Volume 19, Number 1 · July 20, 1972
Populism, Socialism, & McGovernism
By Christopher Lasch
A Populist Manifesto: The Making of a New Majority
by Jack Newfield, by Jeff Greenfield
Praeger, 221 pp., $5.95
Socialism
by Michael Harrington
Saturday Review Press, 436 pp., $12.50
The familiar materials of popular discontent, quietly persisting through three decades of 'affluence,' seem once again to be rising to the surface of American political life. Distrust of officials and official pronouncements; cynicism about the good faith of those in positions of great power; resentment of the rich; a conviction that most things in life are 'fixed'—these attitudes were there all along, of course, forming part of the folk wisdom of the American working class, but they attracted little attention so long as it was possible to believe that the worker had become middle-class in his tastes and outlook. Now that they seem to be taking political form, the illusion is harder to maintain.
Review, 7584 words
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