NEW RADICALISM
355
In this setting, intellectuals have become disaffected
and~
as
Seymour Martin Lipset tells us, "have turned from a basic concern
with political and economic systems to criticisms of other sections of
the basic culture of society, particularly of elements which cannot be
dealt with politically." Or, as Daniel Bell has put it, the younger
intellectuals "have found an outlet in science or university pursuits,
but often at the expense of narrowing their talents into mere technique
[while] others have sought self-expression in the arts."
The end of ideology, in other words, is equated with the solution
to the basic problems of industrial society and it
is
this achievement
which results in the inability of radicals to arouse the masses. When
eighty percent of the people are well off and when the unemployment
rate is well within politically tolerable limits, it would be unrealistic,
as
Harrington recognizes, to expect the other twenty percent to seize
political power.
It
is
true, of course, that a small part of the twenty
percent can be aroused sufficiently to make things uncomfortable for
the rest. But
all
that can be expected
is
that some belated concessions
will
be made by the more affluent majority. All this is to the good, and
in this sense the new radicals have a very positive role to play. But
they are deluding themselves
if
they think that they will
be
the ones
to. pipe us into salvation. Hentoff's article should cure one of any
doubts about this. However useful they may be and however vocal,
the new radicals will continue to be a minority group with limited
political power. Just as the unions have proved unable to deliver the
vote, so will the new radicals be tempered in their political pretensions.
The fundamental failure of liberalism in this country
is
to be
found in its intellectuals-and not in the labor unions, or the poor, or
the civil rights workers. For the most part, our colleges have become
pre-professional schools where the better students are honed and
sharpened for entry into the professional and graduate schools of our
prestige universities. Social criticism has declined, the technical super–
stars dominate their departments, and the social sciences find them–
selves in the advanced stages of mathematization. This state of higher
education in the United States reflects the general influence of the
end of ideology among the intellectuals. I cannot, however, agree
with them that modern society has solved its major problems. I con–
sider this an intellectual atavism which goes back to the days of the
New Deal. The problems we face in the sixties are of a different
