History Closes In on America:
KRONISH, SIDNEY J.
WRITERS and WRITING History Closes In on America The Future as History. By Robert L. Heilbroner. Harper. 217 pp. $4.00. Reviewed by Sidney J. Kronish Professor of Social Sciences, Fairleigh...
...The flowering of science and technology inspired the hope of harnessing nature to man's aspirations...
...Planning for further socialization is on the defensive: anti-democratic movements and parties are declining...
...The release of human energy which accompanied the advent of capitalism created the prospect of banishing poverty...
...On the other hand, a continuation of our present policy of inadequate assistance may expose America to worldwide proletarian wrath...
...At a lower level of abstraction— when we confront concrete issues with specific solutions—we face a wider spectrum of alternatives than the author's analysis allows...
...A comparable growth in non-Communist areas will be expensive and the effort may prove frustrating...
...But the sources of our difficulties are not psychological or moral: they are institutional and political...
...A half century ago the permanence of capitalism and democracy in the West appeared assured...
...Science and technology, capitalism and democracy—once the sources of confidence—are now the seeds of disillusionment...
...The ultimate tragedy would be the adoption of an attitude of cynicism and the attempt to achieve disengagement from history...
...As Heilbroner says: "We cannot help living in history...
...The crucial test for the liberal outlook does not arise from its successful performance in the West, but from its determined enemies in the East...
...The sources of confidence in the future are familiar...
...today their survival is in doubt everywhere...
...The Future as History is an assault on the simplicist view that everything is possible for man and that change is inevitably progress...
...Unquiet rather than pessimism describes the American mood...
...Abroad, there is a global movement towards Communism and socialism, and in the developing nations a movement away from Western-style democracy...
...At home, technology has led to the dehumanization of life, and democracy has led to the mass society...
...and significant steps toward political and economic integration are being taken...
...The major currents of our time are moving in a direction contrary to our desires, and we are no longer certain that we can change their course...
...If we are to meet, endure, and transcend the trials and defeats of the future—for trials and defeats there are certain to be—it can only be from a point of view which seeing the future as part of the sweep of history enables us to establish our place in that immense procession in which is incorporated whatever hope humankind may have...
...but we are not yet committed to the mobilization of our resources...
...Our resources are still superior to those of the USSR...
...Soviet resources are mobilized to bury us...
...The application of creative intelligence to the solution of specific problems has brought Western man closer to realizing his most important dreams...
...The challenges which confront America are disquieting...
...Our economic record is impressive, but is it impressive enough...
...The societies which emerge are likely to be socialistic and perhaps undemocratic...
...It suggests that no philosophy of history provides us with total solutions to global problems...
...Disarmed by the philosophy of optimism, Western society seems incapable of discovering the social controls necessary to contain the unwanted consequences of the forces it spawned...
...We are not yet the prisoners of global forces...
...In the meantime, there are very specific policy decisions to be made...
...It received the coup de grace with the horror of the years 1914-45 and the rise of Russia...
...The first fruits of capitalism and democratic revolutions brought disenchantment with the philosophy of optimism...
...Nowhere in post-Marshall Plan Europe are there real signs of deterioration...
...We can only fail to be aware of it...
...The agent forces of history have not eliminated a large residue of old problems and have created some frightening new ones...
...The widening influence of democracy heightened human expectations...
...The success of Western culture has stimulated expectations...
...Heilbroner presents a convincing analysis which establishes that there are no global solutions to the world crisis...
...Moreover, we are under pressure to match or surpass the high rate of economic growth of the USSR...
...The principal American counter-challenge is our economic momentum...
...In default of these expenditures the Government would be forced to try to stimulate the economy by devices which are bound to bring it into collision with private interests...
...We will have to learn to live with that fact...
...It is certainly not obvious that pessimism describes the mood of Western Europe...
...Our heritage of successful application of creative intelligence provides us with the only vehicle for amelioration which we have...
...Faith in man's capacity to solve his proximate problems has not been sustained by naivete but by experience...
...In Western Europe pessimism is the dominant outlook...
...For the immediate future the historic currents can be expected to run contrary to Western aspirations...
...To insure growth and preserve capitalism, we may be compelled to accept planning and the partial socialization of the economy...
...Clearly, the liberal outlook must be reconstructed to make it more applicable to an age of technological specialization, bureaucrat-ized power and mass movements...
...Military expenditures keep our economy bouyant...
...America faces a limited option in a narrow spectrum of choices...
...The catastrophies of the last 50 years should not blind us to the fact that basic human conditions have improved beyond recognition in the past century and a half...
...The rising expectations of the have-not peoples of the world confront America with a dilemma...
...The American experience reinforces the philosophy of optimism, but history is closing in on America...
...These historic currents bred the philosophy of optimism: "the faith that historic environment, as it comes into being, will prove benign and congenial—or at least neutral to our private efforts...
...The economic success of the USSR and Red China exerts a gravitational pull leftward...
...Reviewed by Sidney J. Kronish Professor of Social Sciences, Fairleigh Dickinson University ROBERT HEILBRONER, in a brilliantly written work, analyzes the historic currents of our time and concludes that the West is at bay...
...However, Heil-broner's criticism of the philosophy of optimism comes close to a denial of the liberal outlook: It has led him toward an understatement of the achievements and an exaggeration of the failures of Western culture...
...The unprecedented success of man's strivings to force history to conform to his aspirations is at the root of optimism and is also the source of much of the contemporary mood of discontent...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 21
