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between
the realms, but that tension has produced a further contradic–
tion
within
the economic realm itself. In the world of capitalist
enterprise, the nominal ethos in the spheres of production and organi–
zation is still one of work, delayed gratification, career orientation,
d~votion
to the enterprise. Yet, on the marketing side, the sale of goods,
packaged in the glossy images of glamour and sex, promotes a
hedonistic way of life whose promise is the voluptuous gratification of
the lineaments of desire. The consequence of this contradiction is that
a corporation finds its people being straight by day and swingers by
night.
What has happened in society in the last fifty years-as a result of
the erosion of the religious ethic and the increase in discretionary
income-is
that the cu lture has, taken tly,e initiative in promoting
change,
and the economy has been geared to meeting these new wants.
In this respect, there has been a ignificant reversal in the historical
pattern of social change. During the rise of capitalism-in the "mod–
ernization" of any traditional society-one could more readily change
the economic structure of a society: by forcing people off the land into
factories, by imposing a new rhythm and discipline of work, by using
brutal means or incentives (e.g., the theory of interest as the reward for
"abstinence" from consumption) to raise capital. But the super–
structure-the patterns of family life, the attachments to religion and
authority, the received ideas that shaped people's perceptions of a
socia l reality-was more stubbornly resistant to change.
Today, by contrast, it is the economic structure that is the more
difficult to change. Within the enterprise, the heavy bureaucratic layers
reduce flexible adaptation, whi le union rules inhibit the power of
management to control the assignment of jobs. In the society, the
economic enterprise is subject to the challenges of various veto groups
(e.g., on the location of plants or the use of the environment) and
subject more and more to regu lation by government.
But in the culture, fantasy reigns almost unconstrained. The
media are geared to feeding new images to people, to unsettling
traditional conventions, and the highlighting of aberrant and quirky
behavior which becomes imagos for others to imitate. The traditional is
stodgy, and the "orthodox" institutions such as family and church are
on the defensive about their inability to change. Yet if capitalism has
been routinized, Modernism has been trivialized. After all, how often
can it continue to shock, if there is nothing shocking left?
If
experi–
ment is the norm, how original can anything new be? And like all bad
history, Modernism has repeated its end, once in the popgun outbursts
of Futurism and Dadaism, the econd time in the phosphorescent
