BLAC K POWER
213
words, that "the only kind of progressive coalition that can exist in this
country . . . is the mild, liberal variety which produced the civil rights
legislation of recent years. And that kind of legislation has proven
itself grossly inadequate." Mr. Dubennan then suggests that :
"If
a radical
coalition could be formed in this country, that is, one willing to scrutinize
in depth the failings of our system, to suggest structural, not piecemeal,
reforms, to see them executed with sustained rather than occasional
vigor, then Black Power advocates might feel less need to separate
themselves and to concentrate on local marginal successes. But no re–
sponsible observer believes that in the foreseeable future a radical coali–
tion on the Left can become the effective political majority...."
I want to concentrate on these statements and their implications
because I believe they explain, at least in part, why Mr. Dubennan's
essay, like Christopher Lasch's also brilliant piece, "The Trouble with
Black Power," in
The New York Review of Books,
finally leaves me
unsatisfied. Rightly critical of the inadequacies of recent liberal legisla–
tion, yet pessimistic as to radicalism's immediate prospects, both writers
deliver a surefire indictment of the society, then walk off leaving us
stranded, with nowhere to turn. Maybe there is no place to turn, in
which case the most incisive critiques of Black Power are pointless; if
there are no serious alternatives, we might as well let everybody do his
own thing. But I do not think we have reached this impasse.
Mr. Duberman lists several examples of the failures of the liberal
legislation produced in recent years - e.g., despite the Supreme Court
decision, 85 per cent of Negro students in the South are still in seg–
regated schools; unemployment among Negroes has risen in the past
decade ; Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has been poorly enforced;
and so has the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This is all true, and the list
could be extended. But surely one cannot argue - although Mr. Duber–
man may underestimate the radical impact of the Voting Rights Act–
that this list defines liberalism's program, that these results flow from
liberalism. They flow rather from the frustration and undermining of
liberal programs by an entrenched and now resurgent conservatism.
5) To recognize this does not mean that liberalism, if it were deci–
sively to defeat conservatism, would be sufficient for all our problems.
As a socialist, I do not believe that. But neither would I want to fall
into the error of earlier radical movements that declared socialism the
precondition for full employment, the elimination of Jim Crow and
other goals now widely recognized as attainable under liberal capitalism.
To assume that liberalism has spent itself when in fact it has not yet
come into its own - for an array of historical reasons - is to establish
a premise that can only lead radicalism into vastly mistaken strategies.
For one thing, it confuses liberalism's ideals with what is left of them
