p For I have sworn thce fair,
and thought thee bright.
Who art as black as hell,
as dark as night.

p SHAKESPEARE

p The period when a mode of production is in the ascendant the majority of the population invariably looks forward with hope. The course of social development is regarded not only as natural but sometimes also as the sole possible course of events. “So long as a mode of production still describes an ascending curve of development, it is enthusiastically welcomed even by those who come off worst from its corresponding mode of distribution.”  [10•* 

p But sooner or later difficulties overcome a class- antagonistic mode of production, and it begins to move towards a decline. What only recently seemed to be quite durable dissolves like smoke mainly, needless to say, among those “who come off worst". Disappointment and discontent mount. The system of values that had regulated people’s behaviour for centuries totters. Traditional notions about what is good and just, kind and beautiful are questioned and often labelled as prejudices, as delusions of the epoch.

p Disaffection and indignation become the norm. Wavering and grumbling gradually embrace even the ruling classes. Their ideology and culture begin to crumble. Scepticism and cynicism spread ever wider. Long-standing social links are severed. And on that soil there emerge philosophical schools preaching loneliness, the senselessness of existence, nihilism and pessimism.

p One cannot attribute this change in the public mood of an antagonistic society to the fact that always, even in the best of times, there are people who are disaffected over 11 something, have lost their belief in something, and regard themselves as having been passed over by destiny. Similarly, it cannot be argued that this change is due to the fact that in every epoch of exploiting society disaffection arises out of an unfavourable concurrence of circumstances, out of specific dramatic situations (a lost war, protracted economic difficulties, natural calamities, the suppression of one social movement or another), and so forth. This cannot be done because it is a matter of a universal, far-reaching change in a class-antagonistic society. This change can only be seen as the outcome of a basic conflict between the needs of the masses, the radically enlarged possibilities of satisfying these needs and the socio-economic and political relations that hinder the realisation of these possibilities. Continued mass disaffection exists only in epochs of the general crises of antagonistic social systems.

p To the largest extent this concerns the general crisis of modern capitalism. It is only the superficial observer who may get the impression that a general crisis breaks out unexpectedly and spontaneously. Actually such a crisis is always preceded by the gradual appearance of definite indications of stagnation and decline.

p The disaffection and indignation of the masses become extremely dangerous to outworn social relations, coming forward as the foundation of social changes. That is when all of bourgeois society’s forces interested in preserving the old order take urgent measures: parallel with greater repressions, control of the behaviour of people and a policy of concessions and handouts, they bring ideological and psychological pressures to bear. All means are used to foster a sense of contentedness that reconciles the masses to the existent bourgeois order.

p Efforts are made to separate the notions of the man in the street about his social condition from his actual status, to distort these notions so that the people regard as their own the interests and aspirations of the social forces determined to sustain and repair the shaken foundations of capitalism.

p The crisis of the bourgeois system remains a grim reality. The attempts to regulate the economy and other spheres of the life of society under state-monopoly capitalism have 12 not resolved its basic problems. On the contrary, they have intensified crisis phenomena, aggravating the antagonisms implicit in that system. However, a way of life harmonising as naturally as possible with reality is imposed upon the man in the street so that actual troubles are regarded as imaginary, while seeming troubles as real. The morals of capitalist society, which elevate vice to a standard of behaviour, thus become decent and even respectable. Indoctrinated in this fashion, man remains satisfied with his life, while rebellious motives, criticism of a mad world and outbursts of popular anger are received by him with suspicion and hostility as inconsonant with common sense, as a disturbance of harmony and tranquillity. The need for mass-producing the sense of contentedness grows tremendously in the epoch of the general crisis of capitalism, in the period of qualitative changes at the third stage of that crisis. The dilemma is—either perish or bourgeoisify the masses.

Let us see what the embourgeoisement of the masses means. It does not mean the atomisation of property and its redistribution, or the conversion of the entire ablebodied population into proprietors. It means moulding individuals united socially and psychologically, i.e., by ideals and views (outwardly non-bourgeois and even antibourgeois), by the entire gamut of feelings and desires conforming to the expectations of small entrepreneurs. By their actual social condition they would objectively remain wage workers, whose exploitation would continue bringing the capitalist surplus value, but their consciousness would be petty-bourgeois—it would be the consciousness of satisfied and contented people. Such consumer-oriented individuals would easily fit into the state-monopoly system, into the modern bourgeois organisation, merging with the petty-bourgeois mass. Such individuals would be lost to the revolution.