Word: utopians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Marx's major prophecies-such as Communism's triumph over capitalism or the outbreak in industrialized societies of the workers' revolution-have proved false. No economy based on his teachings has approached the efficiency of a free-market system, and governments that tried to enforce his Utopian views have been compelled to rely on totalitarian methods. Nonetheless, Europe's expanding middle class is discovering to its horror that its sons and daughters are increasingly hostile to industry, "the System" and even to the established left of organized Communist parties. Says Francesco Forte, president of Italy...
...Yard the aura of a great grassy mall." What the architect has contrived is an appalling combination of a suburban shopping plaza, every golfer's nightmare of an eighteenth hole, and a mausoleum (perhaps designed for the 60 most active members of the GSTFU). When one consider the utopian promises of Stubbins and Associates, Disney World pales by comparison...
THAT KAEL is attacking generally is a Big Movie Industrial Complex. Movies are ties to big money and she points her heaviest guns at the new conglomerate-appointed studio moguls (hipper Louis B. Mayers or Darryl F. Zanucks) who sport long hair while dishing out the "terroist utopian thinking" that threatens to stalemate the numbness of the day. For Kael this bureaucratized Pop, this self-serving negativism, is a mass form of deprivation. Brutal movies don't attack present brutality, they practically glamorize it. The mess of movies that package bankrupt values in million dollar budgets, glossy surfaces...
Anyone is a utopian, says May, who believes "that when we develop a society which trains us rightly, we'll all be in fine shape." He does not agree that "it is society's fault that we are what we are." For one thing, there will always be strong individuals who will step forth from "the conditioned mass." Just as evil is a distinguishing characteristic of human beings, so too is the capacity to rebel, to fight against bureaucracy or loss of integrity. In man's relationship to society, May believes, a new ethic is needed...
...broader issues will not be found by limiting the search to the "radical" or neo-Marxist track. The Marxist tradition, to be sure, has contributed much to thinking in this field and interested students (like young people at other times) are attracted by its non-conformist and more Utopian aspects. Yet there are other models (e.g. Weber) by which to approach these issues and it would be ironic to launch the search for a broader and more complex view of economics by matching the overly narrow neo-classical paradigm (to use the language of this debate) with another which...