University of Virginia Library

Beyond Consciousness Or Future Schlock?

— Ed.

By Charles A. Reich

NEW HAVEN — Those who
look with skepticism upon the
possibilities of revolution by
consciousness (and they
include the young as well as
the old) quite understandably
ask: Where do we go from
here?

I

Around them they see only
numbness, apathy and despair,
a war machine increasingly out
of control, and evidence of
domestic repression
everywhere. The signs of new
consciousness look trivial,
self-indulgent and faddish. The
chances of a new society,
apparently to be based on
dancing in the streets or retreat
to the woods, seem just plain
silly, and optimism under the
circumstances sounds delusive
and criminally insensitive.

Revolution by
consciousness is in no sense
equivalent to the present youth
culture. It is a philosophic
concept, based on an
interpretation of American
history, and of the nature of
work and institutions in
contemporary America. Beads
and bell bottoms are indeed
passing fads, like the hula
hoop. But in their moment on
the stage, they are metaphors
for something far deeper, a
growth of awareness, a change
of values, a renewal of
knowledge and a step toward
liberation. Attention is focused
on youth because that is where
awareness is now most
apparent, but the philosophic
change is taking place in all of
us.

This process of liberation must
be conceived as only Part One in a
process of social change. Of course
there must be social change. Of
course there must be structural
change as well; the debate is mostly
about what comes first — structural
reform, radical struggle, or change
of consciousness. If we assume
argue do that the latter must come
first, then the full process might be
like this: (1) change of
consciousness; (2) development of
an actual way of life and a culture
based on the new consciousness; (3)
the rediscovery of non alienated
work; (4) the restructuring of
economic, political and legal
institutions to reflect the new
values. Sooner or later, liberals,
radicals and those who believe in
new consciousness must have
answers to the same existing
societal evils.

The reason consciousness must
initiate change derives from an
explanation of our present
corporate state. Its essence is the
supremacy of purely materialistic
and technological values over all
others, and its use of false
consciousness to prevent those
values from being revived.
Institutional change, without a new
course of values, would thus be an
empty exercise. The "reformed"
structures would be worse than the
old. Real change can take place
only after new values are
introduced, and the only possible
source of such values is man, and a
new awareness and culture created
by him.

Those radicals who currently
emphasized culture, and seem to
ignore politics and economics, do
so because today s "politics" deals
only with the trivial and ephemeral,
and it is only culture which puts in
issue the true political questions
that confront us. Today almost all
public discussion, especially by
politicians is both puerile and
factitious. Mr. Nixon and such
"opposition" figures as Mr. Muskie
talk in meaningless phrases that
merely serve to numb us and
degrade the public forum. There is
an urgent need for a genuine
politics, a politics where real and
not illusory choices are debated.

The scope and dimensions of
that politics may be seen in the
developing new culture, provided
only that one is able to ignore
particulars and think in terms of
symbols. Long hair and bare feet
and unhomogenized peanut butter
are not ultimate statements about
society; they are, it must be
repeated, metaphors. They stand
for values now neglected or abused,
such as personal autonomy and
rediscovery of the natural. A new
social structure would write into
social terms what the metaphors are
now saying. Any future society will
be based on technology and
organization, as the new culture
itself is. When we want to, we will
bake our own bread or live on the
land, but man cannot reject his own
development. Society will build and
operate machines, but it will use
them for human ends.

To achieve these goals, the
community will need a structure
better adapted than our present
government and law. The object of
such a structure must be to
translate the values now symbolized
by the transitory youth culture into
terms that will give them lasting
effect in the post-industrial society.
We cannot retreat from organized
society, but we can begin searching
for ways to make certain that
organizations reflect both the
requirements of technology and
what we are learning about from
our youth — the needs of nature
and man.

II

I do not see how anyone who
seriously undertakes to look at our
present society can proceed
without first addressing himself to
the problem of advanced monopoly
capitalism and its relationship to
the impoverished majority of the
world. The facts speak louder than
the ideology.

In nation after nation, America's
"allies" are the classes who enjoy a
monopoly of wealth and power;
our "enemies" are those groups in
these same countries who aspire to
a more just economic system for all
the people. If we are to cease being
an enemy to the aspirations of
people everywhere, we must reject a
system based on profits, expansion,
nationalism and power.

Nor can we usefully consider
our present system without
confronting the consequences of
capitalism within our individual
selves. Corroding competition ("the
pursuit of loneliness," in Philip
Slater's words), the repression of
women, of true masculine identity,
and of the artistic, spiritual and
feeling elements in all of us, all
derive from our alienated concepts
of work, from the obsession that
we must brutalize ourselves and one
another lest all motivation lapse.

A third fact of American life
that must be faced is the incredible
contradiction between our
purported democratic faith and the
systematic and overpowering use of
propaganda to impose false
consciousness. Public schools, the
mass media, advertising and the
public relations style of politics are
all blatant efforts to manage people
by manipulating knowledge. Surely
it is pointless to talk about a
renewed democracy unless we can
prevent the possession of our
minds.

The first affirmative
requirement of a new society is a
system of planning, allocation and
design. Today there is no control
over what any organization may
invest, produce, use up, distribute.
The need for planning has been
obvious since before the New Deal,
but we have refused to see it. It is
time for us to grow up to
acknowledge that the great forces
of technology cannot be left the
playthings of corporate
expansionism and personal
ambition.

But planning cannot be left to
the planners. That is the mistake
that produces the suffocating
rigidity of some Communist
societies and the inhumanity of our
public welfare and housing.
Planning is a tool, not an end, and
its goals must come from outside
the process. Only a renewed
democracy can supply them. In a
complex society, it is foolish to
pretend that democracy is satisfied
by a once-a-year election day.
People must be able to "vote"
every day by expressing their values
on the job, as newly aware
consumers, in many kinds of groups
and organizations, and in a variety
of public hearings. Democracy must
become as multifaceted and
pervasive in daily life as government
is now. Planning could then
respond, not dictate.

To provide continuity and
universality to the values generated
by a renewed democracy, a new
society must be predicated upon
law. Such law would be an
expression of lasting values, such as
autonomy, privacy, freedom of
expression, the right to adequate
income, the right to one's natural
environment. Such law would not
operate primarily against man, but
against technology, organizations,
and power from whatever source.
And it would speak in terms
sufficiently universal to provide a
channel of communication and
community so that hardhat,
student and professional could
recognize a value like autonomy as
one they all share. Planning,
directed by democracy and guided
by law, is the means by which
technology can be brought to the
service of man.

If this is the struggle that lies
ahead, why are expressions of joy
and optimism appropriate? The
question is asked by those who
think of pain and struggle as
incompatible with joy. But the true
opposite of joy is not pain but
numbness, apathy, lack of feelings
or caring. Many new consciousness
people already realize, and the rest
will discover, that changing one's
life involves incredible struggle,
vulnerability, suffering and pain, as
John Lennon has recently told us.
The source of optimism is the
discovery of new possibilities where
all seemed dead, the finding of new
space in the human mind, the
knowledge that man still has within
him the sources of renewal.

There is a personal struggle, and
there is a social struggle, and it is
long past time to stop evading them
both and begin, as a nation, to face
the great issues of our times. For in
the meantime, day and night, the
bombs continue their war against
mankind.