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a new society, a new political situation.
If we keep this in mind, the notion of crisis takes on another
meaning. If the future is to be born, the old order must be broken
up, and a crisis must undermine those capacities, privileges, and
ideologies which sustain a blind and conservative power. Such a crisis
is ambiguous because a breakdown of the old order does not
automatically guarantee development of new forces; but it is a neces–
sary crisis, because to the degree that the old order can compel
acceptance of its legitimacy, it can obstruct necessary changes.
During the past two decades the image projected by the United
States has been that of a power mobilizing its institutions with
a remarkable ability to unify its population and to respond to the
national will.
It
corresponded to the traditional notion of a
civil:zation:
an intertwining of culture, institutions, and political
order. The same image could have been applied , though with more
reservations, to the Soviet Union, which also presented itself as a
powerful state mobilizing an extremely well integrated society and a
specific culture. In both cases, the image has always been open to
criticism and has always had its limitations. Nonetheless, the official
image of the Soviet Union has been, that of a distinct historical en–
tity endowed with political capacity, the mechanisms necessary for
social integration, and a progressive culture-that is to say, one
directed toward the great task of industrialization. Similarly, the
United States, especially when viewed from the outside, appeared
undeniably to be an integrated society-that is, one in which the
predominant way of life, the functioning of political institutions, and
economic and military power seemed individual elements of a single
totality: American civilization.
As a result, in both societies cults came into being around the
central social groups-clearly the middle class in the United States,
and even more clearly the Party members and elite workers in the
Soviet Union. At the same time, there emerged a certain moralism,
as well as an appeal to social integration and civic virtue-all this
heightened by an acute awareness of belonging to a society that is
both making and defending progress.
These observations would have been incomprehensible a few
