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STEPHEN ROUSSEAS
Stephen Rousseas
In his analysis of the new radicals, Hentoff makes liberal
use of the distant "they." I shall make the more than reasonable
assumption that he identifies himself with those he so favorably
describes. To begin with, Hentoff sees a deepening class cleavage
in
America between the white and black poor and the rest of society.
By "giving a voice (with power) to the voiceless-including them–
selves," the new radicals are expected to tap successfully the "power
potential of the poor" for political purposes. The
old
radicalism of
the thirties, however, has become irrelevant, and though the new
radicals "are free of the emotional investment [of the older generation
of American radicals] in past failures," they are nevertheless in need
of .a "new" ideology.
Strangely enough, the new radicalism is to get its ideological
infusion by coupling its concern for the poor with the problems of
cybernation. In this juncture, the goal of full employment becomes
"illusory" and the traditional "meliorist" approaches of fiscal policy,
public investment and job retraining programs are rejected out of
hand on the grounds that they are "not radical enough." Indeed,
Hentoff treats us to a naive restatement of Marx's theory of the
progressive immiseration of the proletariat and the resulting polariza–
tion of classes in the new technological society:
... As more and more of the lower-middle and then the middle
classes find themselves made useless in the technological society,
they may be ready viscerally for political action with the poor.
And as security-by-attrition becomes increasingly difficult for
organized !'abor ... that sector, or parts of it, may be ready to
move radically.
With this grinding down of the middle classes, the "growing
ranks of the speechless" will rediscover their vocal cords and, with
the new radicals at their head, march in a solid phalanx into the
Hentoff version of the Great Society. The primary purpose of
this
"new" society will be the radical restructuring of the "old" in order
to achieve the Aristotelian
telos
of permitting each individual
to
