The theme runs through a remarkable book, Convictions, by a dozen of the sharpest young Left Wing intellectuals in Britain. In the U.S. too there is a restless search for a new intellectual radicalism. The workers have not achieved utopia, but their expectations were less than those of the intellectuals, and the gains correspondingly larger. Politics offers little excitement. If anything, one can begin anew the discussion of utopia only by being aware of the trap of ideology.
Ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their individual merits.
One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae. And when these beliefs are suffused by apocalyptic fervor, ideas become weapons, and with dreadful results. But to close the book is not to turn one's back upon it. You are expected to be simply for or against it and judge and be judged accordingly. Hatred and intolerance are wiping out whatever middle ground may have existed.