The End of Ideology Revisited (Part I)

In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 23, Heft 2, S. 131-150

Abstract

Ideas set forth in The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Bell, Daniel [see SA 9:5/61A1008]) are reviewed, & some criticisms of it addressed. A cautionary tale, its place in the postwar debate among intellectuals concerning the future of the USSR & Stalinism is chronicled, along with the development of its theme that ideology is a form of self-deception & its prediction that a new form of ideology would arise from the Third World. Aside from being a political work, however, it was also a sociological one that aimed to provide an alternative to conventional Marxist holistic or totalistic views of society that integrated culture & social structure. Five separate criticisms of the book are reviewed, & a defense offered to each, with focus on why the upsurge of radicalism in the mid-1960s & 1970s did not represent a regeneration of ideology. The tension between ethics & politics is examined. K. Hyatt