The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, with "The Resumption of History in the New Century" (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

A very polished book. The overall argument on the relationship of declining religious and rising national feeling is highly appropriate and particularly significant. Bell is obviously completely conversant with recent work by Habermas, Chartier, Gordon, Baker, and Crow, to name but a few authors whose findings he weaves into his own purpose. I was also taken with his thought on the relationship between national feeling in France and the awareness of France's changing place in the world, and with that, of Britain's surprisingly swift advance from 1688 to the middle decades of the eighteenth century. His pages on 'Great Men' as the vehicles of national sentiment are likewise very thoughtful.
--Patrice Higonnet, author of Goodness Beyond Virtue (20001231)

Praise for earlier editions:
The End of Ideology was one of the most influential, most controversial, and most misunderstood books about the 1950s. But it is not simply a central text of the intellectual history of those years (although it certainly is that). It is also a provocative discussion by one of America's most creative thinkers of political and philosophical issues that concern us still.
--Alan Brinkley

No one could consider himself politically literate without an intimate knowledge of the issues foreseen in The End of Ideology.
--Theodore Draper

Originally published in 1960, this collection of essays focuses on the protean nature of American society and the decay of Marxism and other systematic ideologies in the West...Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [has] admired the book's 'unflagging confidence, trenchancy, and authority.'
--Scott Veale (New York Times Book Review )

Product Description

Named by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books since the end of World War II, The End of Ideology has been a landmark in American social thought, regarded as a classic since its first publication in 1962. Daniel Bell postulated that the older humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were exhausted, and that new parochial ideologies would arise. In a new introduction to the year 2000 edition, he argues that with the end of communism, we are seeing a resumption of history, a lifting of the heavy ideological blanket and the return of traditional ethnic and religious conflicts in the many regions of the former socialist states and elsewhere.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 540 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 2nd edition (October 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674004264
• ISBN-13: 978-0674004269
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #191,740 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Relevant For The 21st Century, August 13, 1997

By	Michael E. Kreca "[e-mail]" (San Diego, Calif., USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The End of Ideology (Paperback)

Although first published in 1960, just before a torrent of social change drenched the US and the world, sociologist Daniel Bell's insightful collection of essays comprising "The End of Ideology" still has much to offer, even as the 21st century approaches. From his thoughtful assessment of the apparent failure of European-style socialism in the United States to his vivid description of the numerous psychological strains burdening the average American worker--the latter still sadly true in our current "information age"--Bell believes that the day of traditional airtight ideological solutions and posturing, for all practical purposes, has ended.

According to Bell, much of what sustained the old "urban progressivism" which, despite its flaws, was a force for much positive social change in the US, has largely disappeared. Bell predicted conditions peculiar to American society combined with trends like the steady decline in labor union membership, the steady progress of workplace automation and, even then, the emergence of mass electronic communications would make humans less willing to accept the singular utopian pronouncements of what he called "millennial" movements. Instead, ongoing social fragmentation, diversification and conflict would make coping with major socioeconomic problems along traditional "party" lines unrealistic and self-defeating if not impossible.

Given the persisting belief among many that traditional "government" and its obsolete solutions are failing us and the continued rise, diversification and notable influence of vocal, single-interest splinter groups with considerable access to a variety of powerful communications media--despite their familiar revolutionary noises--it is hard to disagree. There is much Bell couldn't have foreseen given his vantage point at the very end of the placid 1950s, but his perceptive yet readable critique of our traditional way of looking at many of our pressing social issues and our political history still has a compelling, hopeful freshness, its basis being, as in his quoting of Thomas Jefferson, "is that the present belongs to the living."

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Beginning of History, April 20, 2001

By	Panopticonman "panopticonman" (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Three selections from the End of Ideology are worth the price of the book. First, the essay Bell wrote for this latest edition in which he makes a strong case that with the end of ideology, "history" has begun anew. Next, the new introduction he wrote in the mid-70s which discusses the critical reception of this book. Finally, the last chapter of the original book, a masterful history of Marxist thought.

In essay on the resumption of history, Bell clears away much of the underbrush that has grown up around the notion of "global capitalism" by pointing out that the end of empire (and that includes the Soviet Union) and the colonial era has had the largest impact on world politics over the past forty years. The reignition of various ethnic groups whose identities had been suppressed under various Uber states and ideologies is just as important a part of the story. The 1975 introduction is a fascinating refutation of his, mostly Marxist, critics. For instance, C. Wright Mills, the maverick sociologist, apparently came after Bell for his review of Mills' "The Power Elite" (included in "The End of Idelogy"). Bell neatly dissects Mills' both in the essay and in his answer to Mills' criticisms. Bell, the empiricist, is the clear winner in these two rounds. The last chapter on Marxism is worth re-reading and re-reading for Bell knows the subject and the players intimately, as only a former boy Socialist born in New York's Lower East Side could. He explains how Marx's transmutation of Hegel's ideas into "dialectical materialism" set the stage for generations of leftist intellectuals to misinterpret or reinterpret events into Marxist prattle according to their understanding or lack of understanding thereof. It's a post-graduation education on Marxism in 35 dense, but, brilliant pages.

Two juicy chapters on the American "mafia" and the inflation of crime statistics and the stoking of public fear by law enforcement, although somewhat dated contain some remarkable insights: among them that the "mafia," like American business in general had to move from "production" to the "consumption" mode, i.e., turning toward the consumer to make money through gambling, and away from more traditional, less lucrative businesses such as prostitution. These two articles, written when he covered the labor beat for Fortune magazine, still have an edge now, as the same "crime wave" and "mafia" hysteria continue to be generated by the media and law enforcement.

Bell's wide-ranging knowledge, his clear-eyed appraisal of the American scene, his tenacity in trying to discover the real levers of power, are qualities one rarely finds in this era where shouting and sloganeering still suffice -- although much of this now comes not from the left-hand side of the spectrum, but the right.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The rhetoric of the Cold War explained, July 24, 2007

By	Michael A Neulander "Political Philosophy" (VA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Read this for graduate American history course.

Daniel Bell's book examines the rhetoric of the "radical right" and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s 1949 book, The Vital Center, which illustrates the burgeoning Cold War political divisions in the U.S. that had come into prominence in the 1950's. Bell explained that the discourse had become polarized into two camps--"hard" and "soft." People were deemed "hard" if they believed that both international and domestic Communism posed a grave threat to the security of the U.S. Conversely, People were deemed "soft" if they believed that the danger from domestic Communism was nil. Although Bell lamented this seemingly amorphous division in U.S. politics, his research proved that conservatives were not the inventors of this new rhetoric. Actually, Schlesinger's book introduced the hard /soft dichotomy in his defense of liberal anti-Communism. This new polarizing language had a gender component to it as well. The analogy was that a hard stand against all forms of Communism was masculine, and that it was feminine and a real danger to the security of the U.S. to be soft on Communism. It was this gender-based language that helped to push Cold War politics to grow more divisive and mean spirited. Thus, the purpose of Bell's book was to identify and explain the: "excessive preoccupation with--and anxiety about--masculinity in early Cold War American politics."

Schlesinger's book, "The Vital Center is habitually cited as a turning point for American liberalism, an unequivocal rejection of extremist politics and an articulation of a new liberal anticommunist political realism." Schlesinger's opening premise was that the industrial revolution put mankind in a state of fear and anxiety, and thus made mankind more apt to turn to utopian and totalitarian forms of government to assuage their fears. Only in the aftermath of the terrible events of WWII were liberals forced to recognize that humankind indeed had the capacity to do evil. This recognition made liberals give up their long held belief in humankind's perfectibility and rationality. Schlesinger realized that the history of appeasing Hitler prior to the war, and the dangers that loomed in making the same mistake with Stalin in the days ahead, made it important to construct a liberal response to Communism that could stand up to the criticism of the political right in America. He wanted to prove that a new liberal doctrine would in fact occupy the vital center in American politics.

He attacked the conservatives for their unwillingness to tackle social reforms during the industrial revolution, and he saw insipid conservative capitalists meeting their responsibilities by hiding behind destructive tariffs and monopolies. Schlesinger observed that historically, conservatives turned their backs on robust men, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill; men who acted masculinity. Instead, conservatives embraced the effeminate Neville Chamberlains of the world, men who traded responsibility for isolationism. Thus, Schlesinger charged conservatives of becoming "impotent" men politically.

On the other hand, Schlesinger ridiculed the progressive left, which he named "Doughfaces," because they were too pliable and "hopelessly and irrevocably feminine." Doughfaces live within utopian beliefs and do not recognize the harsh realities of the world. For Schlesinger, Doughfaces had a genuine concern for the betterment of humankind but could only muster up enough energy to be dreamers and critics; they were not masculine enough to be doers. Thus, "Schlesinger took the progressive's politics as evidence of emotional maladjustment, what the postwar intelligentsia so frequently and indiscriminately called `neurosis.'" Schlesinger's conclusion was that the reconstituted postwar liberal leaders would occupy the vital center politically by proving that they were doers and not just complainers. Schlesinger argued that these new leaders were the only people capable of producing "a secure and restored American masculinity."

Bell astutely concluded that despite "Schlesinger's effort to masculinize the liberal reform tradition...it did not prevent liberals (including Schlesinger himself) from being accused of softness." Bell noted that the hard right's political rhetoric became much cruder and targeted such men as Secretary of State Dean Acheson and presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson as paragons of pompous "eastern establishment liberalism," too soft to stand against the pernicious evils of Communism. Thus, Bell research proved that throughout the 1950's, hard right political leaders such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy successfully put Democrats on the defensive with their accusations that they were soft on Communism and guilty of not working diligently in ferreting out Communists from government agencies. The hard right even had some success in convincing the American public that Communists had a higher propensity than other segments of society to be sexual deviants and homosexuals, and if Democrats were unwilling to go after them hammer and tong, then they must be guilty by association. In the fallout from the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, the bleeding-heart liberal egghead superseded the image of the pragmatic, educated, manly liberal bureaucrat of earlier years. If Schlesinger and Democrats who believed in his thesis were to prove his point, that liberals were masculine leaders that were hard on Communism, then they would need a new young vigorous standard-bearer to propel their political party to victory in the 1960 presidential election. Thus, for the Democrats John F. Kennedy became not just the incarnation of the virile `vital center' liberal whose template Schlesinger had created ten years earlier, but the antidote to the nation's crisis in masculinity.

As a graduate student in philosophy and history, I recommended this book for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.