184
IRVING HOWE
• The Cold War
has
largely run its course. That Western Europe
has been stabilized on a more or less democratic basis is certainly a
major achievement; otherwise, the record of the West in the Cold
War is largely one of sterility. The inadequacies of Western power,
especially in regard to areas like Latin America, have become clear;
and it
will
not do simply to keep repeating the anti-Communist
catchwords of a decade ago.
• It seems likely that we shall not soon be plunged into a
nuclear war through the deliberate choice of one or both of the
major powers. At least a partial relaxation can therefore begin, as
a result of which new problems, not accessible to Cold War politics,
can come to the forefront.
• It is increasingly hard to maintain that American society has
reached a state of health so complete that little more than marginal
problems remain to be solved-and those (as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
suggested a few years ago) having less to do with gross exploitations
than with psychological disturbances and esthetic needs.
• While a sharp distinction between democratic and totalitarian
values remains a moral imperative, the view of the world as polarized
between extremes of good and evil, "we" and "they," becomes in–
creasingly tiresome.
• In the United States the civil rights movement has had a sub–
stantial liberating effect, not merely in gaining victories for the
Negroes and in providing the idealistic young with opportunities
for activity and sacrifice, but also in opening up the country to fresh
moods and sentiments.
• The Kennedy administration, more through its civilized tone
than actual achievements, helped clear the air of McCarthyite fumes
and brought to national consciousness at least the possibility of
further social advance.
• The ideological, or what may come to the same thing, the
anti-ideological zealousness characterizing a good part of the intel–
lectual world in the early fifties was bound to exhaust itself. Just as
after the crude Marxism of the thirties, there has followed a period
of sobering second thoughts.
Nevertheless, the truth is that radical criticism remains scattered,
limited in impact, uncertain as to intention, ill-developed in program
and confined to a very few writers. Suppose, however, there were
