102
MARTIN JAY
a revolution which is really worth making can be achieved without ex–
tensive popular support is to ignore the lessons of previous betrayed
revolutions. It is to become indifferent not only to theory, but to his–
tory as well.
And yet, after all these criticisms have been made, the realities to
which the new terrorism has been a response must not be ignored. No
political movement should be understood as simply an outgrowth of
psychological needs or deluded thinking. In moments of bitterness, it
sometimes seems as if America has spawned the radicalism it deserves.
I t is easy enough to castigate the terrorists for forgetting the creative
side of legitimate
praxis.
What is more difficult is to recognize how
rapidly attempts to construct alternative life-styles within the current
society are swallowed up, how the "liberated zones" of the countercul–
ture have been almost immediately "reenslaved" by the mass media. And
to remember that their rejection of the American working class as a
force for social change did come after several years of largely futile
community organizing. It is also easy to express horror at the irrespon–
sible violence of the terrorists without at the same time seeing it in the
context of America's increasing "legitimate" use of violent means at
home and abroad. So too is it simple to register indignation at what
we have called the terrorists' aestheticization of politics, while ignoring
its analogue on a larger scale.
Perhaps most disturbing is that the radical resort to terror reflects
a more pervasive crisis in our society. The swift growth of the "action–
factions" of the left can partly be understood as a response to the failure
of "reasonableness" as a political force. The dizzying escalation of a
good deal of rhetoric on the New Left was less the cause than the con–
sequence of this condition. Paradoxically, the diminution of the power
of thought to influence action has accompanied the widening liberaliza–
tion of expression in our society.
It
has often been observed that the
censorship exercised by totalitarian governments pays a perverted tribute
to the influence of the written word. The continuum between thought
and action is taken seriously by governments which attempt to control
both. In the liberal democracies of the W.est, all kinds of thought have
been tolerated, although often potentially subversive actions have not.
Here the continuum between the two has never been really acknowledged,
"the unity of theory and practice" is perpetually frustrated. In fact, it
might be argued that the freedom permitted to verbal expression serves
somehow to divert attention from the ways in which the freedom to
act in the world is restricted. This is demonstrated very clearly in one
of the arguments often adduced to justify the liberalization of obscenity
laws: that no girl was ever seduced by a book. This may be empirically
