THE FUTURE
469
half century since the 1914-18 war, has been the gradual displacement
of bourgeois society by a new social formation, for which at the moment
we still lack the appropriate intellectual nomenclature. All one can say
is that the current intermediate stage corresponds neither
to
the tradi–
tional picture of capitalism (defined as a market economy with private
property in the means of production) nor to the historic anticipations
of the socialist labor movement. In consequence, liberalism and Marxism
have both been found wanting, as "theories of action" if not as general
philosophies.
(3) The lineaments of the new society are still rather indistinct, but
the combination of centralized economic planning, modified authori–
tarianism in politics and the social predominance of a new "technocratic"
stratum (in the place of the ancient bourgeoisie) suggests that, in the
long run, the picture will not differ very radically from the corresponding
state of affairs in the
soi-disant
communist bloc: subject to those historic
differences (rule of law, individual liberty) which have always distin–
guished Eastern from Western Europe (and, one might add, Latin
America from North America).
(4) In the U.S.S.R. and the Eastern bloc countries, the technocratic
stratum lacks an adequate self-consciousness, and
a fortiori
an ideology
that links it to the masses and enables it to rule without the constant
employment of fraud and force. The attempt to constitute "communism"
as such an ideology has failed. Communism is historically the ideology
of a revolutionary working class. This class having exhausted its mission
and been subjected by the technocratic stratum which evolved from the
ruling group of the Communist party, the latter employs the traditional
vocabulary for the purpose of legitimizing a new form of inequality.
In principle this state of affairs might stabilize itself, but under the
conditions actually prevailing in the U.S.S.R. and its satellites, there is
just enough latent tension
to
make an experiment in controlled democracy
seem perilous to the rulers. Moreover, the official ideology needs to be
reformulated, so as to serve at once as a rational guide for the ruling
elite and as an ideology for the masses. This cannot be done consciously,
in Machiavellian fashion: it must come about as a result of genuine
debate and conflict. Hitherto this has not happened, and in the near
future does not seem likely to happen.
(5) In the West, the changeover from liberal democracy to socialist
(or quasi-socialist) technocracy is proceeding in haphazard fashion. In
Western Europe it is furthest advanced in France and Italy. In Northern
Europe it is mediated by reformist socialism. In Latin America it will
probably come about under the banner of radical nationalist, or national-
