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minority was therefore a sure thing. One of the themes I tried to develop
(and stress) concerned not only the unstable nature of politics during
the period, but the rising awareness among members of the metropolitan
minority that they could lose their chance to dominate the situation.
Those men did not have Harrington's sense of certainty, and I think
they were closer to the truth.
I did deal, though perhaps neither as explicitly nor as extensively
as desirable, with the failure of the agricultural majority to consolidate
and deploy its majority political power. That was one of the two vital
factors in the ability of the metropolitan minority to hang on until it
established the control it required to shape the structure of the evolving
political economy according to its preferences. The other element was
the strategy of co-opting a decisive element of the agricultural majority
by advocating market expansion. I would suggest, moreover, that Amer–
ican imperialism would have blossomed at a significantly later date if
it had not been for the long agricultural commitment to overseas market
expansion.
But if we say, as Harrington seems to be saying, that the outcome
was predetermined simply because the metropolitan elite controlled what
were to become the predominate means of production, then we are left
- at least implicitly - with the proposition that a majority cannot
control or shape a trend. I disagree. I think the possibilities open to a
majority are defined by its conception of reality, by its self-consciousness
and by its strength as a social movement. Let me put it this way:
if
the Populist minority which stressed domestic reform had won the active
support of their fellow agriculturalists, then, despite industrialization and
urbanization, American society would be significantly different.
A related point before moving on to Harrington's remarks about
more recent events. I do not argue in
The Roots
that the agrarian
majority was a "creative" force in connection with foreign policy
(p. 502). I do maintain, as Harrington points out more correctly a
bit earlier, that it exercised "a profound influence upon another class."
There is a vast difference between being influential and being creatively
influential. I do not think that my analysis can be changed with generat–
ing "militant imprecision" (p. 503), precisely because of that considera–
tion. For what we have here is a majority causally involved in pointing
the society away from its primary values and problems. And, as I noted
in responding to Zinn, our awareness of that reality ought to suggest
to us that simplistic slogans and occasional fiery acts are not the key to
building a radical social movement which wants to redirect the energies
and the commitments of the society.
