The Dialectics of Contemporary Society and the Present Crisis

Abstract

The epigraph at the top of this chapter, from a poem by James Russell Lowell, refers to the crisis caused by slavery in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. James Russell Lowell was an abolitionist who saw slavery as a moral evil and as presenting a political and economic crisis. Eventually, this crisis led to the US Civil War and a transformation in US society. Some have called it the second American Revolution. The world outside the United States also faced crises, as testified by the revolts of 1848. The world of the twenty-first century also faces a present crisis.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of fate,

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—

“They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.”

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;—

Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

(Lowell 1844)