LIBERALISM AND THE RETREAT FROM POLITICS

In this relatively brief but cogent book, William Newman states that for the past twenty years America's most serious social critics have, in their pessimism, come to regard liberalism as a doctrine irrelevant to its time. He does not disagree with this conclusion fostered in various ways by such writers as David Riesman, C. Wright Mills, Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Goodman, Hannah Arendt, and Robert Heilbroner. He feels, however, that liberal thought can be redirected -- away from the idea of history and grand social schemes, towards piecemeal, concrete reforms. Liberalism, he says, is a public doctrine or it is nothing. He sees promise in the new generation of technicians oriented towards problem -solving and he insists that the recent agitation of Marchers and sit-ins proves that a relationship can exist between the world of protest and the bureaucratic world of power. Newman's arguments are convincing and his genuine concern is clear.