This isn't a post about Gerald Ford, although he was a fine American and a decent President. Rather, this is about the passing of someone that the mainstream media my well largely ignore, not because he isn't important, but because... well, you know. On December 31, 2006 Seymour Martin Lipset passed away after a long illness that originally struck around the same time that the US was struck on 9/11. There will probably be some profoundly eloquent memorials, referencing his prodigious authorship in the political science arena. Here is a biographical essay penned by one of his former students, Larry Diamond, and Gary Marks, shortly before his illness.

At the time that I had the honor of serving as his research assistant in the late 1990s the large bear of a fellow that everyone called "Marty" was the most cited living American author, a distinction I'm sure he held until his death at the end of 2006. Of him, Diamond and Marks wrote:

Of course, no article could do justice to the wide-ranging intellectual contributions of Seymour Martin Lipset. His books and articles have sought to elucidate such diverse phenomena as the political and social origins of socialism (or the absence of socialism), fascism, revolution, protest, ethnic prejudice, anti-Semitism, and political extremism; the sources and consequences of class structure, class consciousness, class conflict, and social mobility; the links between historical and social cleavages, party systems, and voter alignments; voter preferences and electoral outcomes; the dense reciprocal relations between values and institutions; the changing character of such diverse and specific institutions as trade unions and higher education (and even unions in higher education!); the determinants and dynamics of public opinion and public confidence in institutions; the role of religion in American life; the political behavior of American Jews; the conditions of the democratic order; and the differences between cultures, especially the contrast (which has fascinated him throughout his scholarly life) between Canada and the United States. Across this sweeping landscape of classical and pioneering issues in the social sciences, Lipset has brought a consistently lucid and striking accessible analytical style, and a breathtaking array of sources and evidence, that have made his works among the most popular and widely used, both by teachers and by researchers. More striking still, virtually every one of these issues he has explored authoritatively, both across nations and with a specific focus on the United States. And he has published with equal distinction as a social historian and as an astute commentator on the politics, culture, and conflicts of our time. Can any living social scientist lay claim to such a broad and broadly honored set of works?

Yet, within this great and restless diversity of questions, issues, methods and foci, we think there lies a core theme to Lipset's work. That core is the conditions, problems, dynamics, values, and institutions of democracy, both in the United States and comparatively throughout the world.

His books are genuine classics, from Political Man, which is still used as a text and is in print after almost 50 years, to The First New Nation, about the great theme of his career: That the United States is not a nation defined by an ethnic heritage, but is a kind of perpetual revolution defined by ideology. He kept to this theme, and reinforced it, with comparative analysis of the US as the "country of the revolution" and Canada as the "country of the counter-revolution" drawing the threads together in a book that he admits bears a title stolen from a John Belushi movie: Continental Divide. He also developed and supported this thesis with articles and papers about Japan, comparing "Japanese Uniqueness" with "American Exceptionalism". (While America is, and remains, exceptional, Japan isn't unique.)

But perhaps the work that gave him the greatest sense of accomplishment was one he researched and wrote with the late James Coleman, and Martin Trow--a book with the tongue-twisting title: Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union. For those who don't know it, it's a roadmap to the transformation of authoritarianism into democracy, a theme that continues to resonate, informing our best efforts in the Middle East. I suspect one reason he was so proud of Union Democracy is that his father was a printer, and his first experience of politics was at his father's side in boisterous union meetings between the World Wars.

But most of these observations about his scholarly legacy can be picked up from far more prominent eulogists than myself. What I have to share is a personal recollection:

When I was his research assistant Marty called and asked that I pick him up at his office on my way to school, and when I arrived he didn't think twice about getting into my rattletrap old Subaru hatchback. The car had been burgled and vandalized the night before, so the windows were temporarily taped and covered with plastic. In addition, the carburetor was on its last legs, so the vehicle stalled nearly as often as it ran. He had just entered the passenger side when the engine died. As I sat mortified Marty calmly got out of the car, went around to the rear, put his shoulder down in an obvious effort to push. He was slightly over eighty years old at the time, with white hair... and although he was a huge man, I don't think he was terribly robust. Imagining the headlines the next day about an eminent scholar that a lowly grad student had killed by neglect, I urged him not to exert himself. We eventually got the car headed down a grade and I popped the clutch to get it started.

Arguably the most highly regarded political scientist in the US, if not the world, (his only real rival is Sam Huntington) there simply wasn't an ounce of pretense in the fellow. Not a drop. Any of his students, from UC Berkeley to Harvard, will tell you that he was always humble, kind, brilliant, and interesting... and knew more about America than the rest of us have forgotten. He paid as much attention to questions from students at the top and the bottom of his classes. Nothing was beneath him.

He was the victim of a massive stroke just prior to 9-11, and was bed-ridden with aphasia during the period when the media sunk into their perpetual loop coverage of America's worst day. Although he could barely speak more than a word he managed to observe that if the Qaedists could find some way to neutralize the US there was not much left in their way. This, he felt, was the reason for the attack. And although he had been a lifelong Democrat, and even a member of the Democratic Leadership Council with Bill Clinton, his voting and political allegiances followed his wisdom and heart, not his partisanship.

He is sorely missed, by everyone who knew him or knew his ideas. Fortunately we have his great legacy as comfort.

Posted by: Demosophist at 09:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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