Chris-
topher Lasch, in democracy (Oct. 1981),
43 West 61st St.,New York, N.Y. 10023.
Mass culture, from network television to potboiler novels, has thrown the American Left into a quandary. It seems to reflect popular tastes and therefore to qualify as "democratic" and praiseworthy. Yet even the most populist thinkers regard much of it as aesthetically dreadful, intellectually stultifying, and politically retrograde.
Lasch, a University of Rochester historian, argues that Marxists...