sign in sign up
<<
Home , Daniel Bell

Dialogue between Daniel Bell & Wolf Lepenies

On society &

past & present Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/1/120/1829066/001152606775321121.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Translated by Howard Eiland

“That’s no way to start a newspaper ar- Daniel Bell say that? For several years ticle!”* How many times have I heard he and I worked together with a Japanese colleague–the literary critic and author Daniel Bell, a Fellow of the American Academy of No plays, Masakazu Yamazaki–to ed- since 1964, is Henry Ford ii Professor of Social it Correspondence, a magazine funded by Sciences Emeritus at . Bell’s the Japanese Suntory Foundation and publications include “The End of ” ½rst published by the American Acade- (1960), “The Reforming of General Education” my, and then by the Council on Foreign (1965), which won the gold medal of The Amer- Relations in . Although there ican Council of Education, and “The Cultural were no of½cial positions on the staff, Contradictions of Capitalism” (1976). He has Masakazu and I gladly followed Daniel written or edited eighteen books, a number of Bell’s lead on a host of matters, ranging these in Japanese. He was for twenty years a coun- from choice of themes for particular cillor of the Suntory Foundation in Japan and for issues, to the makeup of pages, and the ten years Scholar-in-Residence at the American selection of vignettes to illustrate arti- Academy. cles. There was no question who was in fact the primary editor. Wolf Lepenies, a Foreign Honorary Member of I was not the only one who thought the American Academy since 1992, was Rector of that Daniel Bell was a great journalist. the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (1986–2001) Bell’s retirement in 1958, after ten years and is now a Permanent Fellow there and pro- with the magazine Fortune (with the fessor of sociology at Freie Universität Berlin. exception of a year and a half in Paris), Among other prizes, he received the Alexander astounded the newspaper magnate von Humboldt Prize for French-German Scien- Henry Luce. ti½c Cooperation, the Karl Vossler Prize, and the “But why?” he wanted to know. Joseph Breitbach Prize. His publications include “You’re body and soul a journalist! What “Die drei Kulturen” (1985), “Benimm und Erken- reason could you possibly have to return ntnis” (1997), and “Sainte-Beuve: au seuil de la to academic life?” modernité” (2002). His latest book, “The Seduc- tion of Culture in German History,” will be pub- * Wolf Lepenies met with Daniel Bell on De- lished by Press in the spring cember 4, 2004, in Cambridge, . of 2006. The German version of the interview was pub- lished in the newspaper Die Welt on January 12, © 2006 by Wolf Lepenies 2005.

120 Dædalus Winter 2006 “Three reasons,” answered Bell. “June, the destruction of the temple? The sa- Society July, and August.” cred writings.” & sociology past & Of course, the lure of summer vaca- Our conversation took place in Cam- present tions was not the only thing that led bridge, where Bell lives with his wife Bell, who during his time at Fortune was Pearl (younger sister of literary critic already teaching at Columbia Universi- ) near Harvard Yard. I ty, to return to an academic career. Born hadn’t seen him in over a year. His in 1919 in New York, Daniel Bell early on house now has a small addition, so that developed a sociological eye for things, Pearl, who had a serious accident a few an intuitive grasp of the fundamental years ago, could move back in and re- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/1/120/1829066/001152606775321121.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 changes taking place in the structure ceive round-the-clock treatment from of society. Today the titles of his books two nurses. –The End of Ideology, The Cultural Con- The house is not only, as one would ex- tradictions of Capitalism, and The Coming pect, full of books. Bell is also an art con- of Post-Industrial Society–have become noisseur and has collected Japanese and bywords in discussions of modernity. German Expressionist prints. He once Bell taught at Columbia as a professor described himself as a liberal in politics, of sociology until 1969. He then switched a socialist in economics, and a conserva- to Harvard, where he remained until his tive in culture. Does this self-characteri- retirement in 1990. He’d come a long zation still hold? “Yes, certainly. I had way from ‘the poor man’s Harvard’– recourse to this tripartite division be- that is, City College in New York, where cause I don’t regard society as a holistic he studied from 1935 to 1938. As the son system. You can be a radical in one area of poor Eastern European Jewish immi- and conservative in another. I’m a liber- grants, he was able to enroll at City Col- al in politics because I believe in individ- lege tuition-free. Soon he was actively ual achievement and reward, in the idea involved with the ‘New York Jewish in- of a just meritocracy. In economics, I’m tellectuals,’ not all of whom were reli- a socialist, because community partici- gious, but who all shared a certain ethos. pation is important to me; everyone is They saw themselves as deracinated cos- entitled to a decent share of the avail- mopolitans, but at the same time as part able resources. And in art and culture of a widely dispersed intellectual family. I’m conservative, because I uphold val- Bell describes himself as “decidedly ues and traditions.” religious.” “My upbringing was very Bell’s description of himself as a so- Jewish,” he recalls, “and my native cialist makes him smile. He remembers tongue was Yiddish. I attended a Jew- a time when there were socialists every- ish school (kheder), where neither teach- where at City College; many Stalinists ers nor students spoke English. We were so argumentative that New York translated from Hebrew into Yiddish.” at the time was known as the most in- Still, religion for Bell is “not so much teresting city in the Soviet Union. The about God, as about the sacred. It’s socialists at City College were abundant- not a matter of ritual or orthodoxy. Re- ly self-conscious, returning manuscripts ligion for me is the holy and the tradi- with the comment: “Tolstoy did it bet- tion, something that sets limits and that ter.” And in the midst of a political de- you can’t go beyond. I was particularly bate, one might hear someone say, en- impressed by the fact that rabbis are not tirely in earnest: “I know what Trotsky priests but teachers. What remains after should do, and so do you. But does Trot-

Dædalus Winter 2006 121 Dialogue sky know?” Daniel Bell was a socialist the de½nition once devised in a City Col- between like the others, but, unlike most, he was lege cafeteria, a New York intellectual Daniel Bell & Wolf never doctrinaire. How does he explain is someone who, after two minutes’ Lepenies that? preparation, can talk uninterruptedly “I was lucky. I became a socialist in on any subject whatsoever for at least a reaction to the Depression. I saw people quarter hour. Bell needs no two-minute living in hovels and starving. Capitalism preparation, and one can listen to him seemed to be on its last legs–so you for hours. He personi½es a kind of Amer- became a socialist. Then I met Rudolf ican intellectual who, unlike his Euro-

Rocker, who though born a Christian pean colleagues, has never had any illu- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/1/120/1829066/001152606775321121.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 had learned Yiddish in order to edit the sions about belonging to a ‘socially free- Free Workers’ Voice (Fraye Arbeter Shtime), floating intelligentsia.’ Nor has he ever a Yiddish-language newspaper printed taken refuge in a concept of ‘the inner in Hebrew letters. Rocker gave me anar- life.’ “With Roosevelt and the New Deal, chist writings, and I read about the sail- there came into being a type known as ors in Kronstadt who, in 1921, went to the ‘policy intellectual.’ That was what Trotsky and demanded food supplies I wanted to be: someone who under- and the free elections they’d been prom- stands something of the details of pol- ised. And Trotsky, the organizer of the itics, and is interested in its everyday Red Army, cried ‘Insurrection!’ and working. Friends of mine would say: the had the sailors shot. ‘Kronstadt’ then be- intellectual has to be critical. That was came a code word for withdrawal from not enough for me. For me, the most the Communist Party. Some people had important function of the intellectual their ‘Kronstadt’ during the mass purges was to take responsibility.” in the 1930s, others during the Hungari- It was because of this ‘ethic of respon- an uprising, and still others during the sibility’ that Bell became a member of Prague spring. My Kronstadt was Kron- four government commissions and, in stadt.” 1965, cofounded the journal The Public Like many of his college friends, Dan- Interest, with his old friend . iel Bell grew up on the Bell resigned in 1972, and was replaced of New York–in a milieu marked by per- by . Kristol became the sistent poverty if not by overwhelming intellectual forerunner of the neoconser- misery. His generation did not come to vatism that brought Richard Nixon and socialism through dramatic conversion Ronald Reagan to the White House. experiences but rather grew into it, as Bell likes to quote Irving Kristol’s youngsters grow into the clothes of older de½nition of the neoconservative as siblings. Schoolchildren were already “a liberal mugged by reality.” But he trade unionists and agitated from soap- does not by any means number himself boxes for a more just society. In this spir- among the neoconservatives. “In 1972, it, the young Bell, speaking on soapbox- invited Kristol and es, memorized passages from Upton Sin- me to contribute guest columns. They clair’s novel The Jungle. His reward–the wanted us to explain why he supported astonished exclamations of passersby on Nixon and I supported McGovern. We the New York sidewalk, “How eloquent wrote our commentaries, but at the last he is!” minute the Times could not print them. At eighty-six, Daniel Bell has lost none We still have the articles. Unlike Kristol, of his youthful eloquence. According to I didn’t trust Nixon for a minute. But my

122 Dædalus Winter 2006 friendship with Irving Kristol was never ness of most citizens to make sacri½ces Society compromised by our differing political for the community. He also predicted & sociology past & views. Friendship has always been more thirty years ago a resurgence of religious present important to me than ideology.” conviction in the world; he believes Eu- Bell’s political differences with the ropean society is only super½cially secu- neoconservatives–those who provide larized. And he has cited the observation the ideological lining to U.S. policy at of his friend Irving Kristol, that societies present–became clear in the course of in the West are unprepared for major ca- our conversation: “I don’t trust a poli- tastrophes. 9/11 was proof of that. tics geared to securing American hege- Asked if he was worried about any- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/1/120/1829066/001152606775321121.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 mony. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest thing in particular these days, Bell had –I don’t trust them. They’re obsessed this to say: “Optimism is a philosophy, with geopolitics.” Still, Bell refuses to pessimism a character trait. My charac- describe American hegemony as ‘im- ter trait is pessimism. continually perialism.’ “There’s a big difference be- have had cause for anxiety; that’s part tween hegemonic and imperial. Hege- of our history. I’m a pessimist–there’s mony, and, above all, military hegemo- always something that’s got me worried. ny, the role of superpower–this role At the moment, it’s the Israeli-Palestin- has fallen to the Americans. I once cited ian conflict, to which the American gov- André Malraux, who had it right: An ernment is paying insuf½cient atten- imperial style is something denied to tion.” Americans. Nixon aimed for it–with- With this, our conversation came out success. And Bush, too, with his to an end–though not our evening to- ‘Mission accomplished!’–his advisors gether. We went to dinner at the Kebab came up with that. Our society is much Factory, a popular Indian restaurant in too bourgeois to be able to cultivate an Cambridge. The table was small but the imperial style.” noise level high. Bell requested that the In speaking of members of the Bush music be turned down a little. He want- administration, Bell frequently uses one ed to sing me a song he’d written in his adjective: “smart.” Unlike most intellec- youth at City College. The song was tuals, he has not believed that those who called “The Old Bolshevik.” He started hold the reins in Washington today are up: “When I was a lad in Nineteen Six, / blockheads. As a sociologist, he is care- I joined a group of Bolsheviks.” There ful not to underestimate the reelected were at least six choruses, and before president. “What drives George W. Bush long nearly everyone in the Kebab Fac- is his faith. He’s a born-again Christian tory had stopped eating. I thought of the and must be taken seriously as such. passersby in New York who had once Compared to, say, Ronald Reagan, who listened in amazement to the little soap- in these things was very clever, Bush is box orator; like them, one wanted to ex- no operator. I sometimes wish he were claim: “How eloquent he is!” –then there might be some chance of changing him. But, no, he really believes in what he says. It’s on this score that so many people misjudge him.” For over forty years, Daniel Bell has bemoaned the lack of civitas in the life of the modern democracies, the unwilling-

Dædalus Winter 2006 123