Graying of the Intellectuals: Conservatives and Dissenters in the >50s and >80s

  • A comparison of social themes and political trends of the 1950s and 1980s shows some marked similarities: conservatism and career thinking are prevailing moods, fear of crime and communism are common, and social consciousness and liberalism have lost public favor. Some conservative intellectuals of the 1950s are still writing in the 1980s, including William F. Buckley, Norman Podhoretz, and Irving Kristol. Dissenting liberals of the 1950s, eg, Irving Howe, Gore Vidal, and Norman Mailer, have retained their positions. It is noted, however, that the radical voices of the 1960s are absent. One explanation for this situation is that many 1960s critics were European, including Erich FROMM, Paul Baran, and Herbert Marcuse; they influenced, but were not essentially a part of United States radical thought. A major difference between the intellectuals of the 1980s and those of the 1950s is that the former are mostly academics; by this trend, radical discourse has been limited to within-University forums, and large sectors of the lay public are ignored or alienated.

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Metadaten
Author:Russell Jacoby
Parent Title (English):Dissent, Vol. 30 (No. 2 (131), spring 1983), pp. 234-237.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:1983
Release Date:2014/01/28
Format:PDF-scan to download
IdNo:Jacoby_R_1983a
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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