LEWIS COSER
81
power can be expected in the future. I find it hard
to
believe that the
British will allow themselves to slip into the economic conditions of,
say, Greece or Spain without major upheavals. There are limits to the
tradition of the stiff upper lip .
I know no more accurate diagnosis of present trends than that of
Robert Lowell who recently wrote:
We feel the machine slipping from our hands,
As
if
somebody else was steering.
Ifwe see light at the end of the tunnel,
It 's the light of the oncoming train.
It
may not yet be "dosing time in the gardens of the West,"
but England seems
to
be getting there pretty fast. But then again
such dire predictions, like Marx's prophecies of capitalism's doom,
have frequently served as self-denying prophecies. They have stopped
the fatal drift, alerted people
to
their perils, and finally led
to
a
renewal of a sense of purpose and collective mastery. One can only
wish that this will happen once more.
