5.70
IRVING HOWE
lax. Herbert Marcuse writes: "Those social groups which dialectical
theory identified as forces of negation are either defeated or reconciled
within the established system." This means that the working class
which Marxism assigned to revolutionary leadership seems either un–
willing or incapable of fulfilling the assignment. That there
is
a
tendency in modem society toward a slack contentment it would be
foolish to deny. But I think it sentimental to slide from an abandon–
'ment of traditional Marxist expectations to a vision of historical stasis
in which men are fated to be the zombies of bureaucratic organization,
zombies stuffed with calories, comfort and contentment; or to slide
from the conclusion that revolutionary expectations no longer hold
in the West to a Spenglerian gloom
in
which we must yield the idea
of major social change.
The trouble with the "mass society" theory is that, if pushed hard
enough, it posits a virtual blockage of history. Yet the one thing that
history, including the history of the last several decades, teaches us is
that, for good or bad, such an eventuality seems most unlikely. Even
in what seems to some disenchanted intellectuals the murk of stability,
'change
is
ceaseless. Twenty years ago who would have supposed
that Russia and China would be at each other's throats, or that the
seeming monolith of Communism would disintegrate? That a con–
servative French general would succeed in ending a colonial war in
Algeria after both the liberal and radical parties failed? That in the
United States Catholic students would be picketing Cardinal Spell–
man's residence? That a silent generation would appear, to be follow–
ed by a remarkably articulate one, which in tum . . . well, who
knows? What looks at a given moment like the end of days turns out
to be a mere vestibule to novelty.
One interesting offshoot of the mass society theory, popular in
some academic and student circles, declares that in a society where
revolution is impossible and reform ineffectual, the only remaining
'strategy of protest
is
a series of dramatic raids from the social margin,
akin to the guerrilla movements of Latin America. Insofar as this
strategy draws upon the American tradition of individual moral
protest, it has a decided respectability if only, I think, a limited
usefulness. Insofar as it
is
meant to satisfy an unearned nostalgia, it
is
utterly feckless. Raising hell
is
a fine American habit, and
if
hell is
even approximately identified, a useful one. But in contemporary
