The End of Ideology Revisited (Part I)

Abstract

THERE ARE SOME BOOKS THAT ARE BETTER KNOWN FOR their titles than their contents. Mine is one of them. Various critics, usually from the Left, pointed to the upsurge of radicalism in the 1960s as disproof of the book's thesis. Others saw the work as an ‘ideological’ defence of ‘technocratic’ thinking, or of the ‘status quo’. A few, even more ludicrously, believed that the book attacked the role of ideals in politics. It was none of these.The frame of the book was set by its sub-title, On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. Yet the last section looked ahead. After observing young left-wing intellectuals express repeated yearnings for ideology, I said that new inspirations, new ideologies, and new identifications would come from the Third World.