BOO KS
473
half a dozen of my students, and none of them could make sense of
it: "But with academicism'/scientism we have, once again, a willed
and artificial community: the ideal
is
right, but that particular high
road to it leads to a stinking Eskimo village-the fancy
part
of New
York Gty lies
in
the other direction." Period, end of paragraph!
Bazelon evidently sees himself as a very deep thinker indeed. One
can almost visualize his unsmiling face when he set down words of
wisdom such as "the essence of the problem of power, this un–
equaled social problem, is whether you obey the life force or the death
force." Gads.
But enough; let's have a closer look at the thesis of the book.
Bazelon
has
discovered that Marx was all wrong (so, what else is
new?).
It
has turned out that it wasn't the working class that would
make the revolution for itself; it was the New Class. "The New Class
is the cream of the proletariat: and the cream
has
separated from the
curd." . And so our author has resolutely discarded all his Marxist
baggage, has "stepped firmly off the transatlantic ship" as he
so
delicately informs us, and has become the self-appointed advocate of
"the cream."
OK,
but why must he in the process distort the thought
of the old master, as when he writes: "[Marx] thought that the
factory worker everywhere and always was inevitably and exceptionally
revolutionary." Marx didn't think so at all,
vide
his subtle use of the
notion of false consciousness.
I have always thought that it is the obligation of a book-reviewer
to summarize as best he can the content of a book under review.
But how can one summarize an
olla-podrida
in which the self–
indulgent author delivers himself of a variety ,of
obiter dicta
on a
multitude of topics, from the "inability of America to become a co–
herent nation," to the victory of science over religion; from the lack
of adequate organization of power
in
the House of Representatives
to the dangers of homosexuality, "a personal disaster far beyond a bad
marriage," from the Supreme Court redistricting decision to Negro
sexuality, and so on and so on. Right in the middle of this slovenly
argued verbose mess there is even a thirty-page chapter entitled,
"An
Essay in Defense of Lying by a Compulsive Truth-Teller," which
isn't related to anything else
in
the book and only manages to suggest
that a) we are all liars and b ) this is really a good thing. La
Rochefoucauld said as much in three pithy sentences.
The book deals with a great variety of things, but the major
subject which the title of the book makes us expect, "Power in
America," is not dealt with at all. Bazelon alleges that the "Big
