Suchergebnisse

In Aug 1989, the German periodical Die Zeit asked whether the recent opening of a MacDonald's restaurant in Moscow (USSR) meant "the end of communism." In a reply to that question, it is proposed that communism & socialism have not failed because they have never been tried. In attempting to implement these syustems in such a backward peasant country as Russia, the Bolsheviks merely created a totalitarian state based on central planning. Also, it is not capitalism that is replacing what the Bolsheviks instituted in the wake of the Revolution; rather, it is democracy that is facilitating the unraveling of the totalitarian state. Rather than emphasizing the issue of capitalism vs socialism, attention should be paid to the ability of democratic governments to handle their economies so as to benefit their citizens as well as the global community. R. Logsdon

It is asserted that a third technological revolution is in progress. The first was the introduction of steam power; the second brought electrical & chemical innovations; & the third is based on four innovations -- advances in electronics, miniaturization, digitalization, & software. Postindustrial society is that layer of society involved in processing, control, & information activities. Social change is described as the ability to institutionalize cultural attitudes in market terms. How the third technological revolution will change society is discussed in terms of infrastructure, or social geography, & production systems. Communication is replacing transportation as the link among people. The change in scale is the crucial question in how social structures will adapt to technology. A. Waters

In the twenty-five years since The End of Ideology was published, the concept of ideology has unravelled completely. What is not considered an ideology today? Ideas, ideals, beliefs, creeds, passions, values, Weltanschauungen, religions, political philosophies, moral systems, linguistic discourses — all have been pressed into service. One hears about 'communism and capitalism as competing ideologies', and 'the failure of the United States [before Reagan] to develop an ideology'. In an essay in the Partisan Review, ideology is defined as 'fantasy cast in the form of assertion', a loose and associative form of thought, 'sharing qualities with pornography …'. A front-page essay in the Times Literary Supplement on pre-Christian religious thought talks of the effects of 'hostile ideologies (i.e. early Epicureanism) on Christian apologists'. And a book on military strategy is entitled The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disaster of 1914.

THERE ARE SOME BOOKS THAT ARE BETTER KNOWN FOR their titles than their contents. Mine is one of them. Various critics, usually from the Left, pointed to the upsurge of radicalism in the 1960s as disproof of the book's thesis. Others saw the work as an 'ideological' defence of 'technocratic' thinking, or of the 'status quo'. A few, even more ludicrously, believed that the book attacked the role of ideals in politics. It was none of these.The frame of the book was set by its sub-title, On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. Yet the last section looked ahead. After observing young left-wing intellectuals express repeated yearnings for ideology, I said that new inspirations, new ideologies, and new identifications would come from the Third World.

(For Part I see SA 37:1/89U3083.) A claim is made that the concept of ideology unraveled after the publication of The End of Ideology (Bell, Daniel; see SA 9:5/61A1008). China under Deng Xiaoping & the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev are discussed as displaying similar disenchantments, & new policies in both countries are said to have similar goals. The "widening gyre of passional discourse" has left the term ideology without the conceptual clarity that it presumably had in the past. A. Waters

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

Der Autor richtet in dem von ihm entworfenen Bild der Welt und der USA im Jahr 2013 sein Hauptaugenmerk auf ideologische und institutionelle Probleme der Steuerung moderner Gesellschaften. Er zeigt die Risiken auf, die sich aus dem Fehlen adäquater Strukturen, für die Steuerung auf internationaler und nationaler Ebene ergeben: für große Probleme wird der Nationalstaat zu klein, für kleine zu groß. Vor dem Hintergrund möglichen Wandels werden vor allem soziopolitische Fragen hervorgehoben, von denen die Zukunft der Welt abhängen wird. (IAB)

In diesem Text stellt der Autor seine Konzeption einer postindustriellen Gesellschaft dar. Als Merkmale der postindustriellen Gesellschaft nennet er: das Anwachsen des Dienstleistungssektors, den Vorrang technisch-qualifizierter Berufe, das Bündnis von Wissenschaft und Technologie und die Prominenz neuer intelektueller Technologien. Ihr Hauptziel sieht er in der vollständigen Kontrolle der natürlichen und sozialen Realität. Es erscheint dem Autor aber fraglich, ob die Menschen diese technokratische Orientierung weiterhin mitmachen werden, da eine vernunftbegründete Rechtfertigung der Rationalität der postmodernen Gesellschaft fehlt und die gesamtgesellschaftliche Zustimmung zur technokratischen Zielrichtung immer labiler wird. Der Autor vertritt daher die These von der Offenheit der Geschichte. (DS)

Two excepts from a journal written after a visit to the USSR in spring 1988 are presented. The first describes a lecture given by the author to an audience of 250-300 people at Leningrad State U, & the question & answer session that followed, in which technology, religion, Marxism, & culture were discussed. The second describes a conversation with Boris Grushin, deputy director of the All-Union Centre for the Study of Public Opinion of Socioeconomic Problems, covering a wide variety of issues of Soviet policy & bureaucracy & the current situation in the USSR. Also briefly discussed are Soviet academics Tatyana Zavlaskaya & Abel Aganbegyan, both closely connected to the current policy of perestroika. F. S. J. Ledgister