RALF DAHRENDORF
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in common
in
one of our "realms of life," such as the integrity of the physical
environment, whereas we may have divergent interests in other "realms of
life," such as the distribution ofwealth. Thus, trade unionists and employers
can both be "green" at times, but they remain on opposite sides of the table
when it comes to wage settlements. Special interests, and social movements
built around them, take the place of political parties; individuals no longer
"belong" to one group which combines most of their concerns, but they switch
allegiances depending on the priority of one or another theme at different
times. We have not yet invented institutions to accommodate this change.
Not only parties but parliaments too were built around the idea of the class
struggle, with the "right" and the "left" in their respective places if not on
opposite sides. In any case, as you sit down to think about the rules of the
game of your political process, you will wish to take the facts of conflict after
class into account. Here too
The Federalist Papers
are relevant, not least
because the United States Constitution was never constructed or applied to
accommodate class cleavages in the European way.
The other force for change is even more problematic, and you may not
like it at all. It consists of active minorities of people who have thought about
things and have advice to give to those who are in a position to act on such
advice. You probably do not regard yourself as an intellectual, but I am one. I
can therefore see that the demise of socialism not only has many practical
consequences and raises questions such as those which you asked, but it also
threatens the very existence of a group which has played a major role in the
recent history of Europe. Perhaps intellectuals are not a group; they are a
gaggle, a motley assortment, a category at best, but many of them have had
a special affinity to socialism. Socialism was an intellectual invention, from
Saint-Simon to Lassalle, from Marx to Grarnsci, and through the hundreds of
byways of Marxism which are now all ending in the sewers of discarded
history.
One influential posture of intellectuals in Europe over the last hundred
years had three ingredients. (In a halfhearted way they are still present
among the bureaucratized intelligentsia in the universities and the media.)
One was the outright rejection of present conditions as endemically rotten
and incapable of repair. The second was a more or less elaborate vision of a
totally different world in which the ills of reality are remedied. And the third
was a great sense of certainty about both the rejection and the vision. Alien–
ation, Utopia, and dogmatism do not form a very attractive triad, though it is
one which leads almost naturally to versions of socialism which are not of the
Social Democratic variety.
I say this without any sense of delight or superiority. After all, I grew
up in this world, and have feelings of friendship for some of those who man–
age to combine their socialist certainties with a personal decency which belies
their creed. One or two have even turned out to be reliable "constitutional
