Intermediacy: Conceptualization of Irish Status in America
| Autor: | Milton L. Barron |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1949 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Social Forces. 27:256-263 |
| ISSN: | 1534-7605 0037-7732 |
| DOI: | 10.2307/2572175 |
| Popis: | We have held that American liberal-intellectual attitudes toward the Soviet Union have been formed largely in terms of two major liberal basicvalue orientations-"freedom" and ethical universalism. Between 1917 and 1941, the USSR appeared to American liberals as a negation of the former and an affirmation of the latter in certain areas of society, or as "totalitarian dictatorship" and "egalitarian reform" respectively. The relative importance attached to each of these two opposing symbols seems to have varied closely with changes in the liberals' domestic situation, with changes in the international scene, and with changes in Soviet behavior as seen through American eyes. The emergence of the Soviet Union as a highly developed bureaucratic state with definite and rigid patterns of stratification, authority, functional differentiation of role and property relationships, has fundamentally altered the value of the Soviet symbol in relation to egalitarianism. At the same time the continuance in the Soviet Union of a tight dictatorship, continued close surveillance of the arts and education, has tended to maintain the negative value of the Soviet Union as a symbol fundamentally antithetical to the liberal value of "freedom." Barring revolutionary changes in the Soviet State, it may be held that these two aspects of the symbol of the USSR have assumed a relative permanency in relation to the liberal-intellectual movement. A continued liberal negative valence toward the Soviet symbol may, then, be safely forecast. Domestically, the position of the American liberal-intellectual movement is in a state of flux. It may be assumed that liberals will not abandon their adherence to the value of "freedom." In relation to the goal of an universalistic society, the liberal-intellectual movement is on the defensive almost everywhere. Liberals are deeply split among themselves as to how to proceed in that defense and how to recapture the initiative. Being forced on the defensive, the liberal-intellectual movement has at least momentarily ceased to concentrate on attempts to create a state more equally balanced between various interest-groups. Whether, as the domestic climate again begins to favor liberal-intellectual aims, there will be a return to a greater interest in, or sympathy with, the Soviet model, especially in the light of the changes in the relevant aspect of the Soviet symbol, must remain a matter of speculation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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