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Gouldner, too, rejects the possibility of a revolutionary struggle
(his reformism has been coming for some time), declaring Marx the last
of the Utopians instead of the first scientific Marxist. Inevitably,
Marxists tend to lump him with the other defectors. But Gouldner, ever
eager to perfect a theory of theories (his most recent book shows how
each theory, and particularly Marxism, contains the seeds of its own
destruction), is concerned with the Vanguard position of the theorists,
and / or the maintenance of this position. Yet his conception of the New
Class as dynamic, and as busily undermining the system which pushed
it to the top, assumes that the growing numbers of educated and
technically trained experts will mobilize against their increasing
alienation; that they will organize around their lack of autonomy and
their discontent, using their own progressive potential and ethics to
supersede the old class. Gouldner "overcomes" utopian implications
by maintaining the tension between the New Class's fight for goodness
and morality for all, and its propensity to push the advantage of its
own culture. Such an assumption, I think, expects critical discourse
to
remain strong enough to withstand political repression and coopta–
tion . It also expects that the Vanguard will be of the Left rather than
the Right-a notion Daniel Bell has recently attacked by showing that
in the past right-leaning intellectuals frequently used to lead. In
addition, Gouldner assumes that intellectuals and the technical intelli–
gentsia have the potential eventually to act as a class-an assumption
the Right dismisses as utopian and the Left as reformist. We would, of
course, prefer his crystal ball to be more clairvoyant than Bell 's. But
whatever happens, he has worked out the most comprehensive and
lucid theory to help us understand our very confused class structure.
EDITH KURZWEIL
REACHING
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF MURIEL RUKEYSER.
McGraw-HilI.
$17.50.
In a " Preface to the Reader," Muriel Rukeyser describes her
Collected Poems
as "a film strip of a life in poetry," rooted in
