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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 33. The American Pattern of Individual Leadership and Mass Passivity - 2. “Community Leaders” - 3. Mass Passivity
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712 An American Dilemma
ership which permeates the entire American nation. It is incorrect to discuss
Negro leadership except in this general setting. If we should study Negro
leadership as an isolated phenomenon, we should be inclined to ascribe to
the Negro people certain cultural characteristics which are simply Amer-
ican. Actually the Negro, in this as in so many other respects, because of
the peculiar circumstances in which he lives, is an ^^exaggerated American.”
For in all America it is assumed that every group contains leaders who
control the attitudes of the group. Everywhere—not least in idealistic pur-
suits—the method of reaching a goal is assumed to be the indirect one of
first reaching the leaders and, through them, influencing the masses. The
leaders are organized locally in civic clubs of all sorts, and they are conscious
of their role. They create a “public opinion,” the peculiarity of which
becomes apparent when, for instance, it is said about a strike which has
failed, in spite of the fact that practically all the workers—making up the
majority of the population—participate, that “local opinion did not favor
the strikers,” or even more explicitly that “public opinion suppressed the
strike.”
3. Mass Passivity
The other side of this picture is, of course, the relative inertia and inartic-
ulateness of the masses in America. The remarkable lack of self-generating,
self-disciplined, organized people’s movements in America is a significant
historical fact usually overlooked by American historians and social
scientists.
The new continent has always offered fertile soil for “isms,” including
every possible “European-ism” and, in addition, a great variety of home-
grown ones. Communist societies have been built by Shakers, Rappites,
Zoarites, True Inspirationists, and other sects, and by secularized Owenites
and Fourierists. The Mormons experimented with polygamy, as well as
with communism, and the Oneida Community with idealistic unchastIty.
Fantastic slogans of easy money and cheap credit, “ham and eggs,” “thirty
dollars every Thursday,” “share the wealth,” “every man a king,” have
inflamed local sections of opinion and startled the world.
America has had its full share of Utopians and idealists, and much more
than its due of charlatans and demagogues. America is also the country of
countless associations.® For every conceivable “cause” there is at least one
association and often several. De Tocqueville and Bryce observed this, and
it is true today. Americans in the upper and middle classes are great
“joiners” and “supporters” of all sorts of schemes for the common good.
If a proposal makes sense to people, their participation and purse can be
counted on. But somehow the associations seldom reach down to the masses
See Chapter 43, Section 5.
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