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so-called new social history, which has taken over the concept of
modernization from the social sciences and given it a new lease on life-or
perhaps we should say, provided it with a final resting place . Even Marxist
historians have taken over much of modernization theory-not sur–
prisingly, since the theory itself, if it can be dignified by that name,
originates in economic and technological determinism, often confused
with Marxism. Whether in their Marxist or liberal version, all such theories
are now proving their complete inadequacy in the face of a world that is
clearly being neither Americanized, modernized, communized, nor
otherwise inexorably transformed in accordance with some overriding
principle of historical development.
Birnbaum:
We're back where we started-facing an uncertain situation. We
cannot say what will actually happen. Of all that can be said about the
Chinese, maybe one of the wisest things they've done is that they've stayed
out of things they could not control.
cultures and ideologies, we may expect more primitivism of the Cambodian sort. Rousseau, it would appear,
has triumphed over Marx .
We share responsibility for the Cambodian Revolution, in two senses. It was American power that ravaged
the countryside. And the leaders of the revolution share some culture with Qursdves : the theorists of agrarian
purity have docrorates from the Sorbonne. NORMAN BIRNBAUM, June 30, 1975.
Shortly after the evacuation of Pnom·Pehn I wrote that the so-called peasant revolution in Cambodia
would lead to another socialist dictatorship-a socialism of barbed wire , the forced march , the forced
confession , the concentration camp, and' 'sdf·criticism." Friends have told me that this view is roo gloomy.
Emptying the cities as the prdude to periodic purifications of the social order, it appears, is an old tradition in
Cambodia. A Cambodia friendly to China, moreover, might hdp to offset the close rdation between North
Vietnam and the Soviet Union . The first ofthese objections probably restS on the same kind of wishful thinking
that welcomed the Chinese Communists in 1949 as "agrarian reformers." The second appears ro assume that
Southeast Asia and the rest ofthe world are destined ro be dominated by great powers-a proposition that is by
no means self.evident, as we have argued above. CHRISTOPHER LASCH, July 9, 1975.
