614 / 676
616
GEORGE
lICHTHEIM
urban economies flourishing at the expense of an impoverished and
neglected countryside, for example, tend
to
"corrupt" their trade unions
by paying them high wages. Meanwhile the hinterland is left to rot
until there is an explosion. Such symbiotic relationships are quite com–
mon in "underdeveloped" countries; as long as money doesn't change
hands in ways that are stigmatized as illegal, the system looks stable
and respectable. One is not sure how Riesman would categorize such
a situation. I should call it "pre-revolutionary," on the assumption
that eventually an armed minority is going to rebel. But this assump–
tion is reasonable only because contemporary politics are what they
are. In past ages, these people would have gone on passively enduring
their lot, human nature notwithstanding. Human nature appears to be
very largely what we make it.
I have perhaps devoted too much space to a subject that happens
to be of topical concern.
Abundanc.e for What?
is not really about the
Cold War or the problem of "underdevelopment." As the title indicates,
it is for the most part about what Galbraith some years ago described
as the problem of "affluence." No doubt this problem is very real to
some people. It must be, seeing that there is such a vast literature
around it. Personally I don't find the problems of suburbanites, and
the worries of consumers, very fascinating, but there are millions of
them, and they are clearly entitled to the best professional attention
they can get.
The more technical papers have been crammed into the second
half of the volume. They include a thoughtful appraisal of Veblen,
and the inevitable reconsideration of de Tocqueville. One sometimes
wonders how many of his readers are aware that
Democracy in America
is much inferior
to
de Tocqueville's later work. Riesman takes him per–
haps a shade more seriously than he deserves. The remaining essays
include one on the technique of interviewing: a practice that
has
clearly been brought to a fine art, since it has now become possible to
make it the subject of theoretical considerations. (The title of this
paper is "The Sociology of the Interview.") It had not previously oc–
curred to me that the political views and voting habits of middle-class
women can be analyzed with the same degree of precision as the in–
comes of their men, but apparently it can be done. (See James G.
March, "Husband-Wife Interaction over Political Issues,"
Public
Opinion Quarterly,
XVII, 4, [Winter 1953-4], pp. 461-70.)
If
a
general impression emerges from these papers dealing with the worries
of the educated middle-class, it is that their author is in close
rapport
with the state of mind manifested by those interviewees who