A reminder that one of the chapters of, "The Culture of Narcissism, " was published in, "Marxist Perspectives."
From a good piecee by Kevin Mattson on Lasch and the New Left. Note the refs to Hofstadter, Lynd and Lemisch, such as >...13. Jim O'Brien, "'Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible': Staughton Lynd, Jesse Lemisch, and a Committed History," Radical History Review 82 (2002): p. 69; Jesse Lemisch to author, email message, April 23, 2002. For Lasch's criticism of Lynd's politics see Lasch, "Journey to Hanoi," New York Times Book Review, April 23, 1967, 16, 18. For more on the Lynd case, see Christopher Lasch and Al Young, "The Lynd Case," The Nation, October 16, 1967: p. 354 as well as the various letters in the Lasch Papers, including Lasch to Richard Hofstadter October 13, 1967 in Box 2, Folder 7 and to Arthur Schlesinger, January 7, 1968, Box 2, Folder 8.
His book, "Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945–1970, " (University Park: Penn State Press, 2002) is a good read about C.Wright Mills esp. His more recent book on Schlesinger, Galbraith, Niebuhr, was I thought a bit too gentle.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/36.3/mattson.html
>...He offered advice to the White House at a meeting but never
abdicated his role as a critic. When Patrick Caddell, the advisor to
President Carter who got Lasch invited to the White House, asked him
what he thought of the malaise speech, Lasch did not hold back. He
told Caddell that he liked the President's call for civic
responsibility on the part of ordinary citizens. But he also thought
this message cut in different and potentially dangerous directions. He
explained, "Appeals for hard work, discipline, and sacrifice are
likely to fall on deaf ears when addressed, not to those who most need
to hear them, but to people who already work hard and undergo
sacrifices every day through no choice of their own. Such appeals will
only reinforce the prevailing cynicism unless coupled with an
attack—more than a rhetorical attack—on the power and privileges of
elites."
-- Michael Pugliese