The New Shape of Politics: Liberalism and Lassitude
Geltman, Emanuel
We are soon going to be asked: whom will you vote for in November? Given the quadrennial pressure to face utter disaster with reaction or coddle the future with facsimile liberalism, I would...
...Mr...
...Schlesinger does— and there is nothing wrong with this as an agitational strategy—is to say: here are issues, only a liberal reform movement can deal with them, an upsurge of political liberalism is therefore necessary and certain...
...For along with a proposal to "elevate our pop ular culture" is another to prosecute "our weapons effort...
...Schlesinger does appreciate our moral and practical responsibility for poverty in other areas of the world...
...especially as he also calls them mere "technical problems...
...RECENTLY, one of the more energetic minds of American liberalism, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote a piece for The Progressive (September 1959) which attempts to rally a liberal movement behind a progressive platform of social reform...
...Schlesinger, or with his father, the noted historian who developed the theory, but his cycles of American passivity and reform strike me as contrived...
...Is Rockefeller more "progressive" than Nixon...
...Given the quadrennial pressure to face utter disaster with reaction or coddle the future with facsimile liberalism, I would like to record my opinion early: the question does not impress me as a vital one, and I shall probably sit my answer out...
...In any case, I rather suspect that the Sixties will have to make it on their own, without benefit of a cyclical assist...
...I am not sure of my answer...
...We can as seriously deceive ourselves by assuming that these men offer us a working standard of leadership as by assuming they are all without intelligence...
...Schlesinger incorporates some twelve programmatic planks which, if they are not the product alone of liberal (or socialist) genius, contain some essentials in human dec ency: slum clearance and revitalized community life...
...November 1959...
...Schlesinger is aiming at Sixty itself, then his apparently optimistic presentation of problems and opportunities, reduces itself to a pessimistic view...
...it foresees new alignments in the Democratic and Republican parties creating an Age of Reform in the Sixties...
...Political harassment by an unfriendly government can hurt...
...I must, however, comment, on their lack of interrelation...
...Are they, though...
...Negro rights, labor's status, any given issue could become the cleaving principle of a campaign and require a stand regardless of other considerations...
...For all I know he might have welcomed Taft-Hartley intervention to head off the strike...
...I am not saying that anything short of simon-pure socialism (my kind, of course) is unacceptable...
...Or how reconcile labor's self-interest with the necessity of foreign nations to export...
...They are real problems, not mere shapeless troubles...
...It capably explores the mood behind the Eisenhower victories...
...There are more real issues than we can possibly enumerate...
...The Sixties, of course, will last all of ten years...
...For of what use to speak of issues and ideas if the outcome is reduced to the convention antics in August...
...We do have troubles enough, and in some cases enough of a solution to elevate the trouble to a problem...
...Schlesinger does a commendable job on both...
...What great issues divide them—Stevenson and Rockefeller...
...Does not a tax program, an inflation program, if intended to redress social imbalance, prick a sensitive area of the capitalist skin—as do foreign aid and similar measures of social need...
...So it may also be that the apathy Mr...
...Schlesinger supports his argument with an historical theory of cyclical changewhich is, to say the least, unconvincing...
...But what motivation, what vital driving force, can our "estranged social order" supply for this purpose...
...That the steel workers stood fast is a tribute to their courage...
...THESE ARE THE NEW and increasingly difficult problems that we face—and to them could be added scores of others, ranging from urban planning to mass culture, from education to the nature of work...
...For the few who still look wistfully at the labor leaders, or the ranks behind them, it might be added that we have become quite accustomed to threats of a new kind of political intervention—even by such potent figures as Meany and Reuther...
...AMONG THESE PROPOSALS, Mr...
...Is Nixon more opportunistic in his advocacy of Negro rights than Kennedy in speaking for the Algerians...
...In Sixty we will have Nixon or Rockefeller runnning against Symington, Kennedy, Johnson, or Humphrey...
...Now this raises an interesting question: does a good Sixties-type of reformer have to accept this as a package...
...A serious socialist organization will not enact a feeble charade of political activity...
...Not one of these gentlemen (except Symington) has, for example, had the decency or courage to tell the Catholic Church to devote itself to its parishioners and to keep out of such a social, public and individual affair as birth control...
...Since it is unlikely, and a hazard if it were likely, it might be better if they addressed themselves to the problems that cannot be solved by the best kind of party program—or government...
...freedom of speech...
...Why...
...a reconstructed educational system...
...The issues he specifies are there, but the will, the readiness to take risks, the necessary radicalism—radicalism not in the dogmatic but the literal sense—is not...
...It suggests another question which relates could one not create another kind of cycle...
...Does that mean that he is more ready to attack the fundamental inequities behind our social imbalance...
...A question such as this may indicate how and why the most serious of our socio-political issues seem more and more to lie outside the frame of our electoral structure and our normal political disputes...
...Is Acheson more "progressive" in world affairs than Eisenhower— or Rockefeller...
...One might say that they contribute to a neurotic atmosphere, not a political one...
...Schlesinger's political conclusions for 1960, this liberal program seems to me quite as visionary as any that might be dreamed up by a socialist...
...We have become accustomed, period...
...I wouldn't think of matching historical scholarship with Mr...
...The intelligence and imagination of the Democratic and Republican candidates, reflecting the leadership of both parties, can be measured today...
...Perhaps the traditional vehicles of po litical action (regardless of denomination) no longer suit the needs of our time...
...McDonald wanted no test of class strength and he obviously wanted no strike...
...Will Humphrey, the most "programmatic" of the lot, forsake the taste of the Presidency to risk everything for principle...
...Many of us are quite ready to accept good liberal coin in the absence of socialist exchange...
...One of the saddest speculations I recently read was in the column of a Washington correspondent, William Shannon, who dreamed a glorious dream—a great political discourse between Stevenson and Rockefeller in the image of such great debates of the past as the Lincoln-Douglas debates...
...New modes of political expression are required—perhaps by autonomous groups in local areas, perhaps by a complete overhauling of our conceptions of political activity...
...Apart from the fact that a Fair Dealish Democratic administration might have sent the men back to work earlier, legislation did not create the difficulty, nor could better legislation have solved it...
...There is disquiet aplenty in the country...
...A question such as this one may be far more important—for liberals, reformers and socialists—in Sixty than the available forms of political participation...
...For my part, I feel no obligation to worship because someone has erected a temple...
...It is this which leads me to suspect that Mr...
...He unites the necessities of building "social health and military strength...
...There is, then, no promise of socialist or of labor political action...
...it confounds such historical misconceptions as the dependence of a reform movement on a period of depression...
...But in the meantime, the "desperate choice" in November strikes me as neither so very desperate nor as anything but beside the point...
...Schlesinger's program, good as it may be in its own right, does not succeed in giving new meaning to that distinction...
...Schlesinger would, I am sure, agree that if the New Deal served useful social ends in the depression Thirties, the nuclear-powered Sixties require something more...
...But would you—good socialist, labor militant, or whatever— have asked this sacrifice at this time knowing it would last 100odd days, and might have to be resumed for a hundred more...
...But they do not intrude into consciousness to the point where there is articulate pressure or desire for action...
...Once it is seen in the context of Mr...
...And there is very little promise of liberal political action—on the level where it can challenge complacency, conservatism or inertia...
...The strike was called, in effect, not by the union, but by the companies to force a test of class strength on a relatively small but handy issue...
...But unless the one descends to complete reaction, and the other ascends to complete social responsibility, the effects are peripheral...
...Is Reuther willing to tackle the auto companies...
...I am suggesting that the avenues of political action today tend to become more and more trivial...
...Agreed he is a sorry specimen, but outside of Hoffa and the teamsters, how many unions are willing to face a major strike today...
...For it depends in conclusion on "the selection of Democratic candidates with the intelligence and imagination to anticipate the needs of the new period" (emphasis in the original...
...To speak then, as he does next, about taxation and inflation controls, is a letdown...
...very much to the entire framework of his rallying-call: can you by now so easily separate the sheep from the goats, the conservatives from the reformers...
...We have indeed come a long way down the scale of taste...
...But it is the disquiet of anxiety, not indignation...
...That any of these men will so force a commitment to new perspectives as to provoke the creation of a new political institution embracing "radical" Democrats and "liberal" Republicans is beyond present imagination...
...Throw Stevenson in too as a possibility...
...By new perspectives (borrowing from Schlesinger) I mean: to motivate the national will to correct social imbalance, advance international economic health, reduce the ravages of political fear and increase individual freedom...
...Presumably, it is a hopeful piece—it outlines a programmatic basis for American liberalism, and it predicts an optimistic future of political activity...
...political assistance by a friendly government can help...
...Militancy is not at all the criterion...
...I AM NOT AT ALL suggesting that politics is unimportant...
...Schlesinger and others have noted as characteristic of the Fifties reflects an awareness of sorts that it does not much matter which party wins, by present evidence...
...But if we look at so crucial a matter as segregation, it becomes clear that whatever progress has been made has been the result of selfless activity by angry, not anxious people working outside the traditional political structure, and also of an intervention by government in which it is hard to discern much clear distinction between conservatives and liberals...
...By its very nature that implies producing negatively, for destructive, wasteful purposes...
...Schlesinger observes that they need to be endowed "with a broader meaning," I will not comment on how curiously undeveloped they are for this type of article...
...Can one be a good pro gressive and not prosecute the weapons effort, but seek instead some way of disposing of it so that we can, precisely, address ourself to the problem of mass culture...
...The ritualistic socialist sects will make a busy ceremony of "equal time, ' which is their privilege...
...equal rights for minorities...
...Anything might happen in that time...
...This is a pretty tawdry star to pin on the breast of high expectation.* • Mr...
...I speak of the country as a whole, not of such glorious instances as Negro courage in Montgomery or Little Rock...
...Starting at another point of the calendar and selecting other intervals, There is no question but that Mr...
...The steel strike is a case in point...
...How shall we meet automation with shorter hours, if we cannot discourage overtime, second jobs...
...Yet they do not lend themselves to solution by traditional political means— though, obviously, they can be affected, their solution helped or hindered, by traditional political action...
...It is his view that we can only make progress by expanding the public sector of the economy, by "making the public interest the central issue" not through disciplinary controls (restrictive legislation) but constructively by "the allocation of resources between the private and public sector of the economy" (emphasis in original...
...If he passes rather lightly over poverty in the United States, Mr...
...Legislation (the Taft-Hartley act) ultimately sent the men back to work at an inopportune moment for the union...
...A political shuffle might so jar present trends.Conceivably, but not perceivably...
...And if he did, who would cut loose from the Republican or Democratic parties to join him—who of the politicians, who of the labor leaders...
...But if Mr...
...If discourse is all we have left, and that too can be practically effective, let it be so without the distraction of such soul-depressing issues as whether Kennedy or Symington is the superior candidate...
...A great political debate does not hang only on skill (and on that ground alone Lincoln has a right to protest), but on ideas—and on division, opposing ideas...
...It might be good to see the labor leaders independently engaged ( in political activity...
...What Mr...
...It would be a very bold man who would pretend that he has a pat answer here...
...Schlesinger faces the problem of maintaining full production independent of a war economy—by eliminating the problem...
...I don't know...
...Laws and parties are not preventing the organization of the white collar worker...
...Schlesinger understands the malaise of our time when he speaks of our "self-estranged social order...
...How do you advance labor's economic interests (correct the social imbalance) when the economy, apart from the immensely wealthy companies involved, is so rich it can sustain a long interruption of production...
...There have been and will again be situations where a single issue overrides considerations of party frame or program...
...Consider a few of our central problems...
...What ideas have they given promise of offering...
...and people are disturbed or worried about them...
...Schlesinger, despite the cogency of his analysis and the relevance of his issues, may be whistling in the dark...
...We are soon going to be asked: whom will you vote for in November...
...Internal union democracy is not seriously abetted by good will inside or outside labor...
...And if the fear of war isn't one of our great underlying anxieties, then what is...
...Is there really anything in this prospect to capture the imagination...
...Cannot a died-in-the-wool capitalist scoundrel stand as unequivocally for minority rights as you or I? In a word, the easy traditional distinction between conservative and liberal is fading away, and Mr...
...Since Mr...
...What forms of economic action are available to labor in the vastly productive, increasingly automated United States...
Vol. 7 • January 1960 • No. 1
