Maybe humanism is not an adequate stand from which to review Amiri Baraka's political diatribe "S-1." Maybe devotion to a just perspective, temperate weighing of evidence, and fairness are luxuries that can no longer be afforded in our oppressed and ravaged society….

But if the situation in America were as bad, or even potentially as bad, as Baraka suggests, then there would be no call for this critique or this critic: We would have lost the battle for civility, compassion, and toleration that the American enterprise is all about and would have to relapse into silence or join the ranks of the shriekers.

Ordinarily, a piece of political claptrap like "S-1" would not be worth your attention…. With a message so powerful and persuasive, original packaging or marketing is presumed unnecessary. Since style evinces individuality, it is anathema. Stylelessness (itself a style; an automaton's style) is a virtue. The more execrable your art, the more absolute your faith.

Ordinarily … the fact that an Amiri Baraka wins high grades for faith and correspondingly low grades for art would be of no interest. But once, in a former life, Baraka was LeRoi Jones and scoring the reverse. Skeptical, angry, eloquent, with an active and original intelligence, Jones was a playwright and poet on whom not just blacks and militants, but all lovers of art were putting their faith and their bets. For a moment he radicalized our vision in the only way possible, by making us see in a new way a truth we've known but never recognized. But then LeRoi Jones died and comrade Baraka was born and even though one read occasionally about his political activities in Newark, one trusted that, if he chose, he could resume the path toward greatness as an artist.

Except for one brief moment in "S-1," when the children of an arrested couple, presumed innocents, turn out to be their parents' collaborators, Baraka's political concerns have abolished his dramatic sense….

Baraka's problem as an artist is that, not hurt as much as he wishes he were, he must invent his affronts, fashion paper oppressors whom he can heroically oppose. LeRoi Jones wrote out of real, Amiri Baraka out of postulated hurt. The really hurt do not cry out in isms.