The 1960s: The Struggle for Justice and the ‘View from the Sidelines’

When Reinhold Niebuhr retired from teaching in 1960 at the age of sixty-eight, he was famous for espousing Cold War militarism, blasting liberal theology and the Social Gospel, and urging the Civil Rights Movement to proceed with patient moderation. In his retirement years he substantially changed or refashioned these positions, transmuting his legacy and the meaning of Niebuhrian realism. The Social Gospel tried to moralize the public square, but Niebuhr said that politics is a struggle for power driven by interest and will-to-power. The Social Gospel taught that a cooperative commonwealth is achievable. By the end of his career, Niebuhr said the ideal of a good society must be given up. Social ethicists ever since have struggled with both sides of his legacy.

The labour republicans and the classical republican tradition: Alex Gourevitch’s From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth

Alex Gourevitch’s From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth is a valuable contribution to republican historiography: in reconstructing the ideas of the 19th century American labour republicans, this work significantly expands and enriches our appreciation of the classical republican tradition. While the labour republicans are convincingly shown to have made important contributions to that tradition, stronger claims that they fundamentally transformed republicanism are less persuasive.