. Tags : war, peace, peace movement, pacifism, world game, Buckminster Fuller, Bucky, Robert Pickus, anti-communism, Quakers, Turn Toward Peace, Bayard Rustin, Speak Truth To Power, American Friends Service Committee, killingry, livingry, Gene Sharp, nonviolence, nonviolent resistance -1- Buckminster Fuller 1895-1983 ("Bucky") and Bob Pickus 1921 - ("Pick") are such audio-visual personalities with so much to say and so many ideas, and who are so often speaking to so many audiences that they hardly have time to write books by themselves. Somebody else has to come along and help get their dynamically oral presentations between covers. Robert W. Marks, and Robert Woito, respectively, have done the busy-work for us. In the winter of 1969-70 they published what I consider two of the most important war/peace books of the decade. (A third is Gene Sharp's long-awaited THE POLITICS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION , still in press.) In UTOPIA OR OBLIVION , Marks has compiled a dozen of Fuller's recent articles and discourses (1964-67), though with no more apparent editorial effort than randomly stringing beads.* * For instance, he fails to mention that selection #11 is a letter to Constantinos Doxiadas, and that #12 had been condensed in the January 1968 Playboy . -2- Fuller has many books in the pipeline, but this is probably the best introductory one to date — it has more pages for less money tban any of his others so far, and "doing more with less" is what Fuller is all about. Pickus and Woito's TO END WAR is not only an annotated bibliography of 663 war/peace books, but it almost single-handedly defines the intellectual agenda, the scope, and the components of "the peace effort — those organizations whose stated purpose is work to end war." (p. 137) The Fuller and Pickus books have this in common: tbey both deal comprehensively with grand strategy for peace. Otherwise they are on different wave-lengths, and they seem never to have encountered one another. But future editions of TO END WAR certainly ought to list UTOPIA OR OBLIVION , which has more to say about achieving peace with freedom than many of the books that Pickus and Woito cite. What Fuller and Pickus also share is a vision of the scale of what needs to be done to interdict war. It is not that they have same vision; it is that their minds are fast enough to sweep in larger patterns than most of their contemporaries. Fuller and Pickus have both engineered some magnificent organizational failures of the kind that — like a gorgeous rocket explosion on the launching pad — may predate later success. -3- In 1961 Fuller envisaged a ten-year program,1965-75, to be called "World Design Science Decade", a self-initiated world-wide effort by architectural and design students to triple the use-efficiency of the planet's resources so as to serve 100% of humanity instead of the present 40%. That same year Pickus launched a far-reaching effort to coordinate the work of all the competing non-communist peace groups under the rubric of "Turn Toward Peace". By 1964 the latter had. all but collapsed in the wake of policy and personality clashes (from which the peace movement is not immune). Pickus picked up the pieces and re-formed them into his present effort, called the World Without War Council, based in Berkeley, New York, and elsewhere, through which he is building an infrastructure of civic leaders, voluntary organizations, and peace organizations, in an attempt "to re-establish the goal of ending war as a viable and guiding force in American life". (p. 263) Meanwhile, Fuller's World Design Science Decade did not get beyond its early stages, and was superseded by his current proposal for a "World Game" (as opposed to a "war game"). This would consist of an elaborately computerized gigantic world map facility — or at least a mental outlook — that can simulate and display strategies for the earth as a whole to be made economically successful for all its inhabitants. -4- Fuller hardly needs an introduction; he has become a celebrity within the past decade, and is called "the world's leading expert". On the other hand, Pickus is not well known outside the peace movement, where he has worked energetically for over fifteen years. He had been in the OSS during World War II, but by the mid-'fifties had combined a Jewish/Quaker outlook to become a pacifist and head the Peace Education Program of the Chicago office of the (Quaker) American Friends Service Committee. In 1955 he was instrumental in the joint writing of a Quaker pamphlet called SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER which became a landmark of sophisticated pacifist thinking. (34) It challenged liberals' assumption that a negotiated disarmament policy can co-exist with an arms race policy; and it sought to confront the reality of totalitarian aggression by suggesting a policy based on nonviolent and Gandhian methods of resistance.* * Update 2009: Pamphlet is now online at this link. In recent times, the phrase " Speak truth to power " has become very common in public discourse. It has also recently been shown to originate with another uncredited member of that Quaker panel, the late civil rights and peace activist Bayard Rustin. In 1958 Pickus moved to his present office in Berkeley where he began an experimental venture in community peace education called "Acts for Peace". Acts for Peace fostered a number of unique approaches in its field; rather than being a membership organization with dues, mailings, and occasional speakers, it instead stressed whatever act an individual was ready to carry out within an overall frame of -5- moving public opinion from support of reliance on war and mass-organized violence, to support of alternative policies. Then and. today, it has been Pickus's talent to persuade his listeners that there is "a coherent body of thought capable of sustaining such a goal" of ending war.* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * In my own case it was: a speech by Pickus in December 1959 that influenced me from tnat day to this into a full-time vocational concern for work to end war. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As Pickus writes, Without a realistic perspective adequate to the whole task, the citizen stands bewildered and immobilized, or limited to dramatic and sometimes counter-productive.protest. (p. 5) In a remarkably similar mode, Fuller states: They want peace. But the young people have not worked out an adequate understanding of the comprehensive factors involved. They don't have enough data to put together the kind of comprehensive picture that I am attempting to put together for you here today. . . . They keep challenging the local politicians by marching in front of them saying, "Make the World Work" — "Let's Have Peace" — "Stop the War." (p..250) Providing such a realistic perspective, then, Pickus takes the ingenious approach of inviting his listeners to undertake whatever level of activity makes sense to them, whether radical or conservative, pacifist or not. As one observer, Arthur Harvey, noted, The idea is that a person wishing, say, to show a film supporting the UN to a group of businessmen can work through Acts for Peace without gagging at the knowledge that some anarchist is at the same time telling high school students of his prison experiences, also through AFP. (39: 4) -6- At that time the official insignia of Acts for Peace was a Moebius Strip: (a loop which is a single-surface curved-plane). In Arthur Harvey's account, it looks as if it has two sides, but this, Bob explains, is similar to the illusion people have about the world. More important than apparent division is the underlying oneness — and we'd better not forget it." (39: 4) By September 1961 several crises were coming to a head — Berlin, nuclear testing, the Congo and Hammarskjold's death — and at this point Pickus found an opening to do for the many divergent peace groups nation-wide what he had been doing on a pilot scale in Acts for Peace: have each separate group agree to contribute its own ideas and programs to a conglomerate effort called "Turn Toward Peace", without merging their differences in a "lowest common denominator" organization. TTP would offer all concerned citizens a range of ideas to choose from and programs to work with; contributing organizations would be delegated to prepare various information kits or materials "as a service to Turn Toward Peace"; and a network of "community peace centers" would be established. To a considerable extent, this was all set in motion, and in December 1963 Pickus organized a conference* for leaders in many voluntary organizations, some of which were only peripherally concerned about war. These organizations were tasked to find out how they could involve their membership more directly in the peace effort. * I was present as a staff member of the Committee for Nonviolent Action. -7- Bob's genius helped shape Turn Toward Peace (one wag called it "Turn Toward Pickus"), but another side of his character may have helped undo it: an extremely zealous anti-communism. From the outset, Pickus had strongly influenced Turn Toward Peace to be built on a "non-fellow-traveling" basis — it was not to be the kind of peace movement which is a front for Soviet foreign policy, and thus critical only of U.S. policy. One of his important theses then and now is that Russian and U.S. foreign policies are both part of the problem, that there must be changes in both nations' outlook, and that the U.S. could help prompt constructive change in Soviet policy by our own American initiatives, rather than simply react to moves the other side makes. Thus Pickus — correctly, in my view — urges pacifists and peace movers not to become apologists for totalitarian foreign policy, and he urges development of nonviolent methods for continuing the real conflict between dictatorial and demo- cratic systems. So far, so good; Pickus is certainly not alone in defending such a viewpoint. But he was such an avid controversialist about this ideology that he almost beat it to death; the American Friends Service Committee pulled out of Turn Toward Peace, which proved a fatal amputation. Pickus in turn moved closer to the liberal mainstream, where he is today.* Update 2009: For a more recent account of the demise of TTP, and the role of Pickus in Quaker peace doctrine, see Allen Smith, "The Renewal Movement: The Peace Testimony and Modern Quakerism" (Quaker History, 85/2, 1996 Fall). -8- Pickus insistently discloses his basic assumptions and political position by way of urging others to do likewise. These are mine — the viewpoint from which I judge TO END WAR : I consider myself a pacifist and primarily interested in advancing the principle of strategic nonviolent action in two realms: (a) as a personal response to immediate evils such as the draft, and (b) as a hypothetical replacement for defense systems based on killing. I explicitly share most of Bob's assumptions and purposes, but my center of gravity is more toward efforts to improve pacifist ideas for defense policy. Pickus has so heavily imbued his own agenda with the political task of building a liberal, non-pacifist, peace constituency that he has left undeveloped the "Developed Peace Position" which he advocates in TO END WAR . In the fifteen years since he prompted the writing of SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER he has left it to others (notably Gene Sharp ) to carry forward the thinking needed to construct: a policy of national defense without armaments., "Few able men are seriously exploring the implications of these ideas in international affairs..." Pickus wrote in 1955; "It is time there was." (35: 8) -9- I've always envied the way Pickus can approach the compIexities of the peace movement, and with a few verbal or typewritten strokes leave the problem as neatly divided as potatoes coming out of a french-fry slicer. A typical specimen is a 1960 mimeographed handout he prepared for a "Peace Interne Training Program" seminar. Excerpt: underlining in original: not hotlinks — gk - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2. Alternate Approaches to Action: What Peace Organizations Do (a) The problem of audience : who are you trying to reach (b) The problem of action : what do you do (c) The problem of style : "Tone" of activity: -Radical / conventional -Education / action -Religious / secular -Frame / next step -Level of commitment -Mass Movement / sect / cell / personal -Personal / political -Pacifist / non-pacifist -Exteme / range / lowest common denominator - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -10- That particular grouping has long been vivid in my mind of how Pickus gives a read-out of peace organizing ideas in abbreviated but wide-screen focus. There are many similar examples in TO END WAR (e.g., p. 235) — almost too many. Pickus sprouts checklists like a tree grows branches. In this book alone we have: • Twelve categories of thought to define the war/peace field (pp. 5-6 and the table of contents) • Seven contexts for considering war/peace problems (p. 170) • Ten basic assumptions: (pp. 179-80) • Seven objectives for a world without war (p. 183) • Eleven elements of a peace constituency (p. 139) • Five ways to evaluate a peace organization (pp. 233-35) • Ten points for a self-survey on the question "But what can I do?" (pp. 207-09) • Twenty-three answers to the above question (pp. 210-15) In addition there are annotated listings af 663 books and pamphlets, 60 periodicals, and 60 peace and public affairs organizations. (Bucky Fuller, incidentally; is much more discursive than Pickus, but in his letter to Doxiadas, he lists 40 Strategic Questions, and 14 Dominant Concepts pp. 308-09.) With all his schemata, what are some of the essentials that recur in Bob Pickus's co-ordinates of the war/peace situation? Here is my Pickus checklist, abridged from his checklists: 1) "Something is wrong in a world in which war is accepted as a right and reasonable instrument of national policy." 2) Conflict . is natural, but not organized mass violence. ("Isn't it possible," Bob once asked in an interview, "that we could get rid of war, while people went on being nasty to their wives, occasionally kicking stray dogs?" 49: 80 .) -11- 3) One-answer solutions to the problem of war will not suffice, whether these be world law, weapons parity, Marxism, emotional anti-militarism, or whatever. 4) A "Developed. Peace Position" sees both America and other national powers as part of the war problem. (As previously discussed.) 5) The Developed Peace Position stresses defense of democratic values but rejects mass organized. violence and insists on nonviolent methods of defense and conflict management. 6) Informed citizens can, by democratic process clear the way for America to adopt: a policy of "peace initiatives", even though present political leadership will not because it is locked in the arms race. 7) War can be ended. It; probably won't be, yet "whatever the odds, we are required to try." Those are seven noble truths, but Bob has dozens more, and some questionable ones besides. The stressing of government and majority rule are recent add-ons to his program, perhaps in reaction to the nihilism he must see so rampant in Berkeley and elsewhere. While I hardly consider myself an anarchist, I will not accept democratic decisions which make me an instrument or witness of killing other people, by napalm, Selective Service, or any other means. Earlier, in Turn Toward Peace, Pickus had built a Policy Framework of VII "points on which we all agree", including a "Goal", a "Judgement", a "Direction", and so forth. The Goal was: "a disarmed world under law in which free societies can grow and flourish", which required in turn a "Focus" on still another "seven objectives" for attaining the Goal. -12- Four of tbe seven Turn Toward Peace objectives have been retained in TO END WAR , including disarmament, world law, world community, and nonviolent methods. But one objective was watered down, and thereby suggests a certain cbange in Pickus's attitude. Objective number four of Turn Toward Peace was: support of just demands for social , political , and economic change from those disadvantaged peoples to whom law and stability can be only a mockery of justice until they have an equal opportunity to obtain freedom, dignity, and material well-being. ( 53: 242 ; emphasis in the original) In TO END WAR the fourth objective is merely: World economic and political development (p. 183) I would say the former is to the latter as Cesar Chavez is to Walter W. Rostow. Update 2009: Note to younger readers: Cesar Chavez was a prominent union organizer and nonviolent social justice activist. Walter W. Rostow was an economic-growth theorist and pro-war advisor to President Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps it is symptomatic of Pickus's bitterness at some of his former allies, and at the revolutionary style of much of the "peace movement" today. * That may explain one amazing oversight in this bibliography of peace theory: its apparent snub of the late A.J. Muste (1885-l967), co-author with Pickus of SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER , and widely respected as one of the foremost pacifist thinkers and leaders in the 20th century. A pamphlet of Muste's on draft resistance is listed, but that is all. Omitted are his biography ( PEACE AGITATOR , by Nat Hentoff, N.Y., Macmillan, 1963), his collected writings ( THE ESSAYS OF A.J. MUSTE , Nat Hentoff, ed., N.Y., Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), and the magazine he founded, Liberation (now edited by Dave Dellinger). To write of tbe peace movement without reference to the ideas of A.J. Muste is to write of the American Revolution without mentioning Tbomas Paine, or of liberty without J.S. Mill, or of the Russian Revolution without Trotsky. In one case we know it can be done, but why put Muste down the Memory Tube? Pickus has no trouble listing many pro-violence authors and periodicals (e.g., Marcuse, Cleaver, Sorel, Fanon, Ramparts , the Guardian ), but Muste and Liberation seem to be excommunicated. -13- Be that as it may, on the whole subject of world development I find that Bucky Fuller has a far greater sense of technology and prophecy. Fuller's theory of how to sidetrack war by means of rapid world industrialization is more imaginative than the section in TO END WAR on "World Community and World Development" (pp.. 32-45); it is here that UTOPIA OR OBLIVION sbould be singled out "TEW", Pickus and Woito's abbreviation for books "especially recommended as contributing ideas that can help move us toward ending war". Despite my critical remarks about TO END WAR , I highly commend this book to anyone's attention, especially newcomers to the field of war versus peace. It is a basic guide to the pluralism of the peace movement, and a departure point for one's own efforts — it is for mine. However, speaking as o