THE FUTURE
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that this is going to impose a strain upon all concerned. On the
doctrinaires first of all- but those writers who in recent years have
complacently celebrated the "end of ideology" may also have to revise
some of their assumptions. It will no longer do to take shelter behind
detailed studies of voting habits in suburbia, or eating habits among
the primitives. Such academic exercises will doubtless continue to
pay dividends, but their scarcity value is bound to decline, and one
may suppose that their prestige will diminish accordingly.
What then are the tentative projections which can be under–
taken at the present time, in the light of what this generation has
come to know about the relative success or failure of earlier attempts?
The next phase, it seems to me, can be approached under two main
headings: (1) the race between modernization and barbarism, and
(2)
in
the developed industrial countries, the retreat from utopia to
technocracy. These topics are internally related, but for convenience
they may be taken separately.
To start with rationalization or modernization, currently so
fashionable a theme that it is difficult to say anything new about it.
There is at least one aspect which has not received adequate recog–
nition, and that is the evident failure of genuine, as distinct from
spurious, rationalization, both in areas which officially count as mem–
bers of the "free world" and in regions which are usually reckoned
part of the Sino-Soviet bloc. In the first group I would mention
Latin America and India; in the second China itself. It
is
plain that
if, instead of thinking in political terms, one operates in terms of
culture, the West has very little in common with some of its political
or economic dependencies. Conversely, the U.S.S.R. (or at least
European Russia) does not have much in common with China. In
the short run this may be politically irrelevant, but it is a pointer to
what may conceivably happen in the not so very distant future, if
the nations should decide to regroup along historical and cultural
lines, instead of continuing the present East-West split. This after all
is
more than mere guesswork. There are indications that such a
realignment is becoming a practical possibility. Here I am only
concerned to suggest what seems to me a possible approach which
has the additional merit of reflecting a distinctively "European"
attitude. The real question then is no longer who
is
going to win the
