Seymour Martin Lipset, deceased at 84

Seymour Martin Lipset was one of the giants of American academia and progressive political thought. As a student of American society and government steeped in the intellectual traditions of European social theory, Lipset brought to the social sciences a highly original and cosmopolitan perspective on "American exceptionalism." Lipset brought light to such conundrums as the extraordinary vibrancy of voluntary associational life in the U.S. and the conspicuous absence in U.S. history of a serious American socialist challenge. As a committed Socialist in youth, Lipset helped build an aspirational American social scientific tradition that dwarfed in creative fecundity the plodding methodicalness of Talcott Parson's reigning postwar paradigm of Structural Functionalism. Yet, as an intellectual offspring of Max Weber and Roberto Michels, he was finely attuned to the capacity of ideology to yield and give shape to new modes of domination within the structures of workers' organizations and political parties ostensibly committed to egalitarianism and class struggle. This combination of moral vision and disciplined skepticism engendered a social analysis that cut to the core of a culture so profoundly shaped by moralism in a society so fundamentally perverted by inequality. Lipset's contribution to the U.S.' understanding of itself looms as large as that of Toqueville. For as long as American civilization lasts, Lipset's intellectual legacy will persist.