RADICAL QUESTIONS
self-consciousness about welfare as a point at which elementary
rights have continually to
be
reclaimed seems to be one of the
preconditions of the maintenance of welfare in an advanced
capitalist society. . . .
The problem of a politics that goes further than this is partly
the problem of a working class that sixty years ago had to set
itself the goals of welfare and now has to find for itself new
political goals.. . .
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In contrast to these three attitudes toward the welfare state, let
me suggest the following position. The struggles and issues raised
within the welfare state are real, not mere diversionary shadow plays
or trivial squabbles. They matter. They affect the lives of millions.
Regardless of how mundane or inadequate the "level of consciousness"
at which they are conducted, the struggles for social betterment with–
in
the welfare state merit our concern and involvement.
No magical solution is available for the problems faced by
American radicals ; if there were, someone would by now have
discovered it. I am myself committed to the "coalition" approach
suggested by Bayard Rustin and Michael Harrington: it proposes a
loose and intermittent association of the major "progressive" forces
in
the country-labor, Negro, liberal, church groups, intellectuals,
students-in order to work for current and intermediate goals. Social–
ism not being an immediate option, it is necessary for radicals, while
continuing to speak for their views in full, also to try to energize
those forces that are prepared to stretch the limits of the welfare
state. Such a dynamic once set in motion, there may be possibilities
for going still further; but any political approach that
dismisses
movements embodying the hard-won victories of yesterday, must doom
itself to sectarian isolation today.
This strategy has many difficulties, not the least being that it
isn't very dramatic. For young people who have just "made it" into
radicalism, it sometimes seems insufficiently radical. But radicalism
is neither a quantity nor a measure of purity and rectitude; it is a
political outlook, and if a rough adaptation of Fabianism is a possi–
bility, then we must seize upon it.
One reason for
this
political stress has been suggested by Meyer
Schapiro: that American society
is
now significantly different from
