NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter 1954)
- Social Research An Int'l Quarterly
- Jan 1, 1955
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 20, 2023
The American executive--federal as well as state--is characterized at present by a willingness to accept administrative authority. It is the Congress that determines the subjects of interest to the administration, the instrumentalities for undertaking the necessary activities, the lifetime, the size of the personnel, and the powers and rules of procedure of all federal administrative agencies, the monies available, and the means of control. Investigating committees are the most important means of control.
Our interest must then be focused on the conditions that have to be fulfilled in order for individual entrepreneurs' expectations to be satisfied. We must ask what rate of output increase is appropriate to each industry in the light of the consumer demand changes resulting from the rise in aggregate supply and factor income, and the associated relative price shifts.
Both majority rule and rule by principles are based on an underlying philosophy about the nature of human life. Each of these two doctrines dissolves the unified Gestalt of human and political existence...A new self-awareness of man is needed to solve them, just as they arose from the historical emergence of new forms of human self-awareness. We have gone to politics from our philosophies, and now we must seek our way again to philosophy from politics.
But Freud's prophetism must not be labored too far. To be a prophet is to assert that there is no way out of tradition, not to try systematically to abort it. And Freud's end, processionally and valuationally, was to abort tradition for the sake of a personality type unknown to history thus far, the psychological man--man emaciated by rational analysis from commitments to the prototypical past. [reprinted in 51:2 50th Anniversary Issue Pt. 2]
As democratic governments were restored in the liberated western European countries after World War 1, normal political activity closely resembling the pre-occupation pattern was resumed. Pretty generally the old political parties were reactivated, resuming their old names and to a large extent receiving the support of their old followers. In general, political sentiment registered a marked trend leftward.
There are few areas in the sociology of religion that are of greater inherent interest than that of sectarianism...The study of sectarianism has been characterized, like so much else in the scientific approach to religion, by a mass empirical data with little or no theoretical orientation. This has been especially true in the United States, and is especially regrettable here, since this country is a veritable paradise for the investigation of religious sects. [reprinted in 51:2 50th Anniversary Issue Pt. 2]
Review of books by Harold L. Ickes. New York: Simon and Schuster. Vol. 1: The First Thousand Days, 1933-1936; 1953, 738 pp. Vol. 2: The Inside Struggle, 1936-1939; 1954, 759 pp.
Review of book by Harriet Wanklyn. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1954. 445 pp.
Review of book by Edward Hallett Carr. New York: Macmillan. 1953. 614 pp. and Soviet Imperialism--Its Origins and Tactics: A Symposium. Review of a book by Waldemar Gurian. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1953. 166 pp.