At Dusk

All periods of historical transition are characterized by a fundamental ambiguity: within a changing reality, both growth and decay appear to be frozen in social time, and what is ascending cannot easily be distinguished from that which is entering a state of final decline. In this respect, the current era of world history presents itself as a prolonged entr’acte in an unresolved drama, as an extended interval in which the poorly defined characters of “past” and “future” occupy the same stage—that of the officially recognized “present.” Under such uncertain conditions, the climax of one historical epoch conceals the beginnings of another; events which seem most tentative are in fact the most momentous. The imbalance of prevailing political, economic, and cultural formations has resulted in a kind of social vertigo in which reality is in flux, and in which, therefore, everything is possible. But if it is clear that what has previously been considered as the status quo no longer maintains, it is far from obvious that existing social authority, in advanced countries at least, faces any immediate prospect of its revolutionary abolition.

The radical ambivalence of contemporary appearances is nowhere more clearly shown than in the confused “public” recognition of global change, a recognition made public in different ways by the various directorates of the present world order, and in the equally confused counter-interpretations of this change by those who, for numerous and often quite dissimilar reasons, seek to replace existing systems with new forms of society. The proverbial “riddle of history”—and its supposed “solution” as discovered by Marx—remain relevant precisely as enigmas, both to the titular masters of recent history and to those who have been dispossessed by this alienated history. The sphinx of modern development can be answered, however, and this response must be formulated in the only language which it understands: dialectics. The task of theoretical criticism remains that of specifying the axial principles and the faultlines within existing modes of social organization, of elaborating a theory of social movement. To this extent, its sense of history is nothing more—and nothing less—than a sense of the moving order of the present. The critique which wants to go beyond its immediate objects must know how to proceed: its prerequisite is self-consciousness—an understanding of what theory itself expresses. Moreover, the weapons of qualitative criticism can only be fully deployed within a decisive historical juncture: their natural element is crisis.

The signs of the times are first displayed by those who control the existing means of signification. It is thus not surprising that a superficial, though no less important, indication of the developing crisis of advanced capitalist society can be seen in the self-despair, the sense of the malevolent inexorability of current events, which has suddenly overcome bourgeois ideology. The viability of “modern civilization” has been impugned by its very apologists: weltschmerz is the social disease which today afflicts all the literati, especially the authorized “critics,” in the dominant intellectual establishment. But this critical void is not the exclusive property of the modern academy; the latter’s sterile apocalyptic vision finds an appropriate counterpart in the insipid rhetoric of modern leftism, which can only resurrect a vulgar-Marxist eschatology concerning the “final collapse of capitalism” in order to explain recent developments. The theoretical and practical inertia of the organized left would not itself be of interest were it not that this condition equally describes the situation of any real oppositional movement within present society. It is a supreme historical irony that the intensification of contradictions within developed capitalist states has been contemporaneous with a general paralysis of modern revolutionary currents. Despite the extreme likelihood of mass discontent in the face of the abrupt deceleration of economic growth in superindustrial countries (expressing itself in protests over unemployment and the decline in the real income of workers, which had been eroded by the inflationary period preceding the recession), it is evident that one movement to suppress existing conditions—that which arose in advanced capitalism during the 1960’s—has faltered. What formerly announced itself as the specter of a complete overturning of extant social relationships has merely become a latent contingency within a field of evolutionary possibilities. If this extremism survives, it will not be of its own doing but rather as a fortuitous consequence of advanced capitalism’s economic crisis. Radicalism will again assume significant proportions because the times are once again radical, but what, if any, revolutionary movements emerge in the near future will represent the start of something new and not a simple continuation of past tendencies.

As one phase of social development comes to an apparent close, the center of structural gravity in the world of political economy has shifted, leaving many material and ideological assumptions in its wake. But already the shapes of things to come can be partially discerned in the encoded language of modern productive culture. Advanced capitalism has been forced to reassess its expectations, and the ideology of unlimited abundance which served as a compelling incentive during its most recent expansionary cycle has been summarily dispensed with. The promise of a terrestrial paradise of the commodity now dissipates before the drab reality of economic stagnation. On the command of capital, a more subdued scenario is devised: all available resources are directed towards the stabilization, through remedial actions, of the economic status quo. Thus, the immediate exigencies of advanced capitalism now correspond to those of a developmental plateau rather than of an “economic miracle”; the system must presently occupy itself with protecting its past conquests. All the partners in this business concern are forced to assert themselves in order to preserve their miserable shares in the common enterprise, and this assertion is made at the expense of the social peace previously concluded between all parties. But whatever the momentary conflicts of interest which divide these collaborators, they are united on basic principles. Despite obligatory denunciations of the high cost of their constituents’ survival, union bureaucracies have been active accomplices in the implementation of austerity programs within the “First World” of the commodity. The primary objective of these programs has been ideological austerity, a limiting of possible responses to the economic crisis to alternatives within existing society; the ultimate success of capitalism’s corrective measures depends on dissimulation, on a necessary distortion in which the aberrancies of the system are made the collective responsibility of all those who are subject to their consequences. Such an accountability has been stressed in different ways, according to changes in the economic climate: in the face of accelerating inflation, the former inhabitants of the “affluent society” were admonished to practice self-restraint in the name of “conservation”; now, in the wake of an economic contraction brought about by the collapse of consumer demand from the effects of inflation, they are expected to bear the brunt of a “national sacrifice” so that commerce may once again flourish. Throughout all these vicissitudes of the capitalist market, what is being conserved is precisely a social ecology of alienated practice.

The domination of objectified labor over living labor, and consequently over all of life, acquires its full significance in capitalist society within a context of economic disequilibrium. The capricious behavior of even the most programmed Western economies does not simply result in commercial fluctuations, but necessarily involves the disruption of social activity. Reified social organization formally expresses an inversion of material and human categories: here, the circulation of things becomes the determining axis of social movement. This fundamental irrationality assumes a rational appearance within an environment governed by the laws of capitalist accumulation. Such authority exercises a direct monopoly over social meaning: by prior definition, economic dislocation becomes natural disaster, an immutable fate before which human society must submit. But while the current crisis is indicative of the distorting power of bourgeois ideology, it also reveals a serious debility in modern economic structures. Although its exact social consequences remain as yet problematical, the deepening recession of developed economies suggests that capitalism has now encountered a qualitative barrier to its further quantitative expansion. This obstacle is shown not only in a failure to calibrate productive and consumptive mechanisms but in a pervasive uncertainty concerning the immediate future of the entire modern economic order. However much the present arrestment of capitalist growth appears to unfold on a material level as a crisis of “overproduction,” it can only be fully understood in terms of social crisis.

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The exact dimensions of the present juncture in world history only become apparent when they are viewed in relation to an entire cycle of previous social development. Seen from this perspective, the confused pattern of contemporary events finds a hidden order. The symptoms of crisis which today proliferate everywhere signal the end of the post-war era: they represent the conclusion of advanced capitalism’s uninterrupted economic growth and quite possibly the larger cultural transformations initiated by this expansion. As this period finishes, it is possible—and necessary—to assess its history, to describe its essential characteristics. To do so, criticism must establish the fundamental contours of advanced capitalist development. It must therefore really distinguish advanced capitalism from other forms of capitalism, elaborating a theory of modern social processes, their history and their contradictions. The history of advanced capitalism necessarily encounters the history of opposition to this society; one phenomenon implies the other, and not simply on one level. The connection between advanced capitalism and its opposition cannot be grasped simply as an antagonistic relationship, i.e., as a relation of opposites. To suggest a convergence between capitalist development and its opposition is not merely to state that the dynamics of opposition were determined by those of capitalism, but to postulate a real identity between them. Without resorting to over-simplification, it can be said that the “modern revolutionary movement” was to a quite precise extent a reflection of modern capitalist society. Thus, in order to specify the theme of opposition to advanced capitalist society, it is necessary to specify the constituent features of this social form. For the purposes of the present article, such a specification can only be made on a rudimentary level.

As previously noted, the immediate historical context of advanced capitalism is that of the post-war era, when a reconstruction period of the developed capitalist economies rapidly became transformed into an era of sustained and accelerated growth. During this period—which may still be considered as contemporary even though its ascendant phase is already part of the immediate past—capitalism, as a cultural as well as economic system, sought to sever any connection with its “primitive” origins and, in so doing, to overcome the negative (i.e., dysfunctional) consequences of its previous development. The rise of advanced capitalism is that of a progressive capitalism and coincides with the full realization of a liberal-pluralist model of social organization. Within this environment, capitalist power—which no longer appeared as such, i.e., as capitalist power, having achieved an “objective” or neutral aspect and hence a certain invisibility- emerged as fundamentally reformist. Although it was far from a uniform or continuous phenomenon, this reformist dynamic of advanced capitalism exhibited itself in various dimensions: on an institutional level (in the reform of basic social institutions, from the labor process to the nuclear family); in the sphere of authority relationships (in the progressive realignment of social relations, from sex roles to the distribution of power in the “political” process); and on a normative level (in the diversification of general social “values”).

This series of transformations did not simply “occur,” either by conscious design or through historical inevitability. It represented neither the triumph of a progressive faction of bourgeois ideology, nor a simple extrapolation of previous trends in capitalist development. The genesis of the advanced capitalist state can be interpreted in terms of a specific constellation of social and material forces: the extensive—and expansive—modification of capitalist culture in the current era has its origins in a material base, the advanced capitalist economy, and in the constraints imposed upon capitalist social organization by a hitherto irreducible class conflict. During the period under discussion, capitalism, in its own way, once again demonstrated the intimate connection between material and social progress. “Affluence,” or a level of relative economic abundance, was not a superficial feature of advanced capitalist culture but rather its essence, its organizing principle. But the specific attributes of advanced capitalism cannot be elucidated only out of an accumulation of material wealth. On the contrary, the social configuration (a term embracing both “form” and “content”) assumed by advanced capitalism must be seen as an adaptation to certain historical circumstances, as an organized response to the challenge of past movements against capitalist authority. The modern welfare state stands as the most enduring legacy of the European and American workers’ movements in the first half of this century, representing a society profoundly transformed by class struggle. Capitalism’s incorporation of the reformist impetus (“reformist” here understood not necessarily in a pejorative sense), and indeed much of the social program, of its former opposition represents perhaps the most significant achievement of advanced capitalism, defining the context of new social antagonisms and circumscribing the history of the social movements which these contradictions generated.

In order to develop at all, the capitalist system must constantly revolutionize its own material and social bases, and the permanent revolution conducted by capitalism does not only consist in the imposition of its mode of societal organization throughout the world, but in an ongoing renewal of its internal structures. Despite its present (and highly significant) inertia, the evolution of advanced capitalism has been predicated on a principle of perpetual motion, a principle which has obtained in both the modern economy and the general culture within which this economy is literally the driving power. The dynamic equilibrium which represents the ideal state of capitalist production extends to bourgeois society as a whole, which is unceasing in its accumulation and application of social technique, in its redesigning of modes of human practice. On a macrocosmic level, the intensive rate of structural change within contemporary society can be resolved into mutually related processes of dissolution and consolidation, encompassing a simultaneous overthrow of antiquated economic forms, social hierarchies, and legitimizing beliefs, and their replacement by new, more “modern” ones. Advanced capitalism organized itself around a comprehensive—and for a time it appeared unlimited—task of social modernization, that is, a modification and amelioration of the conditions of social life under capitalism. Modernity represented both the image and substance of this project and must be understood in both senses: as the unifying goal of existing social practice, a collective telos anchored in the historical given, and as the sustaining momentum of advanced capitalist reproduction. In the culture of advanced capitalism, the secular religion of modernism found its social expression in the official glorification of contemporary values (as opposed to those associated with “tradition”), an exaltation seen most overtly in the much- discussed “cult of youth.” This expression went beyond the establishment of a new value system, however: it allowed capitalism to identify itself wholly with modernism as such and even enabled it to appear as “value-free,” as simply the most advanced, and thus the most rational, example of social organization. This connection was made concretely in a rationalized form of capitalist domination, in the implementation of a calculus of power seemingly indifferent to the ends towards which it was applied. The bare beginnings of this bureaucratization of authority relations in the capitalist state and economy were observed in detail, albeit imperfectly, by Weber. If the primary purpose of this standardization of capitalist power was to improve the functioning performance of economic and political mechanisms, it nevertheless served as a means to further expand capital’s influence over society; the advance of the modern capitalist bureaucracy was accompanied by a general reticulation of social structures, a “spreading out” of capitalist institutions. There were limits, of course, to the consolidation of a uniform capitalist authority, and advanced capitalism retained many of the qualities of a clientelistic state, with distinct interest groups competing for shares of power within a commonly defined arena of contention. And for all of its “progressive” features, the modern capitalist state proved itself on occasion to be crudely repressive in the defense of its authority. Nonetheless, advanced capitalism did succeed in accomplishing a general reduction of tensions in a society which, of course, still remained divided along class lines. Indeed, the institutionalization, on an official level, of the struggle between capital and labor meant that the management of social conflict had become an essential part of the legitimation process in modern capitalist society. (1)

Advanced capitalism, however, should be analyzed not solely in the static terms of its formal power arrangements, but in the fluid terms of its overall movement and the general cultural themes underlying this motion. Of these themes, perhaps the most important has been the relative democratization of capitalist society, a liberalization which must be related directly to economic prosperity (hence the specificity of this “opening,” its real limits and its reversible character). While quite necessarily retaining fundamental class distinctions, advanced capitalism attempted its own abolition of class society, seeking to remove the most obvious, i.e., the most visible, cultural denotations of class. The egalitarian thrust of advanced capitalist culture materialized as a far from superficial “levelling effect” throughout society. This resulted both in a more democratic image of social man and woman (advertising being the medium most responsive to new values) and, more fundamentally, in an altered class structure. The limited equalization of class power in advanced capitalism took place at both ends of the existing social hierarchy: it occurred as a result of the displacement of the traditional ruling class—which became transformed in the general broadening of the power base of capitalist domination—and as a consequence of the increased upward mobility of the traditional working class. New class positions emerged from this, as the power of the classic commercial bourgeoisie was incorporated within that of a new, though no less capitalist, elite and as the objective differences between the industrial working class and other sectors of the capitalist work force narrowed. Concurrent with the realization of such a new, more simplified balance of class forces, however, was a further internal differentiation within classes, resulting, for example, in a high degree of stratification within the “professional” class, and on a broader level, in a proliferation of sub-groupings within the interstices of advanced capitalist culture. This submergence of class identity must be linked to a seemingly contradictory phenomenon in advanced capitalism: the reduced role of the labor process as a source of social identification (work categories no longer being the exclusive determinants of cultural “types” and the importance of work time itself diminishing in relation to that of other activities) and the increased role of the collective product of economic activity as a source of legitimation. Prosperity appeared as the real legitimation process in advanced capitalism, allowing for an individualized “overcoming” of class barriers and “satisfaction” of hitherto repressed needs.

Of course, the “freedom” of advanced capitalism had its other side, and not simply, as the left would have it, that of the exploitation of minorities and the Third World. The privileges of the consumer society were obviously accompanied and sustained by the intensification of the total level of (proletarian) consumption and its correlate, the total level of productivity, but these facts represented only an aspect of the overall intensification of social activity in advanced capitalism. As much as any developing society, advanced capitalism can be considered as a society in mobilization: here, as elsewhere, accelerated economic development translated into a rapid acceleration of social life and thus, its measurement, social time. Furthermore, the exaggerated cadences of contemporary existence, rhythms directly related to the “pace of things” in the advanced capitalist economy, were themselves only the motor forces of a larger process—the reproduction of advanced capitalism in general and as a whole with an independent status, i.e., with an existence independent of its producers. This alienation of social powers from social forces (namely, the proletariat) forms an essential starting point for radical criticism of advanced capitalism, but the “concentrated alienation” of social labor—and social being—in contemporary society has many facets, all of which cannot be reduced to the social and psychological theme of alteriority, understood as “otherness” or “estrangement.” The (self-)transformation of capitalism into advanced capitalism can be measured by various criteria, but perhaps the most important of these has been the extension, both formally and informally, of capitalist domination over the entire range of public expression, and thus “private” life, in modern society. One of the characteristics of advanced capitalist development has been that, even as the percentage of the work force directly engaged in the production of commodities has diminished in relation to other sectors, commodity relations have come to dominate all of social life. This “commodification” of society can be understood as the progressive absorption by the advanced capitalist economy of other, previously “distinct” social spheres (notably those of culture and the family) and the consequent emergence of a highly-integrated social economy. In its advanced stage, therefore, modern capitalism established a ubiquitous power, maintaining this effective presence only by becoming the effective, i.e., the only generally conceivable, realization of collective needs and wants. It imposed its absolute authority over the objective and subjective possibilities of human activity and imposed this order as the public expression of such possibilities, as the image of social practice before society. Within this hermetic enclosure, capitalism’s authoritarian use of the existing means of social communication- means which it, after all, created—results in a pervasive conditioning of thought and activity, in the forcible, if subliminal, structuring of individual and collective psychologies. Advanced capitalism, through this structuration of experience, creates a framework of significance and thus one of signification: it assigns meaning to social activity (establishing the real worth of work, consumption, and participation in society) and determines the way in which this activity is itself interpreted by those who engage in it.

The authoritarian nature of the advanced capitalist state must be understood in a further, objective dimension, however; the metamorphosis of capitalism into advanced capitalism must be explained as such, as a change in the form of social organization. Such a transformation occurs in the form of articulation of social capital: in advanced capitalism, the total social product (including the social relations which presuppose this product) becomes animated, assuming a real “life” for itself above and beyond simply furnishing the basis for new accumulation of capital. This symbolization of capital (the suffusion of capital throughout social appearances) implies that, in advanced capitalism, social objectification goes beyond objects themselves, and even beyond the objectification of society in its entirety, to the objectification of a collective “spirit” or ethos, a unifying social consciousness which assumes a symbolic, representational form independent of particular social institutions. Advanced capitalism is distinguished by the complexity of its socialization process and by the importance which the fabrication of social identity plays in this process. Here, the individual is identified—and has society identified for him or her—on both a figurative (e.g., the visual transmission of social norms, a socialization through images) and concrete (the actual reinforcement, both “positive” and “negative,” of acceptable social behavior) level. What must be recognized, however, is the expanded context of socialization in advanced capitalism and the corresponding increase in the “public sphere” of society. It is even possible to speak here of a “forced collectivization” of experience: advanced capitalist development tends toward the suppression of any distinction between “public” and “private” selves, between egoistic and social behavior, and ensures the supremacy of public identity. Even though “personal” freedom increases markedly, and it is the pursuit of “private” interests which appears to motivate social behavior, the “private” life of the individual is, in contrast to the mythology of traditional capitalism, no longer sacrosanct in advanced capitalism. On the contrary, it is raw material which can be shaped—and sold. Through this form of behavioral modification, every “personal” role becomes a social role. Durkheim, perhaps the bourgeois sociologist par excellence, proposed the idea of “organic solidarity” in order to explain, and justify, the cohesion of developed societies, and this form of social integration is indeed realized in advanced capitalism, but on a higher level than Durkheim imagined. It is not the primacy of codified mores, but of normative patterns implicit in contemporary culture, which determines the “solidarity” of advanced capitalist society. The community of interests nurtured—and inculcated—by advanced capitalism is not dependent on a single, all-embracing “set of beliefs”; its Gesellschaft is not recognized as such, appearing as simply the boundaries within which an increasingly diverse social life unfolds.

To insist upon the sophistication of capitalist power in its advanced state, however, is not to imply that this power developed without opposition or internal contradictions. On the contrary, it is necessary to discern the contradictory nature of advanced capitalist development: the same means by which advanced capitalism secured itself and obtained its collective confirmation also tended to disrupt its underlying social fabric. By virtue of its multiformity, contemporary culture proved to be elastic, i.e., capable of absorbing new tendencies, however “unconventional” they may have appeared to be initially. This elasticity, however, at the same time created a certain “free space,” if only at the margins of society, allowing for the formation of a critical and practical opposition to existing authority. Advanced capitalism also generated social antagonisms as a consequence of the objective requirements of its economic progress. For example, the mobilization of human capacities at the service of advanced capitalist development necessitated an intensive social division of labor, and this increased specialization of economic tasks (corresponding to a new complexity of the capitalist economy) was double-edged: it created an intellectual sector of the capitalist work force as it modernized traditional categories, and this process, while furthering a division of the proletariat against itself, supplied it with new weapons, of which the most important was thought itself. The limited intelligence required by the modern economy was like any other productive tool in that it could be turned against its prescribed use and thus become something else. However, the contradictions of advanced capitalism cannot be explained by reference to certain selective phenomena. General axes of social conflict must be established, and these lines of contradiction can be specified in three, highly simplified areas of crisis in advanced capitalist society: the crisis of authority resulting from an uneven distribution of social power; the crisis within the sphere of extended culture resulting from a widespread conflict between “old” and “new” values; and the purely economic crisis, at first relatively latent and then quite acute, resulting from the continued unstable nature of capitalist development. It is not coincidental that these areas of conflict correspond exactly to the areas of capitalist reform in this period. The crisis of advanced capitalism marked the limits of its reformist project and represented the excessive—from the point of view of capitalism—continuation of this reform. Social reform and social conflict were thus directly, and reciprocally, related in the history of advanced capitalism.

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The uncalculated results of the superindustrial revolution with which advanced capitalist society was inaugurated became apparent both on a material level, in the deleterious effects of capitalism’s domination of nature, and on a social one, as a crisis resulting from the nature of capitalist domination. Of these systemic weaknesses, the more severe threat to expansionary capitalism was the active disruption of its social dictatorship by forces set in motion by the very process of capitalist modernization. It is not difficult to perceive that the radicalization of certain areas within developed society during the post-war era was itself a consequence of the reformist project of advanced capitalism: oppositional movements emerged among those social groups most directly affected by structural change in the system. In the United States, this opposition developed within both modern and displaced sectors, at the margins and the center of advanced capitalist society, and manifested itself identically as: a movement arising to correct the imbalances of American society, as blacks and other minorities who had been excluded from the era of “peaceful prosperity” protested this exclusion and, on occasion, exacted their retribution through collective violence; and a movement in which the social forces specifically engendered by advanced capitalism challenged the new social order, all of whose “benefits” they enjoyed. These two movements were not unconnected, and the revolt of the urban colonies of the American welfare state was joined by, and contributed to, an “alienation of affections” from modern capitalism on the part of large numbers of its affluent youth, intelligentsia, and professional class; both movements, moreover, even while not being direct contributing factors, subsequently overlapped in the increased militancy of certain sectors of the American working class. But the real differences between these currents of opposition should not be minimized, and such distinct movements cannot simply be united to form a single modern “proletarian” movement. The revolts of minorities, the student movement, alternative culture, and radicalized working class (the latter being less a movement than the intimation of one) did not only differ in terms of their respective social origins, but in terms of the issues and forces they addressed. In a real sense, the only unity between these movements was a negative one, expressed in the fact that they each, to varying degrees, took advanced capitalist ideology at its most reformist word and thereby became only an extremist variant of the general reformation of modern social structures and values. Considered only negatively, and, that is to say, only one-sidedly: the black movement (except for its separatist wing), demanded the complete integration of existing society; the student movement organized itself around the democratization and sanitization of capitalism; the counter-culture appeared as an ad hominem projection of the hedonistic values of dominant culture; and the new working class movement—to the extent that it is even possible to speak of such—fought for a humane, as opposed to “inhumane” capitalist labor process and the democratic representation of working class interests.

The dimensions of the radicalization process in American society cannot be disputed, however, nor can the truly radical character of this process. Whatever its ultimate propensity towards reformism (a tendency reinforced by the violent opposition of authority to anything but reformism), the revolution of rising expectations in the advanced capitalist world was not entirely contained within the system’s priorities. It was precisely the affirmative goals and rewards promoted by modern social propaganda which were rejected by this revolution, whose history was one of a prolonged, almost subterranean insurrection against existing values and hierarchies. A profound transformation of consciousness occurred throughout many levels of society as the open expression of individual and collective dissatisfaction exposed, not simply the overt inequalities, but the actual human rapports by which that society functioned. In being diffused, radical discontent was situated on a new level, that of subjective experience. For most opponents to the system, the attempt to redefine social life was inseparably an attempt to redefine “personal” life, and the various challenges to occupational, sexual, and cultural roles in contemporary society put into question individual behavior as well as social relations. An essential motivation of social upheaval in advanced capitalism was the desire of individuals to live differently. But here again, what made this movement radical also facilitated its reabsorption within mainstream society; advanced capitalism proved itself to be perfectly capable of using the theme of personal liberation for its own marketable ends. Non-conformist culture became an acceptable alternative within, rather than outside, dominant culture, serving, in fact, as an experimental laboratory for the “leisure society” by opening up new areas of self-expression (new forms of popular psychology and media, to name only two) for capitalist penetration and by providing new values for cultural reform. Once neutralized and appropriated by conventional society, the alternative culture’s search for “meaningful” activity—for work which would have some “influence”—became only a more contemporary, if more altruistic, version of the traditional capitalist cult of prestige. It is not simply ironic that many former “dropouts” from the commercial world later made their peace with capitalist institutions and joined them.

In retrospect, the radical movements which arose within advanced capitalist society appear principally as attacks on the predominant means of socialization (educational system, normative patterns) and integrative mechanisms (institutions which determined the composition of the work force and the ability of various groups to participate in decision-making processes) and this orientation indicates the strengths and, weaknesses of these movements. The minoritarian, student, and feminist revolts challenged advanced capitalist institutions directly, if only to “open” them up, but at the same time, they provided a new basis for capitalist socialization in the very reform of the socialization process. The liberalization of capitalist integration only served the further legitimation of existing institutions. Such a result was inevitable, given the inability of these movements to extend themselves to a direct challenge of the mode of production in advanced capitalism. However, this assessment should not be construed as a deterministic evaluation or unqualified dismissal of modern oppositional tendencies; on the contrary, these tendencies, to the extent that they really opposed capitalism, must be seen as representing a new stage of class struggle which, while defeated paradoxically in both its isolation and generalization, remains to be recognized for its widening of the arena of conflict in modern society. The possibilities of this social protest, as in the case of the feminist movement, are far from being exhausted.

Having considered modern radicalism, at least in its American variations, as a social movement with origins in the general contradictions of advanced capitalist development, it still must be described as an historical movement determined by immediate causal factors. If opposition to advanced capitalism emerged as a relatively widespread phenomenon, it obviously did not suddenly develop as a general response to the conditions of modern social life, but was initially a response to quite specific issues; much of the transitory character of radical currents derived from their dependency upon certain events. As a concentrated expression of capitalist violence, the American experiment in technological counterinsurgency in Vietnam assumed mythic proportions in its global implications. The immense spectacle of applied destruction in Indochina served as a catalyst for oppositional tendencies in countries that were not even marginally involved in the conflict. Quite aside from presenting the international left with a propitious opportunity to exhibit its selective “conscience,” the Vietnam War initiated a chain reaction in the distended framework of Western society. By inadvertently demystifying the nature of its power, the most imposing faction of international capitalism exposed the rationale underlying its hegemony. The quantitative logic of refined terrorism, which governed operations from the computerized battlefields of Southeast Asia to the demilitarized zones of domestic society, was quite transparent, and this clarification of social power led to a collapse of official ideology on its most important front: collective identity. As the real meaning of modern capitalism’s “tyranny of numbers” became apparent, radical opposition emerged as a significant factor in the advanced capitalist polity.

When mere discontent escalated into a more less general offensive against social institutions, however, illusions about capitalist society were supplanted by illusions about its abolition. That the possibility of social revolution could assume a chimerical quality was less a result of the inept fabrications of contemporary Bolshevism than of the genuine misconceptions which surrounded the interpretation of the contradictions of advanced capitalism. If it was not at all surprising that the definitive cultural polarization naively anticipated by the New Left never materialized, the seemingly imminent decline and fall of bourgeois civilization nonetheless remained a mirage on the horizon of modern revolutionary perspectives in general. But although the subversive processes that undermined the social machinery of Western states in the late Sixties represented a substantial threat to capitalist power, the force of these radicalizing tendencies was mitigated by their sporadic nature and the consistent failure of isolated rebellions to expand, except infrequently, into moments of revolutionary crisis. Indeed, as already demonstrated, the first explosions which accompanied the renewal of social war in advanced class societies were in themselves a false dawn: everywhere, the results were greatly different from what participants on either side of the battle-lines had predicted. On an international level, the sudden and prolonged repercussions of social conflict in developed capitalism exposed the vulnerability of the entire system to internal attack and revealed its fundamental class character, but at the same time the inability of modern radical currents to sustain momentum beyond an initial spontaneity—as in the case of the highest expression of these tendencies, the French occupation movement of May 1968—revealed a basic deficiency. As long as these currents could not prolong themselves and become ongoing, and organized, movements leading to the positive reconstruction of social activity, they could prevent neither the integration of their practical creativity and theoretical program within the structures of capitalism’s nominal opposition—including the mini-bureaucracies spawned by a Leninist revival—nor the manipulation of their rebellious image by capitalism itself. The institutionalization and hence defeat of the intuitive radicalism which characterized modern social revolt marked the passage of this extremism into its other. In the official presentation of contemporary revolt as mere “excess,” rebellion became justified on the system’s terms as therapeutic and as diversion. But the eventual devolution of modern revolutionary opposition was less the result of a pacification program consciously implemented by capitalism (which was really only capable of the most ad hoc responses to its crisis) than of the attenuation of the specific contradictions and issues with which modern radicalism had commenced.