Examines two opposing world-views of progress within Western civilization "A major and challenging work. . . . Provocative, and certain to be controversial. . . . Will add important new dimension to the continuing debate on the decline of liberalism." —William Julius Wilson, New York Times Book Review Preface 13(8) Introduction: The Obsolescence of Left and Right The Current Mood 21(1) Limits: The Forbidden Topic 22(3) The Making of a Malcontent 25(6) The Land of Opportunity: A Parent's View 31(4) The Party of the Future and Its Quarrel with ``Middle America'' 35(3) The Promised Land of the New Right 38(2) The Idea Of Progress Reconsidered A Secular Religion? 40(1) Belief in Progress as the Antidote to Despair 41(3) Against the ``Secularization Thesis'' 44(3) What the Idea of Progress Really Means 47(2) Providence and Fortune, Grace and Virtue 49(3) Adam Smith's Rehabilitation of Desire 52(3) Smith's Misgivings about ``General Security and Happiness'' 55(3) Desire Domesticated 58(5) Henry George on Progress and Poverty 63(4) Inconspicuous Consumption, the ``Superlative Machine'' 67(5) The Keynesian Critique of Thrift 72(6) Optimism or Hope? 78(4) Nostalgia: The Abdication of Memory Memory or Nostalgia? 82(2) The Pastoral Sensibility Historicized and Popularized 84(3) Images of Childhood: From Gratitude to Pathos 87(5) The American West, Childhood of the Nation 92(5) From Solitary Hunter to He-man 97(3) The Village Idyll: The View from ``Pittsburgh'' 100(5) Nostalgia Named as Such: The Twenties 105(5) History as a Progression of Cultural Styles 110(2) Nostalgia Politicized 112(5) The Frozen Past 117(3) The Sociological Tradition and the Idea of Community Cosmopolitanism and Enlightenment 120(4) The Enlightenment's Critique of Particularism 124(3) The Reaction against Enlightenment: Burke's Defense of Prejudice 127(6) Action, Behavior, and the Discovery of ``Society'' 133(2) Culture against Civilization 135(4) Gemeinsscbaftscbmerz 139(4) The Moral Ambivalence of the Sociological Tradition 143(5) Marxism, the Party of the Future 148(5) The Structure of Historical Necessity 153(5) ``Modernization'' as an Answer to Marxism 158(4) The Last Refuge of Modernization Theory 162(6) The Populist Campaign Against ``Improvement'' The Current Prospect: Progress or Catastrophe? 168(2) The Discovery of Civic Humanism 170(2) The Civic Tradition in Recent Historical Writing 172(5) Tom Paine: Liberal or Republican? 177(4) William Cobbett and the ``Paper System'' 181(3) Orestes Brownson and the Divorce between Politics and Religion 184(5) Brownson's Attack on Philanthropy 189(6) Lockean Liberalism: A ``Bourgeois'' Ideology? 195(8) Early Opposition to Wage Labor 203(3) Acceptance of Wage Labor and Its Implications 206(3) The New Labor History and the Rediscovery of the Artisan 209(3) Artisans against Innovation 212(5) Agrarian Populism: The Producer's Last Stand 217(4) The Essence of Nineteenth-Century Populism 221(5) ``No Answer But an Echo'': The World Without Wonder Carlyle's Clothes Philosophy 226(4) Calvinism as Social Criticism 230(3) Puritan Virtue 233(3) ``The Healthy Know Not of Their Health'' 236(3) Carlyle and the Prophetic Tradition 239(1) Political and Literary Misreadings of Carlyle 240(3) Emerson in His Contemporaries' Eyes: Stoic and ``Seer'' 243(3) The Puritan Background of Emerson's Thought: Jonathan Edwards and the Theology of ``Consent'' 246(5) Edwards on True Virtue 251(5) The ``Moral Argument'' against Calvinism 256(5) Emerson on Fate 261(4) ``Compensation'': The Theology of Producerism 265(5) Emerson as a Populist 270(4) Virtue, the ``True Fire'' 274(3) Virtue in Search of a Calling 277(2) The Eclipse of Idealism in the Gilded Age 279(3) William James: The Last Puritan? 282(2) The Philosophy of Wonder 284(2) Art and Science: New Religions 286(4) The Strenuous Life of Sainthood 290(2) Superstition or Desiccation? 292(4) The Syndicalist Moment: Class Struggle and Workers' Control as the Moral Equivalent of Proprietorship and War The Cult of ``Mere Excitement'' 296(4) James on Moral Equivalence 300(4) Sorel's Attack on Progress 304(4) The Case for ``Pessimism'' 308(2) War as Discipline against Resentment 310(2) The Sectarian Dilemma 312(5) Wage Slavery and the ``Servile State'': G. D. H. Cole and Guild Socialism 317(3) The Attempt to Reconcile Syndicalism with Collectivism 320(4) From Workers' Control to ``Community'': The Absorption of Guild Socialism by Social Democracy 324(5) Work and Loyalty in the Social Thought of the ``Progressive'' Era Progressive and Social Democratic Criticism of American Syndicalism 329(3) Revolutionary Socialism versus Syndicalism: The Case of William English Walling 332(4) The IWW and the Intellectuals: Love at First Sight 336(4) Herbert Croly on ``Industrial Self-Government'' 340(2) Walter Weyl's Orthodox Progressivism: The Democracy of Consumers 342(3) Rival Perspectives on the Democratization of Culture 345(3) Van Wyck Brooks and the Search for a ``Genial Middle Ground'' 348(5) The Controversy about Immigration: Assimilation or Cultural Pluralism? 353(3) Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty 356(4) The Postwar Reaction against Progressivism 360(3) Lippmann's Farewell to Virtue 363(3) Dewey's Reply to Lippmann: Too Little Too Late 366(3) The Spiritual Discipline Against Resentment Reinhold Niebuhr on Christian Mythology 369(4) The Virtue of Particularism 373(3) The ``Endless Cycle of Social Conflict'' and How to Break It 376(3) Niebuhr's Challenge to Liberalism Denatured and Deflected 379(3) Liberal Realism after Niebuhr: The Critique of Tribalism 382(4) Martin Luther King's Encounter with Niebuhr 386(4) Hope without Optimism 390(3) Indigenous Origins of the Civil Rights Movement 393(5) The Collapse of the Civil Rights Movement in the North 398(4) From Civil Rights to Social Democracy 402(5) The Politics of Resentment and Reparation 407(5) The Politics of the Civilized Minority Liberal Perceptions of the Public after World War I 412(4) America the Unbeautiful 416(5) Social Criticism, Disembodied and Connected 421(3) Sociology as Social Criticism: The Apotheosis of the Expert 424(5) Experts and Orators: Thurman Arnold's ``Anthropological'' Satire 429(6) The ``Machiavelli'' of the Managerial Revolution 435(4) From Satire to Social Pathology: Gunnar Myrdal on the ``American Dilemma'' 439(6) The Discovery of the Authoritarian Personality 445(5) Politics as Therapy 450(5) The Liberal Critique of Populism 455(5) Populism as Working-Class Authoritarianism 460(5) Educated Insularity 465(3) Camelot after Kennedy: Oswald as Everyman 468(8) Right-Wing Populism and the Revolt Against Liberalism The ``White Backlash'' 476(3) A Growing Middle Class? 479(4) Working-Class and Lower-Middle-Class Convergence 483(4) The Lower-Middle-Class Ethic of Limits and the Abortion Debate 487(5) The Cultural Class War 492(4) The Politics of Race: Antibusing Agitation in Boston 496(8) ``Populism'' and the New Right 504(5) The Theory of the New Class and Its Historical Antecedents 509(3) Neoconservatives on the New Class 512(6) New-Class ``Permissiveness'' or Capitalist Consumerism? 518(5) The New Class as Seen from the Left 523(4) A Universal Class? 527(2) Populism against Progress 529(4) Bibliographical Essay 533(38) Index 571