HERE AND NOW
567
and against, the welfare state by those who yearn forward to what
they hope will be a splendid future and those who yearn backward
to what they imagine was a golden past.
This course of "invasions"
is
by no means completed in the
United States, and indeed is scandalously frustrated by racial and
social meanness.
As
long, however, as there are groups trying to break
in and powers trying to keep them out, we can be certain that the
welfare state will be marked by severe conflict, even though the
"invading" groups may differ from decade to decade. Nor is there
any certainty whatever that the welfare state will prove receptive to
all the claims likely to be made by groups largely outside its system
of dispensation. It is possible that the legitimate demands of the
Negroes will not be met and that this would, in tum, lead to the
virtual destruction of the welfare state as we know it; but
if
that
were to occur it would not, I believe, be the result of an inherent
dynamic or ineluctable necessity within the welfare state as a socio–
economic system; rather it would be the result of a tradition of
racism so deeply ingrained in American life that it threatens to
overwhelm any form of society.
This process of "invasion" is one that a good many of the
younger American radicals find troublesome and concerning which I
find a good many of them confused. Except for a few who have
developed a snobbish contempt for the working class, they acknowledge
the justice of the claims made by deprived groups trying to gain a
larger share of power, goods and recognition; but they fear that
once this happens there must follow among the once-insurgent groups
an adaptation to detested values and a complacent lapse into material
comfort. In part, the young radicals are right. At a particular mo–
ment, a once-insurgent group may settle for what seems too little
- though we ought to be suspicious of contemptuous judgments made
by people who have not shared in past struggles or have merely
grown up to enjoy their rewards. At a particular moment, a once–
insurgent group may move from the drama of popular struggle to the
politics of limited pressure. Right now, for example, the trade unions
seem relatively quiescent; having won major victories, they may for
a time content themselves with minor adjustments; but with time
they are likely to raise their horizons of possibility and again come
into conflict with the existing order; and in any case, it takes a
