NEW RADICALISM
205
is that our present mastery of economics
is
such that Walter Reuther,
Roy Wilkins, Henry Ford and Senator Long can join in a permanent
coalition in which details
will
be ironed out by compromise. And
it is the burden of this discussion that the task of creating millions
of new jobs which will not be automatically produced by the private
sector, of redefining work and adapting to automation, is going to
require some basic changes in American thinking. That means
struggle and conflict.
But
if
the civil rights activists, the union members, the poor, the
youth, and the rest of the population geared to social change could
make of the Democratic Party
their
party, that would be a tremendous
step for the Left of the sixties.
If
the economic program of the AFL–
CIO,
the ADA and the Conference on Economic Progress could be
I
legislated into law by a new majority, that would not be the revolution
but it would be the biggest step since the thirties.
It would be smugly radical to dismiss the Johnson administration
outright instead of taking its inadequate, confused beginnings, like the
War
on Poverty and the Great Society, as points of departure for
criticism and for action.
It
sounds resonant to summon the workers,
the Negroes, the middle-class liberals and radicals to leave the Demo–
crats and start their own party. Only most of them won't listen-and
fewer have listened every year since 1948. The myths about consensus
in
a time of radical change have to be challenged, of course, and
if
it
is a paradox that the forces for this task are grouped within the
very party of the champion of consensus, this
is
not the first time that
history has been sloppy.
In any case, it is now possible to discuss these things. And even if I
think that their enthusiasm sometimes leads them to emotional or
simplified formulations, these young and impatient Leftists of the
sixties, like the civil rights workers and the pover,ty battlers, have
contributed enormously to the progress that has been made. But now
to go beyond means that we must give up the hope for a
deus ex
machina,
for a new proletariat that will restore the old schema. One
need no longer be contented with the vision of a revolution. The more
radical task of taking the next step
is
at hand.
