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The Poverty of Socialist Thought
- Abstract
POLITICAL LABELS are, like most things, subject to the law of civilization and decay. Such notions as liberal and conservative once enjoyed reasonably precise meanings, but by now they have become huge supermarkets under whose roofs a hodgepodge of miscellaneous no- tions is sold. As such they are no longer analytically useful, though they still remain rallying cries for many. One could, of course, attempt an inventory of all the items available in each store, but perhaps it would be more sensible to steer clear of such places-acknowledging their mysterious power to attract but, finally, dismissing them as Pope dismissed women and fools by saying that “true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.”
But what of the labels socialist and socialism? I raise the question because socialism has been stirring up a certain amount of interest among intellectuals during the past five years. The fires of socialism, though reduced to a flicker in this country, are still burning. Yale University Press has recently reissued a collection of essays on socialism, edited by Irving Howe; and Michael Harrington, America’s leading socialist, has in the last four years published two lengthy works on the subject. The last five years have also seen-to name a prominent few-works by George Lichtheim (A Short History of Socialism) and by Leszek Kolakowski and Stuart Hampshire (The Socialist Idea: A Reappraisal), the latter a collection of essays by several hands. Finally there is Dissent, the quarterly magazine of opinion, edited by Irving Howe and Michael Walzer-a magazine whose masthead says that it is “a journal devoted to radical ideas and the values of socialism and democracy.”
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