Wednesday, 22 August 2001 13:44 (ET)

By MICHAEL RUST, UPI Think Tank Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- The Socialist Party USA will be launching the American Socialist Foundation, a think tank they hope will gain greater media visibility for the positions and ideals favored by party activists.

All think tank denizens know that in the war of ideas, a think tank can be a powerful weapon. Lawrence Reed, president of the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank, cites 19th century author Victor Hugo as saying that ideas are more powerful than the armies of the world.

Reed has his doubts about the new Socialist think tank, however.

Socialism per se is bankrupt, he said. They tend to be not well-grounded in things like reason, logic, fact, and history--things that guide the rest of us.

However, it is to promote ideas that the Socialists have launched the new foundation. And in September, the first official event of the ASF will be a meeting held in conjunction with the protests expected in Washington against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which will generate a massive media presence.

The meeting during the planned September demonstrations is mainly a response to the number of people who will be present at the anti-World Bank and IMF actions, said Shaun Richman, the secretary-treasurer for both the new think tank and the old party.

Everyone on the Left is going to be there, he said.

The ASF will serve as an educational resource for the demonstrators, producing reports on various issues from a socialist perspective.

We like to think of this as our Cato Institute, said Greg Parson, the Socialist Party's national secretary, referring to the libertarian think tank located in Washington. Cato scholars promote their beliefs through the highly organized distribution of papers, books, presentations and seminars.

We're flattered that people think Cato has done a good job, said David Boaz, senior vice president of Cato. It helps to have ideas that work in the real world.

When it comes to production of studies and papers, the foundation will probably not get fully underway until next year, said Richman. The Socialist Party leadership hopes that the output from the new think tank will be very pertinent to the problems facing American society.

With this new foundation we can hold conferences, publish books and issue studies and reports on a variety of issues from an inclusive socialist perspective, says Richman.

All of this takes money, however. Richman says that limited fundraising has begun, and that so far, less than $2,000 has been raised.

Given its limited financial circumstances, the foundation will operate out of Socialist Party headquarters in New York. The ASF will not have any scholars in residence. The three officers of the foundation all have connections to the party, as do the members of the small Board of Directors.

Besides Richman, the officers include Parson, who is the foundation's vice president, and Barbara Garson, the foundation's president. Garson was the Socialist Party's 1992 vice presidential candidate for six weeks, following the death of the earlier nominee.

David McReynolds, a pacifist activist who has been the Socialist Party's presidential candidate for much of the last 20 years, is a member of the nascent board of trustees for the ASF.

One thing I emphasized during my (2000) campaign was the need to look beyond Russia and Scandinavia to find our own models for an American socialist movement committed to profound radical social change by democratic and peaceful means, says McReynolds.

Some are skeptical of the think tank's -- and the Socialist Party's -- ability to have an impact.

They're a rump of a shell of an organization with no members, says Ronald Radosh, a former fellow at the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies in Washington. Radosh wrote a recently published memoir, Commies, which describes his childhood as a red diaper child of communist parents, and his work as a left-wing scholar and activist.

Many former friends attacked Radosh following publication of his book The Rosenberg File, written with Joyce Milton, which argued that Julius Rosenberg had, in fact, committed nuclear espionage, for which he and his wife Ethel were executed.

Radosh does not sound nostalgic when discussing any of the surviving segments of the Socialist Party, which split into three factions in 1973.

Social Democrats, USA, of which Radosh was a member, supported an anti-Soviet foreign policy. Democratic Socialists of America, headed by the late socialist leader Michael Harrington, favored working within the Democratic Party, like the Social Democrats. Only the third remnant, which kept the name Socialist Party, has run its own candidates for office.

In the view of Radosh, who is both a professional historian and former socialist activist, none of them have distinguished themselves.

I call them Web sites, says Radosh, of the major socialist organizations. Dave McReynolds has been running for president for 100 years.