Sunday, November 2, 1969

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Sunday, November 2, 1969THE MICHIGAN DAILY


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Wolff, Robert Paul, "The Poverty of Liberalism," Beacon
Press, $5.95.
By RON LANDSMAN
ROBERT PAUL WOLFF is a pompous super-philosopher who
wouldn't know a liberal if he saw one. And his inability to identify
liberals makes it difficult for him to identify their poverty either ac-
curately or intelligently.
Wolff opens his brief analysis, The Poverty of Liberalism, with
a condescending little paragraph in which he all but says he will
save liberalism.
"As a radical, I view this (liberalism's) conceptual chaos with a
certain quiet satisfaction, but as a philosopher, I find myself ir-
resistibly tempted to try some analysis and clarification, much as a
doctor might feel his professional interested aroused by a particular
complicated case of cancer in his sworn enemy," he wrote.
I take it that there is no Hippocratic Oath for philosophers. If
there is, Wolff should be drummed out of the profession.
He is, first, obtuse beyond all imagination. Casting clarity and
relevance to the wind, he proceeds to analyze everything and talk
about nothing,
He hits his high point in his concuding chapter, "Community."
In it, he attempts to analyze the possibilities of creating a sense of
community, of common values, in establishing a post-liberal society.
HE ENDS UP speaking in a jargon someplace between sociologese
and philosophese, an unreadable and unpleasant combination.
In fact, it might not be if Wolff would only make use of it.
His flights of rhetorical bombasity would be tolerable of they went
someplace, but they don't,.
In "Community" he leads himself eventually to the conclusion
that the "free society is good as an end in itself for it is itself a social
value!" A plausibe conclusion, certainly. But to use Wolff's own
medical analogy, it is like a skilled surgeon using his knowledge to
trim fingernails.
This is not to say that his work is entirely without redeeming
social value. While he seems often to misdirect his criticisms, he at
least does more than wallow in a verbal swamp.
His most potent discussion is in the chapter entitled, "Power."
It is here that he is most relevant to contemporary liberalism. While
much of his time elsewhere in the book is spent setting up straw men
and knocking them down, in this chapter he often speaks to the issues
facing liberals today.
THE QUESTION OF1 POWER revolves around the problem of a
power elite. Wolff notes, accurately, that both liberals and radicals
fail on this issue.
Radicals incorrectly believe that there is a power elite that rules
the country. In fact, Wolff says, there is an establishment, almost a
distinct social class, that holds much of the power in this country. It
is not a power elite, in Wolff's strictly defined sense, however, because
it is susceptible to democratic controls. And while these controls are
little exercised, and exercised then only with great difficulty, they
are nonetheless a means of opposing a potential elite.
Radicals are wrong to blame their problems on the elite alone.
There has been a failure on their part to take advantage of alternate
means of opposition, such as elections. Radicals protest against the
controls of the media over the dissemination of political information,
but it is a weak argument until radicals face honestly their own self-
inflicted failures in electoral politics.
Liberals, on the other hand, may be correct in their political
analysis of power, but they gain nothing from it. Wolff wrote:
". . . having won their little victory over the radicals ion the
issue of power), they then rejoice in the moral disaster of American
politics, calling it stability, and moderation, and the end of ideology.
They congratulate one another on the lack of moral passion in our
political life, much like the maiden school mistresses confusing a
deficiency of libido with good manners."
Wolff then goes on to exonerate liberals of the blame for this
sad state of affairs. "The fault lies neither with liberal political
scientists nor with the established order of decision makers, but simply
with the American people."
Here he makes a worthwile distinction between the political
scientist--and by that I take him to mean all non-elective political
commentators, from professors to columnists-and the actual decision
makers, the political practitioner, the candidates and their staff
members.
But to make this distinction and go no further is wrong. The
political theorist and the political practitioner are two very different
people. Wolff fails to note the different circumstances under which
they work.
On the one hand, the political theorist is free from any pressure
other than that of his own conscience and his desire for contemporary
relevance. The practitioner, on the other hand, faces the pressure of
differing politics, the pressures not from ideals or even from the
phyiscal limitations on political action, but from the politically pos-
sible.
It is this last distinction that every liberal always uses to apologize
for his failings, but which is not the less real for the frequency of its
use.
WOLFF COMPLAINS that liberals are "content to restrict the
government to the most feeble sorts of indirect economic controls,"
He fails entirely to take cognizance of a rather stubborn problem-
liberals simply do not have a complete fiat to do as they please.
While a number of liberals and so-called liberals have failed when
they had opportunities to make progress, it is at least as much the
case that the opportunities have simply not been there.
Fight as Nicholas Johnson does, for example, there is little he
can do on the Federal Communications Commission against the con-

servative majority.v
But Wolff Is correct in attacking those liberal theorists who
have failed to expand the liberal imagination, who perhaps could
have added to the aresenal of tools for liberal politicians.
Wolff deals with the issues of tolerance and community in the
last two chapters, and in both he commits a gross number of logical
or academic errors.
A'' ONE POINT, for example, he dismisses ideology in general
as a deliberate falsification of the facts of reality, rather than as an
attempt to impose on a chaotic reality some coherent interpretation
of events. That is a mistake that implies a great misunderstanding
of political theory. Would the doctor not know what an arm is?
That's a serious mistake and Wolff is not to be forgiven,
Wolff fails to match the title of his book. He does not outline
with any intelligence at all the problems of liberalism. One would
think that with such a big target he could have done considerably
better than he did.

Running Against the Machine, by Norman Mailer,
Jimmy Breslin, Peter Maas, and others. Edited by
Peter Manso. Doubleday and Co. $3.50
By DAVID SPURR
rfHE FORMAL announcement of candidacy. Norman
Mailer, a round-faced little Jew from Brooklyn with
murder in his eyes, the Harvard-bred novelist clutches
a bourbon and rolls off polemic with a nervous South-
ern accent. He stops and glowers at newsmen. They
press him for a campaign slogan.
"No more bullshit," he pronounces and breaks into
a little boy's grin.
"NO MORE BULLSHIT." The greatest campaign
slogan since "54-40 or fight" rings out across the nation
and stirs the imaginations of leftists and conservatives
alike. Could it really be true that a candidate for mayor
of New York City can put an end to the meaningless
machinations, equivocating, posturing, and worn-out
phrases that have for so long characterized American
politics?
Not quite. But Mailer's wild campaign with news-
paper columnist-Irish tough guy Jimmy Breslin-(run-
ning for city council president) gave the big city's
political machine suchRa swift kick in the ass that people
from Park Ave. to Red Hook will be talking about it
for a long time.
RUNNING AGAINST THE MACHINE is the story
of that campaign. More accurately, it is a scrapbook
arrangement of speeches, position papers, interviews,
memoirs, newspaper clippings, and advertisements that
explores the historic campaign from a variety of angles.
Although edited by one of Mailer's campaign workers,
the book presents a balanced view, allowing the reader
to make his own judgment concerning the propriety
and sincerity of Mailer's campaign and the validity
of the candidates' ideas.
Viewed as a purely political work, Running Against
the Machine offers an ingenious plan for restoring

life and imagination to a city dying from what has come
to be known as urban cancer - a condition of over-
pollution, overcongestion, excess of crime, of noise, and
of bureaucracy which breeds a feeling of mass lethargy
and helplessness among its eight million denizens.
The dream's success hinges on turning New York
City into the 51st state. From the doctrine of America's
political right it borrows the principles of decentraliza-
tion of government and self-determination by the
people. From the left it expresses the need to help the
poor and oppressed.
Briefly, the new city-state would grant power to
the neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods, for instance,
could have their own schools and housing projects and
cops (if they wanted them) financed, but not con-
trolled, by the city government. The law 'n' order people
could have cops, machine guns, and Ku Kluxers coming
out of the woodwork if they wanted them.
In one neighborhood there should be copulation in
the streets; in another there could be mandatory church
attendance on Sundays. It would all depend on what
the people wanted. As Mailer used to 'say, "I'm running
on everything from Free Huey Newton to End Flourida-
tion."
AS A SCRAPBOOK for the campaign for the Dem-
ocratic primary, the book introduces a unique philo-
sophical approach to government and politics. What
essentially separates Mailer from the rest of the can-
didates is his concern for the quality of human life on
an individual level in the urban environment.
A television debate among all five primary candi-
dates which is reprinted in the book points out that
difference quite clearly. The liberals talk about pouring
more money into welfare programs. The conservative
and moderate candidates-Mario Procaccino and Robert
F. Wagner (yes, he's back!)-dish out tired phrases
scattered with words like "leadership" and "responsi-
bility." One recognizes that their perspective of the city
is filtered through a vast bureaucracy which has grown
up around the ruins of Tammany Hail.

The perspective of Mailer (who once stabbed his
wife) and baroom-brawling Breslin ("My cousin was
a cop. So was my uncle. They were both killed on the
job.") is from the city's gut.
Mailer and, Breslin's toughest obstacle in the cam-
paign (besides lack of money) was that very few people
took them seriously. They were treated by two of the
city's three daily newspapers as a couple of publicity
hounds running as a joke to get material for writing
books.
"TO RUN FRIVOLOUSLY in a city as mortally ill
as New York would be a sin," Breslin would say in the
face of such criticism. Mailer would scowl, "I've already
proved there are easier ways to write books."
A series of detailed, carefully considered position
papers on everything from housing to constitutional
problems involving statehood which are reprinted in
this book are ample proof of the campaign's seriousness.
For an account of a campaign which desperately
needed to be taken seriously, however, Running Against
the Machine is one of the funniest political books ever
published.
There is, for example, the famous episode in which
a drunken, cursing Mailer confronts a crowd of pseudo-
hip, sophisticated and ever-fashionable creatures at the
Village Gate.
Breslin is no less the buffoon. Speaking at cam-
paign headquarters he soberly declares, "If elected .
I will go to Queens!"
Needless to say, they lost the primary, coning in
fourth out of five candidates. Shoot-for-the-moon
Mailer went to Houston to write about the Apollo lunar
landing.
BUT HIS IDEAS are still being flung around the
city, and the book may well prove to be a lesson for
America. The old campaign slogan still holds true for
the entire nation as well as for the city: "New York
either gets an imagination . . . or it dies!"

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Argentina ' own

1aureate

Conversations with Jorge Luis
Borges, by Richard Burgin.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
$3.95.
By MARCIA ABRAMSON

r'HE 1969 Nobel prize for lit-
erature was awarded to
Samuel Beckett. Next year, or
the year after that, the prize
will go to Jorge Luis Borges.
Borges' enigmatic poems and
stories are perhaps the b e s t
creations of the twentieth cen-
tury Argentine literary renais-
sance. Borges is a central figure
in t h e Argentine renaissance,
and he is rapidly becoming a
reigning literary hero through-
out the rest of the world.
The stories and poems of Bor-
ges are paradoxes, built on the
problems of death and infinity,
perception and illusion. Borges
flirts with philosophical ideas-
for example, the eternal recur-
rence. He m a k e s up authors
and philosophies and writes
learned criticism about t h e in
half-seriously. He is fascinated
by the inherent possibilities of
the human will, and the human
imagination. But he is not a be-
liever in certainties; rather, he
is an explorer of the world of
the mind - which may, after
all, be the only world.
IN ONE STORY, "Tlon, Uq-
bar, Orbits Tertius," Borges
writes of a fictional (possibly
fictional) world whose inhabi-
tants value only the creations
of their minds and are able to
materialize thought into phys-
ical being. Tlon is an idealist
world where there are no
nouns because no one believes
in their reality - there are
only the hronir, or mind-cre-
ations. Metaphysics becomes a
branch of fantastic literature.
The people of Tlon know that
any system merely subordinates
the infinite universe to one as-
pect, so they reject a 11 sys-
tems, and in this chaos there is
a greater order.
The story of Tlon is told by a
narrator as lie discovers it in
scattered volumes of an old en-
cyclopedia. Tlon is very care-
fully constructed; it exists only
in one set of one year's ency-
clopedia, B ut slowly, an in-
creasing number of men hap-
pen to come across Tlon, and
it ceases to be a fiction. "How
could one do other than submit
to Tlon, to the minute and vast
evidence of an orderly planet?"
Borges asks.
He would like the world to
be Tlon, and his own philoso-
phy is Tlon. Borges' stories of-
ten create conflict around the
protagonist's struggle to con-
quer reality through the exer-
cise of will, in one of his most
famous stories, t h e central
character succeeds in dreaming
a character into reality - and

then discovers that he too is
someone's dream.
Last year, as Borges contin-
ued to become more and more
well known and respected, he
was invited to spend a year at
Harvard as Charles Eliot Nor-
ton lecturer. A Brandeis stu-
dent named Richard Burgin
somehow won over the usually
reticent Borges and has pro-
duced a book of conversations
which reveal Borges as he is to-
day - still uncertain, still con-
templative, and even m o r e
aware of humanity. His latest
story, "La Instrusa," is about
human relationships; Borges is
wary of being considered only a
writer of "trick" stories, and he
is underneath an incisive ob-
server.
Burgin has drawn from Bor-
ges bits and pieces of a larger
criticism and critical theory,
and these conversations ulti-
mately create a real sense of
Borges. Borges tells us he
thinks Ulysses is a failure be-
cause Joyce gives infinite cir-
cumstances, but creates no real
character. Garcia Lorca is the
"professional Andalusian." He
dissects Henry James, and the
Russian novelists, always with
his o w n unwillingness to be

categorical and t h e unfailing
humor of a man who does not
take himself completely serious-
ly. "But somehow, one never
feels anything in a Russian no-
vel to be true because the char-
acters are always explaining
themselves to each other . . . I
don't think people do that kind
of thing, but perhaps they do in
Russia," Borges tells Burgin.
BURGIN ALSO draws from
Borges a fairly coherent philo-
sophy of art. Quite simply, Bor-
ges says that the reader "should
get a kick out of art." (His own
English, not translation.) The
writer, too, creates because he
enjoys creating. But for a writ-
er to endure, he must be part of
the lasting tradition, the con-
tinuum of art which produces
enjoyment and has meaning for
all men. Literature, Borges says,
is "one of the destinies of man."
The artist is "a man dedicating
himself to his dreams, then try-
ing to work them out. And do-
ing his best to make other peo-
ple share them." Literature is
another challenge to the human
spirit -- and that is what Bor-
ges' own art is about.
These conversations - unlike
Charbonnier's - also give us

some sense of Borges as he is as
a person - quietly humorous
and very observant of others.
He tells us why there is no rev-
olution in Argentina: because
Argentines are skeptic, and any
government that is not disas-
trously bad seems good enough
to them. He tells us about his
blindness, and how he accepted
it because it has given him an
even wider gift of imagination.
ALTOGETHER, the book is
very much Borges, a small -
not very m u c h ultimately is
possible - insight into his eter-
nally revolving mind. Borges
himself likes the book. "I think
I have expressed myself, in fact
confessed myself, better t h a n
in those (pages) I have written
in solitude with excess care and
vigilance," he writes in the in-
troduction, "Richard Burgin
has helped me to know myself."

Today's writers
DAVID SPURR is a junior
in the literary college who
plans to go on to graduate
school in English. He is a night
editor at The Daily.
MARCIA ABRAMSON is a
senior concentrating in honors
English in the literary college.
She is an associate managing
editor of The Daily.
RON LANDSMAN is the
managing editor of The Daily.




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