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PARTISAN REVIEW
cultural leveling in which the masses attempt
to
impose their own culture
(actually the culture of the culture industry) on the elites-a very different
process from the ideal envisioned by nineteenth-century democrats and
even by apostles of high culture such as Matthew Arnold. They imagined a
situation in which "the best that has been known and thought" would
become available
to
anyone who cared
to
listen . Instead we have a situation
in which the worst tends
to
dilute the best, and in which critical thinking
becomes synonomous in the popular mind with privilege.
So we have the worst ofeverything, an ever-widening gap between rich
and poor combined with a regressive egalitarianism in culture. Ultimately,
the decay of critical thought makes it all the more difficult
to
mount a
sustained attack on social and economic equality.
Birnbaum:
If we're
to
talk about socio-economic problems , or political–
economic problems, three occur
to
me . First, of course , there is the internal
crisis of capitalism. Second, we have
to
deal with the continuing
confrontation between the developed and underdeveloped countries.
Third, a fragmented capitalist is now opposed
to
an internally divided
Communist world . These questions are obviously connected, but they have
to be treated separately. What can we say about the first one? The United
States , at least , faces its crisis without what the French call a
solution de
rechange ,
without a socialist alternative. Even the critique of capitalism is
rather muted . How do we explain that , particularly after the sixties?
Lasch:
One of the reasons is that the collapse and the lunacy of the New Left–
the lunacy that always existed side by side with whatever was admirable in
it-have done a good deal
to
discredit the possibility of any leftist solution.
I'm struck by the lack of political interest on the part of students now
coming into college. I can't document it , but I'm convinced that the New
Left had something
to
do with turning students away not just from
radicalism but from politics, partly because its own inflated expectations of
what it could accomplish gave rise to inflated estimates of its failure and of
the futility of any kind of political action .
As we get further away from the sixties , the New Left will probably be
seen more as a cultural movement than as a political movement . Political
radicalism has collapsed , but cultural radicalism has survived and is
becoming more and more respectable . Historians looking back on this
period will have to distinguish between long-range social and cultural
tendencies and the immediate effects of the Vietnamese war. Speaking of
which, what do you think will be its effect? Would you argue that there has
been any real diminution of American world power, not only vis-a-vis the
non-Western world, but vis-a-vis other capitalist nations?
Birnbaum:
There has been a change, though perhaps one which preceded
