been introduced in the first place by Marcuse and Norman O. Brown, who wanted to put psychoanalysis at the service of social theory—struck me as enormously fruitful, providing Marxism for the first time with a serious theory of culture. The tradition of English Marxism, as articulated by Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson, appealed to me for the same reason. It repudiated economic determinism and the mechanistic distinction between economic "base" and cultural "superstructure." It showed that class consciousness is the product of historical experience, not a simple reflection of economic interest. The work of Williams and Thompson also showed how Marxism could absorb the insights of cultural conservatives and provide a sympathetic account, not just of the economic hardships imposed by capitalism, but of the way in which capitalism thwarted the need for joy in work, stable connections, family life, a sense of place, and a sense of historical continuity.

In the late sixties and early seventies, Marxism seemed indispensable to me—with the many refinements and modifications introduced by those who rejected the positivistic, mechanistic side of Marxism—for a whole variety of reasons. It provided a left-wing corrective to the anti-intellectualism of the new left—its cult of action (preferably violent, "existentially authentic" action), its contempt for the autonomy of thought, its terrible habit of judging ideas only by their immediate contribution to the revolution. Marxists in the West took the long view and preached patience: the gradual preparation of a new culture. Marxism explained a great many things, it seemed, that could not be explained in any other way, including the aggressive foreign policy that had troubled me for so long. In the late fifties, I had listened attentively to Kennan, Lippmann, and other "realists," who argued that the worst features of American policy originated in misplaced moral fervor. Vietnam convinced me, however—as it convinced so many others—that American imperialism grew out of the structural requirements of capitalism itself, which continued to rest on colonial exploitation. Those who rejected the economic determinism often associated with Marxism nevertheless took it as an essential principle of social analysis that a society's institutions had to be understood as expressions of its underlying structure, of the characteristic configuration of its productive forces in particular.

But the attraction of Marxism, in my own case, lay not only in its ability to provide a general explanatory framework but in its more spe

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