DANIEL BELL
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Jewish intellectuals. In all ways, the Jews have the greatest stake in
the continuing strength of pluralist institutions in the United States.
But now there is also a whole new set of problems. Fifty years
ago, few persons would have predicted the upsurge of ethnicity not
only in the United States but in almost every country in the world.
The focus on the economic conflicts between capitalist and worker,
as shaped by Marx, predisposed most sociologists to regard class as
the most salient division in contemporary society. Ethnicity was
thought to be an anachronism which would be submerged under the
single national identification of a country, or dissolved into the class
identifications within a society. Yet this has not been the case.
Almost every country in the world (with the exception ofJapan, and
to some extent the Scandinavian countries) is a plural society, with
large admixtures of self-conscious minorities. And today almost
every society is being challenged or torn apart by rancorous ethnic
divisions.
The United States is not immune to these strains . There are
the regional conflicts over resources (such as energy and water).
There are the political and cultural conflicts, prompted by the rapid
growth of Hispanic minorities with their concentrations in the
southern tier of states: California, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida;
and the black concentrations in the major urban centers, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Newark, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, and
Los Angeles, all of which have black mayors. The cultural strain is
aggrava~ed
because the arena in which the ethnic groups are making
their demands is the political one, and conflicts in the political arena,
as against the market, are focused and visible, and the outcomes
tend to be zero-sum situations.
The Jews are in an especially difficult position. Though par–
ticularistic as a group, Jews have always insisted on universalistic
and meritocratic criteria in the competition for place, position, and
privilege in society. But precisely those criteria are under attack by
the disadvantaged minorities who seek quotas and representation
and similar particularistic rules as the means for increasing their
position and status in society. Under conditions of adversity, such
conflicts are bound to multiply.
There is, also, for the Jews, the precarious position of Israel.
Before 1967, most American Jewish intellectuals were uninterested
in Israel. As liberals or socialists, they focused on the radical reform
of American society. But Israel today is a crucial symbol and reality
of Jewish survival. In the Middle East today, who would say that
class, not nation, is the salient division among peoples?
