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RICHARD WOLLHEIM
variety of possible solutions. One might, for instance, think that
toleration, or a measure of stoicism, or the working through to a
more realistic conception of what is and what isn't important
in life would be the best means of transcending the problem.
But Potter "denies this. According to him the problem is a
cultural one. By which is implied that it arises from the conflict of
two cultures, and that a solution to it must consist in the elim–
ination of this conflict. Personally I am skeptical about this
diagnosis. I suppose that there is a sense in which we can talk of
a working-class culture and a middle-class culture in England,
but it must be emphasized that this is a very loose sense indeed,
and not one in which the confrontation of two such cultures is
tantamount to a cultural conflict. For confrontation means con–
flict only when a culture contains as part of its constitution
jealous things like values and exclusive attitudes. But is this true
of either of the so-called class cultures of England? I cannot
see anywhere, either in this book or outside
it,
any reason to be
sure that such is the case.
Of course what there
is
a great deal of in England is snobbery.
But snobbery is no part of either of the two class cultures. It is an
attitude
about
class and its
differentia;
it is not itself one of the
differentia.
Snobbery is in effect the attachment of value to
differences of habit and behavior that have in reality no signif–
icance. And therefore the fact that we think it is snobbish to
make so much of class differences is some evidence that we are
not here dealing with rival ways of life that cannot peacefully
co-exist in a plural society.
But suppose that Potter is right in his diagnosis of the evils
in our transitional society as arising out of the clash of cultures,
there are at least two solutions other than the one that he gives,
and these he passes over. The first solution would be the gradual
diffusion of existing middle class culture so that it became the
culture of the society. Potter gives no reasons for rejecting this
solution-which after all has been inspiration of many educational
reformers-but what his reasons would be can, I think, be inferred
from his treatment of the second alternative solution, to which I
shall immediately pass. This is the transcendence of the existing
class-cultures into an all-embracing "classless" culture: a process
