Knowing It All
LEKACHMAN, ROBERT
Knowing It All anti-politics in america By John H. Bunzel Alfred Knopf. 291 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by robert lekachman This is a good, lively tilt at the enemies of pluralist, democratic politics,...
...As Norman Thomas has wryly observed, one reason Socialism in the United States failed was the theft of its "Utopian" program by the major parties...
...As the list implies, the sources of antipathy to politics as played in the United States are occasionally supernatural...
...Reviewed by robert lekachman This is a good, lively tilt at the enemies of pluralist, democratic politics, American-style...
...In the hands of some of the new elite, the traditional stuff of politics????power, prejudice, privilege and selHnterest????seems to vanish...
...Bunzel has his fun with his oddly-assorted but plausibly selected collection of opponents and his book justifies its title...
...partisans of behavioral manipulation led by B. F. Skinner whose Walden Two receives a rough massage...
...The style is good...
...In an affluent society, the politics of interest show suspicious resemblances to the politics of plutocracy in which what counts is the weight of finance rather than of argument...
...The idea is bright...
...Even for men of the greatest good will, the obvious temptation is to evaluate more and more public policy as essentially technical and therefore most amenable to handling by the masters of the analytical tools capable of solving technical problems...
...Only readers dead to controversy will avoid an urge to argue with the author about every other page...
...friends of instant virtue and practitioners of participatory democracy such as Students for a Democratic Society...
...True, like any good polemicist, he exaggerates the virtues of his own case...
...and psychological reductionists of neo-Freudian persuasion, here represented particularly by T. W. Adorno and his influential studies of the authoritarian personality...
...Our society would be in even poorer condition than it is if it had depended upon the major parties for modern programs toward social welfare...
...Skinnerians and followers of Elton Mayo are united in their dislike of conflict...
...Still, one supposes that Bunzel simply decided that there was no shortage of comment upon the undue influence of wealth, the inadequacies of Congress, the continuing inequity of political representation, the President's propaganda powers, and the dangerous apathy of large segments of electorates...
...How much more satisfactory is the rule of a benevolent elite, reinforced in its altruism by the right psychological techniques...
...The enemies are numerous and variegated: good guys like the Quakers and bad eggs like the John Birchers...
...As far as they and other like-minded religious sects are concerned, Bunzel's moral is plain: Political compromise cannot coexist with an absolute religious ethic...
...As I study the new elitism discussed in periodicals like the Public Interest and embodied in such proposals as the Automation Commission's recommendation of a Council of Social Advisers charged with " 'monitoring' social change, forecasting possible social trends, and suggesting policy alternatives to deal with them," I find myself more alarmed by the economists and the sociologists than by the psychologists...
...In Skinner's universe psychological conditioning begun in infancy prepares the individual to identify his purposes and his happiness with the wholesome functioning of his group...
...With such notable exceptions as Herbert Hoover, Lieutenant General Lewis Hershey and Richard Nixon, in our time Quakers have tended to prefer personal salvation to political power...
...Although occasionally he recognizes the role that groups outside of normal politics have filled in the creation of new programs, new ideas and finally new politics, he does much too little to help us understand the subtle interplay between Democrats, Republicans and the individuals and third parties seeking ultimate or distant goals...
...These reservations quite aside, Anti-Politics in America is well worth reading...
...Authoritarians of both the Left and the Right are contemptuous of the deals, trades and compromises of everyday politics for their own, earthly reasons...
...And by ancient habit, authoritarians of the Left tend to dismiss politics as sheer epiphenomena, pale reflections of the solid economic base...
...If the former saved the soul and risked the colony, the latter surely rescued the colony only at the severe cost of staining the soul...
...Different as they are in most regards, what links warm-hearted Utopians, Machiavellian Stalinists and Fascists of all colorations, is the simple confidence in superior knowledge Each group knows in its heart that it is right Hence the true authoritarian, aware of his insight into the human condition, convinced of his ability to manage society and impatient with lesser men, perceives no need to prolong democratic charades...
...yearners for the alleged social cohesion of the Middle Ages of the Elton Mayo stripe...
...Mayo, the father of the industrial relations movement, early identified management as his candidate for the construction of a social community within the factory...
...Where I find Bunzel incomplete is in his discussion of the shape that elitism seems to be taking...
...But even within the context of his intention, Bunzel strikes me as excessively simplistic on one major point and oddly incomplete on another...
...From the early days of the Pennsylvania settlement, Quaker officials struggled with the incompatible claims of personal purity and practical administration...
...If conflict is indeed an evil, then democratic politics are, to say the least of it, a mistake...
...The economists especially have at their disposal some new and delightful intellectual tools????systems analysis, cost-benefit analysis, operations research, linear programming, and the like...
Vol. 50 • May 1967 • No. 11
