Tropical ginsberg

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CHAPTER II
Defining Concepts
The first concept I work with in this research is one proposed by
James J. Farrell, “political personalism.” According to him, political
personalism is the idea that the personal is political, where individuals
participate actively in the day to day political decisions of their
neighborhood and nation. The personalist, an adept of political
personalism, believes every individual has a compromise with the wellbeing
of society. For the personalist the meaning of the word democracy
– government of the people – is of utmost importance, because there is
no democracy if the people do not participate in it. Everyone is
responsible for what goes on in the country, the worst thing is not the
overt sinister plots of people, it is, rather, the desolate silence of people.
People are called upon to do their part, peace is not only a state of mind,
it is a necessity for daily life; personalists believed in “the inviolable
dignity of persons.” 6 This perspective of personal commitment was the
fuel for the ignition of postwar radicalism in the United States.
According to Farrell, during the 1950s and 1960s, in the United
States, political personalism,
Was suspicious of the market economy and the
state, because they were not ultimately focused on
the dignity of persons. Personalists were
suspicious of the market economy because they
[personalists] did not believe in homo
economicus, who feels no obligation to others.
They [personalists] decried the depersonalization
of people in the impersonal factories and
bureaucracies of modern economy. And they
refused to countenance the injustices that the
market accepted as normal. Personalists were
suspicious of the state in part because they feared
the corruptions of power, and in part because the
habit of looking to the state for solutions to social
problems excused individuals who could be doing
something here and now.
6 Farell, James J. The Spirit of The Sixties: Making Post War Radicalism. New York:
Routledge Publishing. 1997. 6.