Books in Brief: The Poverty of Liberalism

The Poverty of Liberalism, by Robert Paul Wolff (Beacon Press, $5.95). Most radicals long ago concluded with Marx that philosophers have only interpreted the world, while the point is to change it. Dominated by a sense of estrangement from an alien and corrupt world, radicals have been less concerned to know reality than to repress it. Eternal or temporal things implying limits on man’s creativity must be cashiered—violently if necessary— and replaced by the dream of a perfected society to be erected within history. Continuing the polemic of radical literature, Wolff scorns the usual turgid cliches and exposes, in an often masterly way, the internal defects of a politics premised on J. S. Mill’s notions of utility. Wolff censures the liberal’s defined hedonism because it is not an adequate vehicle for fully human life—or permanent revolution. Closing politics to an order rooted in knowledge of reality, he speaks with chilling nonchalance of the “wholesale reconstruction” of society. Liberalism once tried to transform man; but, having lost its revolutionary aspirations, it must be downed, before the “magic word ‘socialism’ ” can open the gate to the City of Man.

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P. C. Beach

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The Poverty of Liberalism, by Robert Paul Wolff (Beacon Press, $5.95). Most radicals long ago concluded with Marx that philosophers have only interpreted the world, while the point is to change it. Dominated by a sense of estrangement from an alien and corrupt world, radicals have been less concerned to know reality than to repress it. Eternal or temporal things implying limits on man’s creativity must be cashiered—violently if necessary— and replaced by the dream of a perfected society to be erected within history. Continuing the polemic of radical literature, Wolff scorns the usual turgid cliches and exposes, in an often masterly way, the internal defects of a politics premised on J. S. Mill’s notions of utility. Wolff censures the liberal’s defined hedonism because it is not an adequate vehicle for fully human life—or permanent revolution. Closing politics to an order rooted in knowledge of reality, he speaks with chilling nonchalance of the “wholesale reconstruction” of society. Liberalism once tried to transform man; but, having lost its revolutionary aspirations, it must be downed, before the “magic word ‘socialism’ ” can open the gate to the City of Man.