I WROTE most of this little book in the weeks immediately following the American invasion of Cambodia, almost a year ago. It is a political response to that event and to the outburst of citizen activism that followed. I want to emphasize that it is far more the work of an amateur activist than of a professional political scientist. I cannot claim much detachment from the people whose politics is described and (often) criticized in these pages. The criticisms are ones I have actually made or listened to other people make at meetings, and I have not hesitated to reproduce the hope, the anger, the weariness that my friends and I—and doubtless our opponents too—felt at such moments. It is my purpose to recommend political action of a certain sort, not political action in general, to my readers. The best way to do that, it seems to me, is simply to join the debates that go on every day in citizens’ clubs and movements.
I have encountered one difficulty that ought to be mentioned here. There is no classical history of citizen politics to which I can refer. Even movements of national scope are too little known in their details to serve as easy references. In any case, my own experience is with local activism, of little interest except to fellow participants in this or that project. So I have often failed to be concrete, though many readers will surely be able to supplement my advice with experiences that will serve (I hope) to confirm it.
Citizen politics is not an affair of lonely leaders or abstracted theorists. It is a roughly equalitarian and highly sociable activity, and one gets along, if at all, with a lot of help from one’s friends. I have had help writing this book, most especially from Carolyn Grace, Irving Howe, Martin Peretz, and Judith Walzer, comrades in different enterprises.
—MICHAEL WALZER
January 1971