Preface

Is there reason to hope today? This question was the starting point for a course given to a group of adult workers at Wayne State University's Monteith College in spring 1976. The instructors, Charles Rooney and myself, sought to address our students' cynicism by presenting a historical sketch of this century which would explore some of its worst catastrophes and greatest struggles. Rooney and I decided we had something to say against the prevailing wind and that we would, consequently, write a book about hope today. The first fruits of this collaboration turned out to be a profession of our faith: that social change leading to a better world was still possible. We started back through the manuscript, realizing that we had nowhere directly confronted the despair it implied and opposed. A book about hope today must first address the reasons for cynicism, we realised. But not long afterwards, our collaboration began to feel the consequences of the university's decision to close Monteith College. Leaving the university, Rooney soon after left his active participation in this project. He remained tied to it as co-author of many of its ideas, purposes, lines of study and even words, but it nevertheless became my own study of catastrophe and hope.

    I have talked with dozens and dozens of people about the project, and have received nearly universal encouragement and support. The question of hope, as question, as our collective question today, touches something deep in nearly everyone I have talked with, and invariably leads to discussions which enrich and extend my thinking.

    I have also had the opportunity to present many of these analyses more formally, in the Senior Seminar of Wayne State University's Weekend College, as well as at its weekend conferences, at the university's History Department Forum, before the Western Social

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Science Association, the Radical Philosophers' Association and the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, as well as to the Jewish Parents' Institute of Detroit and New Jewish Agenda. The American Jewish Committee made possible my first trip to Israel and heard my observations on my return. In these presentations I have not always won agreement, but I have always learned from the opportunities to test my ideas.

    It has been taxing and difficult, this wrestling with the Devil, and I have more than once despaired that my powers were not equal to the task. But each time I realized that my despair was induced by the events I sought to understand, not by personal weakness. There are indeed so many current reasons for despair. But at crucial moments history intervened: the achievement of majority rule in Zimbabwe, the victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the eruption of Solidarity, the electoral victories of Mitterand and Papandreou, the massive anti-nuclear demonstrations in Western Europe and the United States, the appearance of the Israeli peace movement. Each event, for all its reversibility, incompleteness and unresolved questions, became another answer to the question I was asking.

    Over these years I have been blessed with friends, comrades and colleagues who have not left me alone in the often-difficult and painful search for hope. Collectively, I must say, they have made possible the book that follows.

    Accordingly, I have many people to thank. Phyllis Aronson lived with the man obsessed with walking through the Valley of Death for these seven years, and tolerated, encouraged and helped him. Steve Golin read two drafts of the manuscript and gave me his best – an illuminating, committed, loving critique which, as always, helped me to find my voice. Ernst Benjamin talked with me about many of my ideas, often contributing decisively with his penetrating intellect and cogent formulations. Saul Wellman helped me to connect this intellectual project to our common political praxis, and gave me his deeply caring and loyal support. Richard Schmitt read the manuscript and raised a number of penetrating questions which I have done my best to resolve. Dianne Hansen typed the manuscript with her customary speed, accuracy and good cheer. The administration of Weekend College has helped me in large and small ways, in the process of becoming a model institutional home for committed scholarship.

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In addition, the following people talked with me, encouraged me, read parts of the manuscript, and were collectively indispensable to what follows: Robert Deneweth, Anson Rabinbach, George Mosse, Christopher Johnson, Israel Chamy, Anthony Rudolf, Ronald Santoni, William McBride, Douglas Kellner, Susan Wells, Miriam Jerris, Tony Rothschild, David Herreshoff, Perry Anderson, Kenneth Waltzer, Lenore Goldman, Fred Lessing, Joseph Walsh, Jim Jacobs, Diana Kuper, Helen Samberg, Dian Wilkins, Hillel Schenker, Francis Mulhern, Mark Shapiro, Robert Bailey, David Levey, Nabeel Abraham, Melvin Small, Lisa Blum, Evelyn Millstein.

Wayne State University

Detroit

September 1983