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Emerging Ideologies and the Concept of Dialectic: An Exploratory and Speculative Essay
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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What I would like to explore in this short paper is the possibility of a theoretical interpretation of a social dialectic of emergence. I shall not be concerned to criticize or defend the dialectical method in social theory as such, but rather to give one interesting interpretation of it. In so doing, I have chosen two applications which I shall use to show what is meant here by emergence. The first of these treats ideological development in American advanced capitalism, the second examines certain aspects of Soviet Russian development. Both applications are schematic and require further fleshing out. So I put my views forth here only in an exploratory way. Employing the categories used in this paper, I am now preparing a more detailed study of the ideological development of Zionism, to be published subsequently. This latter study may provide more concrete answers to some of the issues raised in the present paper.
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- Copyright © 1971 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
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1 I do, however, believe that dialectics is a valuable heuristic device. It is capable of providing rich and suggestive interpretations for many social phenomena, as I have tried to show in my forthcoming book, Aesthetic Domains (1971).
2 "The Urban Revolution," Town Planning Review (21, 1950). See also Robert Redfield's illuminating discussion of this thesis in The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca, 1953), chapter I.
3 Thus, in the scientific sphere greater energy is expended in the refutation and falsification of theories and less on verification. This notion, drawn from the work of Sir Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959), has been historically expounded by Thomas Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962), see especially chapters 6 through 10. In the scientific sphere Kuhn has argued that progress is irreversible (op. cit., chapter 13) in proportion to its insulation as an enterprise from society, i.e., from socio-political pressures. In a certain sense, however, the contrary of this interpretation may well be true. At least this appears to be the claim of much Marxist historical scholarship in this area, (particularly, for example, in the studies of J. D. Bernal). And it is from this movement and from the "sociology of knowledge," which is closely connected with Marxism, that very important, although limited, investigations of the social history and social function of science have been generated. Kuhn's " insulation" concept is readily equated with the doctrine of value neutrality in the sciences. It is this kind of "scientific neutrality" which leaves science (as a commodity) at the behest of any and all special interests. Hence, it may very well be the case that certain societies or social structures are more conducive to scientific progress than others. On this view scientific neutrality is a goal to be achieved primarily through the control of its (science's) social environment. That is to say, scientific neutrality is a goal, not a fact. Kuhn's lack of clarity on this issue may be the result of what I consider to be his inaccurate analysis of the relation between "science" and "technology."
4 Very little has been done with similar transitions in aesthetic culture since Hegel. Three notable exceptions are to be found in the works of Arnold Hauser, P. Sorokin, and more recently, V. Kavolis.
5 Following the thesis of cultural materialism we may argue, however, that techno-environmental factors are the "causally" primary conditioning agents for all other cultural sub-systems, influencing the allocation of material and social resources in all domains of social life and behavior. The degree to which this view, expressed most clearly by Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), is consistent with, or the same as, the Marxian concept of ideology (superstructure) is not clear, but certainly bears further investigation.
6 To demonstrate causal relations among these cultural spheres has been the main task of historical materialism and considerable success has been achieved by Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Beard, Hilferding, Hauser, Lukács among others. Even so, all phenomena fail to fit the preconceived mold of strict historical materialism, i.e., the explanations remain partial and somewhat disconnected.
7 See, for example, Edgar Zilsel's very instructive article "Physics and the Problems of Historico-Sociological Laws," Philosophy of Science, 8 (1941), also Adam Schaff, "Why History is Constantly Rewritten," Diogenes, 30 (1960), and J. H. Randall, Nature and Historical Experience (1958), especially chapter 3.
8 I do not want to suggest, however, that all changes are internally generated, i.e., I do not subscribe unequivocally to the principle which Sorokin terms "immanent generation of consequences." See his Social and Cultural Dynamics (Boston, 1957) p. 639f. Obviously many changes are externally introduced, as for example, changes in Pacific Island cultures in the post-World War II period. I shall, however, hold to the position that change is primarily the result of technological innovation, thus assigning "causal" priority to the technical order.
9 John Dewey characterized this tendency as early as 1929 in his book, Individualism, Old and New (New York, 1958). His conclusions are well taken for an American experience which abides the mythology of " individualism " and "free enterprise " in a society which is organizationally the very antithesis of such values and modes of behavior.
10 Needless to say, the histories of internal dialectical development in societies are for the most part histories of class struggle. But this is not necessary. Primitive, pre-literate societies, when organized along communal lines with limited division of labor, carry out their struggles against external forces which threaten their cohesion and existence. Only historical societies have been predominantly class societies. See especially the studies of V. G. Childe and Robert Redfield for further anthropological elucidation of this point.
11 See his Soviet Marxism (New York, 1958) and One Dimensional Man (Boston, 1964).
12 See, for example, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York, 1964), especially the chapters on wages and labor and estranged labor.
13 Compare Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York, 1955), p. 348f.
14 Apart from its conservative, political manifestation, it might be argued that the highest ideological expression of this disembodied ethos was the American Abstract-Expressionist movement in painting in which individuality and personal freedom became fetishized and stylized to a point of absurdity.
15 One Dimensional Man, pp. 241-242.
16 I use this term here in a general way to distinguish the affective from the material spheres of existence, to mark off contemporary forms of deprivation from the material impoverishment characteristic of classical capitalist society. This use will correspond roughly to what has come to be known as psychological estrangement and social alienation in interpersonal relations. For a fuller discussion of this phenomenon and its ramifications, see my forthcoming book, op. cit., especially the chapter on the social origins of affective deprivation.
17 I have written at length on the aesthetification and ritualization of politics in my paper " Alternatives to An Aesthetic of Repression," presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of The American Society For Aesthetics, Boulder, Colorado, Oct., 1970. Copies may be obtained from the Society or the author.
18 For an analysis of " repressive desublimation " see Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, Chapter III.
19 Interestingly, this intensification needs to overcome the "defusing" or "co-option" of earlier revolutionary vocabulary by replacing or augmenting that vocabulary with words not likely to be usurped in the mass media, thus, e.g., "fuck," "pig," "mother," and other "obscenities" replace the hackneyed sloganry of earlier confrontations with established power. Thus, "free speech," "obscenity" and serious revolutionary political vocabulary merge. A recent article on revolution in Leviathan is titled, " Who Will Bring the Mother Down."
20 This development has been traced in L. Gruliow, ed., Current Soviet Policies (New York, 1953).
21 Thus, the absence of an "official" repressive policy against the Soviet scientific establishment in recent years is illustrated by the recent, internal critique of Lysenkianism in genetics in The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko, Z. A. Medvedev (New York, 1969). This document was widely circulated in manuscript form among the scientific establishment, was read by nearly all members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and unanimously recommended for publication, before its recent publication in the United States. It has not yet, however, been made available to people outside of the scientific commu nity in the Soviet Union. And because of its unsettling impact, Medvedev has been accused of insanity and at least once committed to an asylum.
22 This analysis of recent Soviet developments relies heavily on Marcuse's lucid preface to the 1961 edition of his Soviet Marxism, pp. v-xvi.
23 The recurrent trials of Soviet writers and the scandalous treatment of East European intellectuals, especially philosophers, testifies to the repressive conditions which obtain. For example, the recent edition (1962) of the official document on aesthetics produced for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Grundlagen der Marxistisch-Leninistischen Ästhetik (Berlin), contains no reference whatever to the work of Europe's most highly respected Marxist aesthetician, G. Lukács, nor to the highly competent work of other Marxist scholars in the field, e.g., Caudwell, E. Fischer, Brecht, Marowski, nor to the remarkable increase in literature on the sociology of, and social history of, art since 1951 in the West.
24 Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, p. xii.
25 These studies will appear in 1972.
26 This process is not fully understood in many sectors of the radical left.
27 I am indebted to my friend and colleague, Professor Erazim Kohak, for initially calling this similarity to my attention. We differ, however, on at least one significant point. Whereas Kohak attributes the fragmentation of the community and the depersonalization of social life to dislocations in the ideological sphere, i.e., to the materio-reductionist and positivist tendencies in Western thought, I would argue that these very dislocations are the product of more fundamental changes in the processes of production, distribution, and exchange brought on by the emergence of the market economy and intensified by the advent of the capitalist industrial revolution. And this, of course, is the essential point of historical materialism.
28 See my unpublished study, "On the Ideological and Dialectical Devel opment of Zionism."
29 The role of ritual and art is of crucial importance in the reconstitution of the community. Studies in this area are badly needed. Two highly suggestive recent studies of this phenomenon are Paul Honigsheim, "Die Ähnlichkeit von Musik und Drama in primitiven und totalitären Gesellschaften," Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie-Sozialpsychologie (3, 1964), and Lee Baxandall, " Spectacles and Scenarios: A Dramaturgy of Radical Activity," The Drama Review (4, 1969). The implications of the extraordinary collective power of art and ritual in the sense implied here and for the general theory of culture are treated in my forthcoming book, op. cit., and in the extremely valuable work of H. D. Duncan, Communication and the Social Order (New York, 1962), especially part viii, but also other chapters.
30 There has been at least one significant attempt to restate the objective conditions of student and black revolutionary movements in terms of Marxist analysis. It should be noted, however, that this formulation has not received wide acceptance, even on the radical left. The formulation here cited is by E. Mandel in New Left Review (54, 1969). Mandel argues that: 1) The rapid disappearance of employment for "unskilled labor" in industry since 1960 is the objective cause of radicalization of blacks, and 2) The transformation of higher education into programmed, technical training, resulting in the proletarianization of college graduates (reducing them to waged "intellectual" laborers), is the economic basis of the radicalization of students.
31 This phenomenon is not, of course, analogous to the mercenary utili zation of the Lumpenproletariat in 19th Century Capitalist society.
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