LIBERAL'S MANIFESTO
Corey, Lewis
Liberal's Manifesto THE VITAL CENTER, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Houghton, Mifflin. 274 pp. $3. Reviewed by Lewis Corey THIS manifesto for "a new radi-calism" has aroused considerable...
...yet it is equally clear that economic problems are a major aspect of the crisis of our generation...
...Which "radical politicians"— Henry Wallace, former Gov...
...It can only mean that both right-left extremes must be avoided...
...The radical intellectual," he writes, "dallied with communism, but the radical politicians remained faithful to democracy...
...He plays around with a peculiar psychology: "There is a Hitler, a Stalin in every breast...
...Schlesinger has not gone beyond the New Deal and Keynes, who, he says, "is the prophet of "the new radicalism"—although Keynesianism is being subjected to increasing economic criticism, with the emergence of a group of "left" Keynesians...
...Nowhere in the book is there any concrete analysis of an economic program for the new radicalism...
...Its collapse has a meaning—what can we learn from it...
...As an expression of the awakening of American liberals from their slough of despond, it has great value...
...We must go deeper into history to get its contribution to a new radicalism...
...As a contribution to the cooperative intellectual effort that is called for, I want to glance at what I think are some of the book's serious shortcomings: I find Schlesinger's sense of history defective...
...What social groups, what economic policy, what specific institutional changes...
...Finally, the best part of this book is its destructive criticism of communism...
...In his search for a meaning of American liberalism he is still dominated by the Andrew Jackson fixation...
...Any new radicalism must contain an acceptable economic program...
...And what is the "vital center...
...Not only in his economic analyses is Schlesinger smugly content to remain on the verbal level of general ideas...
...Obviously, history is not shaped by economic forces alone...
...II The creative idea, in the concept of the vital center, does not, it seems to me, come clearly forth...
...Marxist-communism has been the greatest social movement of the past 100 years...
...Benson, O. John Rogge...
...that there is need for a policy, program, and values around which the overwhelming majority of progressive people of good will in all social groups can get together for constructive social changes to promote greater democratic freedom...
...His Age of Jackson read the New Deal in Jackson's times, and, by implication, Jackson into the New Deal...
...Finally, Schlesinger makes some peculiar animadversions on the "intellectuals...
...It stages no concrete emergence in this book, unless in terms of the New Deal...
...My own conclusion is that the failures of progressive movements in our generation came not from being too rational but from not being rational enough in their understanding of social forces and the nature of man...
...The confusion here is dangerous—the suggestion that liberals, too, must espouse the irrational...
...the center must hold...
...the significance of unionism, for Schlesinger, is exhausted by the sentence, "The rise of the politicalized labor leader introduces a new and possibly valuable element in American politics...
...Very good words, even inspiring...
...When and where in our history did it exist?] The spirit of the new radicalism is the spirit of the center—the spirit of human decency opposing the extremes of tyranny...
...Writing does not become authentically American because it uses yesterday's phrase, such as "doughface...
...The farmers receive no mention...
...He criticizes the danger of state domination, yet he over-emphasizes the state, and writes: "Big government, for all its dangers, remains democracy's only effective response to big business...
...The object of the new radicalism is to restore the center...
...He might have learned a good deal of value for his job of creating a new radicalism from the exploratory analyses of ex-communists and liberal socialists...
...He does not come to grips with the crucial problems of monopoly, of crises and depressions, of economic democracy...
...But its shortcomings are as great as its virtues...
...I wonder what that means...
...I suggest that Schlesinger misunderstands the -liberalism of Theodore Roosevelt, whose "administrative control of industry" came to life in the NRA with its monopoly domination...
...Reviewed by Lewis Corey THIS manifesto for "a new radi-calism" has aroused considerable satisfaction among liberals in search of new directions...
...But here, tooF the job is not altogether satisfactory, for it is wholly negative...
...The confusions of Schlesinger appear in a number of other areas...
...But Schlesinger is obviously no economist, and his brief excursions into economics are superficial and unsatisfactory...
...Its general approach, its affirmation of the basic liberal values, and, above all, its passionate criticism of totalitarianism, especially of communism, fit into the needs of our time...
...There is a thinness in the texture of political democracy, a lack of appeal to those irrational sentiments once mobilized by religion, and now by totalitarianism...
...It is a devastating commentary on a book that presumes to be a text for the new radicalism, that unionism is only casually mentioned and then only for its "politicalized leaders...
...Instead of concrete discussion of these problems...
...Schlesinger learns nothing...
...But how and by whom and for what concrete changes in institutions and policy...
...Institutions and social groups scarcely appear at all...
...Schlesinger draws a misleading and disturbing contrast— "the conceptions of the intellectual are at last beginning to catch up with the instincts [instincts, mind you!] of the politician...
...Each of us has the plague in him...
...Schlesinger verbalizes: "The center is vital...
...Not the intellectuals but the bureaucrats, who saw their brethren in power in Russia, have contributed the largest number of communists and fellow-travelers...
...the businessmen are considered only for their incompetence to govern...
...This is also true of his concept and discussion of "the vital center...
...Such a policy, program, and values would be a synthesis of the radical and the conservative approach in terms of building anew...
Vol. 14 • February 1950 • No. 2
