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In a front-page review in the Washington Post Book World , John Judis wrote: ""Political analysts have been poring over exit polls and precinct-level votes to gauge the meaning of last November's election, but they would probably better employ their time reading the late Christopher Lasch's book."" And in the National Review , Robert Bork says The Revolt of the Elites ""ranges provocatively [and] insightfully.""
Controversy has raged around Lasch's targeted attack on the elites, their loss of moral values, and their abandonment of the middle class and poor, for he sets up the media and educational institutions as a large source of the problem. In this spirited work, Lasch calls out for a return to community, schools that teach history not self-esteem, and a return to morality and even the teachings of religion. He does this in a nonpartisan manner, looking to the lessons of American history, and castigating those in power for the ever-widening gap between the economic classes, which has created a crisis in American society. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy is riveting social commentary.
评论 (5)
出版社周刊评论
The title (its play on Jose Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses, notwithstanding) misserves this collection of essays, for Lasch's criticism that the elites have become cosmopolites in a global marketplace that disdains loyalty to locale is only one aspect of the crises the late author defines. Myriad factors in concert, he shows, including multiculturism, entitlements, mobility, secularization, our therapeutic culture and the professionalization of knowledge, have unsettled Americans' frame of reference. ``Common standards are absolutely indispensable to a democratic society,'' stresses Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism), standards he says we have lost, like the work ethic, individual responsibility, self-restraint and civility. In these essays, some of which were previously published in scholarly journals, Lasch is so encompassing, arguing with such an array of received wisdom-Horace Mann, John Dewey, et al.-that the book is too dense, its focus blurred rather than clarified by its scattershot range. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
A sure sign that Lasch's latest (and, sadly, last) book deserves wide acclaim is that it will infuriate those who cling to conventional notions of left and right. Lasch remains as relentless a critic of liberal progressivism as he is of unfettered capitalism. In many ways, this sharp and penetrating study culminates his career as a social critic of the highest order. It's an articulate challenge to the anti-democratic notions of both market and statist liberals: Both, in Lasch's view, share an exalted sense of the professional and managerial class, thereby diminishing a vital middle class in this country. Throughout his many books, Lasch (The True and Only Heaven, 1991) notes, from his early work on liberals and the Russian Revolution through his biting analysis of self- styled radical intellectuals, he has always concerned himself with one overarching question: Does democracy have a future? More so than his earlier, often naysaying books, this wonderfully vigorous and urgent set of essays makes explicit Lasch's hope for a renewal of our best democratic values: the civil arts of public discourse and debate; an educational system that stresses commonality, not difference; and, quite simply, religion--one of the best disciplines against professional arrogance. For Lasch, to accept our inability to master a God-given world is the first step to a more realistic vision for humanity. The course of our century, as he argues with great historical nuance, has steered us from a sense of the ``common good.'' Our public spaces continue to dwindle, and the language of politics, journalism, and the academy no longer invites the average person into the argument, as democracy once promised. The ``democratic habits'' of ``self-reliance, responsibility, and initiative'' have degraded into a mad rush for social mobility. The common wellsprings for a civil society- -families, neighborhoods, traditions--are now seen as impediments to financial success or as oppressive representatives of sexism and racism. This brave piece of social criticism answers Lasch's critics with a message so simple and obvious, it's sublime. (First serial to Harper's)
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Best known as the author of the surprise "intellectual" best-seller The Culture of Narcissism (1979), cultural critic Lasch died last February with the uncertain fate of American democracy much on his mind. In his final book, he locates the greatest threat to democracy in the continuing rise to political and economic power of rootless managerial and professional elites "who have lost faith in the values, or what remains of them, of the West." Lasch sees these elites driving the U.S. "in the direction of a two-class society in which the favored few monopolize the advantages of money, education, and power." He traces the intellectual history that led to the emergence of both the elites themselves and the cultural dilemmas that express the conflict between their attitudes and those of their underlings--ordinary U.S. citizens--in topical chapters on such matters as the concept of social mobility (it will surprise many to learn how recent this idea is), the agreement and disagreement between communitarianism and populism, the decline of civic virtue, the suppression of argument in public affairs, and the abolition of shame as a social psychological tool. These may seem dauntingly weighty matters for enjoyable reading, but Lasch is so pithy and cogent that he produces the kind of book that makes you want to corner friends and read it aloud to them. In discussing the issues, however, Lasch proffers no easy ways out. If he sees any salvation from the withering away of democracy and the tyranny of elite dominance, it lies precisely in salvation. That is, it lies in religious faith--not the childlike reliance upon a benevolent great father that Freud called an illusion but the assertion of "the goodness of being in the face of suffering and evil" and the practice of constant moral criticism and self-criticism in order to dispel the great illusion of modernity and its elites--the illusion of mastery, the conceit that we are the masters of our fate. ~--Ray Olson
Choice 评论
Lasch's writings have always been original, feisty, splenetic, crisp in attack, and rich in unsettling questions about contemporary cultural conditions. The thematically discrete chapters in this posthumous study are in the same vein: a cantankerous ad hominem assault on cultural elites for being out of touch with traditional values and abandoning civic "virtue"; on black culture adherents for using the victimization thesis to excuse academic failure; on racial politics and advocates of "diversity." The book is also a jeremiad on the decline of mutuality and community--the family-centered society and informal public forums where open debate once prevailed. Lasch gives solace neither to the political left nor right. Both, for example, are scored for their assault on the canon of Western literature. With one hand, Lasch assails corporate corruption of higher education; with the other, he savages black student militancy; he rails against shopping malls for destroying community and embraces family values as central to community; he laments both the "premature release" of hard-core criminals and "the persistence of a racial double standard" in criminal justice. He will anger both the profamily and profeminist crowd, all ideologues, and conventional thinkers. Anyone concerned about American society today should read this important and troubling study, even those who will disagree with it. M. Cantor; University of Massachusetts at Amherst
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
If you don't think that democracies are being threatened from without by benevolent dictatorships, then maybe you'll agree that they are being threatened from within by self-serving elites. From the author of the best-selling The Culture of Narcissism (LJ 4/15/78), who completed this work shortly before his death. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.