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PARTISAN REVIEW
up to our professions, make our behavior live up to our ideals. The
American experience has been the experience of drawing out the latent
implications of the charters on which we are founded, extending the hu–
man meanings of democracy.
It
is a struggle that has gone on fitfully,
erratically, but rather continuously, a struggle among other things from
exclusion to inclusion in our society.
We must acknowledge that this philosophy of history is putting de–
mocracy under new strain. Two centuries ago, the industrial revolution
helped usher democracy into the world, completing the overthrow of
feudalism, of hierarchical society, creating a new social need for literacy
and education, creating new avenues of social mobility and individual
achievement. I think we are going through, today, a change in the struc–
ture of our society as fundamental as the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution meant a shift from a farm- based economy
to a factory-based economy. The revolution we are going through today
is a shift from a factory-based economy to a computer-based economy.
This may be more traumatic in its impact than the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution after all was spread out over a couple of genera–
tions, allowing time for human adjustments that would have been
unbearable if compressed within a shorter period. The industrial revolu–
tion also produced more employment than it did dis-employment. The
computer revolution is highly compressed, and thus more traumatic in its
effects. It also promises more disemployment than employment.
The consequences of these changes will subject democracy itself to
new strains. We already see this in our politics today. The middle classes
of America looked upon economic insecurity with complacency so long
as it was confined to the working class. But now under the euphemism of
downsizing, they see themselves as victims of economic insecurity. The
recent series in
The New York Times
suggests the sense of foreboding
which has been produced by these deep structural changes, the sense of
free-floating anxiety, of anger, indeed of panic. There are middle-aged,
middle-class, middle-management-Ievel people losing their jobs under the
pressure of technological changes with which they feel completely at sea.
They now suddenly realize that technological change is making them
obsolescent. No wonder we have a politics of rage tapped by people like
Pat Buchanan. This free-floating anxiety, I think, is derived from struc–
tural change. The question ahead of us is whether the rather tragic
optimism of democracy will be able to survive this new structural change
in our society. Having heard Stanley Crouch's stirring words, I remain a
tragic optimist.
