Page 4 University Daily Kansan, April 9, 1981 6 Opinion --- Senate earns praise The KU Student Senate has waged a battle with the administration for the last two months. And for a change, the students have won. The administration has approved a $14.50 student activity fee, despite saying earlier that $14 was the limit. Senate leaders were able to successfully defend their recommendations. Student organizations, including the University Concert Series, the University Daily Kansan and KU Legal Services will benefit from the increase. Moreover, the average student will get continued services because of the fee increase. It undeniably was needed, especially in times of inflation. Getting the administration's approval certainly was not easy for the Senate, but its efforts now appear to have been rewarded. This time, the Senate has proved it can be an effective, influential voice for the students. KU students owe the Senate a pat on the back. Five Points '81 Study and Take the Test The University Daily KANSAN (USPS 685-640) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday and Thursday during June and July except September, Sunday and Saturday for early release. Mail $2 a month to USPS at P.O. Box 19729, Ft. Myers, Missouri. P.R.A. $1 a year in Deerfield County and $18 for all months in $3 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, paid through the student activity fee. Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University Daily Kansas, Flint Hall, The University of Kansas, Nebraska, or Oklahoma. Editor David Lewis Managing Editor ... David Lewis Editorial Editor ... Ellen Iwamoto Art Director ... Don Munday Campus Editor ... Bob Schaud Scott Fountain Associate Campus Editor ... Gene Myers Assistant Campus Editors ... Ray Permanek, Sunan Schoehmaker Assistant Editor ... Katrin Broussel Sports Editor ... Kevin Bertelsbak Associate Sports Editor ... Teresa Hurland Entertainment Editor ... Shawn McKay Assistant Entertainment Editor ... Blake Gumpechell Cynthia Currie, Plata Werner Business Manager Terri Ecky Term FY Larry Leibengow Retail Sales Manager Barb Light National Sales Manager Kevin Kofter Production Manager Annele Corned Trafficking Manager Jane Wenderhold Staff Artist Rust Lindsey Photographer John Hankmanm Representatives Human Sales Representatives Juliette Beeler, Teilica Berry, Judy Caldwell, Sally Cowden, Bill Groom, Dennis Hems, Ann Horvemberg, Marcee Jacobs, Terry Kushnagar, Laura Montez, Howard Shalsky, Shetter Shettie, Ted Young General Manager and News Advisor Rick Musker Reagan backfiring free enterprise For conservatives, the arrival in Washington of Ronald Reagan has been a gosedst, William F. Buckley Jr., for one, "all black and blue" from pinching himself. So am I. Ask myself, can it all be happening? The most conservative president in the White House in 50 years? (Pinch.) Ouch! Yes! It can! It can! As I contemplate the prospects of a Reagan presidency, however, pinching myself is not my only source of discomfort. I wince, for example, whenever I look this goddish gifthorse in the mouth. Although he may be just what we need for the short-term good of fire, for the longer-term of sadness he falls short of being the ideal specimen, it turns out. A virtual slave to the idea of free enterprise, he tends to view society and the environment within its context, rather than vice-versa. What then naturally follows is the need to maintain the needs of the dergo modification to suit the needs of free enterprise, rather than vice-versa. When, in a television interview aired before the election, Bill Moyers asked Reagan pointblank whether "consumerism" was a good thing (meaning materialism), Reagan responded with a whole-hearted, "Yes." Thus, he gave tacit assent to the notion that, for the good of capitalism, artificial wants need to be instilled in the populace. If Reagan seems insensitive to the effects of capitalism on consumers, he is even more so with respect to workers. Witness the unqualified hostility he has displayed toward the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. E. J. Mishan, a British economist, put it another way: "The ideal public for modern industry must be one that is both promiscuous and insatiable." Whether he realizes it or not, Reagan supports having such an "ideal public." One of Reagan's "philosophically com- pitable" cabinet members, the new Secretary of the Interior James Watt, sees the environment, also, as being subordinate to free enterprise. Describing his work as former head of the Mountains States Legal Foundation, he said, "Our commitment is to fight in the courts that bureaucrats and no-growth advocates who create a challenge to individual liberty and economic freedoms as expressed through the private enterprise system." ERIC BRENDE Of course, the trouble with all this is that profit-making free enterprise should not be an end in itself, but merely a means to an end, namely, that of a healthy society, and one that is maintained within a healthy environment. Thus, if anything, capitalism is the element that may have to be modified. One possible modification has been offered by the British economist, E. F. Schumacher, author of "Small Is Beautiful." As he wrote in his book, "the capitalist states (or social organizations) that matter] is the mass production of goods that is necessary to insure profits. Workers are reduced from human beings to automotives, and the buying public from human beings to 'consumers,' who consume everything from food automobiles regardless of need or enjoyment. Schumacher's answer is simply to scale everything down. Under the so modified system, workers would, if possible, hand-place a small tool on the workpiece. Thus, work would again be something for humans to enjoy, not dread. The emphasis would be shifted from "making a profit" to “making a living” and an aspect of free enterprise, the means of production, would become compatible with, and one subordinate to, the needs of human beings. In addition, so would the end products of production. Handcrafted and homemade goods, unlike mass-produced, are worth taking the time to relish. Therefore, people would be less易 to mindlessly gorge themselves on them. But before even initial steps toward such a change in capitalist priorities could be made, a shift in the materialist mindset (more is better) would have to occur. For, horror of horrors, the GNP could fall a little. We would do well to take the advice of Orestes Brownson, an American philosopher who in 1855 said, "If you would wish to make a man happy, study not to augment his goods, but to diminish his wants." Furthermore, such a scaled-down economic system would require much less energy, fewer natural resources and would put out less pollution than the unmodified capitalist alternative. And James Watt would be out of a job. If Reagan and Watt do have their way, however, and unrestrained free enterprise does become the overriding priority over the long term, then the consequences for society are far more severe. A witness to the cultural barbarity, moral degradation and depletion and defilement of natural resources that have resulted from the "sordid boon" of the last 30 years. Such decivilizing trends would merely accelerate if Reagan had money on money over humanity were augmented. Moreover, capitalism out of control, by weakening the moral fiber of the people and depleting the resources of the environment could destroy the very foundation on which it was built, the first place. In which case, conservatives could really have a chance to pinch themselves. The democracies of Western Europe find themselves confronted by a Soviet army of a million men with 30,000 tanks facing their west of the Ural mountains—an armored strength a few times greater but latter had in May 1940. The Russian nuclear arsenal exceeded that of the United States. Hungary '68, Czechoslovakia '68–will it be Poland's turn in 1981? And Will Ronald Reagan face a baptism of fire as Red tanks roll into Warsaw? The president has said that he would continue his war with the Nazi's in Poland, yet never the international situation looked more menacing in all the postwar years. Soviets may have Poland in invasion plans Under the smokescreen of a wholly illusory "detente," the Soviets have increased their destructive potential targeted against the urban area of Novosibirsk, equivalent of more than 10.000 Hiroshima bombs. Ominous though the Soviet war of nerves may be, the massing of troops on Poland's border is an intimidation that is nothing new for the Poles. They have, for the last 25 years, a better record than any other Russian satellite people of judging just how far they can go in pursuit of their aspirations without precipitating a Soviet crackdown. It has always been apparent, even in Stalin's time, that Moscow has a healthy respect for Polish nationalism. It has never dared press for collectivization of Polish agriculture, as it did in the other satellites, and it has avoided direct interaction with the Roman Catholic Church in Poland. The Poles have, apart from world opinion, much going for them. There is, first, their strategic position as the most indispensable block in the cordon that Stalin constricted between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. Poland straddles the traditional invasion route, and has thus become a permanent the Kremlin wants is to have it become what Northern Ireland has become to Great Britain. In the June 1966 workers' upheaval in Poland, rather than march as it did later in November on Hungary, the Soviet Union called home its highly unpopular prosecution, Marshal Rakovosky, and agreed to the installation of Gomulka, whom Stalin had condemned as a deviationist—a Titiot. Ever since, Moscow has tolerated in Poland a degree of dissidence unique in Eastern Europe. The considerations behind these concessions still have weight—and presumably Polish patriots are counting on them no less than on world opinion to restrain Moscow. There is a second important aspect of Polish nationalism that is a factor in deterring Moscow PETER SOMERVILLE in the present situation. Although the impulses for freedom that have found expression in the union Solidarity movement are profound, they are unlikely to be as strong as the commitment to national identity of a people with a history of centuries of suppression. Poland has long been a crucible, and from it has emerged a head-strong people—the most able of all at living with Russia and still retaining some sense of respect. That ability now faces a face For now, it is impossible to say whether Lech Walesa and his courageous comrades will get away with it on this occasion; the free trade unions that they have created in defiance of the authorities have a membership already exceeding eight million. If they do not—and there is increasing serious danger that they will not—it is unlikely the The spontaneous uprising of the workers of Poland is a vivid example that the human spirit of man is unconquerable and that his determina- tion live in freedom cannot be repressed forever. Soviets will repeat the TV spectaculars they provided for the Western news media in '56 and '68 with thousands of Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest and Prague. No, the invasion will be more subtle. And the timing of any Soviet attack against Poland is certain to be chosen with care. Some two years ago, on the occasion of the last wave of industrial unrest in Poland, railway flatcar traveling from the Soviet Union into Poland carried under camouflage cover Soviet T-72 tanks resplayed in Polish Army markings. In the event they had been met by the German forces, it was not the Soviets, but the Polish Army itself that was shot down on the Polish workers. The joint Soviet-Polish military maneuvers taking place have been confirmed by the Soviet news agency Tass. The Tass reports are significant because only large-scale Warsaw Pact war games generally are publicized, and Western governments of the maneuvers as a possible attempt to prepare the Soviet and Polish people for any measures taken to end the Polish labor crisis. The question on everybody's mind is whether Haig's hard words and Reagan's colossal commitment to defense is enough to deter the Soviets from a full-scale military invasion attempt, or whether it is merely setting the stage for an official military involvement should the invasion occur. It would be unlikely, however, that U.S. military forces would be deployed behind the Iron Curtain. Just what will the Hag-Neagron America to should our worst fears be realized? the only alternative is to use the economic weapon, but a trade embargo would be more likely to hurt the Polish people than to deal a blow to the Soviet aggressors. And it didn't work in Afghanistan. Clearly, the American response to possible Soviet military intervention in Poland is proving to be just as complex and horrendous a waiting game as the Soviet Union is finding.