IDEAS OF THE FUTURE by
Geor ge Lichtheim
[Continued from Page
410]
Above all, they are concerned to safeguard the essentials of their rule
before embarking upon the perilous experiment of personal (let alone
political ) freedom . I refer to the countries of the Soviet bloc. In the
West, the problem presents itself differently. Here it is not a question of
instituting individual and political freedom: both exist and will pre–
sumably continue to exist. It is rather a matter of defending certain
democratic assumptions against the slow, almost imperceptible, growth
of authoritarian attitudes quite compatible-this needs stressing-with
individualism, constitutional liberty and the rule of law. None of these
need be threatened. I do not believe they
are
seriously threatened. What
may be in danger is something else: the conventional democratic as–
sumption that there is no area of decision-making which ordinary citizens
cannot and should not, in principle, control and make their own.
It
is
here that the new technocratic society poses its challenge: a challenge
wrapped up
in
the soothing language of the benevcolent autocrat: certain
complex matters, it appears, are too difficult for the ordinary citizen
to resolve, though they may be debated ad libitum. Thus the area of
effective democratic control shrinks, though the principle may never
be questioned. In contradistinction to the Eastern nations, we shall retain
our liberties, but shall no longer care to exercise them. I n the end, of
course, the liberties will atrophy. With the best will, Caesar cannot keep
the Republic alive if there are not enough Republicans to go round.
Where then are we to look for a counterweight to the triumph
of managerial technocracy? Quite clearly we can no longer make the
assumption that the historical burden is going to be shouldered by the
industrial working class: a class which has, in fact
if
not in form,
become the foundation of the new industrial order. In a certain funda–
mental sense the class struggle is over, and with it the material basis
of those radical-democratic movements which in the age of the bourgeois
revolution provided an automatic check upon all attempts to constitute
a unified and irremovable ruling elite. It is a truism that the aims of
Marxism, and the actual character of the organized labor movement in
the Western world, have become discontinuous. The "union of theory
and practice" has dissolved, leaving in its wake a reformist mass move-
