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From International Socialism (1st series), No.29, Summer 1967, p.37.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The New Radicalism in America
Christopher Lasch
Chatto & Windus, 45s
Many American intellectuals are at odds with the American Way of Life. So many that the author considers them like a class with a minority group complex and argues that ‘the tension is a function ... of the class consciousness, of the intellectuals themselves..’ The book has little to do with intellectuals as a ‘class’ in interplay and ‘clash, with other forces in the United States. The personal histories and not the social roles of a number of articulate people are related to American social. history. This is quite interesting specialised biography.
Of course these intellectuals are not a class and those chosen do not even make up a group with common interests and ties. They are included because in published and private records they disclosed a great deal of themselves. ‘Among them are Jan Addams, Quaker pietist dissatisfied with churchly good works who founded the slum settlement movement; Lincoln Steffens, journalist who raked the muck of civic corruption, decided it was endemic and was encouraged by the Russian Revolution and Randolph Bourne, bitter, flamboyant World War I pacifist. A few inclusions like Mabel Luhan, who wrote a lot about her sex problems and Col House, adviser to Woodrow Wilson, are puzzling.
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Last updated on 5 May 2010