Daniel Bell As Post-Cold War Intellectual: The Idea of Triunity Beyond the Cognitive Frameworks of the Cold War

Interpretations of Daniel Bell’s works are typical cases of cognitive bias in Cold War social sciences. Bell has been regarded as an anti-communist ideologue, a conservative sociologist, and a neoconservative intellectual. Today, therefore, his works are not discussed in earnest. This study reevaluates Daniel Bell by clarifying that he held post-Cold War perspectives.    

    As Bell himself noted, The End of Ideology is better known for its title than for its content. During the Cold War era, attention was paid not to what he said but the sensational title. Because readers took “the end of ideology” to mean that all ideologies would vanish despite severe ideological conflicts, Bell was considered an anti-communist ideologue. Similarly, because in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalismhe took an anti-modernist position and placed value on religion, many scholars have regarded him as neoconservative.      

    Certainly, he criticized Stalinism and the Communist Party of the United States. He recalled that members of the Communist Party did not know about Kronshtadt in which Trotsky shot rebels in 1921. His criticism was based on experiences from his youth.    

    At the end of the Cold War, he indicated that his position was different from that of anti-communism. He insisted that the end of communism should not be admired, and he also suggested that capitalism would extend indefinitely. Although Bell was close friends with Irving Kristol, who was nicknamed “the godfather of neoconservatism,” and funded The Public Interestwith him, they conflicted politically and ideologically after the presidential election of 1972.  

    In 1977, Bell articulated his three positions: “socialist in economics, liberal in politics and conservative in culture.”  He tried to transcend the binary oppositions peculiar to the Cold War through his idea of triunity. This study reevaluates Bell as a post-Cold War intellectual who fought against neoliberalism and neoconservatism.