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The Vital Center: Politics of Freedom
With a new introduction by the author The Vital Center is an eloquent and incisive defense of liberal democracy against its rivals to the left and to the right, communism and fascism. It shows how the failures of free society had led to the mass escape from freedom and sharpened the appeal of totalitarian solutions. It calls for a radical reconstruction of the democratic faith based on a realistic understanding of human limitation and frailty.
274 pages, Hardcover
First published July 6, 1970
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About the author
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
670 books219 followersArthur Meier Schlesinger Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger, was a Pulitzer Prize recipient and American historian and social critic whose work explored the liberalism of American political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. He served as special assistant and "court historian" to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy Administration, from the transition period to the president's state funeral, titled A Thousand Days. In 1968, he actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy until Kennedy's assassination in the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, and wrote the biography Robert Kennedy and His Times several years later.
He popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration by writing the book The Imperial Presidency.
His father was also a well-known historian.
He popularized the term "imperial presidency" during the Nixon administration by writing the book The Imperial Presidency.
His father was also a well-known historian.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 2, 2016
This is a wise and learned book from a then quite young Arthur Schlesinger. Overall, it is a defense of liberalism and a call for a more robust defense of the vital center, or the core beliefs of liberalism and the need to balance liberalism's emphasis on the individual with the individual's need for community support and collective meaning.
A few ideas stood out to me in this book. First, he gives a fascinating account of the roots of the totalitarian challenge to liberalism in the first half of the 20th century. He argues that the industrial age severed human beings from their connections to church, community, and other collective sources of meaning, security, and identity. Echoing Erich Fromm, he argues that they turned to totalitarianism in order to escape the burden of freedom, which required them to build up identities and systems of belief from the ground up. Totalitarianism gives the individual a clear place within a hierarchy, a set of values, and an erasing of responsibility. Totalitarianism, however, is a false and destructive hope for the individual suffering from anomie. The ideology actually matters little in this social-psychological explanation; even Hitler acknowledged that ex-Communists made the best Fascists because the worldview and methods of these movements were so similar. The result in both camps is brutality, the destruction of civil society, deprivation, and heinous crimes.The USSR failed to achieve its promises, leading to a far worse life for the worker than in the US, in which the workers had real sway in politics within the unions and the Democratic Party. It also recreated the class structure by building up a nomenklatura that took over the privileges of the old aristocratic elite. Schlesinger errs a bit in asserting the efficiency and lack of dissension within totalitarian societies, but his preface from the 1980's corrects this overreach.
Second, Schlesinger shows that all good political ideologies must have an accurate and well-thought out vision of human nature upon which they build a system of norms and institutions.The main mistake of totalitarianism in this regard is to image humanity, or some part of it, as both perfectible and trustworthy in a political system without checks and balances. In contrast, classical liberalism views humanity as frequently fallible, biased, and corrupt. This mean that power cannot be entrusted to individuals without other powerful restraining forces acting to check them. It also means that no amount of reform or indoctrination can weed some traits out of human behavior, even though totalitarians tried to turn human beings into putty to be refashioned completely. In the 21st century, we are even more equipped to accurately discern human nature, which makes it extra disturbing that so many on the Left deny its existence or impact on human behavior and so many on the Right have a deeply simplistic view.
Third, he makes a brilliant critique of the many Progressives who use politics as an arena to air grievances, prove themselves committed to an ideology, and find personal fulfillment rather than a competitive and practical realm of ideas and policies in which people need to get things done. He divides his fellow liberals into doers and wailers. Doers are figures like Lincoln or FDR, who have a deep set of liberal values but acknowledge the need for bargaining, compromise, and working within the system to bring about change, usually in a gradual way. Their goals may be transformative but their means are moderate, and they understand that breaking or bending the established rules of politics usually weakens those rules and undermines their political programs. Most of all, they are imbued with a sense of civic responsibility, a commitment to the rights off, not just their group or those they seek to uplift. In contrast, the wailers are far more sentimental and utopian and far less practical. They seek to turn politics into a ritualistic expression of their creed, a demand for total change in line with their beliefs, and a way to expiate themselves of all responsibility for society's ills and turn that completely on their foes. Rejecting practical responsibility in favor of ideological purity, they are much more likely to issue gratifying denunciations of, say, Franco's Spain or the USSR, than work to alter those regimes incrementally while not doing further harm. I found this division to be very useful in understanding contemporary politics on the left and right in which doers are struggling and possibly losing to wailers.
Finally, Schlesinger's solution to the totalitarian challenge is the revival of the democratic left and the responsible right, who hold between them the vital center. The New Left is largely a reaction to the evil and corruption of the USSR, but it is also a harkening back to more central liberal values and an assertion of new values, such as racial tolerance. He says it must totally reject communism, acknowledge the both the limits and necessity of an activist state, respect the loyal opposition and due process, only prosecute the Far Left or Right for actions, not words (a rebuke to budding McCarthyism), accept the inevitability of conflict and disagreement in a free society, and make real progress on racial injustices, which he finds to be the greatest stain on the US. These are just a sampling of the liberal values that must be embraced, but Schlesinger goes even further to say that these values must be evangelized to the American population. Americans must believe in these values as the bedrocks of their personal and communal lives. The liberals must not call for too reckless and radical reforms, but the conservatives must not turn against reform at every point. Unlike many liberals at the time, Schlesinger also calls for a revitalization of group life in American society, as the individual often only finds meaning within the groups she is a member of.
This book still deserves to be read by everyone on the American political spectrum. It is an ideal balance of pragmatism and idealism from which I learned a lot.
A few ideas stood out to me in this book. First, he gives a fascinating account of the roots of the totalitarian challenge to liberalism in the first half of the 20th century. He argues that the industrial age severed human beings from their connections to church, community, and other collective sources of meaning, security, and identity. Echoing Erich Fromm, he argues that they turned to totalitarianism in order to escape the burden of freedom, which required them to build up identities and systems of belief from the ground up. Totalitarianism gives the individual a clear place within a hierarchy, a set of values, and an erasing of responsibility. Totalitarianism, however, is a false and destructive hope for the individual suffering from anomie. The ideology actually matters little in this social-psychological explanation; even Hitler acknowledged that ex-Communists made the best Fascists because the worldview and methods of these movements were so similar. The result in both camps is brutality, the destruction of civil society, deprivation, and heinous crimes.The USSR failed to achieve its promises, leading to a far worse life for the worker than in the US, in which the workers had real sway in politics within the unions and the Democratic Party. It also recreated the class structure by building up a nomenklatura that took over the privileges of the old aristocratic elite. Schlesinger errs a bit in asserting the efficiency and lack of dissension within totalitarian societies, but his preface from the 1980's corrects this overreach.
Second, Schlesinger shows that all good political ideologies must have an accurate and well-thought out vision of human nature upon which they build a system of norms and institutions.The main mistake of totalitarianism in this regard is to image humanity, or some part of it, as both perfectible and trustworthy in a political system without checks and balances. In contrast, classical liberalism views humanity as frequently fallible, biased, and corrupt. This mean that power cannot be entrusted to individuals without other powerful restraining forces acting to check them. It also means that no amount of reform or indoctrination can weed some traits out of human behavior, even though totalitarians tried to turn human beings into putty to be refashioned completely. In the 21st century, we are even more equipped to accurately discern human nature, which makes it extra disturbing that so many on the Left deny its existence or impact on human behavior and so many on the Right have a deeply simplistic view.
Third, he makes a brilliant critique of the many Progressives who use politics as an arena to air grievances, prove themselves committed to an ideology, and find personal fulfillment rather than a competitive and practical realm of ideas and policies in which people need to get things done. He divides his fellow liberals into doers and wailers. Doers are figures like Lincoln or FDR, who have a deep set of liberal values but acknowledge the need for bargaining, compromise, and working within the system to bring about change, usually in a gradual way. Their goals may be transformative but their means are moderate, and they understand that breaking or bending the established rules of politics usually weakens those rules and undermines their political programs. Most of all, they are imbued with a sense of civic responsibility, a commitment to the rights off, not just their group or those they seek to uplift. In contrast, the wailers are far more sentimental and utopian and far less practical. They seek to turn politics into a ritualistic expression of their creed, a demand for total change in line with their beliefs, and a way to expiate themselves of all responsibility for society's ills and turn that completely on their foes. Rejecting practical responsibility in favor of ideological purity, they are much more likely to issue gratifying denunciations of, say, Franco's Spain or the USSR, than work to alter those regimes incrementally while not doing further harm. I found this division to be very useful in understanding contemporary politics on the left and right in which doers are struggling and possibly losing to wailers.
Finally, Schlesinger's solution to the totalitarian challenge is the revival of the democratic left and the responsible right, who hold between them the vital center. The New Left is largely a reaction to the evil and corruption of the USSR, but it is also a harkening back to more central liberal values and an assertion of new values, such as racial tolerance. He says it must totally reject communism, acknowledge the both the limits and necessity of an activist state, respect the loyal opposition and due process, only prosecute the Far Left or Right for actions, not words (a rebuke to budding McCarthyism), accept the inevitability of conflict and disagreement in a free society, and make real progress on racial injustices, which he finds to be the greatest stain on the US. These are just a sampling of the liberal values that must be embraced, but Schlesinger goes even further to say that these values must be evangelized to the American population. Americans must believe in these values as the bedrocks of their personal and communal lives. The liberals must not call for too reckless and radical reforms, but the conservatives must not turn against reform at every point. Unlike many liberals at the time, Schlesinger also calls for a revitalization of group life in American society, as the individual often only finds meaning within the groups she is a member of.
This book still deserves to be read by everyone on the American political spectrum. It is an ideal balance of pragmatism and idealism from which I learned a lot.
July 23, 2020
From Chapter 2, The Failure of the Right:
“The capitalists have not been, in the political sense, an effective governing class. They have constituted typically a plutocracy, not an aristocracy.”
“Men accustomed to the exclusive pursuit of their own interests find it hard to assume the role of the politician, who must balance and reconcile the conflicting interests of many groups. The plutocracy thinks in terms of class and not nation, in terms of private profit and not of social obligation, in terms of business dealings and not of war, in terms of security and not honor. With its power founded on finance and thus dependent on the preservation of the delicate skeins of promissory confidence, the plutocracy above all dreads violence and change, whether internal or external.”
“In quiet times power gravitates to business as the strongest economic group in society; but it has never been able to use that power long for national purposes. Dominated by personal and class considerations, business rule tends to bring public affairs to a state of crisis and to drive the rest of the community into despair bordering on revolution.”
“The dynamism of capitalism is trickling out in a world where the passion for security breeds merger and monopoly...in the end there will be no one ready to go down swinging for institutions so abstract, impersonal and remote...Capitalism, in brief, at once strengthens the economic centralization and loosens the moral bonds of society.”
From Chapter 3, The Failure of the Left:
“As the child of eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century romanticism, progressivism was committed to an unwarranted optimism about man.”
“For its persistent and sentimental optimism has endowed...progressivism with what in the middle twentieth-century are fatal weaknesses: a weakness for impotence, because progressivism believes that history will make up for human error; a weakness for rhetoric, because it believes that man can be reformed by argument; a weakness for economic fetishism, because it believes that the good in man will be liberated by a change in economic institutions; a weakness for political myth, because...optimism requires somewhere an act of faith in order to survive the contradictions of history.”
From Chapter 4, The Challenge of Totalitarianism:
“Man longs to escape the pressures beating down on his frail individuality; and, more and more, the sureset means of escape seems to be to surrender that individuality to some massive, external authority...The totalitarian state, which has risen in specific response to this fear of freedom, is an invention of the twentieth century...Totalitarianism...pulverizes the social structure, grinding all independent groups and diverse loyalties into a single amorphous mass. The sway of the totalitarian state is unlimited. This very fact is a source of its profound psychological appeal.”
“Against the western sense of being out of joint with history, the totalitarians proclaim their oneness with history...The honest defender of the free individual can only confess the uninspiring belief that most basic problems are insoluble. The totalitarian promises a new heaven and a new earth.”
“Against the background of demoralization and exhaustion, the sheer dynamism of the totalitarian promise acquires a glistening certainty which few men can stand up against...people in general...tend to confound immediate power with the ultimate verdicts of history.”
“Fascism and Communism thus rise from a genuinely revolutionary dissatisfaction with existing society; but the revolutionary impulses are doomed to frustration and die under the heels of the new ruling class they have installed in power.”
From Chapter 8, The Revival of American Radicalism:
“Our democratic tradition has been at its best an activist tradition. It has found its fulfillment, not in complaint or in escapism, but in responsibility and decision.”
“For the doer, the essential form of democratic education is the taking of great decisions under the burden of civic responsibility. For the wailer, liberalism is the mass expiatory ritual by which the individual relieves himself of responsibility for the government’s behavior.”
“A liberalism which purports to shape a real world must first accept the limitations and possibilities of that world. It must reconcile itself to a tedious study of detail…”
“Even the most guileless of our democratic leaders have had in their heart a searching doubt about human perfectibility -- a conviction that every form of human power requires relentless correction. This, indeed, is the gusto of democracy, the underlying sense of comedy which brooks no worship of authority because it knows no man is that good.”
“It is a moderate pessimism about man which truly fortifies society against authoritarianism -- because pessimism must apply far more strongly to a special elite or a single party, exposed to the temptation of pride and power, than it does to the people in general.”
“The people as a whole are not perfect; but no special group of the people is more perfect: that is the moral and rationale for democracy. Consistent pessimism about man, far from promoting authoritarianism, alone can inoculate democratic faith against it.”
“The problem of classes is this: Class conflict is essential if freedom is to be preserved, because it is the only barrier against class domination; yet class conflict, pursued to excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free society.”
“Big government, for all its dangers, remains democracy’s only effective response to big business -- especially when big business behaves with such political recklessness as it has in the United States.”
From Chapter 11, Freedom: A Fighting Faith:
“Free society alienates the lonely and uprooted masses; while totalitarianism, building on their frustrations and cravings, provides a structure of belief, men to worship and men to hate and rites which guarantee salvation.”
“Our democracy has still to generate a living emotional content, rich enough to overcome the anxieties incited by industrialism, deep enough to rally its members to battle for freedom…”
“Democracy...has assumed, much too confidently, that the gnawing problems of doubt and anxiety would be banished by the advance of science or cured by a rise in the standard of living...Democracy has no defense...against the neuroses of industrialism. When philosophies of blood and violence arise to take up the slack between democracy’s thin optimism and the bitter agonies of experience, democracy by comparison appears pale and bitter.”
“And the casualties multiply: the possessors are corrupted by power, the middling undone by boredom, the dispossessed demoralized by fear. Chamber-of-commerce banalities will no longer console industrial man.”
“The inadequacy of our institutions only intensifies the tribute society levies from man: it but exacerbates the moral crisis. The rise of totalitarianism, in other words, signifies more than an internal crisis for democratic society. It signifies an internal crisis for democratic man. There is a Hitler, a Stalin in every breast.”
“The hope for free society lies, in the last resort, in the kind of men it creates.”
“Democracy requires unremitting action on many fronts. It is, in other words, a process, not a conclusion.”
“For conflict is also the guarantee of freedom; it is the instrument of change; it is, above all, the source of discovery, the source of art, the source of love...The choice is between conflict and stagnation...The totalitarians regard the toleration of conflict as our central weakness.”
“The capitalists have not been, in the political sense, an effective governing class. They have constituted typically a plutocracy, not an aristocracy.”
“Men accustomed to the exclusive pursuit of their own interests find it hard to assume the role of the politician, who must balance and reconcile the conflicting interests of many groups. The plutocracy thinks in terms of class and not nation, in terms of private profit and not of social obligation, in terms of business dealings and not of war, in terms of security and not honor. With its power founded on finance and thus dependent on the preservation of the delicate skeins of promissory confidence, the plutocracy above all dreads violence and change, whether internal or external.”
“In quiet times power gravitates to business as the strongest economic group in society; but it has never been able to use that power long for national purposes. Dominated by personal and class considerations, business rule tends to bring public affairs to a state of crisis and to drive the rest of the community into despair bordering on revolution.”
“The dynamism of capitalism is trickling out in a world where the passion for security breeds merger and monopoly...in the end there will be no one ready to go down swinging for institutions so abstract, impersonal and remote...Capitalism, in brief, at once strengthens the economic centralization and loosens the moral bonds of society.”
From Chapter 3, The Failure of the Left:
“As the child of eighteenth-century rationalism and nineteenth-century romanticism, progressivism was committed to an unwarranted optimism about man.”
“For its persistent and sentimental optimism has endowed...progressivism with what in the middle twentieth-century are fatal weaknesses: a weakness for impotence, because progressivism believes that history will make up for human error; a weakness for rhetoric, because it believes that man can be reformed by argument; a weakness for economic fetishism, because it believes that the good in man will be liberated by a change in economic institutions; a weakness for political myth, because...optimism requires somewhere an act of faith in order to survive the contradictions of history.”
From Chapter 4, The Challenge of Totalitarianism:
“Man longs to escape the pressures beating down on his frail individuality; and, more and more, the sureset means of escape seems to be to surrender that individuality to some massive, external authority...The totalitarian state, which has risen in specific response to this fear of freedom, is an invention of the twentieth century...Totalitarianism...pulverizes the social structure, grinding all independent groups and diverse loyalties into a single amorphous mass. The sway of the totalitarian state is unlimited. This very fact is a source of its profound psychological appeal.”
“Against the western sense of being out of joint with history, the totalitarians proclaim their oneness with history...The honest defender of the free individual can only confess the uninspiring belief that most basic problems are insoluble. The totalitarian promises a new heaven and a new earth.”
“Against the background of demoralization and exhaustion, the sheer dynamism of the totalitarian promise acquires a glistening certainty which few men can stand up against...people in general...tend to confound immediate power with the ultimate verdicts of history.”
“Fascism and Communism thus rise from a genuinely revolutionary dissatisfaction with existing society; but the revolutionary impulses are doomed to frustration and die under the heels of the new ruling class they have installed in power.”
From Chapter 8, The Revival of American Radicalism:
“Our democratic tradition has been at its best an activist tradition. It has found its fulfillment, not in complaint or in escapism, but in responsibility and decision.”
“For the doer, the essential form of democratic education is the taking of great decisions under the burden of civic responsibility. For the wailer, liberalism is the mass expiatory ritual by which the individual relieves himself of responsibility for the government’s behavior.”
“A liberalism which purports to shape a real world must first accept the limitations and possibilities of that world. It must reconcile itself to a tedious study of detail…”
“Even the most guileless of our democratic leaders have had in their heart a searching doubt about human perfectibility -- a conviction that every form of human power requires relentless correction. This, indeed, is the gusto of democracy, the underlying sense of comedy which brooks no worship of authority because it knows no man is that good.”
“It is a moderate pessimism about man which truly fortifies society against authoritarianism -- because pessimism must apply far more strongly to a special elite or a single party, exposed to the temptation of pride and power, than it does to the people in general.”
“The people as a whole are not perfect; but no special group of the people is more perfect: that is the moral and rationale for democracy. Consistent pessimism about man, far from promoting authoritarianism, alone can inoculate democratic faith against it.”
“The problem of classes is this: Class conflict is essential if freedom is to be preserved, because it is the only barrier against class domination; yet class conflict, pursued to excess, may well destroy the underlying fabric of common principle which sustains free society.”
“Big government, for all its dangers, remains democracy’s only effective response to big business -- especially when big business behaves with such political recklessness as it has in the United States.”
From Chapter 11, Freedom: A Fighting Faith:
“Free society alienates the lonely and uprooted masses; while totalitarianism, building on their frustrations and cravings, provides a structure of belief, men to worship and men to hate and rites which guarantee salvation.”
“Our democracy has still to generate a living emotional content, rich enough to overcome the anxieties incited by industrialism, deep enough to rally its members to battle for freedom…”
“Democracy...has assumed, much too confidently, that the gnawing problems of doubt and anxiety would be banished by the advance of science or cured by a rise in the standard of living...Democracy has no defense...against the neuroses of industrialism. When philosophies of blood and violence arise to take up the slack between democracy’s thin optimism and the bitter agonies of experience, democracy by comparison appears pale and bitter.”
“And the casualties multiply: the possessors are corrupted by power, the middling undone by boredom, the dispossessed demoralized by fear. Chamber-of-commerce banalities will no longer console industrial man.”
“The inadequacy of our institutions only intensifies the tribute society levies from man: it but exacerbates the moral crisis. The rise of totalitarianism, in other words, signifies more than an internal crisis for democratic society. It signifies an internal crisis for democratic man. There is a Hitler, a Stalin in every breast.”
“The hope for free society lies, in the last resort, in the kind of men it creates.”
“Democracy requires unremitting action on many fronts. It is, in other words, a process, not a conclusion.”
“For conflict is also the guarantee of freedom; it is the instrument of change; it is, above all, the source of discovery, the source of art, the source of love...The choice is between conflict and stagnation...The totalitarians regard the toleration of conflict as our central weakness.”
September 1, 2020
A relevant read for today's current political environment. It is a good view into the hysteria of the anti-communist era, as well as a good (and still relevant) analysis of the weakness of both the republican and democratic parties, especially in their extremes.
Though it is understandable for the time, he spends at least one chapter too deep into the minutia of communism which I don't think is needed, and can be skipped because it doesn't lend to today's environment. And there are a few analogies and comparisons (one to rape) which do not age well.
But I think this is is relevant to today and is important to understand our American history, and fits of hysteria, and he describes our pangs of guilt after. This is a cycle we are repeating in slightly different form and need to learn from.
Though it is understandable for the time, he spends at least one chapter too deep into the minutia of communism which I don't think is needed, and can be skipped because it doesn't lend to today's environment. And there are a few analogies and comparisons (one to rape) which do not age well.
But I think this is is relevant to today and is important to understand our American history, and fits of hysteria, and he describes our pangs of guilt after. This is a cycle we are repeating in slightly different form and need to learn from.
December 29, 2008
Schlesinger is a great apologist for liberal thought. However, the incessant reference to the Cold War lends it the tone of loyalty oath sometimes. That got old for me.
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December 23, 2021Although a lot of the information in here is dated and a bit too influenced by Cold War hysteria to connect to the modern day, I found a lot of relevant points in Schlesinger's analysis. As someone who identifies as a Liberal yet is often put off by the sort of naive Progressivism pushed by many leaders (not a big Bernie Sanders fan) I appreciated his pragmatic viewpoint and insight into the state of left wing politics in the late 40s. Better to be a pragmatic fighter like FDR than a dreamer like Henry Wallace.
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January 28, 2020One day I hope to read this book more closely. Unfortunately, time is in short supply right now.
September 9, 2024
a love letter to democracy
May 24, 2017
I enjoy Schlesinger's work. Those who do also will enjoy The Vital Center.
This study makes a good very primary Cold War source as well as a relevant look into what ideals serve(d) America well in the realm of foreign policy. Even though the Cold War has ended, there is still much to be digested regarding foreign policy/philosophy. Some parts are dated yet others read like current headlines. The time of authorship (1949) was a very interesting period to be writing on foreign policy. The end of the Second World War had witnessed the end of a totalitarian state ... only to be replaced by another one. The rise of such nations constitutes the bulk of The Vital Center along with ways to prevent third world countries from succumbing to these influences.
Schlesinger's musings on containment and reconstruction are very interesting as well as the discussions on plutocrats and "dough-faced" progressives. While Schlesinger's center leans left, contemporary readers from a variety of political views can still benefit by analyzing this work.
This study makes a good very primary Cold War source as well as a relevant look into what ideals serve(d) America well in the realm of foreign policy. Even though the Cold War has ended, there is still much to be digested regarding foreign policy/philosophy. Some parts are dated yet others read like current headlines. The time of authorship (1949) was a very interesting period to be writing on foreign policy. The end of the Second World War had witnessed the end of a totalitarian state ... only to be replaced by another one. The rise of such nations constitutes the bulk of The Vital Center along with ways to prevent third world countries from succumbing to these influences.
Schlesinger's musings on containment and reconstruction are very interesting as well as the discussions on plutocrats and "dough-faced" progressives. While Schlesinger's center leans left, contemporary readers from a variety of political views can still benefit by analyzing this work.
December 17, 2022
The Vital Center: Politics of Freedom is a book written by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., an American historian and author. The book was published in 1949 and is a political analysis of the role of the center in American politics. In the book, Schlesinger argues that the political center is a vital force in democracy and that it is essential for preserving freedom and promoting progress. He discusses the ways in which the center can serve as a bulwark against extremism and as a source of stability and moderation in politics. The book also examines the historical development of the center in American politics and how it has shaped the country's political landscape. The book was influential at the time of its publication and helped to shape the political dialogue of the era. It remains an important work on the role of the center in democracy and the importance of moderation and compromise in political life.
GPT
GPT
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July 9, 2009This is a fascinating Cold War document, a perfect embodiment of what Schlesinger himself calls the "Non-Communist Left thesis." I read it with less interest in thinking about whether its argument is applicable today -- or whether it was even valid in its own time -- than as a representative specimen of the emerging liberal consensus after the Second World War. Read this book after you've read Frances Stonor Saunders's "The Cultural Cold War" to understand what was at stake for Cold War liberals like Schlesinger in promoting the idea of a NCL and where "The Vital Center" fits into the larger project of postwar consensus-building.
May 18, 2014
Deftly presented mandate for the liberal left with examinations of fascism, Communism, and American Progressive and conservative ideologies as assessed in the aftermath of WWII. Enough historical explanation woven into the argument to avoid categorization of a liberal left manifesto. most valuable aspect may be the obvious passion and emotion that permeates this work - provides a great window into how the threat of Communism was perceived and where the ideological battle lines fell at the dawn of the Cold War.
March 13, 2011
What is consistently surprising is how much more lucid Schlesinger's thinking is for the time than most of his non-Communist Left colleagues--which isn't saying a whole heck of a lot, but I was fascinated by the relative lack of outright cant (or at least less hysterical cant) and the (at times) genuine creativity of Schlesinger's arguments.
August 5, 2007
Schlesinger's work is remarkably relevant to the challenge of building a moderate and workable government today. This book and Camus' The Rebel both talk about the dangers of permanent revolution in politics and the pull toward extremism.
February 18, 2013
Though written over sixty years ago, Schlesinger's observations on polarizing politics remain timely and current
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews