PARTISAN REVIEW
93
tradition that investigated early industrial society. Inquiry of this sort,
of course, inevitably becomes political: the pluralism of sociology cannot
justify a flight from politics.
During the Congress, political voices were not entirely silent. Some,
like myself and a few allies, attempted to engage the pseudo-Marxists
and above all the authentic Marxists from the state socialist regimes in
some kind of dialogue. Publicly, this proved almost impossible. Privately,
over Slivovitz, we made out better. At the very least, we managed to
trade our books and articles for caviar and vodka: the Soviet as well
as the general Communist demand for printed matter was very great.
A note of political pathos was added by the group of younger sociologists
who managed to hold a few meetings - on the sociology of sociology.
Was international sociology at the service of the intematinal power elite,
they asked? The answer is that, in general, it has very little to offer to
that elite. Nevertheless, the younger Dutch, Germans and Americans
who organized the meeting struck a responsive chord. Hundreds of
colleagues rushed to inscribe themselves on their mailing list. I asked
about their coordinating committee and learned that of its five initial
members, one was a young Bulgarian and one a student from Niger
attached to a Bulgarian university. This was certainly one of the first
international new left groups to have not one but two representatives
from Bulgaria on it: the "helpfulness" of the Bulgarian was in the
circumstances a bit surprising.
I would have wished for much more criticism of technocracy - in
the neocapitalist and state socialist regimes - on the Congress program,
but it was good to see the critical sociologists break through. Their level
of rationality contrasted favorably with that of the radical caucus at
the September annual meeting of the American Sociological Association,
at which professors were denounced for writing radical books, for "not
doing anything," and one leaflet declared that radical sociologists were
henceforth to be considered the main enemies of radicalism. Reminders
of the inanities of the American scene were not, however, entirely miss–
ing. One younger American described Manson as an exemplar of a new
communal way of living, and the "fat people's liberation movement"
and the "gay people's liberation movement" as part of the avant-garde
in America. The chairman of the session did interrupt to ask that the
terms be explained: he lived in Paris and knew what they meant, but
he doubted that they were current in Bulgaria.
My last image of the Congress was at the airport in Sofia. Sixty
of the French had been bumped off an overbooked flight to western
Europe and had been told that they would have to spend the night in
