Expanding the Political Present

“Nothing we have created, in politics or literature, is necessary….†—Richard Poirier Theory expressing new dimensions of man's political predicaments has rarely emerged from well-accredited academic quarters. Yet political scientists have come to hope that their own discipline, imaginatively pursued, might nevertheless yield comprehensive theories for coming to terms with man's present and prospective situations. To cope with emergencies—if not those of the year 1984 then those of the now more fashionable year 2000—they have proceeded to delineate possible futures. It is hardly necessary to document how industriously they have been extrapolating from the present, becoming interested in simulating, linear programming, gaming, and projecting into the future. With methodological ingenuity and resourcefulness, practitioners of futuristics have provided a new literature which is unconventional, exciting, and at times intriguingly surrealistic. Like Bentham's and Saint-Simon's more buoyant pieces, it has all the trappings of authentic radical thought: it appears to challenge the prevailing intellectual and institutional boundaries. Yet in view of the ideological constraints inherent in every professional discipline, it would be surprising if the new blueprints and scenarios were to inspire men to transcend the present political order, if the new Utopians (to use Robert Boguslaw's apt label) acknowledged something other than the prevailing system of psychological, economic, and industrial norms as their point of departure. They understandably begin with the present, that which is.