The dominant social contradiction was seen as no longer between labour and capital, but between deep-seated human cultural needs grounded in the less abstract levels of life and the drawing of ever-larger areas of life into the most abstracted, and instrumentalised levels of life.
Arenas distinctive approach can thus be seen as having some superficial similarities with post-Marxist and post-classical attempts to apply a levels analysis of social life as developed (differently) by Jürgen Habermas and Louis Althusser.