Norman Birnbaum and Christopher Lasch
AMERICA TODAY:
An Exchange
Birnbaum:
I thought we might talk about our perplexities about
politics and culture in America now. But perhaps I had best layout mine,
and leave you to speak for yourself. At the root of mine is the fact that our
cultural resources-what's called the Western tradition-don't seem to
have given us ideas of the kind of lives we might wish to lead, the kinds of
values we might wish to pursue, the kinds of people we want to become.
This is an eminently political problem because without such ideas there
can't be effective movements for change.
In Western Europe, all we seem to have are the welfare state
institutions, the socialists, and the presently reformist programs-regard–
less of their ultimate aims-of the Communists in France and Italy. (In
Portugal the situation is, ofcourse, different.) And whether these programs
are adequate to the task of creating a just political and economic
community is doubtful. In France and Italy where the Communists and
socialists are close to entering government together, the parties themselves
are currently rather conservative, and neither is eager to be called upon to
administer the decline of capitalism.
Lasch:
To play the historic role of socialism.
Birnbaum:
Right. What ultimately disturbs me is that I can't easily recall a
historical precedent for the universal bleakness of the intellectual land–
scape. There is no conviction that thought which is descriptively correct can
have an impact, let alone belief that new ideas can in fact generate a
different-or better-situation.
Lasch:
Well, what would you say against the view that the decline of the
Western tradition, and therefore, the West should not, after all, be looked
on as a global catastrophe and that what we are sometimes tempted to
regard as cultural exhaustion may signify nothing more than the exhaustion
of the West's capacity to exploit the rest of the world.
Birnbaum:
I don't know. If one were to study the history of antiquity-if I
may advance what is certainly not a new comparison-when power passed
