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The Sound of Silence: Comments on “Still Louis Hartz after All These Years”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2005

Richard Iton
Richard Iton
Affiliation:
Northwestern University ([email protected])
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Extract

Explanations of the unique character of American political development—i.e., its exceptionalism—must consider and explain a wide range of phenomena. Why has the United States been relatively immune to the kinds of social movements and political parties commonly found in other industrialized democracies? Why is there no American Left? Why are American unions as politically weak and numerically insignificant as they are? Beyond parties and movements, we must also seek to understand the absence in the United States of the public goods that are commonly associated with the emergence of social democratic parties in other countries: comprehensive and redistributive policies in the areas of welfare, housing, education, and health care. Understanding these absences requires, in my view, that serious attention be paid to the ways in which race and certain ascriptive practices have shaped the development of the American nation.Richard Iton is associate professor of African American Studies and political science at Northwestern University ([email protected]). He is the author of Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left, and In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post–Civil Rights Era (forthcoming). The author thanks Joseph Carens and Barnor Hesse for their comments on earlier drafts of this response.

Type
COMMENTARIES
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 111 - 115
Copyright
© 2005 American Political Science Association

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