The Origins of the “End of Ideology?” Raymond Aron and Industrial Civilization

Abstract

From the mid-1950s to the 1960s, Raymond Aron played an important role in popularizing the notion that the postwar achievements of Europe’s partially managed, mixed economies held out the possibility of an end to the “ideological” politics of class conflict and polarization between left and right. This “end of ideology” argument has been identified as a distinguishing feature of “cold war liberalism,” a rhetorical shift in the language of anti-communism marking the dawn of a “golden age of capitalism.”1 Yet, in Aron’s writings, the origin of this argument is to be found not in capitalism’s golden age but in its moment of ultimate crisis during the Depression. This problematizes the notion of a clear divide between Aron’s pre-war socialism and cold war liberalism, highlighting the importance of reaching a more detailed knowledge of the former if we are to reach a better understanding of the latter.