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University Daily Kansan Mondav. Nov. 12. 1962
Student Elections
The Guest Editorial which is reprinted in the lower right-hand corner of this page presents one view of campus elections. This is not an uncommon view and one which must be recognized and, to some extent, appreciated.
If the Alabama Crimson-White wishes to hold to the position presented, fine. But the question put to it is: If there are no campus elections what group is going to administrate and coordinate student activities and represent the student body?
WITHOUT STUDENT ELECTIONS there could be no All Student Council. With no student council there would be no student representation of the students. This would place the student population completely at the mercy of any number of forces.
In order to give the students, for whom the entire concept of university level education is designed, the privileges and voice necessary there must exist some functioning governmental body. At KU this is the ASC. Maybe there is no similar functioning group at Alabama. It is hoped that this last idea is the reason for the opinion expressed in the Guest Editorial.
One reason why the Crimson-White blast strikes so hard is that the KU student government is without question one of the best and most operative in the country. This makes it difficult to imagine a school which can so publically betray the opportunity the student body has for representation.
TOMORROW AND WEDNESDAY there is the annual fall general election to select members for the ASC. Last week there was little interest evidenced by the student body over the primary voting. Possibly the students were right; there is no need for the primary. But now the student voter is faced with a chance to elevate fellow students to a position which can be beneficial to the entire student body. This opportunity should not be denied any voter by himself.
There is a great need for a body like the ASC as long as it works in positive directions as it has been doing in the past few years.
THERE MAY NOT BE any momentous issues in the election of the membership of the ASC or any pressing need seen by many people on campus for such a body. But, what would happen if there were no student elections and therefore no student government? For one there would be almost no extra-curricula activities through which a student can gain considerable experience and education and provide a diversion from studying. The faculty certainly would not assume the role now played by student committee chairmen to perpetuate the many activities.
The conclusion thus is that, at least on this campus, there is a definite need for the elections of tomorrow and Wednesday and to participate means better student government and therefore a more rounded college career for all students.
Bill Sheldon
Image of Mao Tse-tung Faltering
By Arthur C. Miller
The image and being of Mao Tse-tung stood dominant for many years as an omnipotent leader to the masses of Communist China. Today, hunger and poverty have destroyed much of that image. Mao is old and often is unable to cope with the problems of China as he did in his earlier years.
As a young man, Mao led his Marxist comrades on the "Long March" northward in the 1920's. He led them into the "Great Leap Forward" in the 1950's. Yet in the 1960's his leadership has faltered.
MAO'S SCRIPTURES, written years before, were once accepted as the justification for his every action and policy. The writings of Mao were to the Chinese what the Bible is to the American fundamentalist—a view of what once happened, what is happening and what will happen, without cognizance of the present.
Mao's writings reflect the preatomic period in which most of them were formulated. They are
out of contact with the present world. They reflect his belief in his own infailibility and they are unable to stimulate the production that will quiet the growling stomachs of the millions.
The 69-year-old "Chairman's" leadership has been marking time as has that of the 19-member Politburo which controls the Chinese Communist government. The average age of that body is now 64 and those leaders have lost much of the imagination and vigor which enabled them to manage past crises.
RICHARD L. WALKER, head of the department of International studies at the University of South Carolina, recently cited several indications of deterioration and tired bewilderment among the top leadership of China, including Mao. He says:
- Since the failure of the "people's communes," there have been no great drives or innovations such as once spurred Mao's subjects forward at a reckless pace.
For three years there have been no major doctrinal pronouncements from Peking. Even in its ideological differences with the Soviet Union, Communist China has been unable to come up with the kind of fresh interpretation it developed only six years ago in dealing with de-Stalinization.
- Internal policies and discipline have been allowed to drift and weaken in the fact of growing domestic problems.
- The National People's Congress which met last March and April failed to come up with any concrete proposals for solving the present agrarian dilemma.
With the aging leadership in mainland China rapidly dying off, what is in prospect for the future? The ideology of Mao, and thus Communist China, has become frozen and stagnant. As the "Chairman's" physical and mental health worsen, the policies of China will probably follow a course of indecision and strict adherence to Mao's pre-atomic age dogma.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
YET THIS MAY be for the best, since the past practices of Mao have been marked with caution unless absolute victory was assured. It is likely, then, that as long as Mao lives, Chinese policy will not become reckless.
There will, no doubt, be a period of unstable leadership when Mao dies. There also is the possibility of a power struggle. In any case, the new leader of the Chinese masses will be faced with the same problems, including that of feeding the hungry millions.
There is equally little comfort to be found in the eventual replacement of members on the Politburo. The middle-ranking members of the Chinese Communist party have had little applied foreign experience and fewer of them have had the benefit of education in the West. Most have confined their activities to party work and military command.
THE QUESTION of exactly what will happen upon the death of Mao Tse-tung cannot, of course, be answered. Mao might well become to the Chinese what Lenin is to the Russians. Or he might become a Chinese Stalin. The latter is unlikely.
Sound and Fury
One thing can be said with some feeling of certainty; Mao's doctrines are deeply ingrained in the Chinese and it may be some time before that "mightiest of nations" leaves its despotic past to join the modern world.
Soviet Journal Attacks 'Subversive' Textbook
Last year, right wing groups both in and out of the University attacked the "liberal, socialistic" tendencies of the Department of Economics of the University of Kansas. One of the main attacks was directed against the use of Paul A. Samuelson's Economics: An Introductory Analysis as a text in some sections of introductory courses.
PROF. SAMUELSON is head of the Department of Economics at MIT and informal economic advisor to the President. His book, now in its fifth edition, is the most widely used introductory economics text in the United States.
Nevertheless, from the campus YAF to Kansas State Senators, it was maintained that Samuelson's treatment of economics amounted to an advocacy of socialism, and the polemic took on such proportions that one could not help but feel that the use of the book was just what Uncle Khrushchev ordered.
IN LIGHT OF these accusations and in light of the fact that this semester alone more than 500 of my students are being exposed to this "subversive" book in their introductory courses, it may be interesting to see what the Soviet Union thinks of the book. Samuelson's Economics was reviewed in 1959 in Vestnik Leningradskogo Universiteta, Serilia Ekonomiki, Filosofii i Prava — the Journal of Leningrad University, Economics, Philosophy and Law Series. Let me give you just a few quotes from this review, to show you how much the Soviet Union appreciates our efforts here at KU to subvert the minds of innocent students. (For those interested, the complete English translation can be found in Problems of Economics, April, 1960, pp. 54-57, available both in the main library and in the Business Research Center Reading Room):
"Samuelson's textbook is instructive in regard to the new method of capitalist apologetics utilized by the contemporary bourgeois
"SAMUELSON'S 'INTRODUCTION' may be regarded as a classic illustration of the definition of vulgar political economy as presented by Marx. . . In our day, the bourgeois economies . . . concern themselves with belittling in every way possible the socialist economic system and seeking to denigrate the economic achievements of the countries of the world system of socialism. This aspect of the matter is present in abundance in Samuelson's 'Introduction.'
"THE BOURGEOISE PRISM of business holds the student's thought, masks exploitation, conceals the actual economic relationships and the understanding of the objective laws of capitalism. The second characteristic of the method of this text is that of approaching the solution of all of the problems it poses from the viewpoint of the entrepreneur . . .
"The method of 'studying' contemporary capitalism proposed by Samuelson is characteristic of bourgeois vulgar political economy as a whole.
"Samuelson's textbook, which has been erected on the basis of a synthesis of the dogmas of vulgar bourgeois political economy of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and of Keynesian theory, clearly reflects the modern tendency in bourgeois political economy. . . Written in the spirit of 'neoclassical synthesis', (it) illustrates the contemporary methods of apologetics for state monopoly capitalism."
Harry Shaffer
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Aren't Elections Nice?
School elections are here again and the excitement generated by them is almost nil. Unfortunately, this is exactly the way it should be.
The major purpose, it seems, for these elections is that someone decided elections are nice, per se. No one thinks that the people running for these offices should be expected to actually do anything.
"STUDENT LEADERS" cry out in anguish about apathy on the part of the student body. We say, nonsense. The first prerequisite for a state of apathy is that there exists something worthy of enthusiasm.
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Are school elections worthy of anything more than apathy from the students? We think not.
A great deluge of campaign posters is not going to remedy the disinterest in the elections, nor do sound trucks and hand shaking junkets constitute the answer to the problem.
THE SOLUTION should be painfully clear, even to the candidates themselves. Either a reason must be found for the existence of school officers or they should be abolished.
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There are many opportunities for purposeful activities by school officers. None of these have ever been tapped. Furthermore, these opportunities will never be tapped as long as the only things these prospective officers require of themselves are bigger and better election techniques.
Crimson-White, University of Alabama
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University of Kaasas student newspaper
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