My second Lasch after Culture of Narcissism. Like that book, this one has some hard sentences to swallow for your typical left-leaning bloke. The thing that kept Lasch living in my head for weeks after I finished Narcissism and will after finishing this book too, is that it's difficult to read his books as a person on the left-side of the tracks and not come away with at least a few of your long held suppositions about society shaken to their core. This verve partially comes from the clear satisfaction he takes in being a contrarian, an instinct that I can imagine was forged in too many meetings, demonstrations, and protests where he was surrounded by people that all thought the same way and were proud of it - a condition that is sure to lead to overconfidence, pretension, and hardened notions of what is "right" and "wrong". Sometimes Lasch comes at the "sacred cows" of the leftist program (abortion comes to mind) in a way that can incite a twinge of annoyance - but I think these critiques must be understood as a way of exploring the real implications of political ideologies, rather than relying on rote platitudes that both sides have been telling themselves about what they believe for decades. I think a central theme of this book is the idea that the true motivations of people in a democracy are not always what the people say they are - Lasch, despite his harsh tone, is incredibly empathetic in his instinct to understand what drives people to make the decisions they do, even when considering "less enlightened" opinions, the anti-bussing movement in 1970s Boston for instance. The key thing to remember here whenever you feel like Lasch is leading you down uncomfortable paths, away from the safehouse of liberal doctrine, is this: he is at bottom a true democrat (small d) and anti-capitalist. As such, he sets himself against all elitism and and financial interests, the two classic enemies of left thought - a fact that has tragically been buried by American liberalism of the last 50 years. If you keep an open mind, Lasch will show you how your liberal opinions have actually been infected by these twin cancers, and how no leftist movement can succeed until they are excised.

It's important to recognize that Lasch's definition of "progress" is different than the way it is typically used in popular discourse. I have no doubt that Lasch would include the identity politics that we now identify with progressivism in his critique had he lived to see their development as it stands today. It's safe to say that the liberation of various groups that have been historically oppressed is of course a good thing, and the "progress" we've made in the time since Lasch's book was published is a net good in my opinion, though I'm sure Lasch would do his best to attenuate that opinion if he could. However, the "progress" that Lasch is critiquing here is explicitly defined in the beginning and (especially) the end of the book as bigger than the word as we typically use it. So big, in fact, that it can be difficult for people who grew up in the society as it stands today to even recognize it as a idea that can have any alternative, it is so taken for granted. It is essentially this: having thrown off the strictures of religion and tradition, a huge part of humanity believes that our ability to expand (our knowledge, our economy, our lebensraum) is essentially infinite. Lasch here is gravely warning against this ideology, which by this point has become the unquestioned norm. He is mourning the loss of limits, without which human ambition becomes avaricious, pompous, destructive. In this book, he is documenting what he sees as the spiritual, economic, and (for this he deserves much credit for being ahead of his time) environmental degradation of humanity and the planet. The biggest, baddest manifestation of this loss of limits is the looming, seemingly unstoppable reality of climate change, which has made clear the absurd wastefulness and profligacy of Western life, and highlighted the insidiousness of capitalism's promise that it can spread this standard of living to every person on Earth. What may seem like a generous promise of global prosperity, is instead a base money grab, and struggle for survival for an economic system that needs constant growth and expansion of markets to keep itself alive.

Though he may get lost in the weeds of political theory and history, Lasch is essentially trying to layout a secular version of what almost all religions have taught - human effort is, in the end dwarfed by the machinations of God, and that to try and transgress the limits of existence is to call disaster upon yourself. Though the reality of a higher being seems to have been refuted a long time ago, it is of utmost importance that humanity, especially nonbelievers, recognize the value of such a concept, and which trampling upon and leaving in the dust of history has contributed so much to creating the precipice we now find ourselves looking over the edge of. ( )

Fairly heavy reading on the history of the idea of progress, especially in the US. Useful for those interested in the history of ideas, American history, and the question of other paths our civilization could have taken.

http://ritasreviewsandruminations.blogspot.com/

This section from Lasch's book serves as an excellent historiographical orientation, though with a very obvious bent of its own. The general project of the book is, according to Benjamin DeMott, "the reclamation of class." Yet it seems that is not "class" as a category of analysis which is contested in the case of the Populists, but rather a very specific understanding of class. In the section we read, it is obvious that Lasch draws specifically on Goodwyn in his search for a usable "Populist" past. The problem remains as to how this class of agricultural workers at the turn of the century can serve as a model for our own "critique of progress."*

Lasch casts Populism as the "producer's last stand." In this he draws upon Goodwyn to critique Hofstadter. The beauty of Goodwyn's analysis, so far as Lasch is concerned is that he neither casts the Populists as proto-Progressives ( a la Hicks and Destler) nor as backward-looking (read proto-fascist) and wrong-headed cranks, a la Hofstadter. Lasch wants us to look seriously at the Populist critique of progress because they groped with the same problems that we do today. On p. 224, he comes very close to saying that the Populists were trying to redefine the moral personality, which is our task today as well. After the death of Populism, people still sought "a moral and social equivalent of the widespread property ownership which was once considered indispensable to the success of democracy." We should approach the Populists, therefore, with a little more humility than that which dismisses them as mere "hayseeds" or worse still as "proto-fascists.**

* See Benjamin DeMott, "Class Reclaimed," review of The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics by Christopher Lasch, In Reviews in American History 19 (December 1991): 599-603. DeMott gives the impression that he is in substantial .agreement with Lasch over the importance of the Populist moment as a source of a "usable past. "

**A note on the problem of Marxism and Populism in passing. In a brief book review of Pollack's The Populist Mind, an anonymous writer for Science and Society [32 (Winter 1968): 121] demonstrates the semi-orthodox Marxist impatience with the American Populists, Who like the Nazis glorified the folk. Marxist analysis is steeped in the fascism critique of inter- war Europe.