PARTISAN REVIEW
407
apparent impartiality, they are especially scornful toward the group
from which most of them themselves have come: the literate, edu–
cated, white-collar men and women of American metropolitan areas
and university towns. This group is not easily defined. Some sociol–
ogists classify it as " new middle class," some put it into the "new
working class," some say it spans both. What everyone agrees, how–
ever, and what is important for my point, is that there is something
distinctively "modem " about the group, something endemic to socie–
ties that are "advanced," highly "developed" - therefore I will refer
to this group as "modern men," as "us." The Weatherpeople take
great pains to disaffiliate themselves from us. When they learned "to
reject the ideal career of the professional,"
it
did not occur to them
to try to create their own career models, or to connect themselves
with radical traditions within their own country, their own culture,
their own class. What they did was to "look for leadership to the
people's war of the Vietnamese," to "look to Mao, Che, the Panthers,
the Third World, for models, for motion." The closest the Weather–
people are willing to come to home is "the 'people's culture' of black
America," which they have learned from "Chuck Berry, Elvis, The
Temptations." It does not seem even to occur to them - they never
mention the idea, not even to dismiss it - that anything further
might be happening here. (The radical potential which they con–
cede to "youth culture" seems to consist entirely in its capacity to
identify with radical forces "outside." )
If
they speak to us at all, it
is
only to give us notice that our "television set, car and wardrobe
already belong ... to the people of the world." Until the reposses–
sors arrive, the one worthy thing we can do is "support the blacks
in moving as fast as they have to and are able to, and ... keep up
with that black movement enough so that white revolutionaries can
share the cost, and the blacks don't have to do the whole thing
alone." In other words, we can serve as a sort of Fifth Column for
the Third World: but not for ourselves - since we're not worth
saving. Our role, our historic mission, is to
be
overcome someday.
When the great day comes, none of us will get to share in its
fruits. Liberation for the world will mean only repression for us.
According to the late Ted Gold, after American imperialism is de–
feated abroad, "an ' agency of the peoples of the world" will be set
up to run the American economy and society, presumably to give
