ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century, the United States further developed some of the features that Europeans found disturbing; materialism, commercialized culture, mass democracy, the victory of scientism over the tragic sense of life, and the intellectuals of the old continent understood. Professor Seymour Martin Lipset wrote in The New York Times, as Europe has become more like America in its economic and class structure, many European intellectuals have been in despair at the rapid increase of similar popular patterns of culture in their own countries. "Workers and intellectuals," Raymond Aron wrote, "are suspicious of concentration on productivity: the first suspect a subtle form of exploitation, the second fear for the survival of cultural values." The intellectual class of Europe, long engrossed in the preparation of a Promethean revolt, was nevertheless taken by surprise when it realized that the new reality, the emerging society, was ready to overflow the molds of the old categories.
