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IN PRAISE OF SCIENCE:

On the Progressive Social Inheritance of our Movement's Activists

J. H. O'DELL

THE SCIENTIFIC and technological revolution and the spread of knowledge in the social sciences, especially over the last two decades, have become important socially significant features of our contemporary age. The widespread organization of scientific knowledge and the application of this to the concrete tasks of improving social conditions under which people live are most valuable aids in the resolution of many acute problems which are the legacy of oppressive social systems. Given the deep and all pervading institutional crisis in U.S. society today and the fact that the general democratic movement for human rights and peace is repeatedly singled out for attack by those in power and authority who seek to prevent the emergence of a mass movement for social change, it becomes a matter of urgency for us, from time to time, to reach deep into the well springs of those experiences and achievements of humanity which are our common inheritance for renewed strength and commitment. As is generally recognized, all human events unfold within a time framework, consequently there are certain time periods and dates which lend themselves in a special way to just such a renewal process. The year 1973 appears to be one of those occasions not only for the immediately compelling reasons provided by such events as the Watergate revelations.

No system crumbles of its own weight and rottenness. The socially conscious actions of a people's movement is required to replace an unjust system with a just one. The United States might very well be entering a period of prolonged stagnation that could last another generation and we would be busying ourselves merely documenting the symptoms of that decay process. But fortunately we take strength from the fact that we are living in an Age of Liberation.

This is a kind of anniversary year, a point-in-time looking back over a larger span of history and drawing upon a body of experience
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J. H. O'Dell is an Associate Editor of FREEDOMWAYS, and has been on the Editorial Board for the past ten years.

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