LOOKING FORWARD TO LOOKING BACKWARD
19
organic and the emergent is the political abstractness of Mumford's
partisanship of a new social order. It is not as
if
he is bringing us new
values which have first to be understood and absorbed; he is reaffirm–
ing the long-recognized need for basic changes in society. But when
we look for discussion of the means, we find nothing but pious rhetoric
or revolutionary bluster. The following is typical: "Instead of clinging
to the sardonic funeral towers of metropolitan finance, ours to march
out to newly plowed fields, to create fresh patterns of political action,
to alter for human purposes the perverse mechanisms of our economic
regime, to conceive and to germinate fresh forms of human culture."
One might imagine from this passage that he has serious political
views; but nothing is more characteristic of Mumford as a social
thinker.than his general aversion from politics and his unclarity about
the nature of the state. The mythical aggregate to which he constantly
appeals, t,he undifferentiated we's and ours' of his tumescent procla–
mations, are his alternative to class groupings. True, he encourages
"political association" as a kind of healthy activ{ty, in the way settle–
ment workers promote boys' clubs (he names Sunnyside, L. I.-alas!
-as a model of "robust
politicallif~"),
and laments that "the saloon
and the shabby district headquarters" have been the chief political
clubrooms: "One of the difficulties in the way of political association
is
that we have not provided it with the necessary physical <?rgans
of existence: we have failed to provide the necessary sites, the
necessary buildings, the necessary halls, rooms, meeting places." But
like so many honest reformers who fear the self-interest 3;nd blatancy
of politics, he wishes finally to preserve his political virginity. Although
he acknowledges the existence of the labor and socialist movements,
essentially he regards them from outside, as possible aids to the i.nde–
pendent, public-spirited reformer. He has adopted some socialist
phrases, but is ignorant of socialist literature and its analyses of the
questions he deals with. In a patronizing mood, he tells the reader
that socialism arose in the slums; on the contrary, it is a product of
critical members of the bourgeoisie, of their science and speculation as
well as their moral idealism. Its history is only slightly affected by
intellectual contributions from the slums. But is there a clearer sign of
political naivete than his regret that "society" hasn't provided meeting
places for the workers: "in how many factory districts are there well–
equipped halls of sufficient size in which the workers can meet?"
It is typical of his provincial misunderstanding of the relations
of politics and society that he can sweep aside the politics of the 16th
to the 19th century as "crazy statecraft"; Mumford, had he been
there, would have acted differently and is therefore full of regrets
in discussing the mistakes of the past. He moralizes on politics, as on
everything else. Yet in his own mind he remains a practical theorist
