gation case turned not so much on thenquestion of whether blacks had beenndenied the equal protection of the lawsnas on the “fact”—presumed to be empiricallyndemonstrable—that segregationnresulted in irreparable psychologicalndamage for black children (a holdingnthat created untold mischief for AllennBakke’s attorneys: Bakke, after all, hadnnever claimed that his right to equalneducational opportunity depended uponnthe condition of his mental health). Innany event, the implications of this newnphilosophy were becoming apparent.nEven those of us who were slow learnersnwere able eventually to purge ournminds of the romantic notion of slumsninhabited by a noble poor. Now it wasnclear to us that if the poor were to bensalvaged, their psyches would have tonbe rehabilitated; they would have tonlearn to defer gratification and to assumenresponsibility; they would havento practice the power of positiventhinking.nHaving acquired this new set of attitudes,nand along with it the strident,nproselytizing style of the convert, Innaturally applauded wildly when thenfield took to be primarily “an expressionnof mental illness,” the incidence of thatnmalady being “greater in the lower classnthan in any of the others.”nBut this only goes to show how extraordinarilynuneducated I was. Incredibly,nI had slipped into the habit of readingnbooks before reading the reviews, anblunder that I have scrupulously avoidednever since. The trenchant analyses ofnThe Unheavenly City which appearednin the more chic journals of opinion hadndemonstrated convincingly that Banfieldnwas undoubtedly a virulent racistnand that he was almost as certainly anfascist; he had, after all, voted for Nixon,nit was reported. As a result of thesentimely exposes, Banfield was preventednby the vanguard of the left from speakingnat a number of universities, includingnthe University of Chicago, a wellknownncitadel of academic freedom (andnhis former employer).nIt was not long before sensitive commentatorsnon the left began to vie fornthe honor of refuting the jackboot socialnscience of Professor Banfield-Nixon.nTwo of these efforts stand out: FrancesnFox Piven and Richard A. Cloward’sn”WhiiteviT its socinlogital signilicdncc. it is not leiribiy iiilcri-.STing.”n—Si’ir York ‘l”niii’.naforementioned Banfield published ThenUnheavenly City (Boston: Little, Brownn& Co.) in 1968. For the thesis of thatnbook (so I thought) was that poverty isnonly one aspect of a vicious syndrome,nof a web of vice and corruption thatnoperated to keep the poor more or lessnpermanently in their lamentable condition.nBanfield, it seemed to me, wasnsimply repeating the liberal gospel whennhe observed that the lower-class (definednas people who are “present-oriented”—ansensible definition if poverty isna state of mind) individual “lives fromnmoment to moment”; that he “has anfeeble, attenuated sense of self”; thatnhis “life-style” is marked by ” ‘action,’nrisk-taking, conquest, fighting, andn’smartness’ “; that lower-class life isn”extraordinarily violent,” which Ban-nRegulating the Poor and William Ryan’snBlaming the Victim (both published inn1961 by Vintage, New York).nOf the two the Piven and Clowardnvolume was by far the most conventional.nLike Lewis and Harrington (andnBanfield) before them, Piven and Clowardntake it for granted that poverty isnnot simply a matter of an economicnshortfall; once again, poverty is conceivednto be essentially psychological.nBut transcending the analyses of theirnpredecessors, Piven and Cloward, in thisnwidely acclaimed study (Alvin Schorr,nreviewing the book for Saturday Review,nmade an unforgettable juxtapositionnwhen he averred: “This book isnimportant and, like the Bible and Marcuse,n… is likely to be referred to bynmany . . .”) identify the root cause ofnnnthat mental disease which afflicts thenpoor: the free market economy. Thenproblem, it seems, stems from the factnthat “change and fluctuation and unemploymentnare chronic features of capitalism.”nThis means that capitalismngenerates certain “travails,” “traumaticndislocations,” and “catastrophicnchanges,” all of which combine to producenan emotionally crippled class ofnalienated victims—the economic equivalentsnof the “boat people” of Vietnam.nIn theory, “these dislocated people becomenpart of a labor supply to be drawnnupon by a changing and expanding labornmarket.” But in fact the economic historynof the West, as Piven and Clowardnread it, reveals that “people do notnadapt so readily to the new and aliennpatterns of social life dictated by thatnwork.” This revelation has two mainnimplications. First, the condition of poornpeople in the United States is gettingnworse, not better: “This book … sonclearly belies the popular suppositionnthat government social policies, includingnrelief policies, are becoming progressivelynmore responsible, humane, andngenerous.” Second, the condition of thenpoor will remain desperate so long asnthey do not revolt, for “a placid poornget nothing, but a turbulent poor sometimesnget something.”nr* or those of us who had been weanednon the culture-of-poverty literature,nPiven and Cloward’s Marxism wasnstandard fare, but Ryan’s book, whilenleftist to the core, was so radical thatnit was startling and brought the wholenquestion of poverty and its causes fullncircle. For Ryan, returning to firstnprinciples, rejected the idea that povertynis a state of mind. For him the cultureof-povertynliterature was, in the worstnsense, patronizing, and condescendingnin the extreme. According to Ryan thenculture-of-poverty writers had concentratednon proving that:n”. . . the poor, the black, the ill, thenjobless, the slum tenants, are differentnand strange. They must learn to conductnor interpret the research thatnil9nChronicles of Culturen