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Liberalism is a worldview or political viewpoint that is based on the concepts of equality and liberty. The liberals understand these principles in different ways, and through them they advocate for a wide range of views. They support an array of ideas, including civil rights, free trade, freedom of the press, free and fair elections, as well as private properties amongst others. Economists and philosophers acknowledged liberalism in the age of Enlightenment, the era during which it turned out to be a distinctive political movement. During this time, liberalism rejected a number of common aspects. These included state religion, complete monarchy, the privilege of hereditary, as well as divine rights enjoyed by kings. Locke, who was the founder of liberalism as a distinctive philosophical aspect, put forth that individuals had a right to liberty, life, and property. With reference to this, these rights should be respected by all, including governments, in accordance with the social contract. Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and aimed at replacing totalitarianism in government with the rule of law and democracy.
Many revolutionaries, including Dos Passos, have used liberal viewpoints in order to give explanation for the armed depose of tyrannical rule. During the 19th century, liberal governments were created in various countries, including North America and European nations. Liberal viewpoints reached a wider coverage during the 20th century, which also promoted the victory of the First and Second World Wars by liberal democracies. Although liberalism had significant challenges from communism and fascism, it was able to survive them. Social liberalism arose in North America and European nations and it was associated with the Europe’s social democracy. In Europe, liberalism is linked with dedication to laissez-faire policies and limited government. On the other hand, the United States links liberalism with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program. His rule was characterized by democratic administration that resulted in welfare policies in the state. In the contemporary time, liberalism remains a main theme in many countries across the globe. This is based on the fact that many nations are characterized by liberal political parties with diverse levels of influence and power. This paper discusses the views of John Dos Passos on crisis in liberalism.
Dos Passos’ Views on Liberalism and Crisis
While writing The Big Money, Dos Passos knew that socialism and communism were not adequate solutions to solve the socioeconomic issues that were impacting America at the time. He sought to search for satisfactory alternatives to such problems. Dos Passos has focused on the misapprehension of the American delusion, which shows that the country is a land full of opportunities and people can have and live how they want. These opportunities include good homes and jobs amongst others. Nevertheless, the World War I destroyed individuals and left them injured and weary, whilst others were in search of good future. The search of big money, however, does not result in consciousness, camaraderie, and gratification.
During the early 20th century, it was fundamental to define what America would become in the future. During this time, the nation was sustaining a resolute sovereignty, whilst relinquishing power to the European colonial powers. In the 1930s, the United States developed to the level of sharing the international power and it turned out to be the premier on the international arena as the nation’s inventiveness, wealth, and exportable culture had changed the country, which initially had been seen as a segregated nation. To Dos Passos, the significance of history in illustrating the qualities that turned out to be distilled and integrated into the national character were not lost. He was a social revolutionary who believed the United States as being divided into poor and rich nations. His perception of two parallel countries offers substance to his exceptional multi-media structure. In addition, he was able to deal with tolerance, one of the significant aspects of understanding liberalism. Some observers put forth that America is a non-ideological country (Buckley 1-3). The nation’s political disagreements are not founded on the battlefield of individual thoughts. The political community of the United States, according to Dos Passos, requires a non-ideological person. This is based on the fact that ideological totality and communism are not good for nations as it can bring them down or terrorize them. This is evidenced by the case of Hitler.
Throughout the occurrence of the Spanish Civil War of 1937, Dos Passos changed his viewpoints regarding the communist movement. This is evidenced when he separated from Herbert and Hemingway because of their inconsiderate thoughts regarding the war. The two scholars were also willing to let their names be used in the illusory Stalinist misinformation endeavors, encompassing the conspiracy in the execution of Jose Robles. For Dos Passos and other American liberals, the Spanish Civil War was a definite struggle between the military dictatorship and the Fascists, the economic and social justice, the Loyalists and popular rule. The war brought about dreadful affliction to people who lived in villages. He criticized arrest and execution of Jos Robles because he was a Loyalist. According to Dos Passos, civil liberties need to be safeguarded at each stage. He wrote this after his city life in Spain. Establishment of GPU techniques in Spain by the communists resulted in more destruction, whilst the military and the pilots did well.
According to Dos Passos, the failure of life of the United States is linked with individuals’ failure to sustain honesty and strength of American principles as conveyed in the American delusion of freedom, egalitarianism, equality, and fairness. During the First World War, these notions were used to cover up behaviors that repressed democracy and freedom. This is evidenced by the case when the war affected and over-determined individuals in making choices and living independent lives. As illustrated in the trilogy, the aspects of equality and justice were also suppressed in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. In this case, he experiences frustration and suffering of Vanzetti and Sacco. Dos Passos pointed out the mass media were one of the major explicit falsifiers of equality. The media, which include newspaper publishers, public relations, and statesmen, manipulate the notions of equality in their public responsibilities. A number of Americans have carried on with their lives, expressing the key principles of American idealism.
Dos Passos shows that some figures such as Thorstein Veblen and Frank Wright represent the hope of complete dedication to conventional American ideals and that they can be revived. In spite of the fact that Dos Passos acknowledges that America is divided into two nations, the poor and the weak, the rich and powerful, he recognizes that having informed knowledge may disclose the inequality brought forth by this situation. Although he lacked any idea of bringing the exploited class together with their exploiters in a single country, Dos Passos desired to decline his foundation class and declare his migrant heritage. Through this, he was able to demonstrate failure of social equality in the United States.
Dos Passos’ views on liberalism are also demonstrated in his city life characterized by big forces of business enterprise (Dos Passos 231). For instance, he found his tour to Russia to be full of incongruity. His view on capitalism, which characterized Russia, was criticized by some scholars. According to Dos Passos, the sufferers were the carriers of the disease. Capitalism, which was recognized as large business enterprises, offered opportunities for people (the rich and powerful) to take advantage of others, especially the weak and powerless. He linked this with the human nature, asserting that it was to be held responsible for various ills affecting the society. He affirmed that the government or the economic system of any country was not to blame for capitalism. Dos Passos believed in the significance of individual choice making (Dos Passos 110). This is evidenced in his writings as he supported individualism and defended it against bureaucracy. He argues that social breakdown is not measured by individual suffering as a result of lack of economic resources, but rather as moral disintegration through individual choice making. In this, he means that influences are shaped by history and society, but they do not determine them.
Appreciatively, Dos Passos wrote about Wobblies, as well as the injustice committed to Sacco and Vanzetti. Besides, he joined other key personalities in Europe and the United States, including Mencken, H.L., Dorothy and Heywood Brown in a campaign to turn over their death sentences, yet they failed. The trial against the two was a horrible experience for the American Liberalism (Dos Passos 98-112). The execution made the liberals lose sense of belonging. Sacco and Vanzetti were immigrants and anarchists from Italy who in 1920 were convicted of the assassination of a guard and a paymaster in Massachusetts. The evidence given against the two was insufficient and lacked validity. Additionally, the trial accused two of them. For about seven years, this trial was at the heart of the media and courts. Dos Passos termed the trial as a sequence of attacks and hostilities against the defendants. This detrimental treatment of Sacco and Vanzetti was shocking for the public. For example, the media reported that the trail illustrated a suspicious attitude of the ruling judge. The media sustained that the jury was set to convict the accused and the ruling given by the judge was done with scorn and prejudice.
Of all the notable personalities involved in the case, John Dos Passos was the most involved. Dos Passos covered the case as a reporter and wrote a pamphlet called Facing the Chair (1972), advising the public to denounce the criminal convictions given to Sacco and Vanzetti. In Trilogy U.S.A., Dos Passos wrote in a harsh tone that the court had won and would eliminate their friends (Dos Passos 67). The case against the accused was a working class preoccupation and concern, as indicated by the Worker’s Party of America. To them, the detrimental treatment of the defendants was equal to an assault on a worker. The party termed the convictions of the accused as a political-judicial maneuver intended to weaken the working group. The convictions of the two were a clear indication that America had not passed its political and racial identity of its post-war era. Case of Sacco and Vanzetti happened in the late 1920s, corresponding to the onset of the great Depression, which was a horrible historical phase in America. A few years after the statement about ‘two nations’ by Dos Passos, the city would transform to a new deal and he became a libertarian patriot.
In this novel Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos holds up twentieth-century American rebirth culture and agrarian Spain as customs against which the worship of industrial progress of America might be questioned. Through the use of symbolic imagery, disjointed narratives, as well as a structural technique, Dos Passos sets the traditional agrarian way of life, remembers of the eighteenth century American Enlightenment in opposition to the contemporary industrial life he wrote about, while remarking the probable impacts of changes in the city as it transforms before the camera eye (Dos Passos 1-9). This way, he urges the reader to look forward to ruin and backward to hope. Through the attempt by Dos Passos to recapture the political and moral setting of the American Enlightenment, he asked the public to appreciate the lost world. To him, the recapturing of the Enlightenment values is vital if the human race is to continue moving forward.
Noting gradual death of the American old way of life through his narrative technique, Dos Passos forecasts the death of principles, values, and words, which were considered as the strength of the American ideal. In Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos represents a complete modern industrialism with his illustrations of a developing city and accounts of life before and after the war (Dos Passos 56).
Dos Passos is not in agreement with the policy of the Communist Party, which states that the novel system is familiar to all and it only needs to be applied. The outset of his literature and politics is rooted in an individual’s image pitted against the prevailing discourse. Ironically, this representation is a function of a master narrative on the land of individuals – America, which is the promised land of discovery. Dos Passos is concerned with the experimentation in arts and politics and he emphasizes the revelatory power of literature. His major concern is to portray what no one else can and in a way what can never be forgotten. Dos Passos’ fear of codification, of power concentration in the hands of politicians and businessmen made him take on contentious political positions after he broke with the left. He tried to sustain a paradoxical theme in the 1920s and 1930s, calling for aesthetic experimentation and social reform without relinquishing what he perceived as his artistic sovereignty. Similarly, his major concern was reclaiming the margins. Studies reveal that an explorer should not get contended with only what he thinks is right, but should spread to unchartered territories and seek the minds of unprejudiced people.
As stated earlier, the radicalism of Dos Passos is at the center of the United States’ political culture and he chooses to go back to the base of the republic to explain the parody in the system during his time. According to studies, Micheal Denning made a representation of the fall of the Lincoln Republic in the trilogy. However, it is clear to all that Dos Passos had a double aim both in his non-fiction and fiction. His aim was to condemn the mechanization of politics, while urging all American citizens not to forget their original dream. In a nutshell, Dos Passos uses his radicalism to catalyze his rebellion and he refuses from the solutions put forth by the same radicalism and their personification in the communist party. Dos Passos remains politically and institutionally concerned with the restoration of the America’s symbolic center.
Conclusion
Economists and philosophers acknowledged liberalism in the age of Enlightenment, the era during which it turned out to be a distinctive political movement. The term has been defined as a worldview or political viewpoint that is based on the concepts of equality and liberty. These principles are understood by liberals in different ways, and through them they advocate for a wide range of views. During this time, there were various common aspects that were rejected by liberalism. Traditional conservatism was opposed by the liberals and they aimed at replacing totalitarianism in government with the rule of law and democracy. Liberal viewpoint has been used by many revolutionaries in order to give explanation for the armed depose of tyrannical rule. They included the French and American Revolution Revolutionaries. During the 19th century, liberal governments were created in various countries, including North America and European nations. Liberal viewpoints reached a wider coverage during the 20th century, which also promoted the victory of the First and Second World wars by liberal democracies. Social liberalism arose in North America and European nations and was associated with the Europe’s social democracy. In the contemporary time, liberalism remains a main theme in many countries across the globe. The World War I destroyed individuals and left them injured and weary, whilst others were in search of good future. As such, during the early 20th century, it was fundamental to define what America would become in the future. During this time, the nation was sustaining a resolute sovereignty, whilst relinquishing power to the European colonial powers.
Dos Passos was a social revolutionary who believed that the United States was divided into poor and rich nations. He believed that the significance of history in illustrating the qualities that turned out to be distilled and integrated into the national character was not lost. Besides, he perceived the two parallel countries as important areas that would offer substance to his exceptional multi-media structure. In addition, he was able to deal with tolerance, one of the significant aspects of understanding liberalism. Lastly, the major concerns of Dos Passos were experimentation in arts and politics and he emphasized the revelatory power of literature. He aimed at portraying what no one else could and in a way what could never be forgotten.
Works Cited
Buckley, William F. Up From Liberalism. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1959. Print.
Dos Passos, John. Manhattan Transfer: A Novel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. Print.
Dos Passos, John. The 42nd Parallel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. Print.
Dos Passos, John. The Big Money. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. Print.
Dos Passos, John. U.S.A. Trilogy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.
