Le Seul Et Vrai Paradis: Une Histoire De L'idéologie Du Progrès Et De Ses Critiques

by Christopher Lasch

Il s'agit de remettre en cause l'idée de progrès et d'y renoncer pour retourner à une démocratie plus exigeante qui demande intérêt personnel bien compris, ouverture d'esprit, tolérance et vertu civique. Critique du libéralisme par la redécouverte des combats contre le progrès dès le XVIIIe siècle, de penseurs comme Ralph Waldo Emerson et de mouvements comme le mouvement populiste américain.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Cultural, Criticism

510 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 1991

About the author

Christopher "Kit" Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist, and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester.

Lasch sought to use history as a tool to awaken American society to the pervasiveness with which major institutions, public and private, were eroding the competence and independence of families and communities. He strove to create a historically informed social criticism that could teach Americans how to deal with rampant consumerism, proletarianization, and what he famously labeled the 'culture of narcissism.'

His books, including The New Radicalism in America (1965), Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy published posthumously in 1996 were widely discussed and reviewed. The Culture of Narcissism became a surprise best-seller and won the National Book Award in the category Current Interest (paperback).

Lasch was always a critic of liberalism, and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he began to become a far more iconoclastic figure, fusing cultural conservatism with a Marxian critique of capitalism, and drawing on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings during this period are considered contradictory. They are sometimes denounced by feminists and hailed by conservatives for his apparent defense of the traditional family. But as he explained in one of his books The Minimal Self, "it goes without saying that sexual equality in itself remains an eminently desirable objective...". Moreover, in Women and the Common Life, Lasch clarified that urging women to abandon the household and forcing them into a position of economic dependence, in the workplace, pointing out the importance of professional careers does not entail liberation, as long as these careers are governed by the requirements of corporate economy.

He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood Populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

This inquiry began with a deceptively simple question. How does it happen that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once and for all?

So opens The True and Only Heaven, Christopher Lasch's penultimate book of cultural criticism. There have been many such critiques aimed at the United States over the past half-century—most more jeremiad than reasoned analysis—but I have always believed Lasch to produce not only the most thoughtful of such works, but the best written. He began as an exuberant leftist, but became increasingly disillusioned and dismayed by Stalinist excesses and Khruschevian failures and their corrosive influence on the West. Finding himself deeply troubled by the emergence of the New Left in the sixties, he commenced a continuously evolving marriage of left-wing and conservative thought, a union that allowed him his unique voice in criticizing the course of Western democratic capitalism—and the US in particular. Lasch's prime target became the curious hybrid of capitalist progressivism that he deemed so enervating and destructive to the roots of Western family, society, and culture.

Lasch traces the history and arguments of thinkers such as Rousseau, a patron saint of early Modernity (and modern Romanticism), Adam Smith, the father of Liberal Capitalism, and Edmund Burke, sire of Conservatism, moving into more detailed focus of such progress doubters as Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and societal critics like Max Weber, Walter Lippmann, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Emerson, in particular, is singled out for his cautions, as espoused in his essays Fate and History, which were turning points for the author in developing his reformed point of view. There are also analyses of the early American Populist movement, centered on William Jennings Bryan, and the less known agrarian movement, proceeding into the full-on industrial swing the US took during and after the Second World War, and the massive social upheaval of the sixties and seventies with the civil rights movement, full-flowered feminism, sexual liberation, the emergence of an entrenched corporate and civic elite, the dissipation of the nuclear family, the narcissistic turn inwards of the self, etc. While Lasch reviews the development of progressive ideology throughout the Twentieth Century with a narrowed eye, he is not critiquing from the jaundiced depths of nostalgia, as he viewed the latter sentiment as the idealization of the past, a reverse illusion to that of progress as the idealization of the future and an inability to ask pertinent questions about the direction society is heading.

As I mentioned before, these critiques have been done many times—what I particularly enjoy about Lasch is the dry wit, the erudition, the exposure to different ways of thinking about problems that do not come naturally to me. I certainly found myself disagreeing with several of his interpretations, but always in a way that made me question how certain I actually was of my own point of view. In particular, his juxtaposition of the Kennedy Hero mystique versus Martin Luther King's truly heroic social work, courage and vision is brilliant. It was also Lasch who steered me towards Carlyle and Niebuhr, whose works I have since gone on to sample.

Like so many of his fellow critics, Lasch could do little but outline the errors society had made, with little substantial and (more importantly) realistic ideas for improvement. Such works always serve better as cautionary tales and warning signs, pointers towards select areas where some initial changes could possibly be effected. What they are forced to acknowledge (and he does) is that a majority of the population wants to live in the society that they do and really could not care less that such a society seems unworthy and perilous to the likes of the author. Nevertheless, the melancholy Cassandra is a brilliant thinker and wonderful writer, and though his earlier book The Culture of Narcissism was much better known, The True and Only Heaven is his greatest achievement.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadly this was my first Christopher Lasch experience. He was a great writer and thinker to say the very least. Lasch and, my favorite historian John Lukacs, are similar in their attitudes towards the middle class and the cult of progress. However, unlike Lasch and Lukacs, I do not give as much credit to the middle class. Still, this is required reading for anyone displeased with ideology and our baby-boomer progressives.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"True and Only Heaven" is Christopher Lasch at his dense best. Master of the run-on sentence, Lasch manages to cram so much history into one amazing work, unified by its reverent look at those throughout history who questioned the dogma of progress that rules modern society. Admittedly, his structure of various essays can prove confusing to new readers. It's quasi-sequential but not really, yet somehow flowing beautifully through so many figures, those remembered and widely forgotten too. The sense of continuity exists through the linkage of ideas. Lasch's brilliance constantly shines through. He finds the little-known works, the forgotten ideas espoused by great thinkers. All these thinkers are unified by

It took me a few days to synthesize all my notes into something coherent and meaningful to review because I was internalizing the big picture. He ties together men of the left (Georges Sorel) and those revered by the right (Carlyle). From puritan Jonathan Edwards to Reinhold Niebuhr to Martin Luther King Jr., Lasch's perspective comes from his middle American Protestantism. Therefore, his work is imbued not just with politics but with culture and theology. This gives it a level of depth that reveals so much about American history.

In essence, Lasch writes 500+ pages to convey that the petit-bourgeois ethic of proprietorship, acceptance of limits, respect for the particular over the universal, and appreciation for virtue and heroism is worthy of our effort. On the other hand, a blind faith in progress dominates political and economic institutions. Guided by the rejection of limits, it believes we can tame the world, tame nature, and tame human nature itself. Things get better automatically; this historical dynamism exists not just in Marxism but in capitalist modernization theory too (160). Problematically, this flattens history and removes peoples' agency. Instead of providing the mythology for action, it breeds passivity. Progress in unfettered form also leads to nostalgia, with its static notions of the past, and pessimism when people confront the real imperfections and evils that exist. Societal elites, especially through the 20th century, sought to tuck away populist values. Even those on the left paid more attention to consumers than to producers, betraying the left represented by American populists and syndicalists. More recently, Lasch notes, the left refused to acknowledge populists' values so the right cynically wielded them against a nebulous new class.

Lasch ends with a call for us to free ourselves by recognizing limits and renouncing resentment. By acknowledging tragedy and evil, we can get to the kind of hope he professes and abandon the dualism of optimism and pessimism. Instead of seeing values of family, tradition, community, nation as "cultural lag", we must uphold the merit in lower-middle-class values.

Under the crushing weight of our news cycle, it's more important than ever to take Lasch's calls to heart. You don't have to agree with everything he says or even like every figure he profiles to take some important lessons from "The True and Only Heaven". Indeed, together we should "assert the goodness of life in the face of its limits" (530). Find communion in close friends and family (165). Put economic abundance on the back burner and think of other concerns, like how to rebuild decentralized communities (328). Especially in light of Black Lives Matter, we must fight for justice while keeping in mind the "spiritual discipline against resentment" (378). COVID-19 exemplifies how maligned our sense of control is. No matter how far we think we've come, our societies have been brought to their knees by a microscopic non-living organism. Stuck in the fear of getting ill or losing family, the current situation should push us to accept the limitations of our existence. If Lasch is right, only this will free us from the despair that accompanies a blow to the ostensibly inexorable march of progress.

[Sean Chick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lasch's last work is an examination of the idea of progress and its critics from all walks of life. His ultimate argument is that progressives had a growing distrust of the masses creating an elite that aligned itself with capitalism and technocracy instead of the masses. By the 1990s the left had fully become neoliberal, anti-democratic, and permissive. In other words, the Democratic Party of the Clintons. This means populism, lacking a home in the right or left, veers between the two. Like Lasch, it is an ideology without a home, and ends up shooting in both directions. Hence why Lasch, despite is deep mistrust of capitalism, is sometimes called a conservative. He is a thinker without a home, a constant critic who offers no balm for either side and its pretensions.

The whole work seems wiser today, in 2016 with Trump and Clinton, than in 1991. We have not escaped the boomer elite, which Lasch sees as the synthesis of years of gradual progressive disillusionment with the white non-college educated. In addition, his take on Martin Luther King, his dramatic success and later failures, is among the best I have ever read.

[Steve Greenleaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book.

Let me repeat it: this is a great book. My justification for this claim? It’s a work of American history (overwhelmingly, but not exclusively) and a work of social and intellectual criticism that addresses a huge topic (“progress”) and ranges over American social and political practice and thought from the eighteenth century to the recent past. It reads as a series of essays—even mini-essays under various section headings—that explore aspects of the American experience that relate to the idea—the hope—and the illusion—of political, social, and economic progress.

I read it in part when I purchased my paperback copy in “August 1991” (inside the front flap). But it’s a fat book—570 pages of text that includes a terrific Bibliographic Essay—and I was short on time and attention (family, law practice, and the seductive allure of other books). Then just earlier this month, I heard it calling to me (metaphorically speaking, I hasten to add) from my bookshelf, where—oh, happy day!—it was not imprisoned in boxes or shelves far away where too many of my other books lie in their Babylonian captivity. But why now? Why this felicitous choice?

If my reading has a theme this year, it’s “What the hell is wrong with American political life? How is it possible that an imposter like Trump—a man whose disqualifications are so well known and too long to list here—was ever elected or considered for election again now?” In exploring this topic, I’ve been resorting to current examinations of this topic, as well as those whose works I explored or was introduced to in the 1970s as an undergraduate and law student at the University of Iowa. (Lasch did a stint at Iowa, but, alas, before my time there.) I don’t recall Lasch being assigned reading in any course, or my reading him until after law school. But I did read his trio of works that gained prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (1977), The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979), and The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times (1984). I recall being intrigued and impressed with his arguments in those works, and those responses no doubt led to my purchase of The True and Only Heaven shortly after it was published.

The thesis of The True and Only Heaven is plainly stated by Lasch:

This inquiry began with a deceptively simple question. How does it happen that serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once and for all?

Lasch, Christopher. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (pp. 13-14). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Some elucidation on this theme:

Once we recognize the profound differences between the Christian view of history, prophetic or millennarian, and the modern conception of progress, we can understand what was so original about the latter: not the promise of a secular Utopia that would bring history to a happy ending but the promise of steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all. The expectation of indefinite, open-ended improvement, even more than the insistence that improvement can come only through human effort, provides the solution to the puzzle that is otherwise so baffling—the resilience of progressive ideology in the face of discouraging events that have shattered the illusion of utopia. The idea of progress never rested mainly on the promise of an ideal society—not at least in its Anglo-American version. Historians have exaggerated the utopian component in progressive ideology. The modern conception of history is utopian only in its assumption that modern history has no foreseeable conclusion. We take our cue from science, at once the source of our material achievements and the model of cumulative, self-perpetuating inquiry, which guarantees its continuation precisely by its willingness to submit every advance to the risk of supersession.

. . . .

Whatever else we can say about the future, it appears that we can safely take for granted its sophisticated contempt for the rudimentary quality of our present ways. We can imagine that our civilization might blow itself up—and the prospect of its suicide has a certain illicit appeal, since at least it satisfies the starved sense of an ending—but we cannot imagine that it might die a natural death, like the great civilizations of the past. That civilizations pass through a life cycle analogous to the biological rhythm of birth, maturity, old age, and death now strikes us as another discredited superstition, like the immortality of the soul. Only science, we suppose, is immortal; and although the unlikelihood of its melting away can be experienced even more intensely, perhaps, as a curse than as a blessing, the apparently irreversible character of its historical development defines the modern sense of time and makes it unnecessary to raise the question that haunted our predecessors: how should nations conduct themselves under sentence of death?

Lasch, Christopher. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (pp. 47-49). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Progress, along with “optimism,” are the primary concerns of Lasch. In Lasch’s view, “hope” is the opposite of “optimism.” And in contrast to “progress,” Lasch preaches enduring values, such as democracy, family, moral responsibility, and limits. Indeed, although not emphasized in his lengthy book, Lasch references the ecological constraints to which all societies are subject. This was in 1991, when our appreciation of the realities and threats of climate change and increasing environmental degradation were just coming into focus (for some).

So what does Lasch do in the rest of the book? In brief sections, he discusses the thinkers and movements that have promoted and challenged the ideas of progress and optimism. The thinkers he examines includes (in an abbreviated) Adam Smith, Henry George, Keynes, Burke, Marx, Tom Paine, Willlam Cobbett, Orestes Brownson, Locke, Thomas Carlyle, Jonathan Edwards, Emerson, William James, George Sorel, G.D.H. Cole, Herbert Croly, Van Wyk Brooks, Lewis Mumford, Josiah Royce, Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurman Arnold Gunnar Myrdal, and a host of others. And Lasch, unlike what I just did, was not just dropping names. He explores the implications of their thought and influence in brief mini-essays that I referenced above. As to movements and schools of thought, he addresses Puritanism, nostalgia, cosmopolitanism, the Enlightenment, Marxism, modernization theory, liberalism, republicanism, communitarianism, populism, guild socialism, syndicalism, populism, cultural pluralism, Progressivism, Christianity, the civil rights movement, the new class, the New Right (1980s style), the anti-busing movement, and consumerism—again, just a brief list. And I must emphasize, he just doesn’t mention these topics, he explores them as a part of this overall project. I am awed at his erudition. Each topic he addresses provides an avenue for further exploration, aided by his rich Bibliographic Essay. (How I love a fine bibliographic essay!)

I’m glad that I’ve gotten this far in writing about this book, as the greater the book, the more difficult I find it to write about, as it tends to overwhelm me. I’m always forced to warn any reader that my meager attempt with a few words of praise doesn’t do justice to my subject. So here.

And do I agree with him? Yes, in large measure. When he suggests that he was led into this project by stating the following in the opening chapter on “The Current Mood” circa 1991, we can’t help but to be taken in:

The premise underlying this investigation—that old political ideologies have exhausted their capacity either to explain events or to inspire men and women to constructive action—needs an introductory word of explanation. The unexpected resurgence of the right, not only in the United States but throughout much of the Western world, has thrown the left into confusion and called into question all its old assumptions about the future: that the course of history favored the left; that the right would never recover from the defeats it suffered during the era of liberal and social democratic ascendancy; that some form of socialism, at the very least a more vigorous form of the welfare state, would soon replace free-market capitalism. Who would have predicted, twenty-five years ago, that as the twentieth century approached its end, it would be the left that was everywhere in retreat?

Lasch, Christopher. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (pp. 21-22). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

I trust you can appreciate why I found this book so accurately addresses my concerns (and those of many others) in this time of troubles. We can only imagine what Lasch, were he alive today, would say about our plight. (He died too young in 1994, aged 61.) He would have reason to conclude that his early diagnosis has been born out by further events, but I also very much doubt that this conclusion would please him or that it would lead him to lay down his pen in despair. He was not a man of optimism; he was a man of hope. And it’s a sense of hope, against the odds, despite it all, that I take away from this book. If we have some insight, we have some measure of hope, and this is perhaps all that we should expect. Hope allows perseverance, and perseverance is a great part of what we humans are about.

[Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, without a doubt, the most important work of American political thought written in the past half century. Probably the most important work since Hannah Arendt. If you wish to understand the trajectory of American politics from the Gilded Age through to the present, give Lasch a go. He'll challenge everything you've ever thought.

Briefly stated, Lasch sees the central question of contemporary political life as this: What will replace proprietorship as the material foundation of civic virtue? Lasch never arrives at an answer, but instead sketches out the history of a subterranean populist current in Anglophone thought—a tradition that is defined by its insistence on the reality and necessity of limits to human power, the evil of wage labor, the virtue of universal small proprietorship, an ethic of producerism rather than consumerism, a defense of provincialism against cosmopolitanism, and the affirmation of life's essential goodness as well as the inescapability of tragedy. It is comprised of figures as diverse as Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, Raymond Williams, William Cobbett, William James, Josiah Royce, the early MLK, and Georges Sorel. In this counter tradition, Lasch finds solid ground on which to build a critique of the cult of "progress" and "improvement," embodied in everything from Marxism, to Reaganism, to the liberal cult of expertise and scientific management.

This is an often dispriting work. Time and again while reading it, I had to put it down, as the refrain to his narrative is that, over and over, the voices most willing to decry industrialism, centralization, and urbanization were stamped into the dust by the proponents of feverish progress. Every time, those who oppose the gravest evils of the modern world—the rape of the environment, the transformation of self-made craftsmen and artisans into unskilled subliterate proletarians, the killing of the unborn—are dismissed by all sides as mere nostalgic whiners, simpletons, or "fascists." It isn't clear where we go from here, but it is clear that the belief in progress is a dead end, and the climate crisis serves as an unavoidable reminder that hard limits are real, and that to seek to transcend them is, well, to fall into sin as well as folly. A fundamental rethinking is required, and perhaps the tools for digging ourselves out are available in the producerist legacy that Lasch so masterfully outlines.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Lasch with the Freud sanded off and a pathological urge to anticipate every last historical objection to his central arguments, among which: getting high on pure possibility seems like a good deal if you're smart or rich, but probably isn't even if you are.

Not sure this is the Lasch you should read if you're just getting into him, but it's the one you want if his earlier books struck a nerve but felt abstracted by their psychoanalytic detours or otherwise incomplete.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I learned from this book: Expect less of life and more of yourself.
And I should add there is a reading of the successes and failures of the civil rights movement that is challenging and disagreeable, but difficult to disbelieve.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite its conclusions, this is a tremendous work of intellectual and cultural history. Speaking mainly about his work in the late 1970s and early 1980s, George Scialabba has written that Lasch did not turn rightward, but 'inward.' While many of Lasch's concerns and conclusions - principally that we have sacrificed virtue and community to the false idols of 'progress' and optimism- seem to be of a piece with the New Right, he is I think justified in at least raising the objection (as Jackson Lears did in No Place of Grace), that we should not idly dismiss the concerns of the Right, or anti-modernism in general. Lears writes more from a version of the Left, while Lasch insists that he is beyond or outside of contemporary understandings of Left and Right, but I think it is valid to submit that we should not allow things like Family, Community, etc to become the exclusive purview of the Right Wing, and that it is dangerous (or at least not analytically fruitful) to dismiss the desire for "traditional community" as provincial, or paranoid. Lasch dismisses the contemporary (1991) division between Left and Right, in that they are unified in their face in 'progress' Reagan's paeans to traditionalism were essentially a bullshit rhetorical device to mask the degree to which he was attempting to restructure global economics to pave the way to his ideal future (something Lasch and I can comfortably agree on).

Lasch is both anti-modern and radical, he opposes blind faith in progress and identifies himself with 19th century populism, anti-Enlightenment American idealism (Emerson), and the Heroic ideal as embodied by Sorel, before he and it had their legacies ruined by Fascism. Although the 19th century populist tradition he is drawn seems less Bryan's than Debs's not-so-Marxist American mid-western socialism, he wants to return to a producerist ethos, rather than embrace a consumerist one. I don't think Lasch was becoming any sort of neo-conservative in the 1990s sense, but does perhaps represent a direction that neo-conservativism could have taken (or maybe appeared to be taking) in 1965. I'm not interested in going there with him, but it's a position worth listening to, certainly more worth listening to than any other variant of neoconservative thought, particularly because he wrote beautifully and showed such an impressive command of American History. He loses me in his defense of particularism and parochialism, and in his defense of Burke's defense of prejudice. Particularly through his belief that the failure of the Civil Rights Movement was in King's efforts to move from the immediate needs of a provincial Black Southern culture toward abstract principles of global justice, which he sees as a switch from the politics of forgiveness to the politics of resentment and rage. He rejects also the condescension of educated elites who thinks that they know better than the lower middle class...but, he's wrong, and they often do.

[Mark Greenbaum · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not light lifting, and there is a lot of self-indulgence and useless tangents into unnecessary terrain, but in between is brilliant, deeply thought-provoking, and frighteningly prescient analysis of the fall of American left and the rise of right wing populism -- all written while George H.W. Bush still occupied the White House. Today, as scribes and scholars continue to grapple with the rise of a gelatinous con artist to the highest elective office in the world, many of their diagnoses were lodged by Lasch in 1991.

The Democratic Party sold out its progressive DNA, embraced big business, and in becoming economically indistinguishable from the GOP, became vulnerable to the right's use of the fake populism of social wedges as a weapon to set the political debates in this country -- and stay on the perpetual offensive. The taking up of the mantle of intellectualism and implicit and explicit shaming of the undereducated working class. The reflexive touting of endless progress through technology while not once considering the danger of forsaking the dignity and stability of work. It was all here. His whaling on the Watergate babies' technocraticism and the icy detached intellectualism of Michael Dukakis could have not just prevented candidates like Hillary Clinton, but John Kerry and Al Gore too! Note to Warren 2020 cadres: wake up! Lasch nails this point, btw: backlash to eggheads is more fervent, and more violent and personal, than it is to any policy disagreement or ideological impasse. It is too late to use these lessons to mold a new New Deal Democratic Party for 2016. But, improbably, astonishingly, these observations are no less urgent and accurate today.

This book made me think. It made me look at the moral and cultural codes polite society has created and which are never questioned, and consider the perspectives of those upon whom these sacrosanct strictures have been imposed. Their chafing is not always so unreasonable. The solutions liberalism has fashioned are not so neat and positive. This will take some time, but if you're interested in looking at your political beliefs under hot light, it's worth the effort.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

smart went crazy, also went slightly dumb

I am all for polemics striking at the panko-crusted heart of bourgeois liberalism but this is a bit tweedy for me. Some legit greatness in here, also a whale tank full of pedantry

[Rodrigo Domínguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two months and three books behind in my 2022 Reading Challenge. Was it worth it? Every. Damn. Page.

Ever since I got my hands on The Culture of Narcissism (early 2021) Christopher Lasch has become a powerful presence in my political reawakening. The True and Only Heaven takes those ideas, strips them off the Freudian nonsense, and systematically works them into a hitherto unmatched political analysis, eerily well-suited for our present time despite being thirty years old.

Allow me to go into detail (awful long read and spoilers ahead)

The book starts off with a provocation, the first chapter being named "The Obsolescence of Left and Right". Lasch takes the concepts of Left and the Right, as understood in modern times, and collapses them under the question of progress and modernity, revealing that "the ideological distinctions between liberalism and conservatism no longer stand for anything or define the lines of political debate".

Lasch identifies the root of our malaise not in the empty ideological rhetoric of both sides, but in the bipartisan abandonment of the idea of limits, with liberalism as its main apostle and Burkean conservatism as an intellectually and morally deficient pseudo-alternative. In short, Lasch decries what few in mainstream political debate even think to decry: "our obsession with sex, violence, and the pornography of "making it"; our addictive dependence on drugs, "entertainment", and the evening news; our impatience with anything that limits our sovereign freedom of choice, especially with the constraints of marital and familial ties; our preference for "nonbinding commitments; our third-rate educational system; our third-rate morality...".

For the rest of the book's first half, Lasch provides a detailed account of "the idea of progress", citing an array of thinkers that go from St. Augustine to Georges Sorel. This histographical gesture is not trivial; by accounting for the (relatively recent) origins of progressive though, Lasch is able to break us free from the spell of its inevitability while introducing us to rich intellectual traditions which have since time immemorial warned us against the arrogance of rationality and the dangers of selfish desire. Such traditions include, but are not limited to, Christianity, Romanticism, Republicanism, and Syndicalism. Lasch does not claim that these traditions exist in a monolith, but that they are united against progressives in their "willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of some higher cause [which] itself serves an important human need [...] that would be systematically thwarted in the age of abundance" and that, finally, "the attraction of progressive ideology [...] turns out to be its greatest weakness: its rejection of a heroic conception of life."

For a book this long and broad, its most admirable feature its is internal consistency. In his characteristic style, Lasch takes long detours through Smithean and Keynesian economics, pastoral idyllic literature, Burkean conservatism, Marxism, Durkheimian sociology, the Gilded Age, agrarian Jeffersonian Democracy, Calvinism and Puritanism, only to end up reinforcing the thesis that there is a fundamental, almost existential divide which most mainstream political discourse misses completely.

Lasch highlights the dichotomies not of Right versus Left, good versus evil, or knowledge versus ignorance, but of radically different conceptions of the good life. One, Godless, modern, and humanist, sees no higher reason to life that self-expression and self-gratification, and ends up a hydra of technocracy, cosmopolitanism, nihilism, neo-pagan spirituality, postmodern philosophy, and capitalist consumerism (even when it masks as anti-capitalist). The other, much harder to nail down, is presented an equally multi-faceted resistance which refuses to believe in "the conquest of necessity and the substitution of human choice for the blind workings of nature...[and] an unquestioning faith in the capacity of rational intelligence to solve the mysteries of human existence"
instead choosing to focus on virtue, sacrifice, wonder, and on "accept[ing] the central paradox of religious faith: that the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy."

To me these ideas ring true and eternal. I identify in them not the epiphany of a new and exciting theory, but the lucid articulation of what I've always unknowingly believed. Indeed, I can now understand my journey through leftism as a search for those same transcendent self-denying impulses, to be found in the rejection of capitalist greed and the embracing of a communal ethics. My own disillusionment, as I presume is the case with many other ex-leftists, came from finally seeing both Marxism and social democracy as fundamentally materialist ideologies, deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, different from liberal capitalism in their degree of impatience but identical in their goal to achieve universal affluence through technical management. I suspect a similar dynamic goes on in the right-wing, with skeptics of modernity deserting the ranks of fascists, neocons, and libertarians who don't see any problem with the money-power behemoth.

But does this all not amount to self-help? The very liberal creed of live-and-let-live would have us believe ethic and aesthetic appreciations regarding the good life are to be treated like consumer choices, available in a wide range of flavors for everyone to enjoy their preference. This is more or less the challenge kindred spirit George Scialabba presents not just to Christopher Lasch but to other anti-progressives like Ivan Illich and Wendell Berry. Scialabba can't but concede to the Laschian view of the good life and lament what we have lost to modernity. He encourages us to cultivate civic and martial virtue in our private lives, but rejects the need to build "a whole world of heroes" as Lasch puts it. Scialabba fears, and not without reason, that politizicing virtue will inevitable invite the ghost of Nietzsche, and possibly even the ghost of fascism.

But what does Scialabba have to say about the dangers of a society which refuses to make virtue a public matter? Of "the inadequacy of a morality that identified good with pleasure and evil with pain"? As it has been pointed by Chesterton, Agamben, Foster Wallace, and Lasch himself, one does not kill a god without a new god taking its place. Or in this case, a demon: Mammon, "basest of known Gods, even of known devils", as Lasch quotes Carlyle in the book. The deep insight at the heart of all anti-materialist and anti-modern doctrines is that human desire, when not tempered by something like civism or religion, will rain holy hell down upon us. In less dramatic terms, it means that even the humble liberal institutions Scialabba cherishes (rule of law, accountability, truthfulness, compassion, and equality) are untenable in a world ruled by "thoughtless individualism which is loyal to nothing". It means you either have eternal values or you have sex, money, and power. You either have virtue or you have vice.

This apparently simple insight accounts for the failure of communism, fascism, capitalism, and arguably of the entire project of modernity. Marxists said virtue doesn't matter as long as workers are in power. Liberals said we could dispense with it as long as we had solid institutions and a free market. Turns out they were all wrong; without virtue, corruption finds its way into both the market and the State, and into the roots of society itself. Lasch quotes the young Santayana: "if a noble and civilized democracy is to subsist, the common man [and woman] must be something of a saint and something of a hero". This is why I say their critique is unsurpassed as far as I know: it takes off where modern ideologies end. This is also why it can and must be turned into a political project.

The final part of the book, like most of Lasch's work, reads like if it could have been written last week. Lasch takes on liberalism as it has existed since the Progressive Era in the United States and Europe, and finds in it many all-too familiar patterns. He talks about "cosmopolitanism [...] a rootless self-seeking for a place where the most enjoyment may be had at the least cost" and I'm instantly reminded of my peers who happily brain-drain our countries in exchange for exotic foods and fancy consumer products. He talks about "the belief that money is the main thing" as I find myself inmersed in a climate of ruthless careerism, vain salary-flaunting, and worship of "the bitch goddess, success". He talks about "the modern mind: of its shallowness and complacency, its unmerited sense of superiority to the past, its fascination with the future, its underlying indifference to the future" as modern AI and biotech threatens to anihilate our humanity. He talks about the civil rights movement, and how, after the downfall of Marin Luther King whom he admires, it slowly devolved into the ugliest of racial hatreds. He talks about the attack on religion and the family at a time when I would be instantly suspect of crypto-fascism in some circles for declaring myself a believer and friend of the family.

"Chapter 10: The Politics of the Civilized Minority" is specially relevant to us. Here he talks about the new class's (now fancily called the Professional Managerial Class) and its "low opinion of the workers they profess to champion", whom they decry as irredeemably racist, authoritarian and backward for not buying into their "enlightened" ideas (nor does he fail to mention the PMC is usually shielded from their disastrous experiments). For them, "democracy consisted of giving people what they wanted —more of everything presumably— but not in listening to their advice about how to get it" and not for a moment thinking this could harm civic character. Thus, democracy came to mean not rule by the majority but rule by an enlightened progressive elite.

He identifies in this not only the technocratic impulse and the therapeutic impulse, but the authoritarian impulse as well: of an ever-expanding expert State empowered to take children from their parents, to institutionalize education and healthcare, to take away citizens' arms while at the same time making a virtue of being soft on crime. He also talks about the resentment of that same working class which, in the absence of a true populist movement championing lower-middle class values and defending their way of life, turned to proto-fascist demagogues like Charles Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith, Lawrence Dennis, Charles Lindbergh, and (to a more nuanced extent), Huey P. Long.

How is this not a replica of our present moment? Of Hillary Clinton and her "basket of deplorables" clearing the way for Trump, himself a demagogue millionaire who nonetheless spoke to the working class's values and anxieties? Of the heavy-handed response to COVID-19 which told us to shove our questions and concerns down our throats and "trust the experts and their science"? Of the hate-fueled racial conflicts we were told would be solved by State-prescribed desegregation and affirmative action, and by defering to the most radical of black power activists? Of the endemic corruption at the highest levels of both government and industry uncovered by brave whistleblowers? And those are just the macro consequences. When Lasch talks about the atomization of society, about the threat of advertising and cheap entertainment, about the damaged relations between the genders, about the meaninglessness of modern work, and about the generalized unhappiness and unwholesomeness brought about by hedonist individualism, I look around to a world of TikTok and Instagram influencers, of mass shootings, of unprecedented State and corporate power, of declining middle-class living standards, and of widespread prescription drug abuse. I look around and I think to myself: is this the utopia they promised us?

It thus becomes clear to me that something needs to be done. Lasch is humble and sane enough to not offer ready-made answers to the tough questions he asks. He limits himself to the suggestion that we might find inspiration in the populist tradition of yesterday ("populist" being a label I hesitate to use, given what has become of it in recent years). While I can agree with this impulse and feel strongly about the need to stand with the common man and woman against progressive elites, I would warn any readers against optimism.

Coming from both a Lacanian and a Christian worldview, I cannot help but believe the forces of selfish desire are pre-political and even meta-political. While it is certain that liberal progressive ideology has set itself to free these forces from traditional safeguards, it is by no means clear to me that anything could have been done to prevent it. What we call sin is not a bug tragically introduced by miscalculation, but an undeniable feature of existence we must live in constant struggle against. But even here Lasch can offer us insight, as he does in "Chapter 9: The Spiritual Discipline Against Resentment". Here he opposes optimism to hope, and talks about "hope without optimism" as an existencial attitude. Perhaps too secular to state it more openly, Lasch nonetheless admits to the tragic character of life when he reminds us that "to be a Christian one must take up his cross". The question of how to reconcile this spiritual insight with political action turns into the question of how to reconcile the fact of human imperfectibility with the desire to improve our lives. The answer of course, remains open for debate.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is common knowledge that the vast majority of sociology is completely worthless, or worse than worthless, and that “social science” is an oxymoron. Still, the study of the societies of man can be a worthwhile discipline, as a branch of humanities, not the sciences. To be sure, the number of modern authors writing in this discipline who are valuable can be counted on one hand, the hand of a man who earlier had an accident involving a table saw. But Christopher Lasch, who died thirty years ago, should be counted in that small group, and this work, his attack on the American gospel of eternal progress, is even more relevant today than when it was written in 1991.

Lasch, who died in 1994, was a man out of time, a refugee leftist who nonetheless refused to embrace what passed for conservatism in the post-Communist false dawn, the main feature of which was idolatry of the invisible hand. (His “turn away from leftism” began when he chose to “question the left’s program of sexual liberation, careers for women, and professional child care.”) No surprise, his message was rejected not only by his peers, but by its intended broader audience, America’s intellectual class. For none of his works was that more true than his last, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, published immediately after he died (he had refused chemotherapy for metastatic cancer, saying “I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.”). That book was a frontal attack on the professional-managerial elite, the slice of society at the top quintile, a group which has only tightened its parasitical stranglehold on America in the past thirty years.

Since Lasch’s day, every one of the problems with our society he talked about has grown to monstrous size. The only group pushing back has been the Right—not Uniparty Republicans (what Lasch thought of as the Right), but the actual Right, which has never had any power at all, and therefore had no success at all. Thus, it has seemed, in the decades since this book, that there was nothing to be done, which led some on the Right to adopt the position of Scrutonism, in love with being a beautiful loser. But in one of history’s inevitable unexpected twists, the heady days of early 2025 feel like a new dawn, suggesting as the actual Right gains power that finally, maybe, we can execute solutions for some of our society’s problems. Lasch’s thought is very valuable for clearly identifying and delineating those problems, which makes his books eminently worth studying.

The book’s title comes from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1843 short story, “The Celestial Railroad.” In that tale, a technologically-updated takeoff on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Hawthorne satirized progressive religious leaders of his day. In his modern version of Vanity Fair, Bunyan’s city of worldly distractions which tempts Christians to stray from the straight path, its residents claim it to be “the true and only heaven,” and reject any interest in the actual Celestial City, further up the road. What Lasch means to imply is that Americans have long been seduced by past progress, or apparent progress, primarily economic but also moral, into believing that progress is the be-all and end-all of human existence, the “promised land.” They further believe, falsely, that such progress can be infinitely extended and multiplied, and that this “truth” makes consideration of all other values unimportant.

Lasch’s overarching aim in this book is to reject “the old political ideologies,” which “have exhausted their capacity to explain events or to inspire men and women to constructive action.” He refers, first, to the ideology he calls “liberalism.” In Lasch’s typology, this is not precisely the Left, although there is a large overlap. Rather, it means at root economic liberalism, a type of political economy, resulting from the intersection of the Industrial Revolution with lines of Left-allied thought derived from the so-called Enlightenment. The second ideology is that of the “New Right,” by which Lasch means Reaganism. (He mentions only a handful of other Right figures as not part of the New Right, notably the illustrious Paul Gottfried, still alive and vindicated more every day, and correctly ascribes to them little power or relevance to mainstream social thought, in 1991 at least.) Most of Lasch’s focus in this six-hundred-page book, however, is on liberalism, counterpoised against those American thinkers who rejected liberalism. They were not men of the Right, but they rejected belief in progress—not in favor of some other ideology, but because of the defects they saw in liberalism. The frame of the book is an exhaustive tracing of the thought of both the apostles of progress and their critics, despite, or because of, that the latter are largely forgotten and the former are embedded into the premises of modern America.

Lasch blames liberalism for that “serious people continue to believe in progress, in the face of massive evidence that might have been expected to refute the idea of progress once and for all.” By “progress” he means primarily an increase in consumption, although he also means, to some degree, supposed progress in social organization, most of all in the suppression of the traditional core moral values of the “petty bourgeoise.” Lasch believes that the hard limit on progress is resource depletion and environmental catastrophe, and that the soft limit is that when progress is made the only important goal for a society it ultimately destroys the fiber of that society. We have lost “a sense of limits,” and without that, we will all come to grief. (No doubt Lasch would have thought highly of Thomas Sowell’s famous A Conflict of Visions, a similar work which counterpoises the “constrained vision” with the “unconstrained vision.”)

The author begins, naturally enough, with a discussion of how the modern conception of progress arose. He rejects the idea that the modern belief in progress is a secularized version of the Christian idea of providence, an idea pushed by Robert Nisbet and A. J. P. Taylor. (The sheer volume of thought discussed in this book is daunting; Lasch weaves analysis of hundreds of works and dozens of authors into his study.) Rather, “The modern conception of progress depends on a positive assessment of the proliferation of wants.” Christianity promises an ultimately happy ending for mankind, but modernity promises instead “steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all.” This collective Western belief in progress “provides the solution to the puzzle that is otherwise so baffling—the resilience of progressive ideology in the face of discouraging events that have shattered the illusion of utopia.” This belief, which Lasch refers to, somewhat confusingly, both as “capitalism” and as “progressivism,” has its origin in Adam Smith, who first spread the notion that “insatiable appetites, formerly condemned as a source of social instability and personal unhappiness, could drive the economic machine.” And this machine would, America was told by our most influential thinkers, allow us to escape from the cycle of civilizations, rise followed by decay. Instead, we could rise forever, through the new chimera of unlimited wants inevitably leading to unlimited progress.

The turn to this way of thinking in the West had many downstream real-life consequences. The nineteenth-century “cult of domesticity,” for example, had nothing to do with subjection of women; it was a progressive doctrine, because “a well-ordered family life allegedly generated the demand for improvements that assured the unlimited expansion of capitalist production.” Similarly, elevating workers out of poverty and oppressive working conditions “multiplied their wants”—which was a good thing. But these benefits were an illusion—“The more closely capitalism came to be identified with immediate gratification and planned obsolescence, the more relentlessly it wore away the moral foundations of family life.” This was because the belief in progress as the highest good implied emancipation from all unchosen bonds—“the right to make a fresh start whenever earlier commitments became unduly burdensome.” Moreover, as a result of progress becoming defined as ever-increasing luxury and ease, both the tragic and heroic views of life, based in hard-learned reality, were thrown out the window, despite the absolute necessity of those views for a strong society.

Progress meant the past had to be dismissed; the future was not to be informed by the wisdom of the past, at all. Lasch shows that the prophets of never-ending progress used claims of nostalgia as a weapon, assuming without arguing that the past was discredited in order to avoid discussing whether it was better or worse (a sin of which the odious John Dewey and even-more-odious Richard Hofstadter were particularly guilty). Denigration of alleged nostalgia was used to “enable sophisticated observers of the cultural scene to dismiss resistance to change as irrational, to equate loving memory with escapism, and to shore up a faltering faith in the future without explaining why such a faith was justified.” (Lasch also notes something I often point out—the idea that there is always a “conflict of generations” is completely ahistorical, a tendentious creation of twentieth-century leftists.) For Lasch, progress means “optimism,” an unthinking belief that everything will always get better, disdainful of the past. “Hope,” by contrast, is the belief that some things can get better some of the time, within the limits set by nature, already known to us, if we pay heed, because our ancestors experienced those limits.

And then we get into the meat of the book. We trace critics of progress, from Jonathan Edwards to Thomas Carlyle, through Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James, and up to the present day, deeply analyzing their thought and linking it to both what and whom they criticized. We go through “The Sociological Tradition and the Idea of Community,” detailing the ideas of everyone from Edmund Burke to Karl Marx. We spend fifty pages on “The Populist Campaign Against ‘Improvement,’ ” discussing William Cobbett, Orestes Brownson, Tom Paine, Samuel Gompers, and many more.

By a close analysis of these writers, whose works were sprawling and do not always fit particularly well together, Lasch constructs a coherent line of thought attacking progress. These men had many concerns, but most revolved around the breaking of social bonds which resulted from treating labor as a commodity, a seemingly-inevitable trend as America industrialized. Their fundamental belief, with respect to economic organization, was that “small-scale proprietorship [the essence of the petty bourgeoisie] conferred moral independence, self-respect, and responsibility.” They objected to the atomization inherent in progress, demanding instead “populism”—meaning not more electoral power for the common man, but that he be independent of concentrations of economic power, autarkic, his own master, rather than a wage slave. Lasch describes this as “the struggle to preserve the moral virtues conferred by property ownership against the combined threat of wage labor and the collectivization of property.” Closely tied to populism, and a term also occurring throughout this book, is “producerism”—the belief that society should focus on tangible production, and reward producers, not the lords of capital. (Lasch would have had nothing but derision for the fantasy that so-called “AI” will lead to unlimited abundance from above.)

The needed independence of men and women from the economic machine, and how that independence was slowly squeezed out of the American system, is a recurrent theme of the book. Ever-increasing industrialization meant, in order to maximize output and therefore progress, that every man (and woman) had to become a wage worker, shorn of any real power. Early unions, for example, were those of artisans, opposed to being forced into the factory system, but they were unable to withstand the onslaught of progress. Agricultural populism and producerism were the last to be defeated, but defeated they were. Instead, America got Taylorism, the desperate lust for efficiency at the cost of humanity.

Then, turning from philosophy to actual rearguard battles against the loss of worker independence, we survey thought and action tied directly to the intersection of economics and politics, most of all syndicalism. Among most people today, syndicalism is forgotten, but it was once one of the most powerful currents of thought related to labor and capital. Syndicalism was an attempt to solve the problems of the wage system—that not only did it erode autonomy, it eroded both virtue and the ingraining of heroism among the populace, leading to “desiccation,” in the term favored by James.

The apostle of syndicalism was the Frenchman Georges Sorel, implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and modernity, though most remembered today for Reflections On Violence, his somewhat chaotic thought on how the working man could only through violent class warfare protect his rights against the extractive segment of society. In its simplest form syndicalism was the proposal that workers own the means of production, not directly but through unions as their representatives and collective actors. It was not a movement of the Left. The “scandal of syndicalism” was that “it was retrograde but obviously revolutionary and therefore difficult for people on the left to dismiss.” It “fell outside the broad consensus in favor of progress, centralization, and distributive democracy. It undercut the Marxist claim to offer the only radical alternative to the capitalist regimentation of the workplace. It forced Marxists to justify their program on the grounds of superior efficiency, on the increasingly implausible grounds that only a socialist state could assure prosperity for all, or on vague appeals to the progress of the human race.” (I note in passing that William “Big Bill” Haywood, a leading syndicalist with a strong Marxist streak, who ultimately fled to Bolshevik Russia after being convicted under the Espionage Act for opposing Woodrow Wilson’s involving America in World War I, and who is buried in the wall of the Kremlin, is not related to me.)

Syndicalism was closely related to other proposals for addressing modern working-class discontents, such as guild socialism and Hilaire Belloc’s distributism, found in his classic The Servile State. Both these were opposed to state socialism, exemplified at this time by Fabianism and Marxism. All these lines of thought other than Marxism were ultimately absorbed in the twentieth century into what is generally called social democracy—the attempt to achieve power in a democratic system to serve the interests of the workers. And whatever the successes of social democracy, they did not include restoring any real autonomy to the workers, or the restoration of any of community, virtue, or heroism. Not only were workers defeated, but it became common wisdom, in part through the contemptuous attacks of men such as Herbert Croly and H. L. Mencken, that the working class could not be trusted to even understand its own interests, and that the “civilized minority” must rule in their real interests—meaning the interests of progress, administered by supposed experts, who would sweep away the stupid petty bourgeois prejudices of the masses. (Lasch’s evisceration of Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality, the Platonic form of this genre, is alone worth the price of admission for this book.)

And, finally, Lasch demonstrates that the Reaganite New Right of the 1980s, supposedly bitterly opposed to progress, not only failed to resist any of this, rather it actively participated in and advanced every part. (He does not mention Margaret Thatcher, but she would have been an even better example of the failure of 1980s “conservatism” to conserve anything.) The New Right paid lip service to supporting the family and the middle class, while all its actions eroded both, especially by requiring women to work outside the household in the interests of progress. (Lasch never mentions Gross Domestic Product, but in many ways this book is an extended attack on the idolatrous cult of GDP.) “Ritual deference to ‘traditional values’ cannot hide the right’s commitment to progress, unlimited growth, and acquisitive individualism.” He does not use the term “Uniparty,” but what he identifies is the early incarnation of that loathsome phenomenon, the political arm of the “new class,” meaning the professional-managerial elite, “knowledge workers,” devout acolytes of progress. He sees no obvious way out, but he still holds out hope. “A populism for the twenty-first century would bear little resemblance to the new right or to populist movements in the past. But it would find much of its moral inspiration in the popular radicalism of the past and more generally in the wide-ranging critique of progress, enlightenment, and unlimited ambition that was drawn up by moralists whose perceptions were shaped by the producers’ view of the world.”

I am not totally sure what I thought about this book. While much of it is profound . . . . [Review completes as first comment].

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The True and Only Heaven" by Christopher Lasch presents a thought-provoking critique of American culture, analyzing the social, political, and psychological aspects that have contributed to the erosion of community and the rise of consumerism. Lasch, a prominent American historian and social critic, explores the complexities of modern society, highlighting the detrimental effects of individualism, materialism, and the loss of shared values. In this academic review, we critically assess the key arguments, strengths, limitations, and scholarly significance of Lasch's work, considering its historical context and its contributions to cultural analysis.


"The True and Only Heaven" offers a comprehensive examination of the challenges faced by American society, ranging from the decline of community to the erosion of democratic participation. Lasch argues that the relentless pursuit of individual desires and the dominance of consumer culture have undermined the moral and social fabric of American life. Drawing from historical insights, social theory, and psychological analysis, he provides a compelling critique of the consequences of modernity and advocates for a return to community-oriented values.

One of the strengths of Lasch's work lies in his nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between cultural, economic, and political factors. He skillfully integrates historical analysis and sociological perspectives to highlight the historical roots and underlying causes of the problems facing American society. Through his exploration of topics such as family, education, and work, Lasch unveils the deep-seated contradictions and tensions within American culture, fostering a critical understanding of its trajectory.

Moreover, Lasch's insightful analysis and eloquent prose contribute to the scholarly significance of his work. He challenges mainstream narratives and offers an alternative perspective on the drawbacks of modernity, consumerism, and individualism. Lasch's call for a revitalization of democratic participation and a reimagining of communal bonds resonate with scholars and readers interested in cultural studies, social theory, and political philosophy. His work serves as a catalyst for critical engagement with the challenges facing contemporary societies and invites readers to envision alternative paths toward a more humane and sustainable future.

However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of Lasch's work. Some critics argue that his analysis may overlook certain structural factors and systemic inequalities that shape American society. Additionally, while Lasch's critique is incisive and thought-provoking, his proposed solutions and pathways to change may require further exploration and contextualization.


"The True and Only Heaven" by Christopher Lasch offers a compelling and incisive critique of American culture, examining the challenges posed by consumerism, individualism, and the erosion of community. His interdisciplinary approach, historical insights, and eloquent prose contribute to the scholarly significance of his work, inspiring critical engagement with the problems and possibilities of contemporary society. However, the limitations and potential complexities of Lasch's analysis should be acknowledged to ensure a well-rounded understanding of his arguments.


"The True and Only Heaven" by Christopher Lasch serves as a significant contribution to the field of cultural analysis, providing a thought-provoking critique of American society. Lasch's exploration of the corrosive effects of individualism, consumerism, and the decline of communal bonds invites readers and scholars to critically reflect on the challenges and possibilities of modernity. Engaging with Lasch's work fosters a deeper understanding of the complexities of American culture and stimulates further scholarly inquiry into the restoration of communal values and the reinvigoration of democratic participation in contemporary societies.

GPT

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book on American progressivist thought and its critics. Packed with information and analysis.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second Lasch after Culture of Narcissism. Like that book, this one has some hard sentences to swallow for your typical left-leaning bloke. The thing that kept Lasch living in my head for weeks after I finished Narcissism and will after finishing this book too, is that it's difficult to read his books as a person on the left-side of the tracks and not come away with at least a few of your long held suppositions about society shaken to their core. This verve partially comes from the clear satisfaction he takes in being a contrarian, an instinct that I can imagine was forged in too many meetings, demonstrations, and protests where he was surrounded by people that all thought the same way and were proud of it - a condition that is sure to lead to overconfidence, pretension, and hardened notions of what is "right" and "wrong". Sometimes Lasch comes at the "sacred cows" of the leftist program (abortion comes to mind) in a way that can incite a twinge of annoyance - but I think these critiques must be understood as a way of exploring the real implications of political ideologies, rather than relying on rote platitudes that both sides have been telling themselves about what they believe for decades. I think a central theme of this book is the idea that the true motivations of people in a democracy are not always what the people say they are - Lasch, despite his harsh tone, is incredibly empathetic in his instinct to understand what drives people to make the decisions they do, even when considering "less enlightened" opinions, the anti-bussing movement in 1970s Boston for instance. The key thing to remember here whenever you feel like Lasch is leading you down uncomfortable paths, away from the safehouse of liberal doctrine, is this: he is at bottom a true democrat (small d) and anti-capitalist. As such, he sets himself against all elitism and and financial interests, the two classic enemies of left thought - a fact that has tragically been buried by American liberalism of the last 50 years. If you keep an open mind, Lasch will show you how your liberal opinions have actually been infected by these twin cancers, and how no leftist movement can succeed until they are excised.

It's important to recognize that Lasch's definition of "progress" is different than the way it is typically used in popular discourse. I have no doubt that Lasch would include the identity politics that we now identify with progressivism in his critique had he lived to see their development as it stands today. It's safe to say that the liberation of various groups that have been historically oppressed is of course a good thing, and the "progress" we've made in the time since Lasch's book was published is a net good in my opinion, though I'm sure Lasch would do his best to attenuate that opinion if he could. However, the "progress" that Lasch is critiquing here is explicitly defined in the beginning and (especially) the end of the book as bigger than the word as we typically use it. So big, in fact, that it can be difficult for people who grew up in the society as it stands today to even recognize it as a idea that can have any alternative, it is so taken for granted. It is essentially this: having thrown off the strictures of religion and tradition, a huge part of humanity believes that our ability to expand (our knowledge, our economy, our lebensraum) is essentially infinite. Lasch here is gravely warning against this ideology, which by this point has become the unquestioned norm. He is mourning the loss of limits, without which human ambition becomes avaricious, pompous, destructive. In this book, he is documenting what he sees as the spiritual, economic, and (for this he deserves much credit for being ahead of his time) environmental degradation of humanity and the planet. The biggest, baddest manifestation of this loss of limits is the looming, seemingly unstoppable reality of climate change, which has made clear the absurd wastefulness and profligacy of Western life, and highlighted the insidiousness of capitalism's promise that it can spread this standard of living to every person on Earth. What may seem like a generous promise of global prosperity, is instead a base money grab, and struggle for survival for an economic system that needs constant growth and expansion of markets to keep itself alive.

Though he may get lost in the weeds of political theory and history, Lasch is essentially trying to layout a secular version of what almost all religions have taught - human effort is, in the end dwarfed by the machinations of God, and that to try and transgress the limits of existence is to call disaster upon yourself. Though the reality of a higher being seems to have been refuted a long time ago, it is of utmost importance that humanity, especially nonbelievers, recognize the value of such a concept, and which trampling upon and leaving in the dust of history has contributed so much to creating the precipice we now find ourselves looking over the edge of.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The True and Only Heaven is a difficult book that takes the reader through a deep history of mostly American and English critics of the concept of progress, so dear to those we call "liberals" in modern America. Lasch displays his erudition and keen critical eye throughout the book, and he clearly identifies with these critics of progress and believes there is something in their thought that can help solve widespread discontent over modern life, especially it's economic dimensions.

His reevaluation of Ralph Waldo Emerson is illustrative of his deft critical mind. He accurately attacks the common perception of Emerson. "Like many others, I used to think of Emerson as a foolish optimist," Lasch writes in the book's biographical essay, adding that "Emerson...had more important things to say about “virtue” and “fortune” than writers in the republican tradition that largely determined the final substance and shape of this book." His reevaluation of this seminal writer is well worth the read for any admirers of the American literary tradition.

Ironically, Lasch the historian does not present in this volume a theory of history and what drives it. He praises the critics of progress throughout American history and suggests that these critics may have succeeded in taming Capitalism such that a system of widespread sole proprietorship and the near absence of wage labor could have been maintained.

But it wasn't maintained, and I think there are deep historical reasons why it wasn't. Lasch doesn't really address the question.

Despite his Marxist background, Lasch largely abandons materialist analysis in favor of cultural and intellectual explanations. He doesn't adequately grapple with the structural economic and organizational forces that made the defeat of his favored populist movements nearly inevitable.

While Lasch extensively critiques both progressive and conservative positions, he refuses to commit to defending any positive alternative. He gestures toward "populist" traditions and religious frameworks but always retreats into historical description rather than normative argument when pressed.

He often makes tendentious arguments that are beneath him. His analysis of why Martin Luther King's struggles for Southern blacks was more successful than his efforts in Northern cities like Chicago rests on a pretty ridiculous argument.

"A more important difference between the North and the South lay in the demoralized, impoverished condition of the black community in cities like Chicago, which could not support a movement that relied so heavily on a self-sustaining network of black institutions, a solidly rooted petty-bourgeois culture, and the pervasive influence of the church," Lasch writes, providing no support for his argument that black institutions and families where somehow weaker or less virtuous in the North.

There's also a wild footnote questioning the legitimacy of the lone-shooter theory of the JFK explanation, relying on evidence that has been debunked by actual ballistics experts.

Nevertheless, it's an important book that remains relevant almost thirty years later, as many of the social problems created by a religious belief in the unalloyed beneficence of progress remain today.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lasch remains perhaps the indispensable social critic of the last fifty years. As with all of his work, if it doesn't affront your beliefs in some way you are probably deluding yourself. He paints in painstaking (and sometimes excessive) detail a couple hundred years of criticism of progress from right and left and the ways in which its apostles have responded. His 20th C proponents of progress (and his 21st C ones as well, though the book was published in the early 90s) decried critics of all stripes as ignorant, backward, even defective, using sociological and psychological arguments that confirmed the supremacy of the advocates of progress over the benighted reactionaries decrying it. He portrays science as ism, with wide-ranging claims to truth and whose proponents lack the humility to acknowledge that our ethics have not experienced the progress that our physical sciences have.

Lasch does not endorse nostalgia, which he distinguishes from memory, and acknowledges that there is no path backward. But he acknowledges that progress has run roughshod over vestiges of meaning and purpose in the lives of people, from faith to family and tradition to meaningful and remunerative work. He is class-conscious, perhaps excessively so, but he outlines long before it became obvious to other observers the emergence of a delineation between the in and out groups, though he does not refer to them as such. He speaks of the in-group's jargon and insularity and its increasing affinity for non or anti-democratic measures to give the people what they need, usually in a form of technocracy that vests the in-group with decision-making powers.

Lasch is sympathetic to the lower middle and working classes and acknowledges that their prejudices (racial and otherwise), while worthy of condemnation, usually derive from economic anxieties that are understandable. Lasch's political landscape looks much like our own; though it was not privy to the subsequent generation of prosperity, the pitfalls of the free market (both he and I would quibble with such a characterization, though not for all of the same reasons) versus the bankruptcy of alternatives. His portrait of populism's following is more sympathetic than his portrait of populism and populists, and his take on early 20th C syndicalism is instructive for people who had only a vague appreciation for it, but he gets to the heart of the problem. The existing system is increasingly flawed, while no obvious alternative exists to it.

The work is not without flaws. The rise of the Internet Age has rendered dated some of his contemporary (late 80s and early 90s) criticism of economic stagnation. As I said his account of early criticism of progress even in the writings of men like Whitman and William James (in whom I have genuine interest) gets so far into the weeds as to be dull. But as with most of Lasch, it holds up remarkably well because he has few sacred cows. He is not wedded to the simple economic dogmas of neoliberalism or Marxism, and he can criticize both the excesses of the 60s generation with its iconoclasm and the social ethic that preceded it.

[Steve Percoco · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this book started off strong, got bogged down often in its discussion and analysis of the history of critiques of progress, but finished in the last five pages or so with a useful perspective on where we were (in 1991 when it was published) and the significant problems that we face going forward. SPOILER ALERT: Mr. Lasch did not offer in the book his own perspective of what constitutes "The True and Only Heaven." After exhaustively recanting the view of numerous social commentators like Emerson, Edwards, James, Neibuhr and Martin Luther King, during which he served as a critic of the critics, he did not explicitly offer his own prescription to fix what ails society. I did get a good perspective on his thinking, however, from the early chapters of the book - where he makes an effective case that endless progress is not guaranteed and describes the qualities of the general population necessary to support democracy - and in the very end of the book, where he offers insights into the limitations of capitalism and the need to find a different model to avoid destroying the planet (ecologically speaking).

The book is dense and a tough slog. For someone like me, who was not familiar with the writings of many of the thinkers that Lasch analyzes, I struggled quite often to keep up with his line of thought from sentence to sentence. It is quite amazing how much research went into the preparation of the book and Lasch's own ability to compare the comments of one thinker with others. Each chapter is organized into subsections that are each only a few pages long and I imagine that each one required weeks of research and Lasch's lifetime experiences to complete. The book is so far sweeping in its coverage that I believe that it would be a useful addition to the curricula of advanced studies in the social sciences, such as sociology, psychology, religion and even economics.

Since Mr. Lasch did not discuss what he meant by "The True and Only Heaven," I can only speculate what he meant by it. In the introduction to the biographical essay at the end of the book, he speaks of "groping for a title;" so the title was apparently an afterthought. Lasch did not say in the essay how he had arrived at it. One possibility, as I discussed above, is that he left it to the reader to glean from his commentary throughout the book what he meant. This is what I believe to be the case. The alternative, it seems to me, is that the true and only heaven represents the here and now, so that we are in fact living in it (even if we do not recognize it) with all of the imperfections of humans and the world that we live in. Seen this way, there will always be critics about the current state of social and political affairs, both from the liberal and conservative views. Yet, life goes on and the world (so far at least) advances, even as the problems that it faces in the modern era continue to mount. Of course, there is also truth in that view, even if that is not what Mr. Lasch meant.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journal entry for Oct 11, 1993

This section from Lasch's book serves as an excellent historiographical orientation, though with a very obvious bent of its own. The general project of the book is, according to Benjamin DeMott, "the reclamation of class." Yet it seems that is not "class" as a category of analysis which is contested in the case of the Populists, but rather a very specific understanding of class. In the section we read, it is obvious that Lasch draws specifically on Goodwyn in his search for a usable "Populist" past. The problem remains as to how this class of agricultural workers at the turn of the century can serve as a model for our own "critique of progress."*

Lasch casts Populism as the "producer's last stand." In this he draws upon Goodwyn to critique Hofstadter. The beauty of Goodwyn's analysis, so far as Lasch is concerned is that he neither casts the Populists as proto-Progressives ( a la Hicks and Destler) nor as backward-looking (read proto-fascist) and wrong-headed cranks, a la Hofstadter. Lasch wants us to look seriously at the Populist critique of progress because they groped with the same problems that we do today. On p. 224, he comes very close to saying that the Populists were trying to redefine the moral personality, which is our task today as well. After the death of Populism, people still sought "a moral and social equivalent of the widespread property ownership which was once considered indispensable to the success of democracy." We should approach the Populists, therefore, with a little more humility than that which dismisses them as mere "hayseeds" or worse still as "proto-fascists.**

* See Benjamin DeMott, "Class Reclaimed," review of The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics by Christopher Lasch, In Reviews in American History 19 (December 1991): 599-603. DeMott gives the impression that he is in substantial .agreement with Lasch over the importance of the Populist moment as a source of a "usable past. "

**A note on the problem of Marxism and Populism in passing. In a brief book review of Pollack's The Populist Mind, an anonymous writer for Science and Society [32 (Winter 1968): 121] demonstrates the semi-orthodox Marxist impatience with the American Populists, Who like the Nazis glorified the folk. Marxist analysis is steeped in the fascism critique of inter- war Europe.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was first introduced to the thought of Christopher Lasch in Archbishop Chaput's fantastic book "Things Worth Dying For" where he referenced it in some of his critiques of modern social developments, particularly the destabilization and fraying of family ties. This book, however, is much more ambitious, and critiques the dominant historical paradigm through which most people view history. People have come to conflate progress with providence, as if it were an inevitable ironclad law of history that humankind progressed morally, economically, and culturally towards the "last man." Lasch's profiling of thinkers and cultural trends demonstrate this to be otherwise (one would think two world wars would be sufficient, but I suppose not). Even the staunchest advocates of the classical liberal tradition prove to be skeptical of an overcommercialized society. The most moving part of the book was the section on family norms and the working class, specifically the section on abortion and its implications for the working class. Rob Henderson's idea of "luxury beliefs" pairs quite well with many of the ideas in this book.

The weak point of the book is unquestionably the policy prescription given at the end. Ironically, I don't think his policy prescriptions in the end really follow from his analysis, but his analysis is so good and informative it is worth reading for that reason alone.

[Luke LeBar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This doorstop history was well worth the time it took me to finish. Lasch often had me questioning and reevaluating my own assumptions about progress, especially as a young scientist. Lasch’s argument, and it is convincing, is that progress (technological, economic, social, and moral) is not in itself a solution to our problems. His examination of populism takes us through a host of strange and interesting characters, from preachers like Johnathan Edwards and Emerson, to integralists like Orestes Brownson, to French and English guild socialists, Italian syndicalists, and to Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr. The most moving chapter of the whole book was titled “Spiritual Discipline Against Resentment.” It centers around Reinhold Niebuhr and MLK Jr. If you read anything from this book, read that chapter. Highly recommend for people who are interested in political thought, economics, and religion.

[JR Roach · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I wrote about this in 2016 - at the time it felt like an intellectual epiphany. I remain impressed with the book although now much less convinced by it:

Wanna take a moment to highly recommend the book "True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics" by Christopher Lasch for the political theory lovers here. Basically, the book is an extended critique of liberal progressivism (Progress as an ever growing expansion of production, consumption, and standards of living as opposed to utopian progressivism), via a recovery of American populist thought, itself the last relic of 18th century Atlantic civic republicanism. The book is particularly fascinating both for its astounding breadth (ends up being a tour of almost everyone important in political theory since in the Enlightenment), but also for Lasch's distinctive political orientation- he's one of those Marxists who turned paleocon(ish). As a result, you can very different takes on a lot of familiar figures (esp conservative ones - Burke becomes a "sociologist of oblivion").

[Jay Callahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best and most complete explication of Lasch's thought. He lays out a very convincing, sound critical portrait of capitalist society that does an end run around the left/right duo, and he suggests a much more solid approach to building a better society, grounded in individual and community responsibility. (Some people probably say he moved to the right or something as the years went by, but those people say that because they are trapped in the left/right dichotomy that Lasch shows in this book is a very confined, crippled, incomplete way of seeing things. Illich and Arendt are very different writers, but come at things from a similar angle.)

Odd suggestion, but I think Dorothy Canfield Fisher's novel Seasoned Timber could profitably be read after reading this book.

This is an important book!

[Gregory L. Flentje · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an important book when it came out in the early 90s. Rereading it now is like reading Nostradamus - except more is right. The critique here is of an older and bigger “thing” called progressivism that focused on humanity’s relationship to the universe rather than a merely more liberal politics. His scholarship is impeccable but his points can still be considered and nuanced by 21st century readers. I found the sections on Thomas Carlyle and several of the early 20th century socialists particularly enlightening - especially when he ties the latter to MLK’s later thought. Many may wonder why he gives so much attention to anti-democratic thinkers…I did too, but it’s important to know it’s out there. Well worth the effort and time.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most engrossing non-fiction works I’ve ever read. From its depth of and breath of thinkers surveyed (e. g., the iconoclastic Orestes Brownson to Reinhold Niebuhr and MLK) it made me think, and even re-evaluate my previous belief in Affirmative Action. I largely already agreed with Lasch’s basic premise concerning the notion of progress, and a sense of place. The book’s only weak points might be that his focus on Emerson (which was fascinating) went on too long, and the Freudian analyzing seemed a bit much. After reading this I’m much more comfortable thinking of myself as a cultural conservative and economic liberal.

[Adam Burnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1994, this is an exhaustive and sweeping mine of the “progressive left’s” origins in a secularized and capitalistic Christianity from the 17th through the 20th century. Major topics include the origins of nostalgia and community, the syndicalist movement, the pitfalls of philanthropy, hope vs. optimism, the enduring impression of Protestantism on liberalism, Martin Luther King Jr.’s realist optimism, and the authoritarian proclivities of the working-class family, and these are just a few of the high points. An ongoing attempt to break the stranglehold of ideology in my own thinking.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa. Absolutely amazing. “Hope and limits are the two threads I've tried to weave together,” Lasch says, concluding a breathtakingly expansive argument regarding the place of the secular idea of material progress in the American political imagination, and various examples of reactionary voices against this, including Sorel, James, Orestes Brown, Carlyle, and Niebuhr. Heroism, as a way to confront the tragedy of life's reality (as opposed to the steady rise promised by the myth of progress), is the main theme proposed as alternative.

[Philemon - · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lasch used to do some of our best sociocultural analysis. I gave this a try after reading somewhere that this book was supposed to be his masterpiece. Problem was that it seemed just too dated at this point to justify taking in its 600+ pages. It may be the surfeit of global disasters looming in the present and the paucity of available compromise between facing up to them and avidly scheduling out-and-out escapism.

[Michael Paone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scholarly yet very readable, Lasch presents a wide ranging (although limited to the Anglo-sphere) analysis of philosophy and it’s context within history attached to a critique of the idea of inevitable progress. That said, the book is not a pessimistic one, Lasch separates the belief in inevitable progress from the hope of a better world. This deserves to be considered a classic in the study of the history of philosophy. Figures discuss range from Emerson to Sorel to William James and MLK.