Foreword

Originally published in Social Research: An International Quarterly of Political and Social Science, volume 1, number 1, February 1934, pp. 1–2.

on rare occasions in literary history a new publication appears, not as a result of long, conscious planning, not a product of particularistic ambitions, but a spontaneous generation within a dominant circle of circumstances. Social Research is such a spontaneous growth. Political revolution on the European continent had expelled from their usual orbits of activity scores and hundreds of the ablest scholars, to whom the scientific world had turned for light upon the problems that harass the whole of mankind. These scholars, representing collectively an important fraction of the world’s thinking power, had been divorced from their customary avenues of expression. Magazines published in their countries of origin, if not formally closed to them, were practically closed. Nothing could be more natural than the emergence of a new organ of publication at the New School, where the largest organic grouping of continental scholars abroad has been established as a Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science.

It would be impossible, even if it were practicable, for an organized body of continental scholars to function abroad exactly as they had functioned at home. When the Greek scholars were expelled from Constantinople in the fifteenth century they were not able to set up in the Western world exactly the same scheme of literary education, of training in art, of criticism and philosophy as had been established in the old Byzantine Empire. They were forced to widen their views, to apply Greek methods to Italian and Austrian and French materials. The consequence was a cross-fertilization of cultures, a renaissance that definitely closed the Dark Ages. The German and Italian and Russian scholars residing abroad will inevitably be subject to a similar process of adjustment to a new environment. Form and material share equally in creation, and though the form of the scholar’s mind may be German or Russian or Italian, the material on which he must work is world material. What is striving for expression in the collective mind of the continental scholars abroad is not the kind of thinking to which they were formerly devoted, but a new kind of thinking. And there can be little doubt that when the integration of form and material has been completely effected new and potent forces will have been set in operation in the intellectual world.

Social Research is an early sign of this coming intellectual movement. The methods employed are obviously continental, the material is of the world at large. And this defines the general character of the magazine. Its contributors will be drawn for the most part, but not exclusively, from among the continental scholars abroad, both at the New School and in other institutions of America and Europe. The subject matter will be drawn from interests that transcend the boundaries of a single country. It will include theory, political, social and economic; problems of social and political organization that are worldwide in their general character though national in specific characteristics, such as class differentiation, militarism, the labor movement; problems involving the interdependence of nations, like the phenomena of prosperity and depression, prices and currency, movements of international trade and investment.

The first issue is wholly the product of the Graduate Faculty in the New School. Later issues will draw upon a wider range of scholarship. The first issue is devoted entirely to leading articles. Later issues will also make room for notes, critical reviews of books of importance within the field of the journal, and briefer notices of books of more special interest.

Social Research has no apologies to offer for appearing in a world in which publications are already embarrassingly numerous. It has a field of its own, won by circumstances and the wholesome disposition of scholarship to react positively to circumstances. The editors are aware that many shortcomings will crave the indulgence of the reader. They are confident that the reader will extend to the enterprise not only his indulgence but his friendship.