Straight by Day, Swingers by Night: Re-reading Daniel Bell on Capitalism and its Culture

Daniel Bell’s landmark Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) remains, 30 years later, the entry point to the rich literature on America’s twentieth-century culture of selffulfillment. After reconstructing the book’s argument with reference to Max Weber’s account of modernity, this article challenges Bell’s claim that Modernist culture and certain tendencies in capitalism threaten the social order. Capitalism and its culture are deeply symbiotic, and draw upon the same antinomian logic. Dionysus is welcomed with enthusiasm into the boardroom, mainly because apocalyptic moods and anti-rational modes of behavior sell emphatically well. It is hard to envision the social breakdown Bell fears, or indeed any effective cultural challenge to a market system that systematically incorporates protest.