“Pluralism” and American History

FEW SCHOLARS HAVE INFLUENCED our thinking about “extremism” as much as Seymour Martin Lipset, professor of social relations at Harvard. The first writer to apply the concept of a “radical Right” to American social movements (in 1951), he later proposed a theory of “working-class authoritarianism.” He has consistently attempted to study the far Right as part of a comprehensive analysis of American politics, arguing that the Right shares with the far Left an intolerance of the amicable group conflict that characterizes pluralist democracy. In an effort to document his theoretical premises, Lipset has joined with Earl Raab, a member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, to compile a massive volume about “right-wing extremism.”

The authors interpret “extremism” in terms of pluralist social theory. American society, they tell us, is composed of varied interest groups, which usually get on pretty well by compromising their interests in “pragmatic” fashion. Each group grants the other’s right to exist, and guarantees its access to the “open marketplace of ideas.” “Extremist” movements, however, are basically “inimical to a pluralism of interests and groups, inimical to a system of many nonsubmissive centers of power and areas of privacy.” Believing that political debates are doctrinal struggles “between good and evil for man’s soul,” ideologues at both extremes deny the “legitimized ambiguity” that is “the genius of American society.” They shun compromise and try to shut down the marketplace of ideas. This kind of behavior is the “antipluralist nub” of “extremism” (or “monism,” a term the authors favor as a synonym).