The End of 'The End of Ideology'

How strong is the evidence for the increasingly fashionable thesis of an end of ideology in the West? 6 arguments are considered: (1) that the intelligentsia, which has emerged as a pol'ly independent stratum, does not itself think in ideological terms; (2) that consensus instead of conflict has become the goal of the intelligentsia in an affluent society; (3) that the lifeaffirming, soc'ly liberating & sci'fic ethos of the intelligentsia has issued in a countermovement against ideology; (4) that independent thinkers & men of ideas have been eclipsed by the bur'crats of intellect & the soc engineers; (5) that the role of these admin'ive intellectuals becomes increasingly beneficent as well as skilled; & (6) that the consensus of professional intellectuals has effectively stifled ideologies of the Right as well as the Left. None of these arguments is convincing because they fail to allow for the possibility that a consensus of the intellectually enlightened may also function as an ideology, & that sci'fic knowledge may be objective & also partial to vested interests of the intelligentsia. AA.