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The Agony of the American Left
Agony of the American Left
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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439 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Lasch
30 books352 followersChristopher "Kit" Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist, and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester.
Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'
His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).
Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.
He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'
His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).
Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.
He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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July 16, 2022
CRITIQUE:
A History of the Radical American Left
This history of the radical American Left was first published in 1969.
Its title ("The Agony of the American Left") and sub-title ("One Hundred Years of Radicalism") reflect some of the ambiguity of Lasch's approach to, and definition of, the subject matter.
On the one hand, the title implies that the subject is American Socialism (if not Social Democracy), while, on the other, the subtitle suggests that the subject matter is a broader concept of radicalism than socialism.
The latter approach implies that all radicalism is left-wing, which ignores the possibility that radicalism can be right-wing or libertarian. On the other hand, I personally question whether political philosophies like anarchism can be said to be truly left-wing, especially when, as now, it seems to share more with right-wing libertarianism.
Overall, Lasch's focus is three "mass-based radical movements": populism, socialism, and black nationalism.
The Agony of Failure
The other aspect of the title that deserves comment is the reference to "agony".
This contrasts with two earlier studies of Socialism which highlight its failure as a political philosophy: "The God That Failed" (1949) and "Failure of a Dream?" (1974).
The titles of the first two individual essays in the collection highlight and paraphrase this sense of failure: "The Decline of Populism" and "The Collapse of Socialism and the Isolation of the Intellectuals".
The third essay is a short history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a body which aimed to frustrate attempts by the Soviet Union to establish support in the Western cultural sphere. The CIA used the Congress to indirectly and clandestinely fund various magazines like "Encounter", "Dialogue" and "Problems of Communism" (1), in the first case, without the knowledge of the publishers, editors and contributors.
The relevance of this essay is that the Congress was an arena in which American intellectuals fought a battle between Communism and anti-Communism (or anti-Communism and anti-anti-Communism) following the McCarthy hearings. The result was a decline in the profile and influence of left-wing (i.e., Socialist and Marxist) academics, in both academia and the cultural sphere.
The fourth essay deals with the relationship between the radical Left and the Black Power movement.
The fifth essay explores "The Revival of Political Controversy in the Sixties", largely between the Old Left and the New Left.
Why Did the Left Fail?
Lasch doesn't make the responsibility for the failure of the Left the primary subject of any one essay. Instead, he scatters a trail of clues along the path of his story.
In the preface, he cites Paul Goodman's view that the reason America finds itself in an unprecedented crisis, without a programme for change, is "the failure of the intellectuals during the late forties and fifties", who "allowed themselves to be 'co-opted' by the CIA, the Rand Corporation, [and] the universities".
The Failure of the Intellectuals
There's a sense in which, once the intellectuals (primarily academics, managers and executives) acquired membership of the "corporate elite" and achieved their own material ambitions, they ceased to fight, or support the fight, for anybody else's rights. As a result, the poor (workers and black people) would find themselves "locked into poverty, left behind in decaying cities from which earlier proletarians, together with the industries that employed them, had fled."
Lasch almost suggests that intellectuals confined their role to theory, rather than practice, action or organisation:
These intellectuals need "an ethical sense, a sense of injustice, a reawakened sense of the indignities and humiliations which men have permitted themselves to accept as normal, inevitable, proper, and moral".
In retrospect, it's not difficult to see how the failure to develop and maintain this ethical sense allowed many people in the American working class and lower middle class to believe that they have been ignored by an amorphous elite who they associate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, capitalism and corporate America in its own right.
Centralised Power
After World War II, Socialism was portrayed as a solution to the problems of post-industrial society:
The example of the Soviet Union was the greatest deterrent to support for Socialism.
Revolutionary Romanticism
Ironically, Communism appealed to "revolutionary romanticists" who proposed to stage a revolution, which only alienated it from the average American:
Political Sectarianism
The destruction of the Left was achieved by splintering it, and segregating theory and practice:
The attempt to "fuse radical politics and cultural modernism" which had defined the mission of the magazine "Partisan Review" would inevitably come to an end.
Theory and Practice
Theory was severed from practice, and vice versa.
To the extent that Marxist theory survived, it was confined to small sectarian organisations and cultural criticism.
It was no longer popular as a critical theory or diagnosis of the problems, nor did it form the platform of any radical, democratic movement.
Even the New Left was divorced from the Old Left and conventional Marxist premises:
Not surprisingly, the Democratic Socialist movement associated with Michael Harrington and Irving Howe were equally critical of these notions, as well as the "militant tactics" and "nihilistic tendencies of the New Left".
The Democratic Socialists saw the embrace of revolution and violence as heading down the same path as Soviet Communism.
What is needed to address the cultural, economic, and political problems is a theoretically based programme of action and social change.
Social Democrats and Welfare Liberals
Lasch is critical of social democrats or welfare liberals:
Radical Liberalism and a New Politics
Lasch also refers to the scope for a "New Politics" and "radical liberals" which "envision a new coalition of middle-class reformers, enlightened labour unions, students, and the poor, united behind a programme of social change that would substantially alter American institutions while stopping short of revolution".
Lasch suggests that some lessons have been learned from the New Left:
He concludes:
As at 2022, the American Left is still asking the same questions, and whether to work within the Democratic Party and the electoral process. (2)
FOOTNOTES:
(1) The last two of these magazines were distributed outside the U.S. by the United States Information Agency, which was usually attached to its embassies.
In 1977, I went to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, and asked if I could get a free student subscription to these magazines. The official said that they were no longer issuing free subscriptions because of budget cuts, but went out the back and found some back copies. He was a bit apologetic that the issue of "Problems of Communism" was two years old, but he said, "That's OK, because the problems of communism haven't changed since then."
(2) Lasch reviews two books, one by Staughton Lynd (who argues that the New Left has "rebelled precisely against Old Left parties which began by formulating 'analysis, plans, program, theory')," the other by Michael Harrington, in the New York Review of Books, together with two letters to the editor, in 1968:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968...
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968...
SOUNDTRACK:
A History of the Radical American Left
This history of the radical American Left was first published in 1969.
Its title ("The Agony of the American Left") and sub-title ("One Hundred Years of Radicalism") reflect some of the ambiguity of Lasch's approach to, and definition of, the subject matter.
On the one hand, the title implies that the subject is American Socialism (if not Social Democracy), while, on the other, the subtitle suggests that the subject matter is a broader concept of radicalism than socialism.
The latter approach implies that all radicalism is left-wing, which ignores the possibility that radicalism can be right-wing or libertarian. On the other hand, I personally question whether political philosophies like anarchism can be said to be truly left-wing, especially when, as now, it seems to share more with right-wing libertarianism.
Overall, Lasch's focus is three "mass-based radical movements": populism, socialism, and black nationalism.
The Agony of Failure
The other aspect of the title that deserves comment is the reference to "agony".
This contrasts with two earlier studies of Socialism which highlight its failure as a political philosophy: "The God That Failed" (1949) and "Failure of a Dream?" (1974).
The titles of the first two individual essays in the collection highlight and paraphrase this sense of failure: "The Decline of Populism" and "The Collapse of Socialism and the Isolation of the Intellectuals".
The third essay is a short history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a body which aimed to frustrate attempts by the Soviet Union to establish support in the Western cultural sphere. The CIA used the Congress to indirectly and clandestinely fund various magazines like "Encounter", "Dialogue" and "Problems of Communism" (1), in the first case, without the knowledge of the publishers, editors and contributors.
The relevance of this essay is that the Congress was an arena in which American intellectuals fought a battle between Communism and anti-Communism (or anti-Communism and anti-anti-Communism) following the McCarthy hearings. The result was a decline in the profile and influence of left-wing (i.e., Socialist and Marxist) academics, in both academia and the cultural sphere.
The fourth essay deals with the relationship between the radical Left and the Black Power movement.
The fifth essay explores "The Revival of Political Controversy in the Sixties", largely between the Old Left and the New Left.
Why Did the Left Fail?
Lasch doesn't make the responsibility for the failure of the Left the primary subject of any one essay. Instead, he scatters a trail of clues along the path of his story.
In the preface, he cites Paul Goodman's view that the reason America finds itself in an unprecedented crisis, without a programme for change, is "the failure of the intellectuals during the late forties and fifties", who "allowed themselves to be 'co-opted' by the CIA, the Rand Corporation, [and] the universities".
The Failure of the Intellectuals
There's a sense in which, once the intellectuals (primarily academics, managers and executives) acquired membership of the "corporate elite" and achieved their own material ambitions, they ceased to fight, or support the fight, for anybody else's rights. As a result, the poor (workers and black people) would find themselves "locked into poverty, left behind in decaying cities from which earlier proletarians, together with the industries that employed them, had fled."
Lasch almost suggests that intellectuals confined their role to theory, rather than practice, action or organisation:
"Poverty has not been eliminated, it has merely been concealed. Because they are both 'invisible' and voiceless, the millions of poor have no way of making their presence felt except by violence; but precisely because they are leaderless and unorganised, violence once it erupts, cannot be directed by radicals towards political objectives."
These intellectuals need "an ethical sense, a sense of injustice, a reawakened sense of the indignities and humiliations which men have permitted themselves to accept as normal, inevitable, proper, and moral".
In retrospect, it's not difficult to see how the failure to develop and maintain this ethical sense allowed many people in the American working class and lower middle class to believe that they have been ignored by an amorphous elite who they associate with the Democratic Party rather than the GOP, capitalism and corporate America in its own right.
Centralised Power
After World War II, Socialism was portrayed as a solution to the problems of post-industrial society:
"Socialists maintained that not only industrialisation but the concentration of industrial production were historically progressive developments leading to the collectivisation of production.
"Populists, on the other hand, regarded them with loathing, as leading to bureaucracy, the fragmentation of experience and the tyranny of organisations.
"The history of the twentieth century suggests that these apprehensions about centralised power had a firm basis in reality."
The example of the Soviet Union was the greatest deterrent to support for Socialism.
Revolutionary Romanticism
Ironically, Communism appealed to "revolutionary romanticists" who proposed to stage a revolution, which only alienated it from the average American:
"The destruction of socialism in the United States had enduring consequences for American radicalism. The most important, perhaps, was the isolation of intellectuals from the rest of society. Marxian theory, no longer joined to a mass movement, became almost entirely a preoccupation of literary intellectuals attracted to Marxism not as a social theory but...principally as a means of continuing 'in another fashion, that alienation from American society which had begun toward the end of the nineteenth century'..."
Political Sectarianism
The destruction of the Left was achieved by splintering it, and segregating theory and practice:
"Socialist theory, meanwhile, remained 'an affair of small political sects' among 'socially isolated intellectuals'."
The attempt to "fuse radical politics and cultural modernism" which had defined the mission of the magazine "Partisan Review" would inevitably come to an end.
Theory and Practice
Theory was severed from practice, and vice versa.
To the extent that Marxist theory survived, it was confined to small sectarian organisations and cultural criticism.
It was no longer popular as a critical theory or diagnosis of the problems, nor did it form the platform of any radical, democratic movement.
Even the New Left was divorced from the Old Left and conventional Marxist premises:
"Marxism did not come back into fashion in the form into which it had evolved in other advanced countries - that is, in the form of a body of doctrine that combined theoretical rigour with an insistence on mass action along democratic lines.
"It surfaced again in the form of an ideology of intense activism aiming at the violent overthrow of colonialism by a guerrilla elite.
"Orthodox Marxism has had a very limited appeal for the young radicals of the sixties, partly because in their view it is plodding and unheroic, partly because they associate it with bureaucratic structure - whether embodied in political parties, corporations, or universities - which in turn are the principal objects of their anger...
"Acting out of an ideal of personal heroism rather than from an analysis of the sources of tension in American society and the possibilities for change, the New Left vacillates between existential despair and absurdly inflated estimates of its own potential.
"...the communists themselves were among the first to [attack] the New Left's 'romantic revolutionary notions about violence and confrontation'."
Not surprisingly, the Democratic Socialist movement associated with Michael Harrington and Irving Howe were equally critical of these notions, as well as the "militant tactics" and "nihilistic tendencies of the New Left".
The Democratic Socialists saw the embrace of revolution and violence as heading down the same path as Soviet Communism.
What is needed to address the cultural, economic, and political problems is a theoretically based programme of action and social change.
Social Democrats and Welfare Liberals
Lasch is critical of social democrats or welfare liberals:
"...those who call themselves socialists in the advanced countries have tended to become social democrats, indistinguishable in most essential respects from welfare liberals. Where they are in power, as in Sweden and Great Britain, social democrats not only offer no alternative to capitalism that is relevant to the needs of advanced countries - they offer no alternative at all."
Radical Liberalism and a New Politics
Lasch also refers to the scope for a "New Politics" and "radical liberals" which "envision a new coalition of middle-class reformers, enlightened labour unions, students, and the poor, united behind a programme of social change that would substantially alter American institutions while stopping short of revolution".
Lasch suggests that some lessons have been learned from the New Left:
"In espousing decentralisation, local control, and a generally anti-bureaucratic outlook, and by insisting that these values are the heart of radicalism, the New Left has shown American socialists the road they must follow.
"Until American socialism identifies itself with these values, it will have nothing to offer either to black people or to all those others whose suffering derives not merely from the private ownership of the means of production but from the de-humanising effects of bureaucratic control."
He concludes:
"...the best hope of creating a decent society in the United States is to evolve a socialism appropriate to American conditions.
"A party capable of bringing such a movement into existence would have to be at once disciplined and democratic, non-sectarian and at the same time firmly committed to certain basic principles and programmes, militant without making a cult of militancy.
"Their commitment to work within the existing political system distinguishes them from the militant leaders of the New Left, with whom, however, they share a dissatisfaction with the present state of American society so deep that it is unlikely they could be reconciled to a continuation of the old politics...
"Is it capable of becoming a new majority? And if it did become a new majority, would it be capable of democratising America?"
As at 2022, the American Left is still asking the same questions, and whether to work within the Democratic Party and the electoral process. (2)
FOOTNOTES:
(1) The last two of these magazines were distributed outside the U.S. by the United States Information Agency, which was usually attached to its embassies.
In 1977, I went to the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, and asked if I could get a free student subscription to these magazines. The official said that they were no longer issuing free subscriptions because of budget cuts, but went out the back and found some back copies. He was a bit apologetic that the issue of "Problems of Communism" was two years old, but he said, "That's OK, because the problems of communism haven't changed since then."
(2) Lasch reviews two books, one by Staughton Lynd (who argues that the New Left has "rebelled precisely against Old Left parties which began by formulating 'analysis, plans, program, theory')," the other by Michael Harrington, in the New York Review of Books, together with two letters to the editor, in 1968:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968...
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968...
SOUNDTRACK:
December 4, 2020
A series of long essays that basically cover the frustrations and disillusionment of the American left in the 20th century. Starting with the early Socialists and Populists into the period of CPUSA and OSS's co-option of many formerly socialist intellectuals after world war 2, and going into the black power movement and stagnation of the new left, Lasch shows how the Leftists constant turning to intellectuals as its vanguard and being distanced from social movements after the decline of both the socialist and populist movement kept moving the American left into cul-de-sacs. A situation that has only gotten more produced since 1969 and the release of this book.
December 8, 2020
A series of long essays that basically cover the frustrations and disillusionment of the American left in the 20th century. Starting with the early Socialists and Populists into the period of CPUSA and OSS's co-option of many formerly socialist intellectuals after world war 2, and going into the black power movement and stagnation of the new left, Lasch shows how the Leftists constant turning to intellectuals as its vanguard and being distanced from social movements after the decline of both the socialist and populist movement kept moving the American left into cul-de-sacs. A situation that has only gotten more produced since 1969 and the release of this book.
June 26, 2016
3½ stars.
This is a thought-provoking collection of 5 lengthy previously published essays, along with a short (2300 words) especially good "Postscript" entitled "After The Chicago Convention, 1968."
Lassch's 13,000-word essay on the black power movement was first published in the New York Review of Books and is available here.
His essay on “The Collapse of Socialism and the Isolation of the Intellectuals” is also available online here.
February 7, 2021
Lasch examines the defeats of the Left in its varied manifestations throughout the 20th century. Although his ideological predilections are clear, Lasch isn't afraid to criticize the movements he examines. His critiques are always of the best kind: not engaging in moralizing but focusing on the historical context and tracing the structural weaknesses to their source.
December 29, 2024
This is the most important book for anyone to read.
Published in the '60s, read in 2024. Depressing to realize that it's just as relevant today.
Published in the '60s, read in 2024. Depressing to realize that it's just as relevant today.
January 28, 2025
I understand that Lasch's privileging of family (I'm not sure how much his view really "evolved" here, as he's already discussing this to an extent in this book) among a few other things has led him to be labelled "conservative" (even Charles Taylor lumps Lasch with Allan Bloom in the "Malaise of Modernity" lectures). However, it seems to me that Lasch recognized that family "as such" has little to do with patrilineal inheritance, which is the actual misogynistic, normative nightmare that, as Marx already recognized, was tied up with the relations of patriarchal feudalism. But these relations were undermined by bourgeois values, and only cast a lingering shadow over the 20th & 21st century, lacking a material basis, though still privileged in the conservative conscience. Marx: "The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations." In other words, as market economy did not initiate from a level playing field, so the inequalities that still exist, in apparently identarian (and national) forms, are largely frozen echoes of the prior relations, stifled by the accumulation of capital and the limited social mobility the current social relations engender.
This state of affairs serves for some to provide an apparently justificatory basis for extant prejudices, which in turn shields capitalist relations and accelerates existing inequality, forming a loop. So, the dominion of undead Capital blocks the realization of the bourgeois values that supported its ascension. As long as Capital finds use-value in proletarianization, tacit enslavement (sweatshop and prison labor; even, frankly, wage labor), imperialism (colonial or otherwise), and so on, it will find use-value in inequality, including in such forms as racism or misogyny, so long as these help to preserve the relations that reproduce Capital and its concentration. At the same time, the technology that exists as a consequence of capital accumulation (and its uneven accessibility/distribution), is what negates the physical limits of the body (making possible Haraway's "feminization of labor" and even "gender affirmation.") The switch to capitalist relations before the very eyes of the historically conscious subject is what reveals gender to be constructed and normative, or more broadly, "human nature" to be social and variable in its very roots.
and so Lasch:
"Radicalism—socialism—is the only long-term hope; but the almost overwhelming difficulties confronting the radical movement in America are suggested, more clearly perhaps than by anything else, by the vagueness and imprecision of the term “socialism.” What is “socialism,” particularly in an advanced country? For most Americans, the word has ugly overtones of bureaucracy, centralization, and forcible repression. Nor is this unjustified or surprising, considering the nature of most of the existing socialist regimes. Because socialism first came to power not in the seat of industrialism, as Marxian theory assumed it would, but in countries where the material basis for a socialism of abundance did not yet exist, twentieth-century socialist regimes have had to address themselves first of all to the task of capital accumulation—a task that in the West was performed by capitalism itself. For this reason if for no other, socialist regimes in undeveloped countries cannot serve as models for advanced countries. Their very existence, however, has helped to impede the development of socialist theory and programs appropriate to advanced industrial societies, since it was always easier, as we have seen throughout these essays, for Western socialists to import a ready-made theory than to fashion one of their own."
Not an obscure point by any means (or is it?), but there is the reality of our "conservative" Lasch.
Whether one agrees with Lasch's moral and cultural assessments in their particularity or not, his concern there seems entangled with the question of why political organization and the application of historical materialist analysis has degraded in favor of nihilism and short term, spontaneous action; and what can be done about it. From what I can gather, he does not see culture (as defined, while discussing Oscar Lewis' "culture of poverty": "not in the narrow sense of the term culture [e.g. an aestheticization of practices, an accumulation of so-called cultural artifacts and treasures] but as a design for living") as an end or a fix in itself, but as a potential intermediary strategy, a stepping stone toward combating the disaffection and demoralization that inhibits all enthusiasm for and belief in social and political organizing, and any horizon of substantial change, in the first place.
This state of affairs serves for some to provide an apparently justificatory basis for extant prejudices, which in turn shields capitalist relations and accelerates existing inequality, forming a loop. So, the dominion of undead Capital blocks the realization of the bourgeois values that supported its ascension. As long as Capital finds use-value in proletarianization, tacit enslavement (sweatshop and prison labor; even, frankly, wage labor), imperialism (colonial or otherwise), and so on, it will find use-value in inequality, including in such forms as racism or misogyny, so long as these help to preserve the relations that reproduce Capital and its concentration. At the same time, the technology that exists as a consequence of capital accumulation (and its uneven accessibility/distribution), is what negates the physical limits of the body (making possible Haraway's "feminization of labor" and even "gender affirmation.") The switch to capitalist relations before the very eyes of the historically conscious subject is what reveals gender to be constructed and normative, or more broadly, "human nature" to be social and variable in its very roots.
and so Lasch:
"Radicalism—socialism—is the only long-term hope; but the almost overwhelming difficulties confronting the radical movement in America are suggested, more clearly perhaps than by anything else, by the vagueness and imprecision of the term “socialism.” What is “socialism,” particularly in an advanced country? For most Americans, the word has ugly overtones of bureaucracy, centralization, and forcible repression. Nor is this unjustified or surprising, considering the nature of most of the existing socialist regimes. Because socialism first came to power not in the seat of industrialism, as Marxian theory assumed it would, but in countries where the material basis for a socialism of abundance did not yet exist, twentieth-century socialist regimes have had to address themselves first of all to the task of capital accumulation—a task that in the West was performed by capitalism itself. For this reason if for no other, socialist regimes in undeveloped countries cannot serve as models for advanced countries. Their very existence, however, has helped to impede the development of socialist theory and programs appropriate to advanced industrial societies, since it was always easier, as we have seen throughout these essays, for Western socialists to import a ready-made theory than to fashion one of their own."
Not an obscure point by any means (or is it?), but there is the reality of our "conservative" Lasch.
Whether one agrees with Lasch's moral and cultural assessments in their particularity or not, his concern there seems entangled with the question of why political organization and the application of historical materialist analysis has degraded in favor of nihilism and short term, spontaneous action; and what can be done about it. From what I can gather, he does not see culture (as defined, while discussing Oscar Lewis' "culture of poverty": "not in the narrow sense of the term culture [e.g. an aestheticization of practices, an accumulation of so-called cultural artifacts and treasures] but as a design for living") as an end or a fix in itself, but as a potential intermediary strategy, a stepping stone toward combating the disaffection and demoralization that inhibits all enthusiasm for and belief in social and political organizing, and any horizon of substantial change, in the first place.
August 27, 2022
I picked this off the shelf to read because I admire Lasch's writing style and abilities. The content came later. Some of the essays inside are more interesting than others and that is fine, but what made this reading valuable was the epilogue of the final essay. Lasch writes about Black Power with great insight; when I was reading, I substituted Black Lives Matter for Black Power and it was immediately updated.
August 9, 2023
interesting book, rather dated, however. Offered some interesting insights to hew ideas were formed by the Left before and during the sixties. However, it offers nothing for the present times. No plans, no view of building a new world, nothing. If you want a history of the "Left", this is the book for you.
December 22, 2020
Seems like he knows what he’s talking about. Not sure I fully agreed with everything but I’m also not sure I fully understood it. So, four stars because it’s hard to rate scholarly works as a non scholar. Enjoyment level was maybe 2.5
December 11, 2024
Amazing
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