Volume 4, Number 4 · March 25, 1965
R. M. MacIver
By George Kateb
Power Transformed
by R.M. MacIver
Macmillan, 244 pp., $5.50
For half a century Robert MacIver has made valuable contributions to our knowledge of politics and society. Though he is now over eighty years old and retired from his post at Columbia, he still continues his work—which is now represented by more than fifteen books. MacIver has combined moral and analytical purposes with a rare energy and distinction. But at the present time his reputation is somewhat diminished. He has paid in popularity for the want of both excess and mystification in his writings. He simply cannot satisfy the craving among students of politics for scientific appearances and brave perversities; as a result he is often considered amiable and outmoded. Yet his work conveys a better sense of political realities than that of almost any other political scientist, and his methods of moral persuasion meet the most rigorous standard of clarity and candor. There is no writer whose work could so usefully serve as a corrective to the drift of American political science—if only the need for a corrective were felt. Beyond fashion, his attainments have a continuing relevance.
Review, 1873 words
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