PAUL HOLLANDER
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ships. Sexism and racism are considered by the critics essential parts
of American culture - often but not invariably associated with capi–
talism. Capitalist technology is regarded as particularly dangerous,
leading to the despoliation of nature and fueling the arms race. The
United States has become for the social critics the major threat °to
world peace, a country which also seeks to maintain or expand its
economic stranglehold over Third World nations, syphoning off their
wealth and degrading their national independence. American poli–
cies in Central America have been especially strongly criticized and
viewed as replications of the Vietnam policies.
It
has become customary in the 1980s for those critical of Ameri–
can society and foreign policy to demonstrate their opposition by
embarking on political tours of Nicaragua and, upon their return, to
proselytize on behalf of that government. Such political tourism, and
the associated idealization of the Marxist-Leninist regime (closely
following past patterns first established by the pilgrimages to Stalin's
Soviet Union and later to Mao's China), have been among the most
persuasive indicators of the persistence of the adversarial disposition
displayed by an estimated 100,000 tourists and a far larger support–
ive audience.
The social critical temper and a strong sense of the flaws of so–
ciety have for some time been a part of the self-identification of elite
intellectuals - and increasingly also of those I called quasi-intellectuals
- in the West. As Czeslaw Milosz pointed out, "A conviction of dec–
adence, the rotting of the West, seems to be a permanent part of the
equipment of enlightened and sensitive people for dealing with the
horrors accompanying technological progress." This is not to say that
the critical impulses displayed are consistently applied.
In
fact the
critics discussed here alternate between moral absolutism and moral
relativism. The former is reserved for their own society which is
judged by high and uncompromising standards while moral relativ–
ism and far more flexible standards apply to other societies, especially
those adversarial towards their own . This attitude is often associated
with "selective determinism ." Groups (or countries) designated as
underdogs are objects of sympathy; they are not to be judged since
their behavior (or policy) is determined by forces beyond their con–
trol; by contrast the groups (or countries) viewed with hostility are
not seen as similarly shaped by their environment or history; they
can make choices and hence deserve to be judged. Another way to
put it is that American social critics, even the most severe among
them, harbor high expectations about their society, and it is the frus-
