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MARTIN B. DUBERMAN
to prevent our planning rationally and acting boldly. We are far more
free-and thus far more responsible-than the determinists have told us.
The new radicals insist, in short, that we may choose what to make of
ourselves and our world.
Though the radicals in our midst are few and exert little power,
at least they do once more exist, and their influence might yet lead us
out of the post-New Deal morass.
If
so, we wiII owe much to those
activists in the civil rights movement who first pointed the way, and to
those intellectuals (often activists themselves) who first saw and schema·
tized the broader possibilities of the movement. In this last group the
preeminent publicists have been Michael Harrington and Nat Hentoff.
Now there is Howard Zinno
Zinn represents an emerging breed of scholar-activists. In his early
forties, he has behind him a Beveridge Prize for his first book,
La–
Guardia in Congress,
seven years of teaching history at a Negro college–
Spelman, in Atlanta-and extensive involvement as adviser and partici.
pant in civil rights activities, especially those of SNCC. His two new
books combine a scholar's knowledge and an activist's experience, which
are used to inform his theme, not to exhibit himself. Thus both books
are personal without being egotistical, are authoritative but free of
pedantry, and are passionate without being suspiciously agitated. The
common theme of the two books-a theme which is rationale and em–
blem for the whole new movement of social criticism-is that it is within
our power to move with high speed towards social justice.
The Southern
Mystique
outlines the reasons for this optimistic belief;
SNCC: The
New Abolitionists
gives us the concrete experiences of those who have
carried the belief into action.
Zinn's optimism, it must be emphasized, is not about what has
been done, or even what necessarily will be done, but only about what
could
be done were we to become aware of the rich possibilities for
change and determined
to
utilize them. This qualified optimism rests
on both theoretical and specific considerations. Zinn draws the theoreti–
cal testimony from a variety of post-Freudian commentators-Kurt
Lewin, Dorwin Cartwright, Harry Stack Sullivan, Gardner Murphy–
all of whom believe in the transcending power of the immediate. Habit–
ual behavior, according to these social psychologists, can be radically
and drastically changed, even when deeply rooted. No determinant,
be
it instinctual or traditional, need preclude the alteration of behavior.
And behavioral transformations, moreover, need not be preceded by
intellectual ones. The opposite is often true: forcing changes (through
legal or extra-legal pressures) in the way people act, can, by transform-
