Table Of ContentPOLITICS A N D VISION
Politics and Vision:
THE AD A A N D AM ERICAN
LIBERALISM, 1947-1985
Steven A4. Gillon
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
1987
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1987 by Steven M. Gillon
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gillon, Steven M.
Politics and vision.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Americans for Democratic Action. 2. Liberalism-
United States—History—20th century. 3. United
States—Politics and government—1945- . I. Title.
E743.G45 1987 324.273'3 86-31259
ISBN 0-19-504973-X
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my parents
June C. Gillon
Francis M. Gillon
Preface
“For all its belief in innovation, American society at the beginning of the
1960s was still conservative,” noted the British journalist Godfrey Hodgson.
“People wanted change,” he continued; “they did not want to be changed.”
Although obviously impressionistic, Hodgson’s observation is not without
merit. Many scholars have pointed out that for a variety of reasons—the
absence of feudalism, the abundance of free land, the shortage of manpower,
the possibility of upward social mobility, and the prevalence of Lockian val
ues of individualism, equality, and liberty—the United States never developed
the antagonistic class-conscious politics common in Europe. Instead, Ameri
can politics has been characterized by a fairly broad consensus on basic is
sues.1
The historians Louis Hartz and Daniel Boorstin, as well as the sociologist
Daniel Bell, gave this consensus approach to American history forceful ex
pression in the 1950s. These scholars rejected the progressive view that de
picted history as progress toward the realization of a democratic ideal through
a cycle of economic conflict. Instead, consensus historians emphasized the
durability of America’s political culture and saw unity and coherence rather
than division and transformation as the central features of that culture. De
spite this important contribution, these scholars underrated both the degree of
ethnic, racial, and class conflict in America and the importance of ideology.
As early as 1955, however, Richard Hofstadter showed, with the publication
of his seminal book The Age of Reform, that consensus history need not be
simple and one-dimensional—that consensus need not require a celebration of
the American condition, only the recognition of shared values.2
In recent years a number of scholars have developed a more sophisticated
variation of the consensus model, which, while emphasizing the dominant
forces of centralization and homogenization, also recognizes, in Alan Brink
ley’s words, “the striking persistence, in the face of these powerful homoge
nizing forces, of diversity, differences, divisions.” To understand American
society properly, Brinkley claims, the historian must understand not only the
“things that have drawn American society more tightly together” but also
“those that continue to drive it apart.” In other words, while recognizing the
• • •
vin Preface
existence of a coherent national political culture, historians should not blind
themselves to the perpetual struggle among numerous subcultures—ethnic, re
ligious, class, and so on—to challenge the hegemony of the dominant view.3
Many scholars, influenced by new organizational and pluralist schools of
thought, have refined this version of the consensus approach. Not surprisingly,
Brinkley in Voices of Protest has shown how two radicals, Father Coughlin
and Huey Long, attempted, unsuccessfully, to “defend the autonomy of the
individual and the independence of the community against encroachments
from the modem industrial state.” David Kennedy, in his analysis of the im
pact of World War I on American society, has shown how the national obses
sion with voluntarism and consensus frustrated liberal attempts to create a na
tional community spirit. James Patterson’s study of the federal government’s
response to poverty in the twentieth century traces “the persistence of atti
tudes popular among the middle class” and concludes that, despite the rise of
powerful interest groups on behalf of the poor, “the ‘social philosophy’ of
Americans had not changed much in eighty years.”4
These scholars have noted the persistence of conservative American social
and political values even in the face of powerful forces of nationalization and
centralization. This tension presents special problems to those committed to
challenging established institutions. America’s conservative political culture
has impaled reformers on the horns of a dilemma. David Kennedy’s descrip
tion of the plight of liberals prior to America’s entry into World War I cap
tures the dilemma that confronts all of those committed to political reform in
America. Liberals, Kennedy has claimed, had to decide “whether to oppose a
distasteful policy on principle and work against it whatever the pain, or to
swallow the bitter pill, seek somehow to make it palatable, retain one’s ‘effec
tiveness,’ and push for good policies to counter-balance the bad.”5
Scholars from diverse fields have observed this tension. Max Weber wrote
about a tension between “substantive rationality,” involving the ultimate val
ues sought, and “functional rationality,” dealing with the means to attain a
given goal. Social action groups, he argued, were divided between Zweckra
tionalität, which emphasized the “ethics of responsibility,” and Wertration
alität, which was committed to the “ethics of absolute ends.” Sheldon Wolin
has referred to the inevitable tension between vision, which poses “a futurist
quality, a projection of the political order into a time that is yet to be,” and
politics, which is committed “to lessening the gap between the possibilities
grasped through political imagination and the actualities of political experi
ence.” Most scholars agree that both forms of rationality—politics and vision
äre necessary for a healthy society. As the political scientist Seymour Martin
Lipset has commented, “a society cannot maintain its pursuit of rational
means-ends relationships except in the context of a set of absolute values
which anchor and direct the search for means.”6
This study analyzes how one representative group, the Americans for
Democratic Action, responded to this dilemma. Founded in January 1947,
the ADA was at the forefront of the movement toward “Vital Center” liberal
ism and for the next two decades emerged as the most forceful advocate of
Preface ix
many ideas cherished by political liberals. The ADA’s national leadership in
cluded many of the nation’s chief labor leaders like Walter Reuther and Da
vid Dubinsky; New Dealers eager to continue the Roosevelt tradition like
Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Robert Nathan; and promi
nent members of the liberal anti-Communist Left like James Loeb, Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., Joseph Rauh, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The ADA functioned
as a national lobbying group for liberal legislation, a source of liberal policy
alternatives, and a grass roots organization devoted to social change.7
Apart from the impressive list of luminaries who joined the ADA, most of
the organization’s members shared remarkably similar social backgrounds.
The overwhelming majority of ADA members were white, college-educated,
Jewish men from the middle or upper-middle class. Despite the organization’s
strong advocacy of civil rights and labor issues, it attracted little support from
either blacks or rank-and-file unionists. Along with their similar social back
ground, what characteristics can help identify “ADA-type liberals”? It would
appear the New Deal served as the unifying force. For onetime Socialists the
New Deal had offered the prospect of achieving meaningful change without
sacrificing political influence. For the many liberals and intellectuals origi
nally aroused to political activity by Roosevelt, the New Deal afforded both
influence and prestige. Many of those who identified with the New Deal be
came increasingly frustrated after 1945 by the changing tide of national and
international events and, perhaps, by their own declining influence in the Tru
man administration. Their commitment to extending the New Deal and their
desire to be involved in the nation’s political life was to unite them for the
next twenty years.8
A common social background and a shared commitment to the New Deal
did not prevent serious disagreement among ADA members over goals and
strategy. Most of the labor representatives and a few intellectuals wanted the
organization to serve as an appendage of the Democratic party, providing
ideas but avoiding heavy involvement in politics. They also hoped to keep the
organization firmly rooted in the bread-and-butter issues of the New Deal and
were militantly anti-Communist. A much larger group of intellectuals and
professionals wanted the organization to work as a source of new ideas for the
party and as an effective political pressure group. While committed to the
New Deal, these members hoped to expand the liberal coalition by addressing
such controversial social issues as civil rights and civil liberties. In the 1960s
the differences between labor and intellectuals in the organization were dwarfed
by the rise of the “New Politics” group. These new, younger reformers, who
grew up in the relative affluence of the postwar period, abandoned the orga
nization’s ties to the New Deal agenda and advocated sweeping changes in
American institutions and values. Although of the same social standing as
older ADA members, they were not concerned with the same issues that had
motivated middle-class reformers in the 1940s and 1950s.9 Rather than iden
tifying with the aspirations of the emerging middle class, they empathized with
1 the plight of the poor and outcasts in American society.10
The ADA provides an excellent case study of the vicissitudes of postwar
American liberalism. Most studies of the plight of liberalism tend to be pe
riod pieces, focusing either on the emergence of the Vital Center during the
Truman years or on the fall of that* consensus during the 1960s. Such mono
graphs provide only static glimpses of a dynamic process, and no sense of
movement and change. Other studies look to the presidential administrations
of Harry S Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson to define the
liberal reform impulse. Yet, even the policies of progressive presidents are not
always representative of liberal ideas. Their programs tend to be diluted by the
give-and-take of negotiation and compromise with Congress and rarely live up
to liberal expectations. Also, most liberals argue, with considerable justifica
tion, that they were never as influential as they or their detractors would have
one believe. “The reality of American politics in the liberal era,” commented
Gus Tyler of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, “is that the
Legislative Branch of the Federal government was in the hands of a conserva
tive coalition which could be petitioned, persuaded or pushed, but not com
manded by a liberal majority.”11
ADA liberals, chastened by the harsh reality of the Great Depression and
fascism, disenchanted with Marxist polemics, and skeptical of ideal solutions,
placed a premium on bargaining and compromise. Yet, they also fancied
themselves as reformers with a responsibility to promote social and economic
justice. Liberals who had come to prominence after World War II tried to
strike a balance between their commitment to abstract ideals of social justice
and their sense of the politically possible. Although they were able to main
tain that balance for nearly twenty years, it began to be upset in the 1960s.
The emergence of divisive issues like civil rights, which tugged at the moral
sensibilities of most liberals, left little room for compromise. Adding to the
problem was the appearance of a more militant younger generation who re
membered neither the New Deal nor the Great Depression and were eager to
assume moral leadership of the liberal movement. It was Vietnam, however,
that, in Hodgson’s words, “became the organizing principle around which all
the doubts and disillusionments of the years of crisis since 1963, and all the
deeper discontents hidden under the glossy surface of the confident years, co
alesced into one great rebellion.”
The Vietnam War forced liberals to put conviction over politics. The
ADA did so in 1968 when it supported Eugene McCarthy over Hubert Hum
phrey for the Democratic nomination. However, it paid a high price. Choos
ing vision over politics left the organization, and liberalism in general, isolated
from the mainstream of American politics. After a few years in the political
wilderness, the organization was by 1978 beginning to reforge a new liberal-
labor coalition. Whether its political strategy will succeed is uncertain. What
is certain is that along the way the ADA has abandoned many of its old as
sumptions and refashioned the Vital Center consensus.
Like all writers, I have incurred numerous debts while completing this
study. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Harry S Truman
Foundation, a Moody Grant from the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, the
Albert J. Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association, as well
