ered as twentieth-century substitutes for property ownership; but none of these policies created the kind of active, enterprising citizenry envisioned by nineteenth-century democrats. Neither did the seemingly more daring solution adopted in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, which claimed to abolish "wage slavery" but actually carried it on in a new and even more insidious form, substituting the state for the private employer and thereby depriving workers even of the right to strike.

The condescension and contempt with which so many historians look back on nineteenth-century populism imply that the twentieth century has somehow learned how to reconcile freedom and equality with the wage system, modern finance, and the corporate organization of economic life. Nothing in the history of our times, however, justifies such complacency. The "petty bourgeois" critique of progress deserves an attentive hearing. It may teach us something; and even if its history of defeat does not strike us as wildly encouraging at first, it may help us, in the long run, to come to grips with our contemporary situation and our darkening prospects.

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