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that in these years the appeal to reason and to politics has come to seem
more and more unrealistic.
However complacent nineteenth-century liberalism may have been,
it was not inclined to be overwhelmed by slogans. In contrast, far too
many twentieth-century intellectuals are intoxicated by language ; words
have never been cheaper than they are today. Terrible words like
geno–
cide
or
Fascism,
which bear such heavy burdens of human suffering,
are today applied by instant commentators to inadequate reading pro–
grams for black pupils, or to the family in the Western world.
It
was
against this kind of irresponsible thinking, this adoration of quick vio–
lent solutions and aversion to patient analysis, that Lichtheim directed
his polemics and his scorn. He positively enjoyed reflection ; he wrote
in an essay on "The Politics of
1970" :
When heads of government take to writmg letters to the press in
an effort to persuade the uncommitted that they stand for disarma–
ment (unlike the opposing side, which presumably favors all-around
suicide), the political scientist is driven back upon higher ground.
If
he cannot find a fresh vantage point, his occupation vanishes,
as does confidence in his ability to discern those elements in the
situation that are hidden from statesmen and diplomatists. The
question, in short, is whether in all this welter of public and pri–
vate comment on the world situation, there is still room for what
used to be known as theoretical thinking.
The theoretical thinking that Lichtheim thought so essential, lest
his occupation vanish, was not exhausted by the literature of exposure
and denunciation. During the last years of his life, Lichtheim produced
a large and very respectable body of historical scholarship, most of it
revolving around Socialist ideas and politics. In the space of a dozen
years he published histories of Socialism and of Marxism, a book on
Marxism in France, a book-length essay on Imperialism, a set of essays
headed by a long rumination, "From :Marx to Hegel." In this essay,
as in his other work, the rela tion of theory and practice, thoug3t and
action, humanism and politics had the place of honor. There is much
information in these books and little hope, deep scholarship and deep
pessimism lightly worn. His best-known book,
Marxism,
first published
in
1961
and revised four years later, is a compressed but comprehensive
history of ideas and movements that begins with the "heritage" of
Marx - German Idealism, philosophical radicalism, and early Social–
ism - examines the Marxist system, the rise of the International, Marx's
late theory, the struggle for his mantle, and closes with "the dissolution
of the Marxian system," all in four hundred pages. Yet the book is full
