ABSTRACT
Many intellectual fashions, do just that; they stand in the way of a release of the imagination — about the cold war, the Soviet bloc, and the politics of peace, about any new beginnings at home and abroad. In the Soviet Union, only political authorities at the top, or securely on their way up there, can seriously tamper with structural questions and ideological lines. These authorities are much more likely to be intellectuals then are American politicians. The end-of-ideology is on the way out because it stands for the refusal to work out an explicit political philosophy. And alert men everywhere today do feel the need of such a philosophy. One might frequently accused of being "utopian" — in their criticisms and in their proposals; and along with this, of basing the hopes for a New Left politics "merely on reason", or more concretely, upon the intelligentsia in its broadest sense.
