Politics and Vision: the ADA and American Liberalism, 1947-1985.

• Author: Lewis, Finlay

Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947 - 1985.

Steven M. Gillon. Oxford University Press, $24.95. Why should anyone give two hoots about Americans for Democratic Action? If current relevancy is the test, the book is going to be a very tough sell indeed. That would be a pity because Steven Gillon has produced a solid, unpretentious account of ADA'S first 40 years that has significance beyond the organization. More broadly, this book -- as the subtitle indicates -- provides an instructive look into the postwar crisis of American liberalism. In fact, one could plausibly argue that the tensions -- at first creative and later destructive -- that defined the fate of liberal aspirations are generic to American political movements and therefore equally important in understanding events on the conservative side of the ideological aisle.

The particular struggle that haunted ADA from its earliest momonents was between forces that wanted to create an American version of the Fabian Society as a politically unadulterated, visionary keeper-of-the-faith and pragmatists who sought to preserve ADS's influnce through accomodation with the centers of real political power. From its inception through the early 1960s, ADA helped keep those forces in harness and exerted a portion to its puny membership roll. The consensus, which was shattered bya generational struggle, was probably inevitable but it happened to collide with the civil rights movement and Vietnam.

It was a real train wreck and jolly good fun for conversatives. Although Gillon does not carry his argument to this point, liberals may have the next laugh -- not the last if one believes in political cycles and alternating periods of right-left ascendancy. Thus, when Howard Phillips christened Ronald Reagan a "useful idiot" for communist propaganda, it surely...