Vol. 24 No. 2 1957 - page 310

310
PARTISAN REVIEW
of happiness. This covert part of the creed illuminates the national
eagerness for education. In America, knowledge as such has never
meant power. Rather, the Baconian idea has been turned upside down.
In the pseudo-science developed in university departments of psychology
and applied in the corporations, we see power masquerading as knowl–
edge. Industrial psychology represents power trying to transform itself
into knowledge--in order to achieve more power.
It was a bold idea to end the book with an analysis of psychological
tests and detailed instructions on how to cheat on them. Whyte's recom–
mendations are genuinely subversive--that is, they are practical, not
rhetorical. The free man must learn how to cheat power masquerading
as knowledge. He must cultivate that double consciousness which permits
the Organization to mount a plausible version of himself in the bureau–
cratic showcase without for a moment believing that the mounted
creature is really he. This is an unending task, I think, one requiring
more than shrewdness and perhaps beyond the resources of individuality
latent in Organization Man. But
if
Whyte is not entirely successful in
supplying a new hero, there is no doubt that he has correctly spotted,
in applied psychology, the new
villain
for our national success story.
LIBERAL PRESS, INC.
printers of
PARTISAN REVIEW
80 FOURTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 3,
N. Y.
DISSENT
Philip Rieff
features in its
Spring issue
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE
MASSES
by
Nicola Chiaromonte
HERESY AND MODERN CULTURE
by
Richard Chase
Paul Goodman
reviews
Robert Penn Warren's "Segregation"
Also in the Spring issue:
An
Eyewitnesa
in
Hungary by
Pet.. Freyer;
Tbe Failure of the
British Left by
Michael Walzer;
Report on
the Communist Party Convention by
Bernarti
Rosenberl;
Hungary and the French Intel·
lectuals by
Jean Chabnm;
Intellectual Trends
in Poland by
L.
Labedz;
National Communism
by
Irvin, Howe;
On the Danger of Being
a Radical by
J.
H .
Wheeler;
Problems
in
Foreign Policy by
Lewis Co..r;
Debate on
Israel between
Stanley Diamond
and
B,,,
Halper,,;
Pouiade and the Sickne.u of France
by
RUle" Weber.
Write to Dept. P, DISSENT,
509
Fifth
Avenue, New York
17,
N. Y.
$2.50
per
year;
75c
per
copy.
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