Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T09:12:48.335Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Sound of Silence: Comments on “Still Louis Hartz after All These Years”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2005

Richard Iton
Affiliation:
Northwestern University (r-iton@northwestern.edu)

Extract

Explanations of the unique character of American political development—i.e., its exceptionalism—must consider and explain a wide range of phenomena. Why has the United States been relatively immune to the kinds of social movements and political parties commonly found in other industrialized democracies? Why is there no American Left? Why are American unions as politically weak and numerically insignificant as they are? Beyond parties and movements, we must also seek to understand the absence in the United States of the public goods that are commonly associated with the emergence of social democratic parties in other countries: comprehensive and redistributive policies in the areas of welfare, housing, education, and health care. Understanding these absences requires, in my view, that serious attention be paid to the ways in which race and certain ascriptive practices have shaped the development of the American nation.Richard Iton is associate professor of African American Studies and political science at Northwestern University (r-iton@northwestern.edu). He is the author of Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left, and In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post–Civil Rights Era (forthcoming). The author thanks Joseph Carens and Barnor Hesse for their comments on earlier drafts of this response.

Type
COMMENTARIES
Copyright
© 2005 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Dawson, Michael C. 2002. Black visions: The roots of contemporary African-American ideologies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dubois, Laurent. 2004. Avengers of the New World: The story of the Haitian revolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Echols, Alice. 1989. Daring to be bad: Radical feminism in America, 1967–1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Echols, Alice. 2002. Shaky ground: The sixties and its aftershocks. New York: Columbia University Press.
Edsall, Thomas Byrne, and Mary D. Edsall. 1991. Chain reaction: The impact of race, rights, and taxes in American politics. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
Foner, Eric. 1984. Why is there no socialism in the United States? History Workshop 17 (1): 5780.Google Scholar
Freeland, Richard M. 1985. The Truman Doctrine and the origins of McCarthyism: foreign policy, domestic politics, and internal security, 1946–1948. New York: New York University Press.
Fredrickson, George. 1995. From exceptionalism to variability: Recent developments in cross-national comparative history. Journal of American History 82 (2): 587604.Google Scholar
Friedan, Betty. 1963. The feminine mystique. New York: W. W. Norton.
Gelb, Joyce. 1989. Feminism and politics: A comparative perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Giddings, Paula. 1985. When and where I enter: The impact of black women on race and sex in America. New York: Bantam.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Greenberg, Stanley B. 1995. Middle-class dreams: The politics and power of the new American majority. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The liberal tradition in America: An interpretation of American political thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Hartz, Louis. 1964. The founding of new societies: Studies in the history of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Hochschild, Jennifer. 1984. The new American Dilemma: liberal democracy and school desegregation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Honig, Bonnie. 2001. Democracy and the foreigner. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Iton, Richard. 2000. Solidarity blues: Race, culture, and the American Left. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
James, C. L. R. 1989. The black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage.
Locke, John. 1823. Fundamental constitutions of Carolina. The works of John Locke. Vol. 10. London: Thomas Tegg.
Mills, Charles W. 1997. The racial contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Morgan, Edmund S. 1975. American slavery, American freedom: the ordeal of colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton.
Morone, James. 2003. Hellfire nation: the politics of sin in American history. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Phillips, Kevin. 1969. The emerging Republican majority. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.
Rosenberg, Jonathan, and Zachary Karabell. 2003. Kennedy, Johnson, and the quest for justice: The civil rights tapes. New York: W. W. Norton.
Scammon, Richard M., and Ben J. Wattenberg. 1970. The real majority. New York: Coward-McCann.
Smith, Rogers M. 1997. Civic ideals: Conflicting visions of citizenship in U.S. history. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 2003/4. No community, no democracy, part II. Responsive Community 14 (1): 1525.Google Scholar
Wilentz, Sean. 1984. Against exceptionalism: Class consciousness and the American labor movement, 1790–1920. International Labor and Working Class History 26 (1): 124.Google Scholar
Williams, Eric. 1994. Capitalism and slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.