AN EXCHANGE
43
kind
of party politics. So you have your choice between these two
mutually exclusive pictures which Hook offers in the same review (a
club offer if there ever was one). I heard him the first time.
Hook does bring up one technical point, however, that I consider
reputable. So far I can see, it is mainly directed against another book
of mine,
Permanence and Change,
a general study of perspective, inter-
pretation, communication. In the course of this study, I illustrate my
notion of perspective by giving many examples of different and conflict-
ing perspectives that overlap one another on the bias. And while show-
ing a representative lot, and explaining how they operate, I also select
the one I consider best fol' the charting of social relationships. It is a
perspective stressing communication, cooperation, participation-a pro-
communist, anti-capitalist perspective. I seek to motivate the choice by
showing the relevancy of this perspective to our current experience and
the scope of its inclusiveness. Hook would interpret the display of the
general list to be "subjective"; and my selection from the list, with the
displaying of its relevance as a justification for the choice, he would call
a shift to "absolutism." After reading Hook's review, I can see why he
should consider it a tremendous give-away on my part to put my cards
face-up on the table by revealing that a perspective is a
choice.
But I
take such presentation of the whole story to be a normal practice of
discourse (normal, that is, once we get outside Hook's orbit of reporting).
But if, after revealing representative items from which a choice may be
made, we then make our choice, and proceed to show the evidence of
its scope and relevancy, if that is a shift from "subjectivism" to "abso-
lutism," will Hook please tell me what more reasonable mode of dis-
course is possible? I grant that many of our present concerns (due to the
"revolutionary psychosis" of a highly transitional era) will probably
seem irrelevant to some subsequent era of history characterized by great
stability. But is it "absolutist" for one to show their relevance
for us and
our necessities
(which are as real as anything can be) -and is it "sub-
jectivist" to admit that the "us" and the "necessities" of some other era
may require 'a different perspective?
In closing: is it not noteworthy that never once, not even to answer
in the negative, does I-look ask whether there is one single ingredient in
my book that might be used (either as it is, or after such-and-such im-
provement) for anti-capitalist diagnosis and exhortation? He never even
thinks of approaching the book from that angle. He might have damned
it just as heartily as he does; that's not the point. The point is that he
spontaneously ignores such concerns. If a writer, supposedly of the Left,
writing in an American magazine that would consider itself of the Left,
doesnot review books from the standpoint of their function .as adjuncts
in the changing of capitalist values (their function in promoting shifts
in .allegiance to the current symbols of authority, and in showing the
qualities of experience revealed by such a perspective) it is a misnomer
for him to designate himself a partisan of the Left at all. Let him con-
demn as much work as he cares to; no writer can call for quarter on the
