The Vital Center

The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom is a 1949 book, by Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., defending liberal democracy and a state regulated market economy against the totalitarianism of communism and fascism.

The argument runs as follows: modern man has been detached from his moorings by capitalism and technology, and searches for a new solidarity and finds this in Communism. However, Communism has in reality been a totalitarian military dictatorship run by the Communist Party since Lenin "exposed Marxist socialism to the play of...influences which divested it of its libertarian elements".[1] Instead of supporting this totalitarian road, a strong and interventionist liberalism is needed, New Deal-style, in the tradition of American leadership in the liberal world order and of the national reforms of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. This would be practical, anti-utopian, and would "restore the balance between individual and community".[2]

Editions

Sources

  1. ↑ The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. 1998. p. 64. ISBN 1-56000-989-6.
  2. ↑ Richard Seymour, The Liberal Defense of Murder (London 2008), p. 122.