RADICAL QUESTIONS
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the survival of the intellectuals as a distinct group if that VlSion were
extinguished?) It is the sense of a possible good society that provides a
guiding nonn for our day-to-day political life. Without such an as–
sumption, radical criticism runs the danger of declining into mere
complaint or veering into elitist manipulation. Perhaps, then, the ac–
cumulation of defeats suffered by socialism can yet provide a premise
for new beginnings.
Finally, The Intellectuals
It is tempting to end with a call for greater political involvement.
But what, in the present circumstances, would that mean? The American
intellectual world, except in regard to an occasional issue or figure
arousing strong emotions, is not greatly interested in politics. Things
have, to be sure, improved a little since the fifties: one encounters
less frequently the smugness of literary people who regard politics as a
sign of vulgarity. But the idea of a sustained political involvement seems
abstract or unlikely to most American intellectuals. Some of the reasons
for this are not at all admirable: narcissism, lucrative busy-work, ex–
hibitionism, competitiveness, all related to an affluent but insecure
culture. Other reasons deserve to be taken seriously: a genuine doubt
as to what intellectuals can achieve, uncertainty as to how to act. That
there is no party or movement to which radical intellectuals can attach
themselves does not bother me as much as certain intellectuals claim it
bothers them. I am more concerned with the development of a serious
political consciousness within the arena in which intellectuals live and
work. Concerning
which,
three concluding remarks :
• The American university has recently become more alive, more
concerned politically, than it had been for several decades. This, on
the whole, is a cheering development, but some aspects are also dis–
turbing. There are available pn the American campus-which, as it
grows at an astonishing rate, becomes one of the major centers of
national life-far more spokesmen for a democratic radicalism than
are now making themselves heard. To the extent that they fail to speak
out and establish relations with the aroused students, to that extent
will the rising campus rebelliousness be diverted and entangled. Silence,
abstention, indifference may not have mattered very much in university
life these past few decades; now they matter enormously. To carry the
moods of the fifties into the sixties will have bitter consequences.
• A major shift or shakeup of "power relations" seems in prospect
for the intellectual world. For the first time in several decades, the
generation of intellectuals associated with the thirties- a generation
bound together by common problems, experiences and quarrels-seems
