Not by Organization Alone

Draft #2

I

[3] A Russian novel about an inventor and an American sociological study of its middle “which has left home” would not on the face of it, be likely to have a great deal in common. The wide gulfs of separate life patterns and values, interest and response would, one might guess, portray the landscapes of two separates planets.

Many different questions are raised in both volumes, but it may however, that they share one question in common, and that is the possibility of ultimate freedom in an industrial society.

Not By Bread Alone is a recent Russian novel of an inventor's herculean struggle with the state bureaucracy to have adopted his superior invention for cast-iron pipe. In the seven year epic which ensues, […]

Text in English to type

[4] The Organization Man describes the omnipresent Organization which in school, corporation, research lab and hospital (and informally in suburbia) weigh heavily on the middle-class American at each turn and decision of his life. Moreover this process is accompanied by a “social ethic”, that “rationalization the organization's demands for fealty and gives those who offer it whole heartedly a sense of dedication in doing so”.

The intellectual roots of the social ethic are deep, beginning with the education of the child through school and college, through his place of work, leisure, literature, and the communities where he lives.

Dudintsev's hero Lopatkin is reminiscent of a biblical figure in his selfless dedication, his humanity and devotion to the task of carrying a “lighted torch” into the darkness. […]

Galitski, the party man, who ultimately arranges for his own collective to build Lopatkin's machine says “you ask why I took up your case? Because you did everything that one man could do”.

“In don't say that we have got communism yet”, Lopatkin maintains, “but I would …

[5] [6]

II

[7] There is an immoveable ponderous obstruction to this self-realization of the individual's inner demands, whoch forms the backdrop of the society in which he lives.

[…]

Whyte describes …

[8]

Both environments would seem to reject individual creative contributions…

[…]

[9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

III

[13] The attempt to rationalize some prior and durable harmony as the essential relation between the individual and his society is certainly spurious. The rewards of the frictionless group and pressured camaraderie are flat and strangely unsatisfying. The extinction of a meaningful existence may result from a total adjustment to society. (Whyte mention 1984).

…

[15]

[16] One justification that is offered is the permanent emergency which is supposedly faced by Russian society, in the name of which freedom may be suspended: …

[17]

Text Informations

Reference:
Date: 1958
KPA: 37/07 (draft, 17 p.)
Other Languages:

Lge	Name
DE
FR

See also

In Abraham Rotstein's “Week-end Notes”:

• Weekend Notes XX
• Weekend Notes XXI
• Weekend Notes XXII