ALAIN TOURAINE
223
Is it only a play on words to say that our crisis consists in applying
the term "crisis"
to
that which is a social transformation and a
transition from old social struggles to new ones? Optimists and
pessimists alike have accepted the great myth of the consumer society,
the notion that the management of things has replaced the
government of men, as the French followers of Saint-Simon con–
tended at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whether society
is regarded as the implementation of values, or defined as the em–
bodiment of the ideology of the ruling class , once this remote and
hidden principle of unity has been invoked , society is reduced to a
universe of objects, of rules and institutions, of signs and instruments
of inequality and domination . History seems
to
have withdrawn from
these crystal-like societies . Calculation seems
to
have replaced action
and strategy to have eliminated politics. Society has become de–
socialized ; we no longer have at our disposal instruments for
analyzing it as society: only as order, language or technique . To move
out of the crisis is to learn to feel responsible again,
to
rediscover the
stakes of collective action . We must take this crystallized society in
ow hands and shatter it against the wall of our silence and our anger .
Adaptedfrom a translation from the French by LeonardMayhew.
