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a welfare capitalist response : increased federal spending , public job
programs , and so on . Not a single Democrat in Congress has introduced a
bill proposing nationalizing the oil industry .
Lasch :
Still it could be argued that what you call the crisis of capitalism is only
now becoming really acute and that its full effects are onl y now beginning
to be widely felt. If welfare liberalism really rests on an assumption of
continuing economic growth- an assumption which until recently most
people found it unnecessary to question, even during the Great Depres–
sion-its days may be numbered . When the fact of continued expansion
begins to be widely questioned , and when it becomes apparent that
implementing traditional liberal programs will require an actual redis–
tribution of wealth- cutting up the same pie instead of baking a bigger
one- then welfare liberalism may cease to have any appeal
to
the working
class , and more radical programs will begin
to
win adherents .
Birnbaum :
But such responses are never produced mechanically by historical
situations: they come , rather , in situations which have been anticipated ,
ideologically. The question Robert Bellah raised recently as
to
whether the
American ethos allows anything like the development of socialist political
ideas , becomes more and more interesting.
Lasch :
Whatever else we can say about the prospects for American socialism,
we can say that of the various capitalist countries, the United States is about
the last place one would look for the development of a powerful and radical
socialist movement . It 's more likely that some serious attempt at a general
transfer of power would take place in Western Europe , in some major
industrialized country .
Birnbaum :
I agree, and I think that we spend so much energy accusing the
Western European socialists of being overly integrated with their capitalist
societies that we overlook the extent
to
which certain transfers of power
which would be regarded as revolutionary in this country have taken place
there. The furthest we go here is that a senior partner in Lazard Freres , Felix
Rohatyn , has called for economic planning in the U. S. , and a bill calling for
planning was proposed by Senators Humphrey and Javits-who have
joined Rohatyn and some unionists in a committee
to
advocate planning in
European neo-capitalist form . However , the most efficient way
to
run
capitalism may be under the name socialism , with socialist parties to
discipline the working class.
Lasch :
But if the ultimate fate of socialist parties is
to
keep alive a moribund
capitalism, it is no longer clear what are the advantages of being politically
more advanced .
Birnbaum:
In terms of the struggle between the developed and under-
