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flow from the calculations of futurologists, but which will be the fruit
of a newly invented culture and new social movements.
The invention of a new image of progress, the extension of
democracy, and the recognition of the role to be played by fun–
damental and never completely negotiable conflicts-these are the
three elements which would result in a reconstitution of the political
life and consequently an end to the crisis. Maybe we are moving
toward such a political renaissance; but we might also fail to reach it.
For several years now, the universities have ceased to provide stimulus
to political life . The labor movement still possesses vigor, or is in the
process of regaining it, in Italy, Spain, France, and Great Britain; but
it can no longer play the central role it held for over a century. The
great movement of cultural change, of which the women's movement
is probably the principal component, sometimes seems to close in on
itself in the name of self-expression and the liberation of desires,
separating itself further and further from social criticism and political
action which are still caught up in the language and forms of the past.
The Western countries seem to be abandoning themselves, as
they did almost half a century ago, to the mechanisms and gambles
of economic contingency, and to accepting, often with a sense of
cowardly feeling, the feeling that they are not responsible for their
problems or for the solutions to them. We are not yet rid of the
il–
lusions of the affluent society. Most of us still hope that "things will
work out," that governments and experts will manage somehow or
other in getting out of a crisis whose material consequences have been
considerably lessened by negotiated provisions assuring the un–
employed of a significant portion of their income-which also serves
as a guarantee against a precipitous drop in consumption. Still, we
must once again apprehend the necessity of creating new forces of
production, both material and cultural. In addition, we must recog–
nize the new class struggles; and finally, we must reject the very
idea of crisis insofar as it serves to sustain the dangerous fiction of
a social order, a unity of values, norms, and social organization
(whether healthy or unhealthy)-a fiction which masks the reality
of historical creation and the conflicts implied by and connected
with it.
