578
IRVING HOWE
election or the ·earlier struggles around " right to work" laws, the
labor vote can still cohere into a' major force.
Similar signs of change seem to be occurring among the Negroes,
where the massive commitment to the Democratic Party may - though
it certainly has not yet - come to an end. And among younger people
there is a growing inclination to respond to politics as
if
group
interest were somehow vulgar or even reprehensible and what mat–
tered most were political "styles" and moral, or pseudomoral, appeals
rising above socioeconomic concerns.
Why then has this coalition devoted to defending and extending
the welfare state come to a condition of crisis? A few answers suggest
themselves :
• As
the interest groups become increasingly absorbed into the
welfare state, their combativeness decreases, at least for a time. They
develop a stake in the status quo and become economically and psy–
chologically resistant to new kinds of insurgency. Thus, while a gen–
eral case can and should be made out for a community of interests
among the unions, the Negroes and the unorganized poor, these
groups wiIl often clash both in their immediate demands and their
political styles.
• What I would call the "rate of involvement" among the
interest groups and moral issue groups is likely to be sharply different
at various moments, and the result is unavoidable friction. When the
unions were surging ahead in the thirties, they received little help
from the churches; it did not even occur to anyone at that time to
expect much help. The Catholic Church in particular was regarded as
a major center of political reaction. Today we witness the astonishing
and exhilarating rise of ferment within the Catholic community, while
the unions, though still fierce guardians of yesterday'S gains, are not
notable as centers of innovation.
• Ideally there ought to be cooperation between those committed
to a politics of pressure and those committed to a politics of in–
surgency; but in practice the latter often tend to define themselves
thmugh dissociation from the former (perhaps on the "principle" that
you strike out most violently against your closest relatives) while the
former feel their survival and even their honor to be threatened by
the latter. As long as the wretched Vietnam war continues and social
stagnation consequently characterizes our domestic life, this conflict
is likely to
be
exacerbated.
