Word: vanguardism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sputnik I, a tiny dot of light moving across the autumn sky, did what nothing else had done for nearly 20 years: it scared Washington. The people who knew the implications, like Astronomer John Hagen, head of Project Vanguard, America's own unborn space probe, stayed up all night linking a hasty network of aerials to catch the faint beeps of the intruder that mocked the presumed U.S. technological superiority. Power and politics were never again the same in the capital. Sputnik signaled a new superpower on the prowl. Space, for the moment, was the area of contention...
...Human Rights. America must be in the vanguard of the search for social justice not only here at home but globally. We cannot seek, however, to create mirror images of the U.S. in every developing area throughout the world. It neither serves the purpose of social justice nor the vital interests of America to pursue policies under the rubric of human rights that have the practical consequence of driving authoritarian regimes, traditionally friendly to the West, into totalitarian models where they will remain in a state of permanent animosity to the American people and their interests...
...undermines the legitimacy on which Communist power rests by refuting the claim of the Communist Party to be the sole authentic representative of the working class." Communist orthodoxy predicates authoritarian rule: a bedrock belief of Marxism-Leninism is the absolute dictatorship of the proletariat, as represented by its vanguard, the Party. In practical terms, Moscow-style Communism also insists on rigid central planning; that kind of "command" economy is in trouble if it cannot command its own workers. For these reasons, the Soviets are nervous that the Polish disease will catch elsewhere in the East bloc and touch off worker...
...ironic that Michael Walzer's chapter on the general historical patterns of revolutions emphasizes the political relationships between the intellectual vanguard and mass uprisings of the English, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. His concern seems almost narcissistic--the former Harvard professor certainly fits the bill of today's radical intelligentsia. At least, he must conceive of himself as a bright light in the revolutionary vanguard. But Walzer is not so easy to pin down. He emphasizes that his writings have been for the most part politically motivated. Still, his most engaging work wanders into the realm of abstract generalities, indulging...
...unflinching mandarin elites. Walzer, thus, justifies his own commitment to radical principles as the ground work for his passive vision of a just society. But he does not completely abandon the revolutionary zeal of his earlier years. In the '80s, he cannot reasonably expect to form an intellectual vanguard for a socialist revolution, but he can justify his moral theorizing with Rousseau's dictum--"If I were prince or a legislator, I should not waste time in saying what wants doing; I should do it, or hold my peace." Today's liberals ought to take Walzer seriously, for, perhaps...