190
IRVING HOWE
what it was
thirty
years ago,
in
that it formally accepts the values of
social welfare, yet frequently does not work to realize those values.
Among the consequences of
this
disparity between norm and reality
are: the more complacent liberals feel, though they do not quite say,
that there really are not many short-range goals still to be reached;
the left-liberals have not succeeded, nor perhaps tried, to work out
a clear program of immediate objectives such as they had a few
decades ago; and the impression grows that problems are insoluble,
or that those who claim to be solving them are mere hypocrites, etc.
Carey McWilliams has listed immediate problems for which the
answer is
more
(welfare measures) and those for which the answer
is
new
(automation, allocating national resources);
his
catalog is
worth noticing
if
only to remind ourselves of the urgency of the
obvious:
Is a "great society" one that, on an ever larger scale, continues
to despoil the environment? Are present budget priorities really
designed to produce a "great society" or a caricature of one?
Can we continue to guide our foreign policy with compulsive
slogans: "anti-communism," "containment," "the free world"?
How is the scale of the military budget
to
be determined? How
is a policy of reconversion to
be
brought about? How should
resources be allocated? Should we plan and for what? How do
we propose
to
cope with the consequences of the scientific-tech–
nological revolution?
Now there is
in
our society an occasional effort, more often a
half-effort, and sometimes a mere pretense of coping with such
problems; but increasingly the result is to blur the issues and dis–
credit the very idea of rational action. What happens more often
than not has been pungently described, perhaps overstated a little,
by Paul Goodman:
"Education" means subsidizing schools to train National Science
Foundation grade-getters for higher status and salaries in Re–
search and Development, and as professional institutional per–
sonnel. "Urban Reconstruction" is the cabal of Washington,
city party-bosses, real-estate promoters and automobile manu–
facturers to
destr~y
neighborhoods and communities....
"Agri–
culture"
is
the underwriting of
chain~grocers
and
latifundia,
