The following excerpts are from the advance texts for the first two Godkin lectures, delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday nights by Chester Bowles. Excerpts from the third lecture will appear tomorrow. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Chester Bowles, American Politics in a Revolutionary World, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright, 1956, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

I

A Theory of Political Development

In this election year the attention of most Americans will be focused on the prospects of our two political parties. A study of long-term political cycles may seem, therefore, academic and beside the point.

Yet I believe that a consideration of these cycles will give us greater insight into the nature of our present alignment, help us to judge. more accurately the validity of current arguments, and even suggest, after a fashion, the course of our political development in the years ahead....

My purpose is to consider whether and how our system can mobilize the creative political resources to deal effectively with the demands of the explosive new time in which we live. I believe that to do so may require rather fundamental shifting and rearrangement in the present political alignment, not only of our two parties but in the deeper strata of public attitude which support and maintain them. I shall concentrate, therefore, on the times and manner of such creative political responses in our past, to the neglect, perhaps, of other features of our political processes less relevant for the present purpose.

From this point of view American political history may be usefully considered in terms of three great cycles or periods, each of which began with a burst of creative activity permeating a sizable majority of our people. Each of these cycles began its response to the emergence of dynamic new economic and social problems for which the previous movement held no adequate answer.

Each called forth not only new concepts of governmental responsibility but new political orientation on the part of a great many citizens. Each accepted the economic and social changes which the earlier movement had produced in its period of creative energy, and moved on to develop new answers to the new challenge. Each was identified in its earlier dynamic stage with a leader of great stature, with Jefferson, with Lincoln, and with Franklin Roosevelt.

Each was launched in an atmosphere charged with surging enthusiasm and bitter partisanship, followed by a mellowing as the new concepts brought forth by the new conditions because more generally accepted and, ultimately, were adopted as basic objectives by both major political parties.

I believe that we are now in the late stages of the third of these political cycles, and that a new one, calling for new alignments and a fresh burst of political imagination and creative leadership, may now be in the early phases of its development.

Only a very brave or very foolish man would attempt, as this is written, to prophesy the outcome of the 1956 election. But if I am correct in assuming that we are drawing towards the end of a political cycle, there are certain aspects of the approaching campaign which can be forecast with some confidence.

For instance, those questions which later historians will certainly judge to be the most crucial of our time will not be the principal subjects of debate. The campaign is likely to be fought for the most part on older and more familiar ground.

The Democrats will be denounced as radical New Dealers who favor an overbearing federal government and creeping socialism. Their proposals for a $1.10 minimum wage, increases in social security, and expanded slum clearance will be described as starry-eyed Utopianisms, derived from Marx or worse. Their candidates will be labeled "soft on communism."

The Republicans will not get off much easier. It will be said that they are reactionary successors to Herbert Hoover and may lead us into another Great Depression. Proposals for a $.90 minimum wage, more moderate increases in social security, and more limited public housing will be characterized as timid, reactionary, and dictated by big-business interests.

The Democrats, to defend themselves against the reproach of softness on communism, will be tempted to take a "tough" line on foreign policy issues; and the Republicans, in an effort to pour substance into the "peace" half of their "Peace and Prosperity" slogan, will call piously for a patient bipartisanship.