 Increasingly, "Arena"’s arguments added up to a critique that was deep-cultural and/or ontological.As the USSR collapsed and capitalism was fully globalised, and as the environmental problem became compelling, it was becoming clear that a global system had developed to such a degree that its basic contradiction was of the possibility of meaningful life itself.By the end of the 1980s it was becoming increasingly difficult to bridge the deeper theoretical debates and more current analysis within one publication.