THE CONDITION OF THE LEFT

...They are much more rational and autonomous than critics allow, Flacks contends...

...In so doing, they forced a change on the society at large...

...on the contrary, the strongest motivational structures developed in our culture are those that energize people toward private life and personal fulfillment...

...Recall the bumper sticker: I owe, I owe, so off to work I go...

...He aims his hugely ambitious book not at fellow academics but directly at leftists—the activists and intellectuals who are trying to make the United States a more just and democratic place...

...If the Left has so far failed to socialize the political economy," he says, "it has nevertheless succeeded in certain times and places in socializing particular groups of human beings...

...It is not affecting "the overall historical drift," it is invisible nationally, and it is grossly underrepresented "in the mainstream arenas of national debate...

...As this example suggests, the primary sphere of Left influence in America has been cultural...

...The consumer package serves as the material basis for a pervasive sense of personal liberty," he says...

...Our culture provides very weak motivational bases for political participation...

...Marcuse and many other cultural critics claim that Americans are as much robots at home as they are at work—victims of the consumer culture...

...Along with these consumer items, Americans express their identity and exercise their liberty in leisure-time hobbies and activities, Flacks says, whether religious, athletic, therapeutic, or otherwise...

...Along the way, he offers a concise and critical history of the American Left in the Twentieth Century, focusing on the Socialist Party, the Wobblies, the Communist Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and SDS...

...And his discussion of the Left's successes seems at times to be overdrawn, for the Left remains far from the reins of formal power...

...founding of the country and the ideology of liberty itself...

...Integrating the Left are alternative foundations and philanthropies, such left-wing magazines as The Progressive, The Nation, In These Times, Dissent, Mother Jones, Socialist Review, and Social Policy, and a handful of left-wing think tanks, notably the Institute for Policy Studies...

...He traces this inward-looking, private orientation of Americans back to the Matthew Rothschild is managing editor of The Progressive...

...Unfortunately, leftists themselves haven't recognized this...

...It will not disappoint...

...This leads to a definitional problem with Flacks...

...Government exercises power without affecting (at least palpably) our everyday lives when it fuels the arms race or intervenes abroad...

...When the accustomed patterns of everyday life are threatened, he says, the opportunity for radical politics arrives...

...He argues that "the United States lacks a strong democratic culture" (the next time some pompous pundit drags out Alexis de Tocqueville, Flacks will come in handy...

...The solution, he says, is not to try yet again to create a Left political party in America...

...Still, the Left suffers from a lack of traditional power, Flacks says...

...After locating the Left's historical successes, Flacks surveys its current condition...

...The political key to his argument is the concept of the tradeoff, which, he says, rests on a political premise: that "the master social institutions" will enlarge the sphere of everyday freedom and security...

...If conscious leftists want the people to make history," he says, "then the point is not to lead them, but to continuously create a culture through which such making can be understood as morally and practically right...

...Flacks disputes this notion...

...The Left has nurtured "perspectives, aspirations, and values that permit popular protest and grass-roots organization to emerge and grow," he concludes...

...These activists have then gone about the hard work of organizing the unpolitical...

...Still, not every point he makes is throughly convincing...

...His goal, echoing the early Marx, is "to end the experienced chasm between everyday life and history, and to promote the democratization of society and its institutions...

...As a force for socialization the American Left has been a crucial element in the evolution of the American social charter...

...But the similarities end there...

...So far, this argument follows the familiar lines of Mills, Marcuse, and Lasch...

...At work and at leisure, they exert their independence, Flacks says...

...But his is a book to argue over and discuss...

...He defines power as "the capacity to make history, to influence the conditions and terms of everyday life in a collectivity...

...Richard Flacks's book compels attention from all who call themselves leftists...

...Flacks recognizes that "those committed to democratization must face the fact that in general people are committed to the making of their lives rather than history...

...Flacks has gone to great lengths to rescue Americans from the oblivion to which cultural critics have consigned them...

...The suburban home and its built-in technology, the car and the recreational vehicle, the TV and stereo all share a common attribute: They are instruments of individual independence and choice...

...He finds an "extensive organized Left structure in the United States, the continuing dynamism of left-wing activism in American life, and the influence of the Left within the institutionalized arenas of the society," especially the universities...

...Rather than presaging the age of mass conformity expected by critical intellectuals, this mass quest for personal fulfillment led to a surprising cultural pluralism," Flacks says...

...The women's movement is a prime example: Activists insisted on changing everyday roles, relationships, and language to conform to a more egalitarian ideal, Racks points out...

...He does so for an overriding purpose: to allow for the prospect of democracy...

...It can change the way we view the world—and our role in it...

...That would be "an exercise in delusory futility," he maintains...

...second, to locate the successes of the Left in order to give directions for future action...

...He starts by enumerating the obvious failures: The Left has never won a majority for socialism, there is no working-class party in America, and no durable national left-wing organization exists...

...Readers will have their own disagreements with Flacks...

...Americans are not as one-dimensional as they are often portrayed...

...Flacks is upbeat about this possibility...

...Through the work of singers, painters, writers, teachers, and gadfly intellectuals, the Left has succeeded in providing "a continuing 'adversarial' thread in our culture that has counterbalanced cultural themes that promote conformity to the logic of capitalism and the nation state...

...For if Americans are thoroughly one-dimensional, narcissistic, and brainwashed, there can be little hope for change...

...That is the question that Flacks addresses in the second half of his book...

...His cultural argument appears too sweeping, granting too much authentic autonomy to consumers of mass culture and underestimating the hypnotic power of the mass media...

...Flacks takes it upon himself to define those roles, Chief among them is the socialization of grass-roots activists...

...That's too narrow, for the U.S...

...This is just such a book...

...Linking these two concerns is the central distinction Flacks draws between Americans who interest themselves in "everyday life" and those who dedicate themselves to changing the world—or, in his grandiose phrase, "making history...

...The moral foundation for the search for personal solutions lies in the American ideal of liberty—that every person has the right, the responsibility, to live his or her own life," he writes, noting that the ideals of liberty rub up against the ideals of democracy...

...The tragedy of the Left may be, not that it failed as a historical agency, but that its adherents failed to comprehend their historical roles," he writes...

...Occasionally, he seems to view the good life as not a chicken in every pot but a VCR in every den...

...What effect has the Left had on American politics and culture...

...More fundamentally, they view work as part of the tradeoff for more freedom in their personal lives, and they make this tradeoff more or less consciously...

...Flacks does not view Americans as sheep, robots, or mere cultural receptacles...

...It is a book about us and for us...

...What's more, the Left has failed to weigh in with a new articulate public philosophy that could alter the national debate and counter Reaganism...

...Nevertheless, the Left has "been integral to the development of American society and culture," Flacks argues...

...Local grass-roots organizations have spread themselves across the country, he notes, and national lobbying and education efforts take place on an issue-to-issue basis...

...It is not that people are trying to 'escape from freedom,' or have become 'robotized,' " says Flacks, "but that they accept a degree of subordination as practically necessary if they are to have the means to maintain some space and opportunity in their lives for freedom and meaning...

...Beyond this training of activists, the Left has also succeeded in promulgating an "ethic of collective responsibility," which Flacks defines as "a set of principles and rules for individual action that are morally binding on members, and that are capable of becoming obligatory for ever-widening circles of nonmembers as well...

...Rather, leftists need to redouble their efforts in the cultural field...

...He says history is unfolding in a "narrative of democracy" that is "changing the relationship between daily life and historical action...

...Two concerns underlie Flacks's book: first, to refute such cultural critics as Herbert Marcuse, Christopher Lasch, and C. Wright Mills by showing that Americans do not suffer—or, at least, not entirely— from "false consciousness" and "narcissism...

...Richard Flacks, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, brings to bear the insights he has gathered both as an activist and as a scholar in an attempt to synthesize American left-wing politics and to chart the way to a more democratic future...

...by Matthew Rothschild Once in a great while, a book comes along that addresses the fundamental issues that confront the Left...

...Millions of Americans find satisfying work, he notes, and those that don't can (and often do) find ways of making it more bearable: They subtly assert power on the job, join unions, or manage to rise through the ranks...

...Here, in defense of the Left's role in popular culture, Hacks takes his final stab at the cultural critics: "It is simply not the case that American culture is unambiguously shaped by the 'hegemony' of the capitalist class or that American nationalism straightforwardly structures popular attitudes toward authority...