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Political Theory and Political Action in Karl Mannheim's Thought: Reflections upon Ideology and Utopia and Its Critics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Richard Ashcraft
Richard Ashcraft
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles
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Extract

As a work of political theory, Ideology and Utopia has satisfied almost no one. Mannheim's critics extend across a wide range of viewpoints, from Parsons, Merton, Bendix, Popper, and Shils on one side to Marcuse, Hork-heimer, Lukacs, and Adorno on the other. Neither Marxists nor non-Marxists have found much to their liking in the book, and the rather easy dismissal of Mannheim's arguments by such influential thinkers on both sides of the political spectrum has certainly constituted a major obstacle to any serious consideration of the position he developed in Ideology and Utopia. For, I shall argue, the arguments contained in that work, when they have not been neglected altogether, have been poorly understood by those individuals whose writings exercise a dominant influence upon the thinking of contemporary social scientists.

Type
The Progress of Social Science
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 23 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

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References

An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the 11th World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Moscow, August, 1979. I wish to thank John Queen for his assistance in the preparation of this article.

1 The works of his first group of critics are well known; for a discussion of the Marxist critique of Mannheim, see Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston, 1973), pp. 64, 291–92Google Scholar; Jay, Martin, “The Frankfurt School's Critique of Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge”, Telos, no. 20 (Summer 1974): 72–89Google Scholar; Meja, Volker, “The Sociology of Knowledge and the Critique of Ideology”, Cultural Hermeneutics (May 1975): 61, 66n.Google Scholar; Remmling, Gunter W., The Sociology of Karl Mannheim (London, 1975), p. 57 ff.Google Scholar

2 This essay does not attempt to provide a general assessment of Mannheim's political thought, viewed as a whole, which, in any case, evolved through several stages. Except for a few references to his early writings, the concern here is solely with the arguments Mannheim advanced in Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1936) (hereafter cited as IAU).Google Scholar

3 Meja, , “Sociology of Knowledge”, p. 61 ff.Google Scholar; Horkheimer, Max, “Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff?”, Archiv für die Geschiehte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung XV (1930): 33–56Google Scholar; Marcuse, Herbert, “Zur Wahrheitsproblematik der soziologischen Methode: Karl Mannheims Ideologic and Utopie”, Die Gesellschaft (October 1929): 356–69Google Scholar; Lewalter, Ernst, “Wissensoziologie und Marxismus: Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Mannheims Ideologie und Utopie von Marxistischer Position Aus”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 64, no. 1 (04 1930): 63–121–Google Scholar;. The question posed by Marcuse, (p. 359)Google Scholar, for example, is whether there could be “an interpretation more dangerous and hostile to Marxism” or more likely to sanction “a universal opportunism” than the one developed by Mannheim? Lewalter, (p. 118), on the other hand, maintains that once Mannheim's scepticism about Marxism is dismissed, the important features of his argument are identical with a Marxist perspective.Google Scholar

4 After citing the views of Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill on wages, profit, and rent in the first three sections of the first manuscript, Marx begins his discussion of the problems of political economy in the fourth section of that manuscript, “Alienated Labor”, with the statement: “We have begun from the presuppositions of political economy. We have accepted its terminology and its laws. We presupposed private property; the separation of labor, capital, and land … From political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity … that the misery of the worker increases with the power and volume of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands … and finally that … the whole of society divide[s] into the two classes of property owners and propertyless workers” (italics in original). Marx, Karl, Early Writings, ed. Bottomore, T. B. (New York, 1964), p. 120.Google Scholar

5 IAU., p. 117.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 38.

7 Ibid., p. 2.

8 Ibid., p. 3.

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10 IAU, p. 269.Google Scholar

11 We need to “show that a certain style of thought, an intellectual standpoint, is encompassed within a system of attitudes which in turn can be seen to be related to a certain economic and power system; we can then ask which social groups are ‘interested’ in the emergence and maintenance of this economic and social system and at the same time ‘committed’ to the corresponding world outlook. Mannheim, Karl, “The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge”, in From Karl Mannheim, ed. Wolff, Kurt H. (New York, 1971), pp. 109–11.Google Scholar

12 IAU, p. 174.Google Scholar

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15 IAU, p. 168.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., pp. 221–22.

17 Ibid., p. 65.

18 For a discussion of this problem with respect to the writings of contemporary political theorists, see my “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology”, Journal of Politics (08 1980).Google Scholar

19 IAU, pp. 28, 43.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., pp. 168–69.

21 Ibid., p. 3.

22 Ibid., p. 83; cf. p. 33.

23 Ibid., p. 114n.

24 Ibid., pp. 43–44, 254. Also, see Mannheim's, essay, “American Sociology”, first published in the American Journal of Sociology 37 (1932): 273–82Google Scholar, and reprinted in Mannheim, Karl, Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology, ed. Kecskemeti, Paul (London, 1953), pp. 185–94.Google Scholar

25 IAU, p. 3.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 185.

27 Ibid., p. 164; cf. p. 290. At the same time, of course, Mannheim recognized that the existing conception of science was already politicized. This “intellectualistic conception of science”, he argued, “is itself rooted in a definite Weltanschauung and has progressed in close connection with definite political interests”, namely, the “political and social interests” of the bourgeoisie. Ibid., pp. 166–67.

28 Ibid., p. 115.

29 Ibid., p. 116.

30 For a recent discussion of these themes, see Habermas, Jurgen, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston, 1968).Google Scholar

31 Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958), p. 145Google Scholar. Like Weber, Mannheim developed his ideas about the methodology of the social sciences in relation to his views on the purposes of education. See below, pp. 44–45.

32 Apter, David, ed., Ideology and Discontent (Glencoe, Illinois, 1964), pp. 15–46Google Scholar. Also, see the essay in that volume by Bendix, Reinhard, “The Age of Ideology: Persistent and Changing”, pp. 294–327Google Scholar. Even the admirable contribution by Geertz, Clifford, “Ideology as a Cultural System”, is much vaguer and more abstract in its treatment of ideology than is Mannheim's discussion in Ideology and Utopia. Cf. Apter pp. 47–76.Google Scholar

33 Lederer, Emile, State of the Masses (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Ortega, José y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy (London, 1869)Google Scholar; Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society (London, 1960)Google Scholar. Mannheim's fullest discussion of mass society can be found in his Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (London, 1940).Google Scholar

34 For a discussion of this point as a characteristic of liberal thought, see IAU, p. 220Google Scholar ff. For Mannheim's own expression of this viewpoint, see his “The Crisis of Culture in the Era of Mass Democracies and Autarchies”, Sociological Review (04 1934): 105–29Google Scholar, and the essay, “The Democratization of Culture,” in From Karl Mannheim, pp. 271–346Google Scholar. And, for an interpretation of Mannheim's thought in terms of his general preoccupation with the problems of philosophy and culture, and therefore as a thinker within the tradition of liberalism, see Kettler, David, “Sociology of Knowledge and Moral Philosophy: The Place of Traditional Problems in the Formation of Mannheim's Thought”, Political Science Quarterly (09 1967): 399–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 This point is discussed at greater length in my article, “On the Problem of Methodology and the Nature of Political Theory”, Political Theory (02 1975): 5–25.Google Scholar

36 From Weber, Max, p. 55Google Scholar. Weber denied that this “methodological individualism” forced him to accept an evaluative defense of the individual as an aspect of his ideological commitment to liberalism. I have argued elsewhere that such a connection does exist in Weber's sociology, and that it finds expression in what Mannheim would call a “style of thought”, viz., liberalism. “Marx and Weber on Liberalism as Bourgeois Ideology”, Comparative Studies in Society and History (01 1972): 130–68.Google Scholar

37 IAU, pp. 28, 58–59.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 32.

39 At one point, Weber declares that an ideal type “has no connection at all with value judgments.” Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Illinois, 1949), p. 98Google Scholar. He cannot mean, however, that descriptively, the way in which social scientists formulate the problems for their investigation—which includes and depends upon the use of ideal types—has no connection with the social scientists' “practical value interests”, since it is just this point that Weber repeatedly insists upon in his argument against the notion of a “presuppositionless” social science. Ibid., pp. 78, 81, 84, 94.

40 IAU, pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

41 Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar; Dewey, John, Individualism Old and New (New York, 1929).Google Scholar

42 Lichtheim, George writes that Mannheim “regarded himself as a Socialist”, although no source for this assertion is cited. The Concept of Ideology (New York, 1967), p. 35Google Scholar. For a discussion of Mannheim's early political views, especially in relation to those of Lukacs, see Kettler, David, “Culture and Revolution: Lukacs in the Hungarian Revolutions of 1918/19”, Telos, no. 10 (Winter 1971): 35–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 IAU, pp. 29–31.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., pp. 124, 126.

45 Ibid., p. 124.

46 Mannheim recognizes, however, that a functional approach to social problems tends to de-emphasize the seriousness and the specificity of conflict, and therefore avoids a close examination of the “inner antagonisms” of social life. It thus serves a conservative role in this political conflict and, in modern society, is linked with the bourgeois-liberal mode of thought. Ibid., pp. 23, 278.

47 “It is especially revolutions that create a more valuable type of knowledge.” Ibid., p. 128. Later, revolution is discussed as something which “prevents rationality from becoming absolute”, and, for that reason, deserves a place “somewhere in our conception of history and our scheme of life.” Ibid., p. 132; cf. Remmling, , Sociology of Karl Mannheim, p. 71.Google Scholar

48 IAU, p. 150.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., p. 281.

50 Ibid., pp. 149–51. “The rising bourgeoisie which brought with it a new set of values … represented a new ‘economic system’ … accompanied by a new style of thought. … The same seems to be true of the proletariat today as well. Here too we note a conflict between two divergent economic views, between two social systems, and, correspondingly, between two styles of thought.” Ibid., p. 65.

51 Ibid., pp. 76ff., 94–97.

52 Ibid., pp. 189–90.

53 Ibid., p. 285.

54 Ibid., p. 185.

55 Ibid., pp. 170–71.

56 “It is the most essential task of this book to work out a suitable method for the description and analysis of this type of thought and its changes, and to formulate those problems connected with it which will both do justice to its unique character and prepare the way for its critical understanding. The method which we will seek to present is that of the sociology of knowledge” (italics added). Ibid., p. 2.

57 Ibid., p. 133.

58 Ibid., p. 4.

59 “The more bourgeois ideals … were in part realized … through the accession to power of the bourgeoisie, the more this rational calculation, without any consideration for the historical setting of facts, was recognized as the only form of political knowledge.” Ibid., p. 141. For Mannheim's views on “the democratic cosmopolitanism of the ascendant bourgeoisie” expressed through “idealistic philosophy” and Kantianism, in particular, see ibid., pp. 66, 166ff., 221, and “The Democratization of Culture”, in From Karl Mannheim, pp. 288–91Google Scholar. It is especially in the discussion of these issues that the influence of Lukacs and his History and Class Consciousness upon Mannheim's thought appears most evident.

60 It must be stressed that this position reflects a sociological approach to types of thinking as “collective activities.” Whether an ideal standard of thought fashioned according to the methods of some model of science is preferable, on philosophical grounds, to the type of thought identified with an existing ideology as a source of knowledge about social reality is therefore not the primary issue. To be sure, there is a legitimate methodological problem here, one to which the sociology of knowledge must address itself. Nevertheless, from Mannheim's standpoint, it is a mistake to believe that the problem of ideological thinking can be resolved through the formulation of analytical distinctions, between science and ideology, for instance, or that even when such distinctions are applied by social scientists they can effectively displace the practice of ideological thinking by social groups, classes, or political parties. For an example of this position, see Apter, Ideology and Discontent.

61 It was Marx's critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, and later his critique of Feuerbach's philosophy for its failure to deal with politics, which guided Marx away from the framework of bourgeois philosophy. His essay, “On the Jewish Question”, is also a direct attack upon the political theory of liberalism. “The political realism that derives from Marx”, Mannheim wrote, was the most important element he had incorporated from Marxism into his own thought. From Karl Mannheim, p. lxxxiii.Google Scholar

62 Parsons, Talcott, review of Alexander von Schelting's Max Weber's Wissenschaftslehre, American Sociological Review (08 1936): 681.Google Scholar

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64 von Schelting, Alexander, review of Ideologic und Utopie, American Sociological Review (08 1936): 666–67Google Scholar. Hamilton, Thus concludes with respect to Mannheim that “the ultimate consequence of his work is a turning against science in the study of social life.” Knowledge and Social Structure, p. 133.Google Scholar

65 Mannheim, , “Structural Analysis of Epistemology”, in Essays on Sociology, pp. 15–73; cf. Kettler, “Sociology of Knowledge”, p. 400.Google Scholar

66 Kettler, , “Sociology of Knowledge”, p. 401Google Scholar. “Through the sociology of knowledge a new approach to the problems of political science becomes possible. A careful analysis of the specific nature of political practice and of its various forms might disclose the main changes in its modes of thought.” Unpublished manuscript, cited in From Karl Mannheim, p. xlix.Google Scholar

67 Despite the fact that Mannheim repeatedly alludes to the idea that the character of political thought is “qualitatively different” from other forms of knowledge, and very often begins his epistemological observations with statements such as “in the realm of political and social thinking”, Werner Stark, for example, not only reverses Mannheim's emphasis but also condemns him for holding the position he has imputed to him (cf. IAU, pp. 1Google Scholar, 111, 117, 170, 172, 185, 190). Thus, Stark praises Mannheim for having taken “a very big step forward, from a political towards a philosophical point of view” in relation to Marx, and then attacks his “philosophical” viewpoint for being inadequate to support the claims of the sociology of knowledge. The Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1958), p. 102, and passim.Google Scholar

68 IAU, p. 176.Google Scholar

69 Mannheim's purpose in Ideology and Utopia was “the construction of a sociological history of the structure of modern consciousness.” Ibid., p. 205n.

70 Ibid., p. 4.

71 Ibid., pp. 84, 115, 117.

72 Hartung, “Problems”; Hinshaw, Virgil G., Jr., “The Epistemological Relevance of Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge”, Journal of Philosophy (4 02 1943): 57–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stark, , Sociology of Knowledge, p. 121Google Scholar; Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. (London, 1945)Google Scholar, 2:204, 215ff.; Speier, Hans, review of Ideology and Utopia, American Journal of Sociology (07 1937): 160–61.Google Scholar

73 Horkheimer, , “Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff?”; Marcuse, “Zur Wahrheitsproblematik”; Remmling, Sociology of Karl Mannheim, p. 59.Google Scholar

74 Meiton, Robert K., “Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge”, in Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Illinois, 1957), p. 507.Google Scholar

75 Horkheimer, , “Einneuer Ideologiebegriff?”; Marcuse, “Zur Wahrheitsproblematik”; Remmling, Sociology of Karl Mannheim, p. 59.Google Scholar

76 Even this proposition is somewhat starkly stated in view of the fact that Mannheim was “not concerned” with a conception of “politics exclusively suited to intellectuals”, since political objectives “in an epoch like our own” can only be realized through “mass action.” IAU, p. 160. Yet, once allowance has been made for the latent possibilities or contradictions in Mannheim's theoretical framework which point in other directions, this assessment of his political position retains its essential correctness.Google Scholar

77 Mannheim is conscious of this “Hegelian tendency” in his thought. Ibid., pp. 151–53. However, he was convinced that he could “translate this constructive notion” of a Hegelian synthesis “into empirical research.” Ibid., p. 69. Nevertheless, Mannheim frequently speaks of “the inner meaning of history” or of an “unconscious tendency” in society working towards a synthesis. Ibid., p. 91. This tendency existed, he maintained, even though there was no existential social group actively seeking its realization. Hence, he could speak of this tendency as forming part of “the implicit mission” of intellectuals as a social group. Ibid., pp. 159–62. How these assumptions could become meaningful on the level of empirical research, and why this imputation of totality to intellectuals as a group represented an advance over Lukacs's imputation of totality to the proletariat—which Mannheim rejects—is certainly never made clear by Mannheim.

78 In my view, Mannheim's problem in this regard is shared by the “critical theory” school of Marxists. Once the proletariat and class struggle are abandoned as the forces of social change, the “emancipatory reflection” of critical theory, stated in terms of social action, tends to dissolve into a Hegelian synthesis on the level of consciousness. For all of their initial criticism of Mannheim, the views of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, especially in the post-1930 period, as well as the position of Habermas, are actually very well characterized by Mannheim's description of the intelligentsia in Ideology and Utopia. Jay, , Dialectical Imagination, p. 292; Jay, “The Frankfurt School's Critique”.Google Scholar

79 IAU, p. 147.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., p. 156.

81 Ibid., p. 160.

82 Ibid., pp. 161–62.

83 Ibid., p. 163.

84 Weber, , Methodology, p. 7; also, see “Politics as a Vocation”, and “Science as a Vocation”, in From Max Weber.Google Scholar

85 IAU, p. 162.Google Scholar

86 Ibid., p. 170.

87 Ibid., pp.173, 177.

88 Ibid., p. 189.

89 Ibid., p. 191; cf. p. 190.

90 Since, for Mannheim, “political praxis is not to be identified with revolutionary praxis”, this meant that “a society which struggles for self-government and self-determination … can do so fruitfully only with the help of a critical and rational consciousness and the knowledge of social forces.” From Karl Mannheim, pp. IxivGoogle Scholar, lxxvii; IAU, p. 183.Google Scholar

91 IAU, p. 9.Google Scholar

92 Ibid., pp. 45–46.

93 Ibid., pp. 52–53.

94 Letter to Kurt Wolff printed in Wolff, Kurt H., Trying Sociology (New York, 1974), p. 557.Google Scholar

95 IAU, pp. 52–53.Google Scholar

96 Ibid., p. 99n. A dialectical approach is especially suited for dealing with “the unrealized and the unfulfilled tendencies which represent the needs of each age.” Ibid., p. 199.

97 Ibid., p. 124.

98 Ibid., p. 150.

99 Ibid., pp. 149–50.

100 Ibid., pp. 115, 241–42, 270. It should be remembered that Mannheim directed his criticism against what he believed was “a dogmatic type of Marxism” espoused by his contemporaries. Ibid., p. 276.

101 Ibid., p. 122.

102 Ibid., pp. 159, 168, 220ff.

103 Ibid., p. 278.

104 Ibid., p. 150. Liberalism's “faith in mediation and discussion is incompatible with admitting the existence of irreconcilable differences, of conflicts that cannot be settled by purely intellectual means.” From Karl Mannheim, pp. 248–49, 291–92.Google Scholar

105 Cited in Kettler, David, “Political Theory, Ideology, Sociology: The Question of Karl Mannheim”, Cultural Hermeneutics (05 1975): 76.Google Scholar

106 IAU, p. 65.Google Scholar

107 Ibid., pp. 223–25.

108 Ibid., pp. 114–16.

109 From Karl Mannheim, p. 248.Google Scholar

110 IAU p. 229.Google Scholar

111 Ibid., p. 244; cf. p. 219ff.

112 Ibid., p. 154.

113 Ibid., p. 27.

114 “This sociologically oriented history of ideas is destined to provide modern men with a revised view of the whole historical process.” Ibid., p. 78; cf. pp. 190–91. In the table of contents to the German edition of Ideologic and Utopie, Mannheim wrote that he was engaged in “a sociological structural analysis” of the historical changes in the meaning of “ideology.” From Karl Mannheim, p. Ixii.Google Scholar

115 IAU, p. 311.Google Scholar