THE NEW REVOLUTION
Lens, Sidney
The New Revolution American Politics in a Revolutionary World, by Chester Bowles. Harvard University Press. 131 pp. 12.25. Africa's Challenge to America, by Chester Bowles. University of...
...If today the course of politics is to shift decisively it will be because there is a new challenge by a force outside the Democratic and Republican Parties, a new threat by workers, farmers, and intellectuals against the Itaid, status-quo mentality of the two parties...
...It is equally true that only the challenge and the threat of a growing leftist movement, and perhaps a third party, [pushed Roosevelt as far as he went...
...Bowles does not say...
...Page for page there are few books with so much provocative thought as these short manuscripts based on lectures delivered at Harvard and California...
...Instead, says Bowles, our program has been "clumsily militaristic and un imaginative" and we seem "to be adrift without a policy and without even a clear objective...
...This is a novel and thought-provoking theory of political develop-ment...
...Reviewed by Sidney Lens READING Chester Bowles' new books reminds me of a question Aneurin Bevan once put to me: "Why is it," he asked, "that your leading Americans, who do seem to understand the revolutionary character of our times, don't seem to go all the way...
...and adoption of poli cies under which the people can enjoy the benefits of their resources...
...He analyzes the world revolution with a wisdom and insight as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth...
...Praiseworthy as this program may be, it is, I think, platitudinous and limited...
...Many nations have secured independence, but they have yet to gain "a full measure of human dignity", and "increased opportunities, broadly shared...
...This is the dilemma which we have not yet faced, a dilemma "involving not only the nature of life on this earth, but its continued existence...
...And as for the new "consensus," here too he violates his own dictum to be imaginative...
...It is only when Bowles elabo-rates the practical program flowing from this theory that I feel he strays from sound ground...
...Now a "fourth consensus" is neces-sary if America is to forge ahead...
...Yet when it comes to posing answers Bowles seems unable to cut the chord with his associates of so many years...
...We live in an "era of good feeling" in which the impact on America of the "revolution of rising expectations" is not clear to the Joe Smiths of our nation, and in which the political candidates skirt the subject to devote their rhetoric to side issues...
...134 pp...
...We would face a serious crisis indeed if in the next decade the bountiful and largely undiscovered raw materials of Africa, added to those of Asia, were withheld from us...
...utilization of qualified natives in local government...
...He does not, unfortunately, "go all the way...
...Yet the three past turns in American policy have always been accompanied by leftist pressures, by masses in motion: the rebellions of the "critical years" of 1783-88, the pressure of the frontier, the abolitionists, and in our own time the unemployed and union struggles of the thirties...
...progres sive steps towards self-government...
...The first period extended from 1800' to 1861, and was "characterized by a general acceptance, for the first time in history, of an effective federal government . . ." The second, from Lincoln to Roosevelt, "imposed on this primary foundation a dynam-ic and uniquely American ' response to the Industrial Revolution...
...If we are "clumsily militaristic," shall we then liquidate NATO...
...Shall we turn out to pasture those politicians, including Bowles' friends, who stand for this "clumsily militaristic and unimaginative" policy...
...He sees little hope of organizing a third party because of "deep-seated political habits, organization, and laws, which protect the position of the two established parties against newcomers...
...2.75...
...Bowles is certainly a rarity in the upper echelons of American politics...
...And that does not include China, with its 600 million population, which has also cut itself adrift from Western dominance...
...But this is only half the story...
...The "crucial" question, according to Bowles, is the inexorable nationalist revolution in Asia and now Africa...
...Bowles himself recognizes that Roosevelt was "pushed" rather than "went" to the left...
...He finds nothing more compelling as a program for Africa (and presumably Asia) than the five points made by Cordell Hull in his 1949 memoirs: Moral support and material aid to help the colonial peoples "towards their political, eco nomic, social and educational add vancement...
...The third, from 1932 to the present, .was the general accceptance of the welfare state by the majority in both parties...
...University of California Press...
...tha setting of specific target dates for ful independence...
...It has already brought independence to sixteen nations covering 700 million people in the last short decade...
...This, it seems to me, is far more relevant...
...There is still time for America to join the crusade and avert the debacle which is certain if we do not...
...His silence here is in sharp contradistinction to the forthrightness of his main argument...
...He feels that the new program will probably achieve majority status first in the Democratic Party...
...An4 if in addition, Russia offered Asia, Af-rica, "and even South America an opportunity for rapid economic develops ment within an association of states led by the Soviet Union," the danger to our nation would be compounded many times over...
...He is timid in marking out a new path away from the Democratic Party and from leading politicians whose views are poles apart from his...
...The United States has lived through three critical periods, in each of which a new "consensus" has taken hold of both major parties and steered the ship of state along the right course...
...Having made this point, however, one can only hasten to express gratitude that we do have -a few Chester Bowies', who explain our national paradox in an incisive and lucid manner...
...Along with such figures as James P. Warburg, Justice Douglas, and John Nuveen, he forms a lonely quadumvirate among the men of substance who see world affairs in revolutionary perspective...
...So far the "revolution of rising expectations" is only in its incipient stages...
...It is true, of course, that Roosevelt used the Democratic Party as his medium of social reform...
...Here, I feel, is where Bowles should place his emphasis...
...Shall we cut the power of the Pentagon and its towering role in making America conformist...
...Sould we, for instance, withhold aid to those colonial powers, like Britain or France, which refuse to adopt this course...
...What will distinguish this consensus from the current one is its "realization that freedom in this tightly interre-lated world is becoming indivisible...
...What is needed obviously is a "fresh approach," a sharp turn...
Vol. 21 • January 1957 • No. 1
