Page 51 - Decoding Culture

44 DECODING CULTURE
that offered by Fromm or Benedict or, indeed, any other analyst.
In summarizing his aims he writes (Williams, 1965: 319 : '[wle
)
have been trying to develop methods of analysis which, over a
range from literature to social institutions, can articulate actual
structures of feeling - the meanings and values which are lived in
works and relationships - and clarify the processes through which
these structures form and change.' Yet even a generously dis­
posed reader of The Long Revolution would be hard pressed to
say exactly what constitutes these distinctive 'methods of analysis',
a task not helped by Williams' almost Leavisite insistence in the
Foreword to the 1965 Penguin edition that 'the method is in this
sense the substance'.
Later, of course, Williams was to reflect much more fully upon
theoretical issues in the context of his continuing concern with
developments in modern marxism. But at this stage, and for all the
extraordinary invention and insight of The Long Revolution, ques­
tions of theory and method have not yet quite escaped the
inheritance of the culture and civilization tradition. On substantive
issues, however, Williams makes remarkable progress. He moves
the terms of discussion of culture toward a much less restrictive
conception than was prevalent in either of the main traditions that
I have been discussing in this chapter, convincingly demonstrating
the necessity of understanding the totality of relations between
society, art and activity. He establishes the centrality of communi­
cation processes to community and common culture, a topic taken
up, if somewhat unevenly, in his next book on communications
(Williams, 1962). And he extends even further the emphasis on
human agency that threads its way through the culture and civi­
lization tradition. W e must not think only of society or the group
acting on the unique individual,' he writes, 'but also of many unique
individuals, through a process of communication, creating and
where necessary extending the organization by which they will

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