in the public sector for deliberation
(even if we will fail at resolution).
Even pragmatists allow themselves
to give their children some values that
might come off as foundational.
As
William Galston reminds us, "to achieve
the kind of free self-reflection that
many liberals prize, it is better to begin
by believing something. Rational delib–
eration among ways of life is far more
meaningful if (and [ am tempted to say
only
if) the stakes are meaningful, that
is, if the deliberator has strong convic–
tions against which competing claims
can be weighed." Compare this with
Richard Rorty, who argues that we can
afford deconstruction only after "con–
forming to the norms of the discourses
going on around us." Spinning first–
order narratives must always precede
the deconstruction of self.
Diggins is distraught that the
pragmatist agenda seems not to
entail
the virtues of liberal democracy. The
pragmatist never need be a liberal
because liberals care about certain
ends, and pragmatism, in Diggins's
reading, is just procedural, is just a
means that gives no attention to jus–
tice. By reminding us (as a good
historian should) of the illiberal poli–
tics of the daddies of modern
pragmatism (i.e., Pierce, James, and
Dewey), Diggins accomplishes a feat
which isn't to the point. [ doubt
Rorty would have a hard time agree–
ing with Diggins that the fathers of
pragmatism left much work to be
done. We are redescribing pragmatism
every day, and liberal
hope
(not just
foundations) will be assumed to be a
component of philosophical pragma–
tism soon enough.
The pragmatist never denies wor–
thy ends. She denies the metaphysical
point that she might ever achieve
some gothic program, some final
vocabulary, a final solution. With
Diggins, the pragmatist fears the Nazi,
takes him seriously. But the pragmatist
feels strongly that she can only hope
to beat the Nazi at his own game: no
retreat to some competing foundation
will move those moved by rhetoric. As
much as Diggins, the pragmatist wants
to have something to say to the Nazi
that might help the Nazi convert; she
works at the Nazi's words because
that's how she imagines changing
someone's world.
To the editors:
Ethan] Leib
Yale University
Walter Laqueur's reading of my
Foullding Myths oj Israel (Partisan
Reviel.tl,
Winter 1999) constitutes a
deeply apologetic and distorted ver–
sion of Labor Zionism, and is a
perversion of my argument and the
basic issues [ raised . His criticism is
ridiculous-for instance, when he says
that I write about people whom I did
not know. This is true; but is this not
what historical writing is all about?
His comments also tend to be dema–
gogic, as when he translates into
current prices and American dollars
allowances and special bonuses
received by Labor's leaders in the
1920s and 1930s. My book is not
about such triviali ties. I gathered
archival material in order to follow
the emergence of the Israeli political
bureaucracy-a new class in the sense
of Michels and Djilas-and to
respond to some basic questions about
the founders' visions of social change.
For instance, why was the Histadrut,
that state in the making, constructed
not as a prototype of a socialist society
but as a power structure in which
inequality was dominant and ideolog–
ically accepted from the executive
headed by Ben Gurion to the least of
its economic enterprises?
