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inarticulate popular need and sophisticated thought might still join. After all,
there is a European tradition of socialism, which has united workers and
intellectuals .
It is, however, that tradition which is in disrepair. European socialism
insisted that the claims of the political community were superior to those of
the market. The unequal distribution of the social ptoduct made a true citi–
zenry impossible. The state could bring a national community into being by
appropriating the market. To do so, however, it had to promote those univer–
sal values formulated in the French Revolution-values which were often the
negation of those ties of family, community, and religion which gave con–
tinuity, depth, and substance to European culture. These forces were often
opposed to socialism: they offered immediate satisfactions which were more
important than (hypothetical) future gains. Since 1789, the European right
has known how to mobilize one sort of tradition against the left, which has
rarely offered alternatives of a convincing sort.
The terms of the conflict have now changed, bewildering both left and
right. The idea of an increase in the workers' share of the national product is
implausible where production is declining. That decline coincides with a
period in which the idea of quantitative equality has been rethought . The
issue of the quality of the common life has been raised. No less importantly,
the question of participation in economic and political decision has become
salient. Technocrats ruling in the name of the public interest may be an
improvement over capitalists maximizing their profits. They exercise domin–
ation, nonetheless.
The recent importance of issues of autonomy and quality has been re–
inforced by the emergence of passions once thought slumbering, retrograde,
or dead. Up and down Europe, ethnic groups and regions, local communities
and producers, have been heard from. They insist that arithmetical compu–
tations of the national interest which ignore their traditions, rights, and
privileges are tyrannical. Once the property of the right, these demands have
now taken a decidedly different political color. Confronted by a universalism
expropriated by technocrats (and up-to-date capitalists), European socialists
have begun to rethink the value of localism. A new alliance is nascent, among
those who seek decentralization, cultural autonomy, and workers' control.
The difficulty is that a unifying idea is lacking.
All of this is not immediately apparent to the visitor to Europe, nor
indeed to those Europeans faithful to the ideas of 1948 or 1962. Events seem
to have outrun ideas, and ideas have been replaced by words . I came to France
to work with some friends on a collective volume, a set of essays on the present
situation. The only one of us who thought he saw clearly where society was
going, and what had to be changed, was Rudi Supek-the animator of the
