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LUCIEN GOLDMANN
reformists" insist on the development of a new working class. But
even this term is a concession to the tradition because actually it
involves workers in advanced branches of production and a growing
number of specialists who might be expected to reject corporate
capitalism and demand an economic democracy based on the man–
agement of businesses and social institutions. But here, too, Marcuse
refused to admit the existence of differences between the two kinds
of "revisionism" and lumped them together as ideologies of integra–
tion into existing society.
Finally, if one tries to relate Marcuse to the positivist and con–
servative theories of academic sociology, one sees that just as in his
relation to Heidegger, there
is
both a radical opposition and a
certain agreement. Raymond Aron's and Daniel Bell's "end of
ideologies" is conservative and apologetic, as is Reisman's theory of
the "disappearance of internal radar," despite Reisman's superior
mind.
As
against these optimists, Marcuse has warned us of the
one-dimensional man's threat to both culture and liberty, and has
pointed to a transcendental reason which condemns consumer soci–
ety in the name of human dignity and freedom. He saw what was
coming where the Arons and the Bells saw only hope. But having
said this, it is still true that they all- Aron, Marcuse, Bell, ReIs–
man - share the mistaken belief that Western society has been so
stabilized that no serious opposition can be found within it.
In fact, the events of May and June 1968 in France quickly
refuted this analysis, and revealed that the transition from mono–
polistic capitalist society to the corporate capitalist society of the post–
war period was much more complex than it appeared to Marcuse.
Roughly (these ideas, which I can present here only schematically,
will be the subject of a separate study), there were two phases of
prewar capitalism: liberal capitalism and the monopolistic capitalism
of trusts, what I have called "Crisis Capitalism." In the one, there
was partial, liberal regulation of the market and philosophic indi–
vidualism, rationalism and empiricism. In the other, there was no
regulation of the market, social and economic crises and existential
philosophy. The
third
phase of Western capitalism - which sociol–
ogists have variously labeled consumer society, mass society, tech–
nocratic society, corporate capitalism - emerged from the second
