26
PARTISAN REVIEW
purpose in the past and have not always been "mere superstitions."
It
therefore emerges that the choice made by our intellectuals against
the development of theories is a moral choice.
Is it a right choice? I
think
not. There is a serious and
growing void in our thinking about moral and social problems. This
void is uneasily felt by society at large and is the more distressing since
we are now perhaps for the first time in our history feeling the loss of
religion as a consolation and guide; until recently various substitutes
(Socialism itself, later Communism, Pacifism, Internationalism) were
available; now there seems to be a shortage even of substitutes. The
claim of Socialism to be a "science" has become, after many setbacks,
a trifle less confident, and has certainly lost the spiritual appeal
which it once had. Of course Socialism will continue to attempt
to constitute itself a science, in the sense of a highly organized in–
vestigation of the mechanics of society. But, and especially since it
cannot now claim to be the scientific study of an inevitable quasi–
biological development, it should, in my view,
also
far more frankly
and more systematically declare itself a morality. Our Socialist
ancestors had ideals but no techniques. Weare often amazed at
their naivete. We have the techniques;
these
we can explain
clearly. But we can give only a rather brief and denuded explanation
of our ideals. We have reached a stage where the amount of theory
is decreasing while the social need for it increases. The danger re–
presented by what
is
called the "managerial society" is the danger
(already diagnosed by Marx as characteristic of capitalism) of
the
division of the population into experts and ignorant (though perhape
contented) masses with no communication between them; and we
have now the additional spectacle of the division of the experts into
mutually non-comprehending groups. What is needed
is
an
area
of translation,
an area in which specialized concepts and recom–
mendations can be seen and understood in the light of moral and
social ideas which have a certain degree of complexity and yet are
not the sole property of technicians. There is a Tory contention
that theorizing leads to violence, and there is a liberal contention
that theories are obscurantist and blinding. Now on the contrary
it
is the absence of theory which renders us blind and which enables
bureaucracy, in all its sense, to keep us mystified; and as for violence,
