Terrorism will prove a more effective weapon. But many thought his description of low- intensity war and its criminal propensities was chillingly accurate. The criminal dimension of the new warfare, however, was not neces- sarily its most worrisome aspect. At the same time, the struggle grows more violent and painful, both because it is less regulated and because the com- petition is more keen. All classes are set against one another because there is no longer any established classification.
Effort grows just when it becomes least productive.
Although Durkheim is not much read in America, his ideas have great currency. In the 1950s Robert Merton wrote an article that used the con- cept of anomie to analyze the problem of delinquency, which became the single most frequently cited work in the history of American sociology. Merton showed that, long after the transition from agrarian to industrial society haci been completed, other conditions could weaken values and thereby promote violence. Through Merton, Durkheim's ideas diffused into American discussions of crime and deviance. Not all criminologists agreed that crime was becoming more irrational or even more common.