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PARTISAN R'EVIEW
symbol
of
the middle way. But time-and a growing appreciation of the
Soviet experience-has suggested that the improvisations of the New
Deal, far from leading capitalism into an untenable no-man's-land, have
actually staked out the broad position toward which liberal socialists,
in their recoil from totalitarianism, are being obliged to retire.
In a certain sense, the fruitful social thought of the last fifteen
years has been an attempt to explore the terms of the New Deal com–
promise. Yet the exploration of a compromise is not necessarily the
most thrilling type of intellectual endeavor. After living dangerously
in
the exciting land of either-or, social thought has now been compelled
to enter the unromantic realm of more-or-less; and, in so doing, it has
lost many people, especially intellectuals, who had a need for doing
or dying, and would accept nothing less than the apocalypse. All of us
tire quickly of the "mixed economy"-the very phrase sums up the de–
cline of economics from a religion into a technique. We are unwilling
to look into the tedious technicalities of compensatory fiscal policy; social
security has become a bore; health insurance, another; and the Bran–
nan plan is beyond comprehension. The politics of expediency, com–
promise, pragmatism--or, to put it in another way, the politics of
democracy-seem just too dull.
Yet the middle way can survive only if it becomes sufficiently
charged with faith to inspire people to fight and die for it. This is the
problem which concerned both Dr. Popper and the late Dr. Mannheim.
Their new books represent interesting and somewhat divergent at–
tempts to work out social and philosophical bearings of the middle way.
The Open Society and Its Enemies
is a big, abounding book-463
pages of text and 263 more pages of notes-crotchety, garrulous,
opinionated, and, on the whole, valuable and interesting. Dr. Popper
approaches the problem of the middle way through the spacious-but,
in his account, sanguinary-avenues of the philosophy of history. He
sees Western civilization as a great, continuing transition from the
"closed society"-magical, tribal, collectivist, where the individual un–
questioningly submits to irrational forces-to the "open society"-in
which men are confronted with personal decisions to be made on the
authority of their own critical intelligence.
The "closed society" has an organic, almost biological character.
Consequently the experience of abandoning it produces a traumatic
shock, leading to convulsive attempts to recapture the old securities. One
form taken by this reaction, Dr. Popper suggests, is "historicism"-that
is, the propagation of doctrines about historical inevitability, the ad–
diction to long-term historical prophecies. "Historicism"-and, indeed,
most other techniques of evading the responsibilities of freedom-he
