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PARTISAN REVIEW
Social unrest, war, and revolution have inspired many of the
great political texts - Locke's
Second Treatise,
Rou eau'
Social
Contract,
Burke's
Riflections ,
Lincoln's
Second Inaugural,
Lenin's
State
and Revolution,
Randolph Bourne's
The State.
Today we confront
neither the apocalyptic climaxes of 1914 or 1939, nor the dramas of
St. Petersburg 1917 or Berlin 1933, but rather a creeping malaise
under which the older creeds and values that had buoyed prev ious
generations of Americans are crumbling. What account for our
doubts and fears?
It
might be the disillusionment following a series
of hocking events: a debilitating war in Vietnam, the Watergate
scandals and other revelations of national corruption, new fears
about America's dependency on foreign oil and the exhaustion of our
own resources, rage about the captivity of American hostages in
Iran, an uncontrollable arms race, and rampant inflation . These
frustrations doubtless provoke many Americans to look for some sort
of authority. And the deeper frustration may ari e from the ab ence
of a viable authority: a political figure to inspire a worried people; a
movement or party to organize their interests and concerns; above
all , an idea to illuminate the complex problems besetting the
country. Our crisis of authority derives from our lack of any
commanding idea of authority.
Or perhaps the "crisis of authority" is only a means of criticizing
the alleged excesses of freedom. Today, the state is no longer being
attacked in the name of "the people ." On the con trary, the people are
being attacked in the name of "the public interest" for their alleged
outbursts of "democratic distemper." When the thinkers of the
Enlightenment assaulted unjust government, they did so believing
they were stating eternal, objective principles and "self-evident"
truths that gave man "inalienable" rights - grounded in the laws of
nature and God. Today, scholars criticizing the behavior of people
allegedly abusing their collective power and authority no longer
claim to believe in an objective truth, anchored in external reality
and thus capable of discovery by the rational mind . The modern
idea of truth is sociological and psychological, less an entity than a
function or relation . Truth is made rather than discovered, made
from the subjective meanings that people give to their actions. Truth
is now seen as contingent upon men's behavior, rather than based on
objective laws or values influencing their minds and thereby
governing their behavior. This functionalist approach characterizes
the stance of some contemporary American social scientists, who,
while avoiding the "structural functionalism" of the late Talcott
