THE SOCIALIZATION OF MUCKRAKING
101
the modern "community of interest" of monopoly capitalism was
well established before the movies and radio appeared on the
scene; we have seen only few and ephemeral examples of movie
and radio muckraking, the present tendency being overwhelmingly
to iron out these media into profitable conformity with the needs of
the business community. For media, therefore, the muckraker is
reduced to the book, the pamphlet, the platform, and the increas·
ingly partisan·political radical and liberal press-the latter being
of relatively negligible circulation.
Muckraking is being increasingly
socialized
in the sense that
the costs are paid out of the public purse or out of the surplus
social value which has been segregated and doled out by the philan–
thropic foundations. A substantial amount of muckraking is being
routinely performed by such government agencies as the Federal
Trade Commission, the Food and Drugs Administration, the Secur–
ities Exchange Commission, the Works Progress Administration,
and the Labor Relations Board. The net production of the founda–
tion-subsidized sociologists is also still considerable and by no
means without value despite the tendency toward intellectual onan–
ism and job-racketing already noted. Most of the foundations have
been chased out of most of the "hot" fields of inquiry-medical
economics for example. But since their executive staffs have vested
interests in their jobs they often don the asbestos suits of an increas–
ingly "scientific" argot and return like moths to the flame.
The combined production of the public and philanthropic
muckrakers is
quantitatively
very large; almost, if not quite as
great as the total volume of commercial magazine muckraking
during the first decade of the century. Unfortunately the produc–
tion of both these contemporary muckraking mills, especially the
former, is highly selective, censored, and
politicalized,
which
means that it is functionally stultified. Honest muckraking, like
honest plumbing, is no respecter of muck; the idea is to construct
and maintain efficient economic and social drainage. Political
muckraking is quite different. Political muckrakers are concerned
on the one hand with muckraking their opponents, and on the other
with concealing and deodorizing the deposits that accumulate in
their own back yards.
There is only one thing worse, and less habitable than a social
order with bad drainage, and incompetent drain men. That is a
