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Contemporary Cultural Theory

of middle-class utilitarianism—closely parallel, as we shall see, to
the defences attempted by both classical sociology and classical
Marxism. But the critique of utilitarian culture becomes displaced,
through a similarly organicist and anti-individualist conception of
the state, into a fear of anarchy, and a corresponding faith in the
remnant, both of which are much more reminiscent of sociology,
especially French sociological positivism, than of Marxism. The
Arnoldian programme becomes, then, a programme of liberal, but
not thereby individualist, social reform.
Williams argues that the key weakness in Arnold is his in-
ability to explain how it is that the state might be influenced by
the remnant, rather than by the classes, so as to make it possible
for it to fulfil the cultural role allocated it. In short, Arnold can
offer no institutional mechanism by which the remnant might be
organised. Thus the case for the ideal state collapses into a defence
of an actual state that is in reality far from ideal (Williams, 1963,
p. 133). There is one obvious reply to this charge, though it is not
one of which Arnold could have availed himself. It could be
argued that Arnold’s remnant is better understood as a social class
in its own right, rather than as an aggregate ‘number of aliens’
(p. 109), and that it should therefore prove at least as capable of
directing the state, at least in particular directions, as are the
Barbarians, the Philistines and the Populace. Neither Arnold nor
Williams contemplate this prospect. But had either done so,
it might well have provided them with an explanation for
the transparently educative role of much of the business of the
modern state. A problem remains, however: understood thus—
that is, as an intellectual class—the remnant would in all
probability be motivated, not by a general humane spirit, but by
their own class spirit. Such a class spirit would, of course, prove
unusually sympathetic to the business of intellectual work. But
there is no reason at all to imagine that it would be inspired by
the love of human perfection.

T.S. Eliot
If Arnold was the central nineteenth-century figure in the devel-
opment of the culturalist tradition, then the equivalent status for

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