Marshall Berman
NOTES TOWARD A NEW SOCIETY
One of the most intense and most disturbing arguments
on the left in the late sixties has been over the possibilities of modem
man creating a decent society. The New Left has put the question
this way: can a socialist revolution be made
by
Western men, or
along with
them, or
apart from
them, or only
against
them? The
real question is: is there any hope for us? Radicals of the sixties have
forced this question to the surface in every advanced industrial coun–
try. It has taken on a special urgency in the USA.
The responses of the American New Left have been shaky and
ambiguous; they have exposed the cracks and strains at its founda–
tions. On the one hand, the most vital impulse of New Left activity
has always been populistic, driven by a characteristically American
faith in everyday people, a faith that, for all the inequities in Ameri–
can society and the oppressive acts of the American government
internationally, the American people themselves are still a source of
decency and hope. This is the faith that has inspired the continuing
drive for participatory democracy and community control. On the
New Left itself this faith has clashed with a darker view of "the
people."
The main left-wing idea of "the people"
is
formulated most
systematically by Herbert Marcuse's
One-Dimensional Man.
"'The
people,''' Marcuse argues there, "previously the ferment of social
change, have 'moved up' to become the ferment of social cohesion."
Thus, "The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they
find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen
equipment. . . . The political needs of society become individual
needs and aspirations...." The people within our society identify
