SOURCE: "Mr. Schlesinger's Vital Center," in Religion in Life, Vol. XIX, No. 2, Spring, 1950, pp. 205-12.

[In the review below, Ahlstrom contends that the liberal, democratic outlook defined in Schlesinger's The Vital Center is based on a relativistic ethic that denies the fundamental tenets of the democratic system it advocates.]

One of the minor tragedies of the present time is that most descriptions of our crisis have become clichés. It was, therefore, very fortunate that Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., should have written a terse volume on the "politics of freedom." The Vital Center is a statement of "mid-twentieth-century liberalism," an outlook that has been shaped by "the hope of the New Deal, the exposure of the Soviet Union, and by the deepening of our knowledge of man." More explicitly it is a study of the circumstances that now demand a center position between the business-oriented politics of Calvin Coolidge and the politics of the total planner. Of central importance for this program is Mr. Schlesinger's desire to maximize freedom within the limitations of the social needs of an industrial age and to improve the general welfare to the extent that freedom is not endangered. All of these considerations of public policy, however, he relates directly to the concept of Western man adrift in an "age of anxiety." Accordingly, the irrationality and depravity of man, which have been traditional justifications for authoritarianism, are here used to strengthen the case for democracy. It is also in this context of despair, impersonality, and conflict that he outlines the past attempts of the Right and the Left to cope with the problems which industrialism and urbanism have created.

Conservatives have failed, by his analysis, because they have too often heeded the counsels of the business mind and yielded to the acquisitive instincts of the "plutocracy." They have not displayed the concern for the public weal that has characterized leaders of the "aristocratic" tradition from Alexander Hamilton to Theodore Roosevelt. Moreover, following Joseph A. Schumpeter's thesis, he sees capitalism itself to be bringing about its own undoing. The failure of the Left, the nature of totalitarianism, and particularly the "case of Russia" are given more extended analysis. For these purposes Mr. Schlesinger abandons the traditional device of polarizing Right and Left on a linear scale, and uses instead the diagram of a full circle in terms of which divergences that begin as conservative versus liberal or radical versus reactionary finally meet, as Communist and Fascist, 180 degrees around from the "vital center" on a common ground of violence and terror. Mr. Schlesinger takes no chances that the absolute tragedy of totalitarianism will be underestimated, nor does he have any doubts about the impossibility of co-operating with Communists or fellow-traveling progressives whom he terms Doughfaces—"democratic men with totalitarian principles."

Affirming the value of freedom, welcoming the aid of conservatives more than doughfaces (because they value freedom more), and recognizing the well-nigh insuperable problems that confront sinful and erring man, the book is a summons to liberal action, not a blueprint for Utopia. In foreign policy, Mr. Schlesinger asks for active support of the non-Communist Left wherever it is found and world-wide action in behalf of freedom. Domestically, he emphasizes the responsibilities of government for maintaining freedom, extending its social services, and restoring the sense of community. Although the details and institutional aspects of these proposals could hardly be charted in so brief a compass, the book is a comprehensive and compelling formulation for radical democratic men with libertarian principles.

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This essay, however, is not concerned with the program of action which the book outlines, but rather with its theoretical and presuppositional structure. Although Mr. Schlesinger has stated in his Foreword that "novel or startling political doctrines" have not been set forth, he does present a very considerable theoretical foundation for his program. These aspects are especially important because the book has been very widely read and because it is a "report on the fundamental enterprise of re-examination and self-criticism" which virtually a whole generation of liberals has undergone in the last decade. It is, therefore, an important case study. Despite the wide acceptance of the outlook presented in this volume, it is my conviction that a long-term basis for hope has not been presented; and that the church must not only concern itself with this liberal analysis in general, but conduct the re-examination and reaffirmation of doctrine that will give substance and vitality to such a program and to our collective hopes.

The Leitmotiv of this book is moral crisis and the flight from freedom of modern man. Its basic demand is for recharging the moral resources of man. This is in itself a departure from the cant of most American liberalism, and appearing thus in what is primarily a discussion of public policy, it actually confers on the book a certain pioneering status. Nor has Mr. Schlesinger stopped with the mere announcement of a moral problem.

In diagnosing our ills, he has presented an interpretation of the human predicament which has in it much that is Pauline, although it has been phrased in the terminology of psycho-socio-economic theory. The message is an old one, a hard one, and a tough one. With a certain Calvinistic fervor it exposes the great liberal fallacy about the nature of man. Though often couched in terms of frustration, it says with the Apostle:

Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for its will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. (Romans 7:17-19)

This approach constitutes a fundamental revision of the ideas of man's benign goodness and his inexorable progress to a kingdom of heaven on earth.

Again, in finding the basis for man's anxiety in the social complexities that leave man homeless and rootless, without sense of communion or brotherhood, Mr. Schlesinger suggests a New Testament theme. To be sure, there is no citation of Holy Writ and he is not trying to bolster dogmas relating to the Mystical Body of Christ; but as one reads in page after page of the lonely, torn, unintegrated mass-man that industrial society has created, one sees a new richness in the words of St. Paul:

…. God hath tempered the body together,…. that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. (I Cor. 12:24-26)

None of my remarks which follow could detract from the value of this insight.

As will soon be made clear, however, Mr. Schlesinger has not written a biblical interpretation of our predicament. Nor has he allowed the profoundest spirit of the Hellenic tradition to inform his basic conceptions. The resulting philosophical orientation, therefore, seems inadequate to the needs imposed by present-day pressures. It is entirely possible, nonetheless, that a few of the following criticisms would be unnecessary if Mr. Schlesinger had depended less on a psycho-sociological notational system, and if it had been possible for him to amplify some of the theoretical problems and to define more adequately certain concepts. With these reservations in mind, and from a point of view which is essentially evangelical, though eschewing the anticlassicism and antirationalism of much modern orthodox thought, a more detailed explication of what seem to be the shortcomings of Mr. Schlesinger's analysis can be considered.

The reader is not left long to doubt that the basis of the politics of freedom is essentially relativistic. Liberalism, we are told, must not be disdainful of the "pragmatic compromise"; there is the familiar insistence on the overarching importance of "results" as the final test of the validity of our ideas; and we are not spared the deprecation of logic common to emergent philosophies from Emerson to James. Mr. Schlesinger also commits himself to a social interpretation of history. "The state and the factory are inexorable"; James Madison's statement of the economic interpretation of history (before Marx was born) is applauded as "magistral"; and Joseph de Maistre and Edmund Burke are praised not so much for the articles of their faiths as for their insights into the function of social myths—Paretos before their time, as it were. We hear of the "manic-depressive cycle" of American business, the "capitalist death-wish," and the "compulsive mass escape from freedom [of industrial man] into the deep, wombdark sea." We are bidden, finally, to have hope that "cultural pluralism" and "spontaneous group activity" will satisfy "those irrational sentiments once mobilized by religion" and, thus supplying "outlets for the variegated emotions of man,…. restore meaning to democratic life."

This is a capitulation to that very approach which Mr. Schlesinger criticized in such strong terms while reviewing a recent study of the psychology of the American soldier. The review filed a protest against the methods, language, and pretensions of the "Social Sciences." It may be suggested, however, that were his animadversions taken literally, a very considerable portion of this book would suffer the maledictions its author himself pronounced. One can readily agree with him about the importance of "American study of village sociology" in problems of world reconstruction; but in the present theoretical framework the democratic idea of freedom is seriously vitiated and individual dignity in either the classical or the Judeo-Christian sense tends to lose its meaning. These matters must, therefore, be considered briefly.

Although not as a direct result of this social interpretation of man, the ideal of freedom tends to become a muscular rather than a rational concept. Democracy in the Western tradition has always been linked inseparably with the idea of free man reasoning. The emphasis is now changed. Democracy becomes not a reasoning faith but "a fighting faith." We are given frequent citations to the effect that praiseworthy aristocrats have not failed to love the sword whereas plutocrats have preferred "tranquillity." Without questioning for one moment the need to defend our heritage, one can wonder how this view differs from the somewhat less than profound message of Carl Sandburg's recent novel (which, for that matter, reiterates much of Walt Whitman's demand for "a large and resolute breed of men"): have faith in continuity and struggle—so it has been and ever shall be. The problem of freedom, however, is related more directly to the idea of individual dignity; and here Mr. Schlesinger's social interpretation is revealed again. The "essential strength of democracy," he admits, lies in its "startling insight into the value of the individual"; but in the same paragraph he asserts that "individualism derives freely from the community," Freedom, too, it is said, "has acquired its dynamism from communion in action."

Yet there is another dimension in which The Vital Center must be evaluated, because it has been supplemented by the author's appreciation for the philosophical temper that can be traced from Pascal, Dostoievsky, and Kierkegaard to Sartre and Niebuhr. All of these men have made the predicament of the individual a crucial fact and each of them, judging by frequent citations and references, has informed Mr. Schlesinger's present conclusions. We must "strengthen the human will," he says, following Albert Camus. "The reform of institutions can never be a substitute for the reform of man." "The death pallor" will come over free society "unless it can recharge the deepest sources of its moral energy." This insight, however, is insufficient in itself. In fact, study of the combined effect of these views of freedom, the individual, and our ethical problem reveals the deepest tragedy of Mr. Schlesinger's analysis.

This tragedy lies in the fact that the value of his trenchant statement of our crisis is doubly canceled by the contradictions brought on by his sociologism. On the page after his affirmation of the anterior need for the "reform of man" he asserts that "the hope for free society lies…. in the kind of men it creates." (Italics mine.) Furthermore, the goal is shifted: it is not moral man but "emotional and psychological stability" that is wanted. Man is "instinctively anti-totalitarian." (Italics mine.) What he lacks is "profounder emotional resources" and effective group activity.

Now nobody would dismiss the anxiety and loneliness of modern, industrial man or deny that he would be happier if he were less lonely. He is often made happier even now by joining the Rotarians. He would be happier still if by some miracle the medieval village (or even the nineteenth-century American town!) could be made a much more significant factor in the total social pattern. To the extent that practical corrective measures are possible they should be undertaken. But these considerations are in the strictest sense of the word peripheral.

In the first place, this idealization of "rich emotional life," whether in context or out, seems deficient in explicitness, and insofar as it is a poetic summons to a stronger Volksgeist it is actually dangerous. But more important, it overlooks the central issue. Human dignity is our real concern and this rests on other things than the pragmatic value of an erect, intelligent animal. The insights of our "classical and religious past" must be consulted. Yet, except for occasional references, Mr. Schlesinger seems to place more confidence in social psychoanalysis. This resort is not entirely successful, for it is never made clear why the totalitarian methods of providing "emotional resources" are categorically wrong. Stalin has appealed to those "irrational sentiments once mobilized by religion," promising a way, a truth, and a life, complete with parousia and paradise. He has integrated his converts socially: cells, collective farms, and a nationalistic mission. There seems to be no shortage of "group activity." Nor is there a love of tranquillity! And the conclusion drawn is that ultimately this abolition of freedom is wrong only because it will not work. Due to the nature of Mr. Schlesinger's philosophy of the individual, the crucial weapon is lacking.

What are the "spontaneous sources of community," the "springs of social brotherhood" which we must tap again? If there is something in man which unfreedom thwarts even if it could remove his anxiety, we must define it. Moreover, a moral crisis is a demand for ethics—not just a choice between "conflict and stagnation." We must turn reason to the task of erecting a logical framework of principle. Neither man, the will of man, nor society is going to be made moral by minimizing the frustrations brought on by urbanism! This merely suggests a new optimistic fallacy. There is more than a simple faith in progress that needs to be revised. There will be no "rededication to concrete democratic ends," no "revival of the élan of democracy," no "resurgence of the democratic faith" until man, rational man, defines the ends of democracy in terms that do justice to his rationality and to his dignity. We must not think that illogical reasoning is going to "get results." Using every concept and technique that the sciences can give us, we must try to transcend ourselves and our culture in search of what Plato called the "outline of virtue." This means that we must direct our intellectual energies to defining what Mr. Schlesinger calls "the values which distinguish free society from totalitarianism." A check-list of political freedoms is insufficient. It is also essential that we do not blur our responsibilities by suggesting, as he does, that "the advocate of free society defines himself by telling what he is against." We cannot let it be said of us as Henry Adams said of another generation of liberals: they considered the intellectual difficulties in their path to be unessential because they were insuperable.

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No one can deny Mr. Schlesinger's insistence that these are times requiring bravery. But one is reminded of Cicero's advice to his son: "It is impossible for the man to be brave who pronounces pain to be the greatest evil, or temperate who proposes pleasure as the highest good" [Moral Duties of Mankind, Book I]. We cannot scorn the rationalists or deprecate reason: there is too much glory in the "elevated and unsubdued mind." This liberating force of Hellenism the modern liberal needs in his search for principle and for his proper estimate of man.

Yet there is another response to the need for bravery, and the admonition of St. Paul imposes itself: "Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." (Eph. 6:13.) It is true that Mr. Schlesinger, in his critique of Encyclopedist or Social Darwinist optimism, has sounded a Pauline note. But he has not emphasized the paradox of man's predicament and his anxiety regardless of social adjustment. Nevertheless his exposition points to the fact, and understanding the fact we can resort to the wisdom of our heritage.

Jacques Maritain has written that "democracy needs…. evangelical ferment in order to be realized and in order to endure" [Christianity and Democracy]. This implies a faith in man—to use our best metaphor—as created in the image of God. It implies that sin involves more than Aristotle's Punch-and-Judy show between reason and the appetites. It implies that the dignity of man is, in the last analysis, a spiritual truth. "We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights." They are really rights: no man and no government can legitimately take them away. Democracy, as Bergson said, is evangelical. Without the inspiration of Christianity, it is just another formula—a reasonable formula, but ultimately caught in a paradox that only faith can resolve.

This, it seems to me, is the real sermon of our times, and modern political thought must be invested with its meaning. If the center holds, it will not be because men grounded their hopes in ephemeral psychic satisfactions, but because they searched for and found principle in the universe. If we fail—and we may fail—we must face the judgment of Hosea: "for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land…. Therefore shall the land mourn, and everyone that dwelleth therein shall languish." (Hosea 4:1-3.)