Ideology in Politics: An Essay in Analysis

SI SX'1VNV NI xvssa N\f : M)0'10aaI IDEOLOGY IN POLITICS: AN ESSAY IN ANALYSIS By GORDON T. CHURCHILL A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University (November) 1968 MASTER OF ARTS (1968) (Political Sci~ne) McMASTER UNIVERSITY Hamilton, Ontario SCOPE AND CONTENTS TITLE: Ideology in Politics: AUTHOR: Gordon T. Churchill, B.A. (Econ.) (Sheffield University) SUPERVISOR: An Esa~ in Analysis Professor D. Novak NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 67 SCOPE AND CONTENTS: This thesis is an attempt to examine the nature of ideological thought, and the way in which the concept of ideology is used in politics. A short survey of the concept introduces the topic. The concept is then treated in terms of epistemology, the sociology of .knowledge, nationalism, and political theory and doctrine. The conclusions are that the proponents of the view that ideology is at an end in politics may well be correct in terms of their Q~m implicit assumptions, ·but it is clear that this standpoint cannot be upheld if other assumptions are made. . Substantial support may be given to this proposition by the fact that it is possible-to argue that the "end-of-ideology" is itself an ideological viewpoint, and one that is substantially in favour of the status guo. As such, this ·viewpoint appears to be inherently inimical to the philosophical cr~tique of such basic political concepts as freedom, democracy, and political order. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my acknmvledgements, for their comments and criticisms, to Professor D. Novak, Dean J. Melling, and Professor H. Massey. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page SCOPE AND CONTENTS ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv PREFACE v CHAPTERS I II The Concept of Ideology 1 Epistemology and the Sociology of Knowledge 18 Nationalism 33 IV Political Theory, Doctrine, and Ideology 43 v Concluding Notes on the End-of-Ideology 56 III 62 BIBLIOGRAPHY iv PREFACE The purpose of this study is to try and clarify some aspects of political ideology. The study was inspired by the current Anglo-American controversy, behleen sociologists and political scientists, about whether ideology any longer plays a significant role in political life. The topic is obviously tremendously broad and I will have to cut the scope of the study as far as is possible, so as not to lose intelligibility. I shall not, therefore, deal with the underdeveloped world or undertake an extensive sociological discussion of the "embourgeoisement" of the Western working class. Similarly, I will have to exclude any discussion of the psychology of ideology. My main concern is with the implications of the end-of-ideology argument for political theory and political philosophy, and the related issues of human values and ideals. In Chapter One I will introduce the topic with a survey of the concept of ideology and with a brief discussion -of political ideals. Chapter Two is concerried with the question of how we can claim to have certain knowledge -of and with the way in which such ~oncepts claims are, from the standpoint of the sociology of knowledge, determined _or conditioned by particular social situations or milieu. Chapter Three may body of the text. to stand apart somewhat from the main ape~r It deals with nationalism and-will show at least some attributes of all ideologies in a more clearly defined form. In this sense the contents of Chapter Three are re-lated to those of the preceding v and following chapters. Chapter Four is entitled "Political Doctrine and Ideology". It begins· with a discussion of theory, philosophy, and thought, and then concerns itself with "revisionism" in the East and in Great Britain- in the Y/est. Chapter Five dra\.,rs on the preceding chapte!,s in concluding remarks on the connotations of the end-of-ideology argumento vi CHAPTER I THE CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY Ideology is a pattern of beliefs and concepts (both factual and normlltive) which purport to explain complex social phenomena with a view to directing and simplifying socio-political choices facing individuals and groupsol This definition of ideology appears to be too broad in its denotation. In fact, it hides a long history of changes in the descriptive use of the term "ideology", and, like all definitions, it subsumes the varied attempts that have been made to analyse the theoretical connotations of the concept. This chapter will attempt to give a description of the changes in the use bfthe word "ideology" and the connotation of the concept, and will look at some of the theoretical attempts at analysing the concept. By adopting this approach, it is intended at least to lay the basis for some points which will be elaborated at later stages in the thesis. bare facts ~/il One hopes that the pedantry of a of historc~l-aun thereby be avoided. The term "ideology" was first adopted by Comte- Destutt de Tracey in the late eighteenth century. As a philosophical and anthro- pological concept, it was tQ denote the study of ideas and of the role they performed in shaping particular doctrines about ideas. regad~ Destutt ideology as a branch of physiology in so far as he held that IJulius Gould and William t. Joll, eds., A Dictionary of the Social Sciences, p. 315. 1 2 all ideas emanated from sensations. Destutt claimed, therefore, to address himself to the science des idees, the science of ideas. It was hoped to discover, by using the methods of natural science, to arrive at causal relationships between sensations and ideas. "Ideology" was intended by Destutt to be a non-emotive terl!l. The members of l'Institut, in Paris, who pursued the liberal-rationalistic branch of thought associated with the Enlightenment, were, however, quickly branded as ideologues by Napoleon when they inevitably turned against the autocratic manifestations of his regime and his imperialistic designs. As used by Napoleon, this term expressed approbrium (of a particular political vie\'Ipoint). "Ideology" itself was to Napoleon nothing better than "visionary moonshine", while to Karl Marx it 'vas "false consciousness", disguising the real historical and sociological condition of men. Although Marx had been nurtured in the Hegelian philosophical tradition, he, with other "left Hegelians", had reacted against its substance religiosity. bec~us of what he perceived to be its profound Hegel had conceived of his philosophy as an indictment of the Kantian synthesis-of Cartesian dualism and Lockean empiricism. Neither mind nor matter bad been considered predominant in the Kantian system because, Kant maintained, experience was not independent of thought. b~t Thought was necessary in our conceptUalisation of experience, the construction of concepts could not take place outside of our experience. Thus, knowledge was both phenomenal (of appearances) and noumenal (of things-in-themsel ves) , . the forme"r being meaningful knowledge. Hegel's reaction against this philosophy took the form of a renewed emphasis on the noumenalo Thus, far from agreeing that "the 3 speculative use of reason results in metaphysical theses whose very meaning is doubtful ll ,2 Hegel believed that this approach lay at the core of true philosophy. The noumenal or "true" world, as well as the· phenomenal world was the product of ideational processes. The idealisation of reality is rational, and "the rational is real". History, on this is the process of idealisation, of the moveba~is, ment of the particular towards the realisation of the Absolute Mind. A young Hegelian, Feuerbach, reacted against the apparent subjugation of the individual man to the moving totality of the dialectic. The philosophical dilemma of the bifuriation of the individual into "selflt and "not-self" was epitomised by religion.· Religion as conceived by Feuerbach was a form of false-consciousness through which man became alienated from himself. To Karl Marx, however, Feuerbach was himself under the illusion of a false-consciousness. As Marx saw it, the root cause of man's alienation was the direct result of the secular divisions in mankind and did not lay in the "escapism" of a theological metaphysics. Hence, in the fourth of his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx says: Feuerbach sets out from the fact of religious selfalienation, the duplication of the world into an imaginary world ·>and a secular one. This work. consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis • • • • But the fact that the secular basis deserts its own sphere and establishes an independent realm in the clouds can only be expla~nd by the cleavage and self-contradiction in the secular base case. 3 Feuerbach's division of the spiritual and the seculaF was, then, only the beginning of an attempt to· understand the "false consciousness" 2~manuel Kant, quoted in Henry Aiken, Age of Ideology, p. 35. 3Quoted in Lewis S. Feuer, ed., Marx and Engels; _Basic Hritings on Politics and PhilosE~' p. 4. 4 of man or his "ideology". It appears that Marx, and later Engels, were applying the concept "ideology" to what Destutt had regarded as 'mere' ideas. In the Marxian synthesis, ideas about religion, law, morals, philosophy, and so forth constituted the superstructure of society, the substructure of which lay in the material mode of prqduction of a particular epoch. Ideology was originally interpreted by Marx as forming a part rather than the totality of the superstructure. However, it is clear that Marx later regar"ded it as the important factor which provided a basis for the others. The term "ideology" was used here in"a descriptive and non-neutral, rather than an analytical sense. In Maurice Cranston's terminology ~t was employed as a "boo-word". Marx and Engels held that their theory was in itself not an ideology-- it was a means of analysing and discovering the true nature of ideologies. At least one scholar appears to have seized on this claim somewhat readily: With much insight Harx and Engels developed the doctrine that their economic interests bred in each group a corresponding "ideology", a protective web of beliefs that held no. intr~c validity, but were the rationalisation of their struggle to gain or maintain place and power. 4 When modern writers, like Roucek, maintain that Marxism is itself an 'ideology', they are using the concept in the narrow sense, as the viewpoint of a part~cul social class; But, surely Marx and Erigels used the concept in a broader sense as well, -- one, moreover, that-was much nearer the conception of ideology elaborated by Destutt 4R• 11. MclveI', The Web of Government ~ p. 41. (My italics.) " 5 de Tracey. Thus, if Marx and Engels could claim, as Destutt hoped to do, that they had discovered a means of identifying vlhat underlay and gave rise to men's ideas and thought, then they had, indeed, developed a "science of ideas", though one that examination of its own hypotheses. light did not allow for apre~tly It is interesting to note in this Engels's later views on historical and his emphasis materil~, on the interrelationship between ideas and circumstances. But,-even if Engels recognised that the connection between idea and circumstance was one of an interrelationship rather than a one-way relation, he still maintained thatJultimately, ideas other than those emanating from the proletarian standpoint would be historically false. Karl Mannheim was aware of the two conceptions of ideology to be found in the works of Marx and Engels, although in his book IdeoloJEY Utopia he appears to give a mainly pe jorative connotation to the ~d word 'ideology'. Nevertheless, Mannheim attempts a closer theoretical analysis of the concept. Thus, ideologies as more or less conscious deceptions of human interest groups reflect two types of falsity in observation and statement, conceptualised as the 'particular' and 'total' forms of ideological thinking. ideology takes place on The particular conception Df level, and is concerned with the-psy~olgica what we regard to be the falsity of our opponent's position in relation to the true nature of the situation. The late~, be against his interests if revealed to him. ~uch it is assumed, would The distorted ideas of an adversary "range all the way from conscious lies to half-'conscious and unwitting deceptionll, from mlculated attempts to dupe others to 6 "sel f-de ception". 5 It is possible to determine an argument between two persons holding .particular ideological viewpoints, because the difference in views does not preclude the assumption that there exist certain criteria of common ground between them. ~'- Because of such elements Df common agreement, at least part of the argument between the two opposing parties may be non-ideological. On the other hand, the total conception of ideology presupposes the complete ideological determination of the whole structure of thought: Here we refer to the ideology of an age or of a concrete historical social group, e.g., of a class, when we are concerned with·the characteristics and composition of the total gtructure of the mind of this epoch or this group. Mannheim designates two categories within his total conception / of ideology, the 'special' and the 'general'. The 'special formulation refers to the totality of thought of an individual or social group, conditioned by their 'life-situation' or social circumstance. The total thought of a historical epoch is the concern of the 'general' formulation of the concept, and in this sense recalls the Weberian designation of the "cons'ciousness of_ an epoch". Mannbeim' s total con- ception of ideology shows us the way to a sociology of knowledge, and an examination of such a transition and the problems of relativism which it raises for Mannheim's theory' will be undertaken in Chapter. Two. We may note that Mannheim followed Marx in being able to incorporate in his analysis the psychologicai an~ sociological manifesta- 5Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp.55-6. 6Mannheim, loco cit. 7 tions of what 'he regarded as ideological thought. By 'psychological manifestation' is meant the derivation of the thought processes of an individual from certain psychological traits, such as drives, instincts, motivations, and so on. By sociological manifestation is meant those thought processes that are derived as a result of an individual's relationship to a social group. According to Mannheim, the particular conception of ideology operates primarily with a psychology of interests, while the total conception uses a more formal functional analysis,-without any reference to motivations, confining itself to an objective description of the structural 7 differences in minds operating in different social settings. Mannheim, as a sociologist, vias more concerned with the total conception of ideology; he was therefore unwilling, or unable, to explore further the psychological nature of the particular conception of ideologYc 8 Historically, however, the perception of ideological thinking as motivated primarily by psychological causes may be accorded to Nietzsche, Pareto, and Sorel. To Nietzsche, all thought.was illusion, which provided rationalisations for the basic human motivation, the nwill to power". It is obvious that the term "ideology" was again being used in a pejoratiye sense. Although the-residues and derivations were construed by Pareto as_forming the basis of ideologies, the vagueness and the pseudo-scientism of these concepts do not really facilitate -7Mannheim, ibid., pp. -57-8. _ 8Mos t psychological inves~gato into ideology have been of a nature of an inquiry into the various traits entering into the so-called authoritarian personality, especially the studies by Erich Fromm.- See, e.g., Escape from Freedom; by Adorno and associates, The Authoritarian_ Personali~. An excellent investigation into the ·wider perspective of belief and disbelief systems (these only partly composed of ideolop:ical thought) is contained in- Milton Rbkeach, The Open and Closed Mind. 8 the location of the psychological determinants of an ideological outlook. 9 Implicitlyj at least, the term was used by Pareto as an emotive word. Sorel, notably in his Reflections on Violence, perceived ideology in both a eulogistic and dyslogistic sense. Ideology was· thus a rational structure of beliefs that could be either revolutionary or reactionary, i.e., intended to help either to overthrow or to uphold the status quo. More important to Sorel was his concept of the myth, . which may be defined as an irrational concentration of beliefs (one . hesitates to call it a "~ystem). Myth concept opposed to that of utopia. ~TaS conceived by Sorel as a Myth was thus conducive to revolu- tionary action, e.g., the myth of the proletarian general strike, while utopia was not. Mannheim had, of course, examined the concept of utopia, but had given it a denotation similar to that given to myth by Sorele Thus, although both ideologies "and utopias were regarded by Mannheim as 'situationally transcendent', t}1e former were regarded as "unrealisa?le ll , while the latter were looked upon as being "realisable". . The utopian mentality could cause the bounds of the existing social-conditions to be broken, while the ideological mentality could not. But to Sorel the utopian mentality was reactionary because it was unrealisable, and it . was unrea1isable be·cause it failed to take account of the intui tfve· foro-es in mankind. furthermore, "Parliamentary Socialists" w.ere handi ... capped in recognising the supreme value of man's irrationality as a 9See Rokeach, OPe cit., pp. 125-129, for a discussion of .the psychological difficulties that may arise as a result of a conflict _betw~n the content and structure of an ideology.- 9 means to promoting soci~m. The social myth was important in the organisation of the irration.al elements in men's thinking, and', therefore, the function of the real socialist leader was to promote such myths as the only means of overcoming the inactivity of the "petit-proletariat". effect, the myth was more than utopia becau~, In pragmatic,ally speaking, it took account of the various images that men built up from the resentments they felt against existing society. Thus, the myth of the general strike comprised a body of images capable of invoking instinctively all the sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by Socialism against modern society.lO Sorel maintained that his conception of the role of myth as a means of organising the proletariat towards socio-poli ti'cal change was quite the antithesis of the utopian thought adopted by the "bourgeois socialists". And yet, one can in one respect say that Sorel's stand was not itself far removed from the paradigm of utopian thought. Although he was against the 'scientism'- of the 'utopians and their projections of an inevitable socialist society in the future, and held that the "Ideals men hold of the future are never realised in actual historical evolution", Sopel still believed that "this is nei t11er sufficient grouna for inaction nor evidence that belief is impos~ble. One would think that it is just as ufopian to conceive of a society of 10George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 127. II Irving Horowitz, Radicalism and the Revolt, p. 109., 10 irrational men as to conceive of a society of rational men. It is not pertinent to this essay to examine the paradoxes that Sorel's theory encountered because of its core 'conception of the maintenance inevtab~y of human irrationality and sensationalism through a kind of permanent revolution. For our purposes it is enough to note that for Sorel ideology is the prime vehicle for social action. I have dwelt somewhat upon the Sorelian theory because it points to several emphases that will emerge later in this thesis. I wish now to expand one of the elements in Sorel's work. This element is utopian in the sense that it is concerned with the goals of mankind. It is the ideal of socialism. Ideals in the sense used here are "envisioned ends of improvement, of the better, of the excellent, of the perfect, against which we measure actual a~hievmntlf.12 Vie are, then, concerned with normative propositions for political conduct. Intuitively, in common speech and in political action, we expect an idealist, in the words of Carl J. Friedrich, to be Ita person who will be motivated in his actions to a greater degree than most others by the ideals he cherishes".13 l1y reference to .. the "ideal of socialism" in the last paragraph may be enigmatic. Do we regard such an ideal as one to be placed against or alongside other ideals? yet neither. The answer is both of these and For, on the one hand, one would suppose the "ideal of socialism" to be t.o subsume the ideals mentioned above, together. with 12Evelyn Shirk, The Ethical Dimension 13Carl J. Friedrich, Han I p. 49. and his Government ,Ppe 84-85. 11 other ideals bearing humanistic considerations. The 'excellent' or 'perfect' society is envisaged to be one allowing for maximum freedom and indiyiduality for man, while instilling a spirit of co-operation rather than one of competition. In comparison, Erich Fromm in his-book Escape from Freedom considers the ideals of fascism to be totally opposed to the humanistic ideals described. However, the socialistic ideal is not to be identified with a blueprint or template for the new society. In fact, we should be well aware from our reading of the history of socialist thought that the concept of socialism has been nebulous and only vaguely defined. To Fourier and Owen socialism meant a communal society based on co-operation; to Marx it was the classless society; to Proudhon, a society where property rights had been abolished; to Bakunin, an anarchical society; to Sorel, a syndicalist one, and so on! I have included this brief analysis of ideals in this chapter, because the fundamental question that the current controversy on the endof-ideology seems to directly related to it. rai~e-s The question may be phrased, 'Is idealism in the manner I have described it a form of ideology or is it something completely divorced from ideology'? idealism is utopian, th~ If all it may be possible to draw a conceptual dis- tinction between this type of thinking and ideological thinking. But even Karl Mannheim, the most notable protagonist of such a -division, states that "To determine concretely, however, what in and ",hat utopian is extremely difficul.t ll • is that we are not dealing with '-pi.enthsky~ 14Mannh' elm, - Ope -Cl. t ., -p. 196 • 14 a given case is ideological What makes i t more difficult visions on the one hand, 12 and so-called misrepresentations of factual conditions, or 'deceptions', on the other. He are concerned with how a particular person sees what ought to. be done in terms of what state of· affairs he \.,rould like to see brought about. Bertrand Russell sees this issue clearly. He states: We must approach goals by degrees but I believe no less firmly that really vital and radical· reform requires some vision beyond the immediate future, some realisation of what ~uman beings might make of life if they chose.1 5 This is not to say that i t is "a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active ll • 16 Contrary to 'popular' opinion, which appears to be changing on this very topic at the present time, these ethical presumptions \vere present in the work of Karl Harx. consciousness. "For Marx no social life is possible \vi thout human And there is no human consciousness without ethical ideals of some kind".17 Harx differed from the Utopian socialists in his perception of these ideals only, in that his was a naturalistic perception of ideals as related to the social basis and hence grounded. on human need. Even when he abandoned-his idealiSl!1 in his attempt "to understand the nature of the historical basis", he retained a belief in - the "natural activity'! of the material social basis that led directly to the expression of human needs. Since Mannheim, the treatment of the concept of.ideology has been mainly descriptive. William Ebenstein, in his Today's Isms, 15Bertrand.Russell, Political Ideals, p. 16 Ibid ., pp. 22-23. 17 .. Sidney Hook, From HeBel to Harx, .p. 87. 67. 13 perhaps uses the term in the simplest manner possible. four major groupings of ideologies: system w~th He designates Capitalism, viewed as an economic democracy as its political counterpart; Communism and Fascism, \oJith historial and existential variations in each of these ideologies; and Socialism, differentiated between, say, the Socialism of Great Britain or Sweden and the left wing .5"ocialism of Italy. Gyorgy and Blackwood attempt to dra\.,r distinctions between 'free,' ideologies socialism, liberalism, and capitalism -- and 'unfree' ideologies fascism, communism, and nazism. They give an "appraisal" rather than a definition of the term lIideology" as a "concise set of political, social, and economic ideas in the realm of world pOlitics".18 This statement seems similar to Maurice Duverger's conception of "total ideology", L e., an ideology \'Ii th a WeI tanschanung or world-view, as opposed to "partial ideology", Le., that ideology \oJhich arises from a particular social class or category.19 Ideologies perform lItwo leading roles in the d,evelopment of political conflicts", according t.o Duverger. The first role is that "of co-ordinating and systematising individual oppositions, thus setting them \vithin the context ·-of a larger conflict ll • The second role is to give to political disputes lIthe context of conflicting values".20 The latter role is given to ideologies because of the view that it is a , function of ideologies to propgund a system of values. l8Gyorgy and Blackwood, Iaeologies in Horld \ Afairs~ 19Maurice Duverger, The Idea of Politics, pp. 20 . . Ibid.,. p. 77 •. The designation p. 17 76-77. 14 of ideologies as value systems is not, hm.,rever, common today: "In general, ideology has today a somewhat pejorative sense which does not attach too value". 21 This is probably so because the term "ideology" has often been employed to designate an action-related system of ideas, most totalitarian ideologies. fically, The causal relationship, implied a~tion, between theory (or more particularly ideology) and first emphasized by Karl Harx. spe~i- was perhaps If the bourgeois society was a reflection of false consciousness, then to arrive at the truth, \-Jhich was effectively disguised by the ideology, was the task of the proletariat. As the proletariat constituted that social class which, because of its unique socio-economic position in history, had no need or desire for an ideology based on false-consciousness, it would possess the true ideology. But if this true ideology was to be attained through the form of a fully class-conscious proletariat, a Klast:f~r than a Klasse an sich, tRen action was required. sich rather Horeover, this action ",ould be necessarily revolutionary action, and in this sense related to particular goals. Sorel's conception of the myth implies the connection ·between theory and action. very clearly. In short: For l1arx the only real action \. . as in politics. But action, revolutionary action as Harx conceived it, was not' mere social change. It was, in its way, t,he resumption of all the old millenarian, chiliastic ideas of the Anabaptists. It was, in its new vision, a-new ideology:22 21Clyde C. Kluckhorn, "Values and Value Orientations", Toward 'and Edward ~hi;) A General Theor:y of Action, ed. Tal'cott Pars~n p. l~31-2. 2D~nielB1, The End of Ideolg~, p. 394. 15 The secular counterparts of the religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth· centuries were the radical totalitarian movements of the twentieth century.23 Here, again, we encounter an attempt to establish the heavenly city on earth. It was noted at a very early stage in the analysis of modern totalitarianism that ideology played an important role as an organising factor. Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich, and others, have shown how ideology was influential ip. the formative years of the Nazi and Bolshevik movements as a propagandistic and unifying force. 24 Alan Bullock in his study of Adolf Hitler shows hmv dexterous Hitler vas in employing anti-semitism to bring together the tV/O wings of the. Nazi movement that had become estranged over policy considerationso 25 Arendt points to the interrelationship of ideology and the use of terror in the Nazi and Communist regimes. Her analysis of this relationship leads her to entitle Chapter Thirteen of her book "Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government". The main theme of her analy- sis seems to be that ideological thinking aims at a total application of a "style" idea to the realms' of reality. "Hence ideological thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five sen,~26 Her view of ideology seems very close to the special formula- Fried~ch 23For an excellent analysis of these chiliastic movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and their affinities to the. modern totalitarian movements/see Norman Cohn., The Pursuit ·of the Millenium, 24HannaJ:L Arendt, The Oriy,ins of Totalitarianism; Carl J. , Tot.ali t arianism. 25Alan Bullock, Hitler; A study in Tyrann..x" 26Hannah Arendt, OPe cit., p. 470. Ch. 3. 16 tion of Mannheim's total conception of ideology. The awareness that "our total outlook as distinguished from its details may be distorted" leads, as Mannheim indicates, to a different problem of falseconsciousness than that \."hich emanates from a purely psychological basis -- a point which Harx had obviously seen clearly. For Hannheim, the danger of 'false consciousness' nowadays is not that it cannot grasp an absolute unchanging reality, but rather that it obstructs comprehension of a reality which-is the outcome of constant reorganization-of the mental processes which make up our worldsa 27 ,,I Although the contents of this chapter have been mainly descriptive of the ways in \."hich the concept of ideology has been applied and used historically, some useful conclusions may be drawn. In the first place, although most of the writers we have mentioned may agree with the definition of ideology at least, be clear. given on page one, one point should, This is that the term 'pattern' implies a concise, logical interdependence of ideas, 1. e., a coherent structure. If all ideological thought is so "structured", then it-may, indeed, seem that it makes little sense to talk as ideologies. ~f liberalism, cQnservatism, and socialism But we may juxtapose the content of ideologies as their distinguishing featur.~ By content is meant a greater or lesser degree of commitment, belief, and value orientation. "Normative It- cOI!tent may, thus, imply a utopian element, i.e., the looking tm·Jards certain ideals as guides to action. But it may also -imply a condonement of the status guo, an attitude that there ought to be no change. The latter R.osition, broadly conservative, may also_provide a "guide to action' or 'non' ann h 27M . p. 94 ! el'rIl·, - OPe Cl. t ., 17 action' ".28 Social conditioning is obviously important in respect of . the relative weighting given in thought to either of these elements. This ,..rill be discussed in Chapter II. But \'1e may see here some of the reasons why the "end-of-ideology" may itself be regarded as an ideological viewpoint. 28Cf• David lUnar, "Ideology and Politica·l Behaviou:r", Hidwest· Journal of Political Science, V, 4 (November 19~), 317-331. CHAPTER II EPISTEI10LCGY AND THE SOCIOLCGY OF KN0\1LEDGE Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowing. The problem of hm'l \Ve can kno\V arises in direct confrontation \vi th the -socalled common-sense -theory of knowledge 0 Philosophically ,this theory implies that what \'Ie see, in terms of shape, size, colour, etc., has really existed before, and \Vill exist after, the act of perceptione The problems that arise from this theory of knowledge are perhaps - obvious. l!'or instance, ~s a rose still red when \ve "see" it at night? A coin which appears round when placed on a flat surface and viewed from directly above, appears oval when slightly tilted and viewed from an angle; has it changed its shape? but how do we know? Common sense would tell us 'no', Physiology raises problems about how, for instance, the same nerve current can carry such different qualities as warmth, cold, sound, pain, etc., -to our brain. to how 'tIe In physics, problems arise as can claim to see a stflr when light waves from the star take light years to reach the-earth. l If matter consists of atomic particles, " how are these related to one another, so that \ve can speak of an object having mass, or, more currently, energy? The prime impulse to the origin of epistemology was, then, brought about by raising the question of whether \ve can have cogn-i-tion beyond experience. It is not my purpose here to elaborate on the various theories of knowledge in the history of philosophy; two schools may, 11 am indebted for some of these examples to Olaf Stabledon. 18 19 however, be delineated: Idealism entails the vie\v that the objects of knO\vledge have no existence apart from the mental states which know them. Realism, on the other hand, supposes that objects do exist independently of our kno\"ing them. The essential epistemological problem is which of these two schools of different philosophical gories, can lay claim to ~hougt, or, rather, the falling under these general catevie\~onts ~great truth. The existence of a multitude of knowledges which present themselves as true and yet opposed to each other - is the epistemological problem at its roots, a fact immanent and conscious, of which every man who reflects can be aware. 2 In Ernest Gellner's view, the tradition of epistemology in \vestern philosophy since Plato and Aristotle is reflected in the socalled Crusoe Myth. 3 This myth, in brief, presupposes the Pure Visitor, who is free from error ,in his judgements because not hidebound by a given conceptual framework. to 'abolish' any~coeptul Several techniques have been developed framework: the Cartesian scheme adopted the means of universal doubt; tne" British empiricists based all knowledge on perception. For Sartre, one of the modern representatives of Existentialism, the epistemological problem took a slightly different form. Being, in this view,- is -being-in-itself, 4 and knowledge has no "st. ~Thomas and Epistemology", quoted- in 2 L • H. 'Regis, O. ~P., Roland Honde and Joseph P. HulIaby, Philosophy of Knowledge: Selected Reading~, ch. 2, ~ 184. 3Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change, 4Being--in-itseif -~ phenomenal' (unconsc,ious) existence. Cf. being-for-itself -- conseiousness of a lack of being, 'a striving for " being. S'ee Jean-Paul Sartre, Beinr; and Nothingness , translated and " with an introduction by Hazei E. Barner. 20 content. Man is an eternal guest for being and selfhood, and in this sense is "thrown into the world" to make the bes~ he can of it. The Pure Visitor is, then, an impossibility; for we are, in a sense, hidebound by the language we speak, and the other social customs -and practices \.Je have iz{heri ted. 5 It is clear there fore that, as Gellner says,- we cannot divest ourselves of OUr c-onceptual clothing. Thus our 'conceptual clothing' is part of the language we speakt and, therefore, we might agree with Peter \'linch: To ask whether reality is intelligible is to ask about the relation between thought and reality. In considering the nature of thought one is led also to consider the nature of language. Inseparably bound up with the question whether reality is intelligible, therefore, is the question of how language is connected with reality, of what it is to say something. 6 We may see clearly that, as language is intimately related to society, changes in social patte-rns are likely to necessitate and bring about changes in words and the meaning of words. It is unlikely, for instance, that, in any given language-, grar.unar and syntax will change to anything near the_same extent. As \,rinch· says, then, our concern should funda- mentally be with the "nature of language in general". 7 vJhatever meaning - may be given to this statement, I think that some illumination may be 5Gellner points out that, though we may reject the myth of the -Pure Visitor, "those who reject him /are mistaken in rejecting the enterprise on whicn he was engaged, which can, and sometimes must, 5e _ carried-on without taking the myth itself seriously". Ibid., p. 108. 6peter Winch, The Idea 7J.J0c • cit. of~ Social Science, p.ll. 21 provided by the fact which Susanne K. Langer has so admirably brought to our attention, also symbolic. 8 that language is not purely utilitarian but nam~ly, By linguistic symbolism is meant "the record of articulate conceptual thinking"e Thus, language is more than a communicative interaction, expressing our wants and needs as \vell as the particular we observe. obje~ts We can, therefore, use language to 'transcend' or universalise the particular objects v!8 observe, so that, for instance, we are able to talk of a table, car, etc., \vithout the immediate presence of either. Symbolic language may thus be both connotative and denotative. Connota- tion involves the expression of a concept,like 'arnen', which does not embody any syntactical part of speech; the utterance is essentially instinctive. Denotation relates to a conception or thing which is immediately public, and, therefore divorced from any personal experience leading to a momentary exclamation. Denotation, because it is more 'realistic', does not, to- my mind, necessitate any specificity of utterance. A conception, however vague, can carry adequately its symbolic reference. For-instance, although we may not know what a hippie has been doing wh&n he tells us that he has bee-n -"doing his - thjngll, we may safely assume that he has had a pleasurable experience. The relevance of this discussion for qur topic is that the language of ideology can be viewed as forming part of a symbolic cultural-system. 9 Ideological language is, for example, likely to be far . 8Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in aNew KeY,Ch. 5 . 9.!3ee Clifford Geertz, "Ideologyas a Cultural System, in David Apter (ed.),Ideolog;( and Discontent, pp. 47-76. 22 more metaphorical than ordinary language; in any .case, words are likely to be employed in such a manner as to carry.maximum effect. clarify this point. I should .If we accept that an important part of any ideology is the orientation of certain values or ideals,lO then the. language used by a person holding such an ideo-logy is likely to -express these factors in some form. ll Either explicitly or implicitly an 'ideological sentence' will often contain a condemnation of an extant (social or political) situation, and/or an expression of a desired situation, the implication of an 'ought'. But ,"hen is political language ideological and when_ is it not? A person with a pejorative view of ideology would probably hold the belief that all statements which do not adequately represent the facts, i.e., cause 'distortion', are ideological statements. to the epistemological problem, proper claim to knoHledge? na~ely, This leads back when are we a91e to assert a \ve may well encounter a situation where, as Mannheim puts it someHhere, we are "talking past one another". Such an event is likely to be the attribute of a "closed mind ll ,12 but at any stage in political debate misunderstandings are likely to arise, mainly becaus~th political debate assumes a complex of normative and descripti ve (not yet 'posi ti ve') elements and meanings, plus ,- at _times, _1°1tle shall discuss this point further in -Chapter Three. llCf. Arne Naess, OPe cit., pp. 181-7, for a semantical discussion of "ideological sentences". l2See Hilton Rokeach, rhe Open and Closed Hind, p. 40. A similar distinction might be made between open and closed ideoiogies,· which involves a discuGsion of the structure and content of an ideology and. will be deferred to Chapter Three. 23 the ample adoption of symbolic metaphor. \fuat is it to say that the Taft-Hartley Act was ~ -"slave labour act,,13 or that certain immigration laws 'fascist racial discrimination'? ep~tomis In this respect, the attempt -to discover the meanin8 of words by- their use the object of linguistic philosophy -- may well be pointless or even farcical. A similar fate may befall the attempt to indulge in what Ernest Gellner calls "a-priori conceptualisation". Of significance 'is the debate between Peter v/inch and Alasdair Hac Intyre on the role of cattle in the Azande Society, when in fact cattle could not survive in the area of the Azande tribe, owing to a tropical disease. 14 An approach to the langua8e of politics from the point of view of how words are used (in \vitt8enstein' s sense, politics would then form a 'language game') is unlikely to help us in our attempt to understand the symbolic content of ideological lan8uage. Although I shall return to this point later, a digression may be pertinent here. In the field of linguistics proper, as opposed to linguistic philosophy, the argument of John Stuart Hill that "the principles and rules of grammar are the means by which forms of language are made to correspond with universql thought,,15 encountered refutation quite early in the advancement of linguistic research. It was found gy Jean Piaget and others that the syntax of speech varies between languages; for instance, Chinese does not contain the traditional Western 13Geertz, OPe subject~ cit., p. -60._ 14Ernes-t Gellner, "The- En-try of the Philosophers", Times Literary Suppler:Jent (April 4, 1968), PR. 347-'). -15Ernest Cassirer, An Essay-on Han,_ 1962, po. 126 •• 24 predicate form. Cassirer points out that these discoveries do not necessarily mean that lithe idea of a general or philosophical grammar" is, therefore, "invalidated by the progress of linguistic research, although we can no longer hope to realise such a -grammar by the simple means that were employed in former attempts". An attempt employing new "means" has perhaps been epitomised by social anthropologists, such as Piaget and Nalinowski, and psychologists, such as VI. 1. and D. S. Thomas. 16 The attempt is made to link verbal be_haviour to psychological traits, of "instincts", "drives", and so on. An examination is· also made of the manner in which a certain "patternll or form of objects and functions develops and .is subsequently- standardised in a locality or tribe, _thus influencing the formation of a ne\'1 conceptual scheme. Such a scheme \'1ill often regroup elements taken from elsewhere, for example, customs from other tribes. 17 Levi-Strauss' book illuminates one dominrult failure in the psychologists' attempt to study language development, and this is a failure to study language development "against -the background of, or in connection with, the social ~ct itself".18 Thought is, it may , be granted, essentially linguistic in that we think in terms of concepts which form part of a given language. Given this, we may agree with C. Wright Hills when he states that "A theory of mind is needed which con~eivs social factors as intrinsic 16A brief discussion may he found in Barnes and Becker (eds.), Contemporary Social Theory •. 17Cf. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage I'lind pp.156-7 •. 18Barnes, OPe cit.t·p. 347. 25 to m~ntaliy".19 In this context, thought is essentially social rather than personal, which does not that we should hypothesize ~ean such a thing as a collective or group mind, but rather that thought entails a "clear and dynamic conception of the relations imputed between a thinker and his social context".20 The core of this argument is, I feel, that whatever the debates between certain philosophers of language, such as Bertrand Russell and Rudolf as regards the logical imputation of Carn~ may reveal to us to certain sentences in meani~g respect of their "testability" and "verifiability", we still have to look for a wider context of meaning. In Hills's view research of this nature is difficlut to undertake because of the absence of a set of psycho-sociological hypotheses. theori~aly-subn He attributed the sparseness of the methodf,) of the sociology of knm-lledge to the absence of such a theoretical More recently a similar fr~evlok. criticism has been levied by Arne Naess in relation to ideological research. Although it seems that the sociology of knowledge is gradually being superseded by the study of linguistics) we should now turn to a discussion of the _sociology of knowledge. "Wissensociologie" became established as a branch of sociological inquiry in the 1920's in an attempt to meet two distinct intellectual problems: the problem of historical knowledge and the solutions propounded by "historicism", and the Marxist theory of ideology thought. 21 its applications to political an~ I do not propose to give a histor~cal account of the-main 20Ibid ., p. 426. 21T• B. Bottomore, "Some Reflections on -the Sociology of Knowledge", British Journal of Sociolog;z., VII (1956), p. 52. 26 proponents in this field, but will briefly state their point of approach and turn to Mannheim's-exposition of the topic. I shall discuss some criticisms levied against Mannheim's theory, and the light which the study of the sociology of knmvledge may thrOvl upon the concept of ideology. It is generally agreed that the central point in the study of the sociology of knowledge is the discovery of the relations between knowledge and'other existential factors in society, such as social class and group structures, as well as, culturally, values, climate of opinion, and so on. It is perhaps notable that bvo kinds of know- ledge were excluded from existential determination by the two most significant figures in the early history of the sociology of knowledge, Marx and Hannheim. 22 \Ye elaborated briefly Hannheim' s total conception of the ideology in the first chapter. It implies that the form, content, and conceptual frame\vork of a "mode of thought" are unavoidably bound up with the life-situation. This was what Hannheim described as the "special formulation" of the total conception of ideology. \ve mentioned also his 'general formulation ~j which is taken to mean that the whole of the thought of a social group or an historical epoch is determined. si~uatonly The special formulation implies that only the thought of one's opponent is si tuationally determined, while -the general fortllulation implies that all thought is so determihed. 23 of the socilg~ of knowledge fro~ Manl'!heim derived his theory the generai formulation of total 22The reader may see here implicatioris for the 'end-of-ideology' argument. This will be discussed in-due course. 23Mannheim, OPe cit., p. 77. 27 ideology. The transition from the one to the other involves the simple realisation that not only the thought of one's opponent is situationally determined, but that all thought is so conditioned. The sDciology of knowledge has, on the other hand, as its prime objective, "the varying ways in which objects present themselves to the subject according to differences -in social settings". 2_4 We can perhaps see the relativistic position in which Mannheim found himself, which led to his being accused of epistemological relativism. 25 If all thought is situationally determined, particularly political and social thought, two general objections have been raised against Mannheim. The first is tha~ the thought of the observer or adumbrator of a relativistic theory or position is itself situationally determined and consequently cannot establish objective criteria for assessing the social determinants of the thought of other groups or individuals. Secondly, if the observer is able to establish such criteria of judgement and establish his_position as unconditionally true, then the doctrine of relativism is selfcontradictory. Mannheim himself was aware of this apparent contra- diction and stipulated several criteria for the circumvention of this predicament. 26 At least one thinker maintains that "These anti-relationistic 24Mannheim,op. cit.,-p. 265. 25Cf • Rooert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, revised and enlarged edition (Illinois: Free Press,-1957, p. 502. Merton,- 26For details, see Mannheim, OPe cit., Chapter Thirteen. OPe cit., Chapter Five,and 28 elements ignore the status and character of epistemological forms". 27 These are that "the categories upon which all discourse and inquiry depend are related to social situations, to cultural determinants", and that "closely linked with such a vievl of categories is the social theory of perception ll • 28 By lIsocial theory of perception" is meant that by "acquiring a_ technical vocabulary with its terms and classifications, the thinker is acquiring,as it were, a set of colored spectacles Jl • \vhat is important about this argument is that although, as we have mentioned above, the categories of discourse and inquiry are related .to social and cultural determinants, we inevitably run into the problem of a type of Harxian "cultural lag". The form such a lag would take would be either a renewed justification of a declining social phenomenon, or an attempt to read into the present situation what is believed 'ought to happen' in the future. Either of these elements in a claim to know- ledge may be described as constituting "false consciousness", and therefore as being ideologicalo The first type of lag makes it possible to speak of Hachiavelli as "the voice of a decaying bourgeoisie",or of the Enlightenment as Ha bourgeois ideology".3 0 The second type of lag should reveal to us important features of totalitarian ideologies - actually, all radical ideologies. an~, It seems here that we encounter the link between theory and p~actie, ideology -and action. For Hachiavelli' s Prince, the prime - 27C• \vright Hills-, lIThe Hethodologica;L Consequences of :the Sociology of Knowledge", Ope cit., p. 460. 28 Ibid ., p. 458. 29 Ibid ., p. 1.89. 3 0See the articles by Alfred von Hartin and Harold J. Laski in Judith Shklar, Political Theory and IdeoloEl' 29 29 aim was to re-cultivate the spirit of the virtu Romanaj for the philosophers of the- Enlightenment, the aim, in Laski's view, was, indeed, to cultivate a better society, but one for the bourgeoisie, not for the poorer classes. The link behveen ideology and action in totalitarian societies is obvious; I shall return to this point later. The essentiai point here is that the beginning of the modern age experienced what Arendt has described as a reversal of the traditional relationship between thinking and doing. 31 , This reversal took place wi thin the hierarchy of the vita acti va. Originally this term 'vas confined to those human activities which took place within the sphere of the "public-political if, but \vith the disappearance of the ancient city~sae the term vita activa lost its specifically political meaning and denoted all kinds of active engagement in the things of this world. Thinking and doing were both facets of the vita activa as opposed to the vita contemplativa, the contemplative life. Indeed, the active life was essential to the undert_aking of contemplation. for the fe\v to "behold". The many had to "do", For Thomas Hobbes as well as Plato, "leisure is the mother of philosophy". Even for Hachiavelli, therefore, who, in the view of one " philosopher, developed a strategy "based upon mental weapons instead of physical weapons",3 ability of the 2 the essential criterion became-doing. to govern became defined by his actions. Pri~ce The Religion as a powerful 1tTeapon in all political-struggles 'had lito prove its -strength in action".33 The distiJlguishing characteristic of the- Republic 31Hannah Arendt, _The Human- Cohdi tion, p. 264. 32Ernst Ca~sire, The Hyth of the State, p. 162. 33Ibido, p. 138. A defining characteristic of the Republic, as elucidated in the Discourses. 30 was the ability to turn itself into a dictatorship at time of war. All this may seem to have little relevance to the sociology of knowledge and epistemology, let alone the concept of ideology. But a number of factors are of importance. First, the elevation of doing over thinking was itself part of the broader reversal between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. If, therefore, as in Arendt's view, contemplation became meaningless, it became meaningless in the face of the tendency to view life and history as process. Action as process became the art of making, and if history was process, then not ~, concealed fro~ made history, even if the meaning of history was ~, the~. But if the meaning of history was conea~d from men, though revealed to the r-ight use of reason by the philosopher, its devlop~nt was embodied in the collective entities of the nation and of the social class. In the first place, this ~eant that all thought outside this embodiment (philosophy of history) became ideological, a form of false consciousness. But, in the second place, the problem of arriving at the true consciousness took the form of action -- of nations at war, of the assertion of the proletariat. It was but a short step from the viewpoint just de~crib to what Lichtheim calls "the-ideology concept of-logical positivism", when ide-ology "becomes synonymous wi.th any kind of consciousness -that can relate itself to the ongoing activity of a cl?ss or group effective enough to make some sort of 34Li~htem.op pr~ctial cit., p. 46. difference".3 4 31 Thus, the seeds are laid for Lenin's conception of the revolutionary elite; history is process, but the process has to be understood and propagated by the standard-bea.rers of the sociBJ. class which is uniquely placed within that process. Ideology in this vievl becomeq the prerogative of the faithful; and the more dogmatic the faith the more it takes the appearance of an institutionalised becoms~ The intellectual, far from assuming the vantage point re~igon Mannheim accqrded to him, from which he could overview the conflict of ideological perspectives, becomes, instead, to use a term coined by Raymond Aron, the committed 'churchman'. the next chapter. But this we must leave to If, however, political ideology is a weapon of a revolutionary elite to mobilise the masses, then it might be possible to regard political doctrine as something distinctive from ideology. I shall consider this point in the final chapter. But I hope that our discussion has clarified a nwaber of factors. The first of these is the broadly conceived ep~stmolgica question of how ..Ie can know what such social arid political concepts as freedom, democracy, and even "the Good Society" stand for. From the viewpoint of the sooiology of knowledge, one's point of view in these debates is always determined by one's social situation, measured largely in terms of class. in the face of apparently lowe~ing Runciman has point~d This approach is still very important, even class differentials. For, as \v. G. out in an admirable book?5 feelings- of class resentment may be those of relative deprivation, in terms of economic status, or 1967. pow~r. 35Rer • Relative deprivation, the dif~renc between what W. G. Runclman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice, 32 one perceives one's social position to be in terms of any or all of these three categories and one's actual position, suggests the continued importance of at least one aspect of ideological thinking (that of false consciousness?). I remember Professor Bernard Crick remarking in a lecture that the classless society of the future will be one of the middle class, a peculiarly Americrul ideal. This assumes a great deal but, above all, it .assumes an easy passage through the , ideblogical bulwark raised on the resentment felt by the existing "middle class" in the \vest and in the East. CHAPTER III NATIONALISM In so far as an ideology is an expression of false consciousness, it is, indeed, a terrible,simplifying agento The process of simplification takes place in two perhaps analyticaily separable waya. To a greater or lesser degree, the process of ideological cognition involves, on the one hand, a rejection of what is inimical to one's pattern of thought, and, on the other, what may be called a nondeliberate incomprehension of certain facts. This distinction is probably more useful than that drawn by Mannheim between total and partial ideological thinking. In this vein, it· may be useful to treat my distinction in terms of what we have called earlier 'open' and 'closed' ideologies. All ideologies may be supposed to involve both conceptual categories of deliberate exclusion and non-deliberate incomprehension. For instance,Mannheim's special formulation of total ideology would embody to a greater degree the elm~nt of deliberate exclusion, while partial ideology would involve a greater degree of non-deliberate incomprehension. We ~ight terms of my categorisation. and open ide~logs find it useful to discuss nationalism in In this context, the categories of closed could be substituted for 'total' ,and 'partial' ideologies in my framework, and perhaps make more sense because allowing greater influence to extra-societal factors,such as propagandising elites. According· to Elie Kedourie,"Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the "nineteenth century". 3~ As such, "i t 34 pretends to supply a criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to enjoy a government exclusively its own, for legitimate exercise of power in the state, and for the right th~ organisation of a society of stae~"l The belief that "humanity is naturally divided into nations" had, as Kedourie points out, one of its chief origins in the philosophi cal ideas of the period, particularly Kant, Hegel,and Fichte, but the Enlightenment philosophy of a universal and "invarying law of Nature" also had its influence. The doctrine of enlightened absolutism was in fact based on this philosophY,thus providing an example of the conflict between the universal and the particular. the state was merely a collection of individuals thrown together, I~ the task of the ruler was to maximise his subjects' welfare. In al- most a parody of mercantilist doctrine, the strength and prosperity of a state and the glory of its ruler depended "on its capacity to ensure the welfare of the individual lt • was the negation of the 2 But the French Revolution doctrine of enlightenment al-to~cmpen absolutism; in simple terms, it meant that if a people was dissatisfied with its government, hpwever "enlightened Tl it might be, it could overthrow that government. Of course, this had been part of_John Locke's doctrine ,and the Americans, in a sense, had been the first to implement it. But the difer~nc lay in that the French revolutionaries-con- sidered themselves a nation in a way that the .not. Kedourie q~otes A~ericans could and did - from "The-Declaration of the Rights of-Man and the Citize_n ":. "The principle of sovereignty resides essentially in lElie Kedourie, Nationalism, p. 9. 2Ibid .; p. 12. 35 the Nation; no body of men, no individual, can exercise authority that does not emanate expressly from it"} Kedourie rightly points out that the above "is one prerequisite without which a doctrine such as nationalism is not conceivable". In fact, what makes nationalism expressly an ideology in this view is that it raises the question of the nation above the turmoil of ordinary_political conflict. There is an equation (how pertinent to the 'third world'?) of nationalism with the desire for radical political change; a plan for this becomes even clearer when considered :in terms of the conservative and philosophical reaction to the French Revolution and the post-revolutionaryNapoleonic expansionism. Thus, if the French conception of nationalism found its philosophical justification in the Rousseauan doctrine of the General Will, the 'antinationalist' reactions found justification in the teachings of the German Idealist school of Philosophy. It mayor may not te the case that Kant's ethical doctrines of 'selfdetermination' provided the "ultimate paternity of nationalism".4 It is clear, however, that in so far as they provided for arguments in the philosophies of Fichte and Schelling, they laid the groundwork for yet another philosophical reversal, which VI8S to have an important influence on. the politics of the nineteenth century. Initially, what happened in philosophy was another reversal of the vita contemplativa and the vita activa. In so far as the vita activa was concerned with the pUlsation of a healthy political body _ (and we have noted earlier Arendt's questioning of this role of the vita activa since Plato), the reversal took the form of a complete subversion of politics. _ It was, indeed, more than a simple reversal; in_ 3 Ibid., p. 12. 4See Geln~r's somewhat misplaced criticism of Kedourie. Gellner, Ope cit., p. 151. 36 Kedourie's view, it involved a complete enveloping of_the vita activa by the vita contemplativa: "For from the life of action and the con- templative life being opposites,_ i t was now held that the politics and the vocation- of all citizens was that absorption into the universal consciousness which hitherto had been only the ambition of a few philosophers - and mystics". 5 The teachings of these "few philosophers and mystics" led directly to the glorification of the state ,as, in the writings of Fichte and Herder, the embodiment of the nation, or, in Hegel's writings, the embodiment of particular phases of the absolute Idea Becoming:. The State is_ the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before, that in which Freedom obtains objectivity. When the State or our country constitutes a community of existence; when the subjective will be of man submits to laws -- the contradiction between Liberty and Necessity vanishes • • • For the History of the World occupies a higher ground than • • • the conscience of individuals. What the absolute aim of Spirit requires and accomplishes • • • 6 transcends the obligation • • • of good or bad motives. And yet, nineteenth century nationalism did not take only the form of the glorification of the state (used synonymously in this sense 'I/ith nation). Thus, the type-of nationalism preached by Mazzini,John Stuart Mill, and others, may best be summariped as an attempt_ to expand liberty - between nations and the rights of the individual. In the one case, wrote Acton in 1862, nationality is founded on the perpetual supremacy of the collective will, of which the unity of the nation is the necessary condition, to v.fhich every other influence must defer, and against which no obligat~n enjoys authori~y, and all resistance is- tyrannical. 5Kedourie_, Ope --cit., p. 41- 6Quoted in Christopher Thorne; Ideology and Power, p. 157. 37 The other case was distinguished from the first because it tends to diversity and not to uniformity, to honour and not to unity; because it aims not at an arbitrary change, but at careful respect for the existing conditions of political life, and because it obeys the laws and results of history, not the aspirations of an ideal future. 7 Etymologically, we have, it seems, two approaches to nationalism, one of which is generally regarded as anti-political, the other as conducive to politics. I have remarked on Machiavelli's assumption of nationalism as providing an underlying unity to the conflict of interests in a nation. This is no mere tautology, however, for, clearly, a conflict of interests could exist without a sense of national identity; Canada would be a good example of this. Modern Israel is a paradigm of the role Machiavelli assigned to nationalism. the feeling of nation permits rather than obstructs the exercise of free politics. The question of which comes first, the nation or the freedom of political conflict, does not arise in the case of Israel, for the two go hand in hand. It is a.difer~t matter for the developing countries today, as it was for Germany and Italy earlier in the century. The overid~gmphas given to the 'nation' is largely accounted for, politically,_by the failure of the political community to establish itself in these countries, owing to historical, cultural, and religious divergences. Is nationalism-an ideology-in the second sense but not in the first, or is it not an ideology at all? Two authors take the _view, contrary to Kedourie, th<;l.t .it is -not an ideology at-all. 7Ibid ., p. -159. Carl Friedrich defines nationalism as 38 primarily "a sentiment or a body of feelings associated vii th the sense of self-identity of particular nations". It is, therefore, devoid of any specific notions concerning the political "typic~l or social order as such, except to insist that the order should be in keeping with nationalist traditions ll • 8 Bernard Crick, typically, takes the liberal view of nationalism, following Mazzini: liThe true nationalist must believe, on the contrary, in the equality of nations".9 The fact that every nation has its unique history means, in Professor' Crick's view, that nationalism cannot be an ideology. He \-lOuld take a view similar to Friedrich's, I think, in regarding nationalism as an ideology only \-/hEm it is linked with such an 'ideology' as socialism or.racism. It then becomes an instrument for oppression, military expansion, and so on. But this is a tenuous position, for was not nineteenth century imperialism an ideology in just this sense -- an over-elaboration and extension of "national self-identity, as well as the various economic and other motives? Nationalism -- pure, yet .not so simple may not be an ideology in the restricted 'active-related' sense; it is just_ 'there would say, a "myth", 01; as some a "state of mind lt • This ignores that in nationalism certain values are often involved. eco~mi I mean by values here not only those of the "third \vorld" -proges~ ~elas from colonial domination, and so on ---but also the institutionally oriented, those more typical of developed countries. Thus, the talk is of American democracy and the British .8Bernard Crick, In Defence of -Politics, p.' 83. 9tb1d • 39 rule of law -- the "system" breeds a national frame_of mind. It is not exactly a question of 'old myths and new realities', though there is more than a modicum of truth in applying the dictum to America's attitude towards developments in South-East Asia. simply this: Today the issue is one becomes so used toone's own system that one expects others to 'behave' in the same way. It is thus possible to understand the failure of the British to comprehend the nature and inherent tendencies of the Nazi movement. With centuries of breeding under the rule of law, it was possible for many in Britain to accept Hitler's statements of intention of operating within the norms of legality, if not without question, at times, then at least with a great deal of cr.eduli ty. 10 In terms of my proposed categorisation,such an outlook as that adopted by the British towards the Nazi movement in its formative years would epitomise , in the main t "indeliberate incomprehension". Not entirely, however, because the Communist 'menace' provided ready grounds for neo~acpt of a prospective bulwark. (This is not to say that a few, like Patrick Gordon Walker, did riot realise that the menace was, in fact, a.' "Communazi Menace"). On the other hand, it is true that total rejection of many obvious facts would involve the combination of a pseudo-nationalism with some other doctrine, such as-class or rac~, thus providing a-totalitarian ~eltanschug. Despite assumptions to the contrary,"Weltanschauung" cannot -be directly interpreted as "woI;'ld--view". A world-view would- imply an element of rationality, the weighing of_pros and cons, at least lOFor an excellent analysis of reports in the 'responsible Press' in Britain in the ~wentis and ~hirtes see Brigitte Granzow, Mirror of Nazism. 40 to a certain extent. In contrast, - Weltanschauung is no rational concept. It is rather an intuitive contemplation of the whole. It claims to be all-inclusive and unfathomably deep. It cannot be understood by rational thinking; it is a product not of the individual but of the collectivity-.ll To understand Russia, wrote Tyutichev in a poem, involves not the use of reason but a belief in her peculiar nature. Kohn remarks that National Socialism changed "the character of the ~/eltanschug from a metaphysical to a biological one which seemed more appropriate to a 'scientific age,.12 Because the totalitarian ideologies were regarded as "scientific by their adherents, precision was demanded, and this entailed (as we shall see in Chapter Four) the reaching of cold logic into history. A IIworld" view, indeed. The concept of Weltanschauung implies a certain religious devotion, and if nationalism in itself could not be accurately described as a Weltaschauung in quite the same sense as the Nazi ideology, it formed a sort of surrogate for religion. Talmon ascribes three main causes to the appearances of nationalism in the early nineteenth century: the decline of religious sanction and the weakening of the religious frame-work; the doctrine of the rights of man and the democratic sovereignty of the people; economic and social processes at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. 13 In Talmon's view, both the trends of nineteenth-century nation&lism described above exhibited elements of tl}e "unique" and the "universal". Thus, the Rou~seaitcly inspired French rational-trend emphasised _ llHans K9hn, Political Ideologies of the Twentieth Century, p. 12Kohn , ibid., p. 79. 13J • Talmon, The Unigue and the Universal, p. 19 78. 41 "the constant, vibrating experience of partnership among equals, deliberating jointly on that which was common to all of them, the res publica ll • Will. 14 The unifying factor in this case was the General The German irrational trend, emanating from Herder, emphasized on the one hand the uniquesness of language and the ~, and on the other hand the universal justification of force to assert national greatness. In both cases, however, modern nationalism --I / . .;: ;.'1, "> Seeks to be a substitute for religion. It is, as well as other things, a form of striving for spiritual redemption, a straining for a solution of the contradiction between the urge to break away, and the need to belong; between the desire for self-expression, and the yearning for sel·f-surrender j between the j.nstinct of advanture and the hope for tranquility and security; between the impulse to di~play power and vitality, and the love of justice and the wish for certainty, between hubris and the sense of sin.l5 More simply, modern nationalism might be expressed as a dialectical interlogue between an.aspiration for equality of treatment in its broadest sense, conducive to freedom, politics, and so on, and an outward-looking desire for power-satisfaction. The nationalism of the developing nations would probably involve some combination of these two elements. The degree of influence of these factors will depend par~ly on the content of the ideology_in terms of values, norms,and beliefs. But the degree of influence will also depend on the structure of the ideology -- whether it is morff or less rigid this being related to other possible-ideological factors, such as racism. By way of _conclusion,it is worth noting.that similar conclusions may be reached 15Ibid ., p. 19 42 in respect of religion -~ the structure being determined by organisa- tional "factors. Thus, nationalism exhibits many characteristics of ideologies. It provides a value basis in terms in which certain ideals are formulated and pursued. The ideology "may be more or less open and thus exhibit characteristics of deliberate rejection or indeliberate incomprehensio-n. The intensity with "'/hich values are held is also a significant weighting factor. CHAPTER IV POLITICAL THEORY, DOCTRINE, AND IDEOLOGY It might seem at first sight that the con-cepts of ideology and doctrine are the same, for both terms express a body of beliefs and commitments. It may be ~ hm1ever, possible to draw some sort of a distinction behveen political doctrine and political ideology. I regard as more than helpful here the attempt made by Professor Bernard Crick to draw a distinction -- however schematic to the purists -- between political philosophy, political theory, and political thought, as "three levels of writing and talking about political acti vi ty". The distinction is drmm in the follm/ing manner:- By :e,olitical thought I mean the ordinary opJ..nJ..ons that people hold, their immediate demands, assumptions and conditioned reflections about day to day public affairs -- often called 'public opinion': that is, attitudes ruld actions which can be studied as given data within an accepted or settled social context. I mean by political theor,y: attempts to explain the attitudes and actions arising from ordinary political life -- thus political theory is concerned with the relationships between concepts and circumstances. And I mean by political philosophy attempts to resolve or understand cO}1flicts bebveen political theories \</'hich might appear to be equally acceptable in given circumstances; it can take two forms (not necessarily incompatible): a philos~1ca analysis of the terms and concepts of political theory or (though many cannot come this far) an attempt to establish ethical c-riteria -to judge betw-een the desirabil;ity of different theori~s (so it arises when the 'can be' of the disputants is broadly a~red and only the residual 'ought to be' remains) • IBernard Crick, "Phil os opny, Theory and Thought" (review article), Political-Studies, i5 (February, 1967), pp. L~9-5. 43 44 ' Plainly, as Crick indicates, the distinction once drawn is to be forgotten, or., at'least, quietly put to the back of the mind. For it is clear that political theories, as attempts to explain why people think and act the way they do ~bout concrete events (and other people's ideas), quickly become doctrines when they are translated into opinions about what ought to be. The translation is effectively one between the plane expressing a relationship of concept and circumstance and the plane expressing a relationship Political doctrines are, then be~wn thought and action. (I agree with Professor Crick), founded on social theories that attempt to explain how society workso In this sense, conservatism, liberalism, and socialism were social theories before they became doctrines, but so, in this sense, was Marxism a doctrine t though claimed by many to be an ideology. However, in Professor Crick's view, ideology is a particular type of doctrine. He means by this ideology a theory which claims universal validity, because of a belief that all ideas derive from circumstance, but then which alsp holds that this truth is deliberately obscured ~Y rul~ng elites, so that the theory has ~o be asserted ~n the form of propaganada to the masses e This view seems to me peculiarly one of Leninism rather than Marxism, though, of course, it is usual now to speak of Marxism-Leninism, and, indeed, this is the doctrine that became formulated into the totalitarian ideology of Communism. Hannah Arendt has discussed with utmost clarity the logic of immanence that formed the essential core of the ideologies of ~azism and Communism in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Sov'iet -Union: 2Ibid ., p. 53. 45 \fuat distinguished these new totalitarian ideologists from their predecessors \-/as that it was no longer primarily the "idea" of the ideology -- the struggle of classes and the exploitation of the workers or the struggle of race and the care for the Germanic peoples which appealed to them, but the logical process which could be developed from it. According to Stalin, neither the idea nor the oratory but "the irresiStible force of logic thoroughly overpowered Lenin's audienceu • The pO\",er \",hich Harx (and Sorel?) thought was born when the idea seized the Qasses was discover~ to reside, not in the idea itself, but in its logical process which like a mighty tentacle seizes you on all sides as in a vise and f,rom whose grip you are pb,,,,erless to tear yourself away; you must either surrender or make up your mind to utter defat.~ As Arthur Koestler is poignantly aware in Darkness at Noon, "P' -- becomes even more of a fiction the "grammatical fiction" -Under this force of logic. The latter explains, at least, the culti- vated cynicism of the elites in these regimes. Affirmative statements that classes or Je\",s were dying out meant that action had to be taken to ensure that the process of dying actually took place. The concentra- tion and forced labour caQPS were thus a macabre caricature of the Hegelian process of Being and Becoming. It may well be, therefdre, that- the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century were an extreme example of the attribute of false-consciommess given to ideological thinking by Marx and others. It is agreed that there is a ~theory of elites involved here as well as the personality cult in the U.S.S.R., the Fuehrerprinzip in Germany, and the worship of the duce in Italy. And yet, one feels that one should not get carried, away by the theory- of "the vanguard of the Prole-tariat", such that \Ve interpret it as the philosopher-kings infusing the' masses with the light they'otherwise would not see. 3Arendt"oP. cit., p. 472. It is still a puzzling 46 factor to -those \."ho have not forgotten that the ideologies of German Nazism and Italian Fascism \."ere more than indebted to "clear and present trends~a Seymour M. Lipset put it in respect of the C.CoF. in Saskatchevmn. Totalitarian ideology- is at least one formulation of the general concept of ideology. be total. Totalitarian ideology must, at any rate, However, the attempt to engulf all phenonema into a realm of logic is bound to encounter difficulties. The truism breaks down at the point where the cognitive implications of such an ideology meet the apparently flat refusal of concrete phenomena, events, etc., to conform (as it were) to "interpretation". Explicitly, this is the argument put forward by Daniel Bell and others, that ideology (in this sense) necessarily breaks down under the "irrefutable" advance of scientific knowledge. Logically, this is the impossibility of imposing the dialectic on scientific experiments. Bell maintains in one of his essays on the topic that not only the influence of science but also of Western literature and ideas has helped to "crumble the walls of faith" in Soviet l1arxism-. 5 In this sense, as Z. A. Jordan points out, the crumbling of 'the walls' has been occurring for a considerably longer period in Poland. Poland has developed in two separate schools: 6 Revisionism in that of Orthodox Revision- ism and that of Philosophical Revisionism, under the main protagonists 4See for-the int_ellectual or:igins of the NR7.i ideology george L. Morse, The-Crisis of German Ideology. 5Daniel Bell, "The End of Ideology in the Soviet Union?", in J.)rachkovitch, Harxist -Idealogy in the Contemporary i.,rol~ 6See his Philosophy and Ideology. For a more limited exposition of Polish Revisionism see his article, 'The Philosophical Background 9f 47 Schaaf and Kolakowski respeGtively. The aim of both schools is to revise the fundamental concepts of Harxism-Leninism, so that new questions may be formulated in the face of a constantly changing socioeconomic reality. The difference bebveen the two schools lies in that the orthodox revisionists are concerned with bolstering the traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrine against-potential breakdown, while the philosophical revisionists reject "methodological dogmatism" in every form. The aim of the philosophical school, which adopts an attitude both rational and critical, is to achieve a ne\v humanistic and more individualistic philosophy, without abandoning the Harxian system as a vision of the world. ~s Jordan says in his article,7" because of theiT essential differences-a confrontation between the two schools was inevitable. "The clash of the orthodox and the philosophical revisionists is a conflict betv18en those who are anxious to act effectively and those who wish to think correctly". The suggestion is that those who wish tq "think correctly" also refuse to be 'bound' by an ideological system. The philosophical revisionists, however, propose to retain (or return to?) the idealistic visions of the young !vJarx. This mayor may not mean that_they are "abandoI?-ing" the ideology. - It is suggested, however, that the orthodox revisionists are concerned with a change" in tempo, within the context of the old ideology, while tIle philosophical revisionists are cohcerned with a change in style~ It i q interesting to note that the orthodox school borrowed many of its ideas on conceptual changes from the philoso.phical school. Revisionism in Poland'", in \V. Stanckiewitz (ed~)fPolitca since \VorldVlar II, pp. 250-288. 7Ibid ., p. 280. '1'hou!i,ht 48 The fact is that l1arxism-Leninism does face two basic dilemmas in modern times: the necessity for deducing from the doctrine princ~ ples for" ruling or governing the state, and the holding of an absolutist 8 East state doctrine in the face of advancing scientific knowledge. European philosophies are attempting -to overcome these dilemmas as well as to solve the general existential prublems of death, failure, and so on. This, however, does not ascertain the prospective 'end' of Harxist-Leninist ideology. The difficulties encountered in the U.S:S.R. in establishing "socialism in one country" without the logically (and humanly) necessary economic and social conditions led to a rigidly structured ideology. Thus, the context of the Harxian doctrine, basically humanitarian and ethical, was subsumed under an authoritarian pattern emphasizing the discipline needed for a para-military, revolutionary elite. 9 The changes we are \vitnessing in the Soviet Union today -- the introduction of the Liebermann profit motive, the concomittant de-escalation of emphasis given to 'heavy' industrial production, the tendency for Soviet philosophers to deal with problems of alienation, and so on all theBe may suggest tl{at C10re \veight is given to the content of the ideology, but there is no indication that the Soviet is bureac~y likely to lose control over these changes. The current trends in various -Communist countries can,be regarded in terms of our discussive division between political osophy and political theory. ~hil- The two levels support one another. Thus, 8Cf • Joseph-H. Bo~henski, "Harxism il1 Communist Countries", in Drachkovitch, OPe -cit., pp. 60-75. 9Cf • Rokeach, Ope cit., pp. 125-9. 49 to quote one author, lito the Communists, theory explains and orders reality at the same time as it Erovides a programme for action".lO statements oriented towards action have been a feature Progam~tic of radical political parties in the West. Programmatic statements, according to Leon D. Epstein, are policies formulated in terms of a party's raison d'@tre. ll The aim of a programmatic party is not-to win elections for the sake of winning them, but to carry out policies. pa~ticulr In this respect the political parties of the United States are not programmatic, and yet policy is supposedly formulated (or connived at?) somewhere. What is lacking in the Democratic and Republican parties is perhaps a sense of purpose. Such a sense of purpose mayor may not amount to what are called political ideals; it seems that political ideals are more radical than a sense of purpose. In so far as Toryism is a permanent feature of the philosophy of the Conservative Party in Great Britain, it gives emphasis to the conceptions of 'social order' and 'hierarchy'. Accepting this, we might agree "lith Samuel Beer that if "there is ho Conservative ideology, there is a Tory conception of purpose".12 This sense of purpose is concerned primarily with the distribution of.. power in society. Conservatives are thus con- cerned with the defence of hjerarchy, a defence which is not limited (in Beer's view) to private property, or dependent on its existence. In having a sense of purpose, there is involved a commitment to certain values. _ The use of the "lord "commitment" is not meant to lOQuoted in' Carl J. -Friedrich, "Totalitarianism: ReGent Trends", Problems of Communism, XVII, 3 (May-June,_ 1968), p. 37. llS.ee Leon D. Epstein, _Political Parties in \.,restern Democracies, Ch. X. 12Samuel H. Beer, Modern- British Politics,.p. 384. 50 imply that all the expre$sions of policy intentions by a political party are completely determined by, and subordinated to, a given set of-values, such as might imply a blueprint for the 'Good Society'. The-more or less detailed elaboration of such a blueprint is, as we have seen, a feature of the totalitarian movement. The striving for absolute values by these movements is dictated by a kind of inner logic, which allows no sphere for disagreement about the type of action required to fulfil these values. On a lower level, most political parties, then, may be regarded as possessing some kind of value orientation. The degree of value orientation will,of course ,differ between countries, and even in countries over time. Thus, the German Social Democratic Party of the nineteen-twenties could be said to have been considerably less concerned with specific values than, say, the Democratic Party in the U.S.A. at the same time. In a similar 'i/ay, the German social democrats are less value-concerned today than they were in the'twenties. I use the term "value-orientation" to imply the orientation of values towards a common focus or sense of purpose, as outlined above. This is to say that there is an' overriding sense of values, but that it is not so overriding as not to allow an element of disagreement. The topic could.be taken in the context of the relation between ends and means. The choice of ends and means is largely a question of values, which may seem to rei_terate much of what I have just said. However, the essen.tial distinction to be drawn is between the attempt. to read values through the logic based on_a philosophy of history, which is less a question of what "ought to be done" than what "must be' done"., and the desideratiori of val·ues from partly rational but mainly affective McMASTER UNlVEKSITY LltsKAt<'(. 51 bases of feeling. 13 It has been the vievl of many writers on- the British political scene that the Labour Party is no longer logically motivated. (if it ever had been) ideo- We can dismiss_the_ latter part of the last sentence; the Labour Party was undoubtedly iIi its Jormation (to quote Samuel Beer) an "ideological party" .14 Exampl-as of 'this 'ideologism' are , "two manifestoes: Labour and the New Social Order (1918) and Socialism in our Time (1927). The former was directly Fabian, the latter was adopted- under the pressurs of the I.L.P.with,its demands for a "living wage ll • 15 The point is that, even if we take account solely of the Fabian influence in the Labour Party, wh±ch ~as undoubtedly predominant, we are - stil·l confronted with 'an 'a-ttitude'_as to-what should be done. This is not, of course, to say that'-all the Fabians thought of the Socialist society as the panacea for <3,11 inen'sproblems. But Bernard Shaw and other leading Fabians did at_least see such a society in terms of an (hierarchical) order of ideals--and ;;'i-nciples. 16 There was, then, an ethical absolute, however vague, motivating political action. It seems clear that the__ work of the Labour Party "revisionists" is taking place within t..his -type of ideological context. The attempt 13James B. Christoph se~ to be concluding-the ideological aspects of British politics in this--r:ight in his article "British Political Ideolgyf~n Roy C. Macridis,Political Parties: Contemporary Trend~ and Ideas, pp., 75-101. Pol~ticaQurey, 14SamueLBeer, "DemQcra-t:iCO~Py XXXII, (196l)~ pp. 114-23_ Government for Britain", - 15samuel Beer, Modern British Politics, p. 158. _ l6Cf~ A. M. McBriar, Fa~n~ocalism_ and ,English -Politics, 1884-1918, pp. 156 ff.. Here he ~es equality as the primary Fabian ideal, and behind i t "the vaguer 'and larger vision of the classless society". -, 52 radically to revise and reformulate, and even dissociate from, certain elements of dogmatic ideology meant that,in Crosland's words, "hostility was aroused by the feeling that the 'revisionists' were proposing a cynical surrender of principle for the sake of electoral advantage".17 He believed that "a political party is not behaving immorally in studying the wishes nf the voters, provided that it wants power not for reasons of personal ambition or prestige, but in order to put a programme into effect. 1S The key sentence, for our anly~is, is as follows: There is much talk ••• of the dangers of sacrificing socialist principles; what is forgotten is the sacrifice of socialist objectives, not to mention human freedom and welfare involved in a long period of impotent opposition. i 9_ If, then, the British Labour Party is of the ideological or, as Epstein has put it, the programmatic type, the mere statement "sacrifice of socialist objectives" suggests a continued if·somewhat altered frame of mind. "Conflicting value systems, each capable of enlisting considerable support in a given society, are thus essential to the existence of programmatic parties", says Epstein~20 There may, indeed, be evidence of a decline in programmatic statementsj-it is partly a question of the diminished role of the mandate. But such an occurrence does not necessitate, and has not brought about, a parallel d ~c " "1 - t s. 21 ln va ue comml"t men 1 lne 17C• A. R. Crosland, The Conservative Enemy, p. 118. T 1S JA)C. "t • Cl 19 Ibid ., p. 118-9. 20Epstein,_op. cit., _po 263. 21For ~comparble view on the Australian Labour Party see Tom -Truman, "Ideological Groups in the A.L.P. and their Attitudes", University of Queensland Papers, 11-2 (St. Lucia: --University of Queensland Press, 1965)9 - 53 In terms of Professor Crick's trichotomy, moral imperatives still demand of socialists in Britain and in many 'other countries that their theory provides not only an alternative explanation of hO\oJ society works, or could work, but a better explanation. Which is not to say that they cannot see that "conservatism can work, after a fashion".22 Richard Titmus views the situation in a light similar to that described above. He points out the ample evidence for the failure of the "social welfare state": to bring about a ' diminution in vast discrepancies of wealth and poverty, to lessen monopolistic concentration, to solve the problems of social disorganisation and cultural deprivation, and to deal with "the gro\oJing impact of automation". When Titmus makes the statement that the proclamation of the end of ideological politics ignores such evidence as this, he seems to be interpreting a political ideology as a set of proposals (Y/hich deal with given or prospective socio-economic situations) enumerated on the basis of an implicit if not explicit orientation of values. The suggestion is that it may still be poss- ible to read between the mund~e lines spoken at Party and Trade Union Conferences the continued expression of value-oriented "idealregarding" principles rather than suspect an over-emphasis on pragmatic "want-regarding" principles. 24 22Bernard Crick, "Philosophy, Theory, and Thought", op.' ,cit., p. 52. 23Richard M. Titmus, "Social \1elfare and the Art of Giving", in Erich Fromm, ed., Socialist Humanism (New York: Doubleday-Anchor, 1966), pp.377-392. 24 ,- See B~ian Barry, Political Argumenti pp. 38-9, where the' 'analytical dis'tinction -is drawn in this way. \vant-regarding pr,i'nciples 'i are principles which take as given the wants' which people happen to have and conetr~ attention entirely on the extent to which a certain 54 I do not regard it as particularly useful to talk of the "end of doctrine" rather than the 'end of ideology', though it may be that the ideologist indulges in slightly more 'visionary speculation' in terms of particular ideals than the holder of a political doctrine. Certainly, if we take the narrow conception of ideology as a refusal to allow for the possible validity in one's opponent's viewpoint, then the term "doctrinaire" could be used equally as well as "ideologist". Both, in a sense, provide for the element of "false- consciousness; for the position which says, 'my view is the only true one' • In so far as the term "ideology" is used to refer to a value system, it can again be used interchangeably vii th the term "doctrine ". Both, as a set of beliefs, contain an explanation of \V'hat is, together with statements about what ought to be done. Even if the ideology may have become more latent than manifest in many Western democracies, it is still a question of "given certain values, my view is the most acceptable one". "Revisionism" is thus revision within an ideology, since new explanations are demanded, or new methods, because the old ones have not worked. "In the East 'revisionism' does not imply that the e:x:isting ideology is going to be 'revised' out of existence. We have seen that in many Communist countries a-change in content is taking place. As far as the U.S.S.R. is concerned, the structure of the-ideology, c~osely-intrwd discp~ne, authoritarian with internal and - external power politics, is likely to militate against too rapid policy will alter the overall amount of want-satisfaction or on the way in which the policy will affect the distribution among people of opportunities for satisfying wants". The ideal-regarding theory can be looked upon as the contradictory of the 'want-regarding theory'. 55 changes in content, even in the face of advancing scientific knowledge • . The recent invasion of Czechoslovakia has, it appears, effectively frustrated the notion of the end of_ the "Colq. War" (mainly as a result of the alleged decline of Soviet ideology) as anything more than a tentative hypothesise- CHAPTER V CONCLUDING NOTES ON THE END-OF-IDEOLOGY The arguments for the end-of-ideology are based on two main reasons: the first is the dis1llusipnment of intellectuals in the West witli the Stalinist perv~sion of Marxian doctrines, together with the alleged lack of scope for criticism by these intellectuals because of the quiescence of overt class struggle as a result of rising living standards (embourgeoisement) of the working class. The second reason is the breakdown of ideologies in East and ~he West under the onslaught of advancing scientific knowledge. The phrase, "the opium of the intellectuals", is sometimes applied to the secular religion of ideology. No consideration is made of the possibility that science itself may be a religion; peculiarly, faith in science will save men's souls. Daniel Bell declares in the chapter entitled liThe End of Ideology" in the West" that he_proposes to borrow from Karl Mannheim the distinction be- tween the "particular conception of ideology" and the ception of ideology". that the particular I~ con- Bell correctly represents Mannheim when he- says conepti~f psychology of interests._ ideology implies a concern with a On the other hand, "total ideology-II is used by Bell to mean "an all-inclusive system of comprehensive reality;', lDaniel Bell, End of-Ideology, p. 40. 1 57 which is, as we have seen, somewhat in accordance with Mannheim's total conception. However, Bell completes the definition thus: "It isa set of beliefs, infus-ed with passion and seeks to transform the whole of a 'Vlay of life". 2 This destroys completely Mannheim's analytical distinction between ideology and utopia; both are involved in "some other-\>forldly sphere ll which transcends history. But -ideology becomes utopia when social groups incorporate their wish-images in their actual conduct, in an attempt to realise them. In several of his writings, Bell emphasizes the need for utopias. But the demand is supposedly qualified by reference to the use of the so-called "empirical ladder": a utopia that specifies "where one wants to go, hO\o[ to get there, the costs of the enterprise, and some realisation of and justification for the determination of who is to pay".3 Admirable emotions in themselves, one would think, but they form no more than a glorified projection into the future. In the 'technical' view, one is sure that if Daniel Bell and his associates can point the way to this sort of "cost-benefit" analysis of the future, a great . many economists who have puzzled for years over which generation is to shoulder the burden of the public debt would be pleased to hear of it. Strictly_speaking, the type-of ideological passion Bell_and others are referring to is that associated with the radical mass 210c • cit. -3 Loc. cit. 58 movements of the 'twenties and 'thirties. Hence, as we saw in Chapter Four, Bernard Crick's view of ideology as a special type of doctrine used by an elite for indoctrinating the masses. This type of political movement, we may accept, has died dovm in the post-war era. One strongly suspects, however, that Bell, Shils, and the others are aware of the possible lull. nature of the t~mporay Thus, the phraseology is often a "call" for this or that -- the end of "enfused passion" (Bell) or "alienative politics" (Shils). Given that there is a lull in radical political activity; why dq.~:the - cJ..a-imants of the end-of-ideology not draw logical cert~in. conclusions from the history and sociology of the concept of ideology? The point has been made by C. Wright Mills and others: end-of-ideology itself an ideological viewpoint? is in reality the ideology of an ending: reflection itself as a public fact. is not the "The end-of-ideology the ending of political It is a weary know-it-all justi- fication -- by tone of voice rather than explicit argument -- of the cultural and political default of the 'NATO intellectuals,.4 There has been much debate in recent years on whether political theoI!-Y still exists. ·'.One of the main symptoms providing the basis for this belief is given by Isaiah Berlin as the absence of a "commanding work of political philosophyll5 in the twentieth century. A commanding work is defined as one- !'that has in a large area_ converted paradoxes into platitudes or vice versa". 4C• Wright Mills, "The New Left", Ope cit., p. 249~ 5Isaiah Berlin, !'Does Political Theory still Exist?" in \'1. G. Runciman and P. Laslett, Philosophy, Politics and Society, II, p. 1. ... 59 It is a generally recognised fact that political theory and political philosophy have been de-emphasized in American considerab~y graduate schools as a result of the onslaught of the new behavioural science. Empir~s reigns' , . We must, a la Lasswell, collect data upon-data and hope that we shall eventually st:wnb1e across some apocalyptic r previously unheard-of, conception of mankind. In short, as Berlin, Strauss, and many others have said, it is generally 'believed , that we cannot learn from the studies of past political theorists, why men to (political) things,we tend to concentrate on how they do them. Has the human problem·changed, is it not just so enormous that perhaps we cannot grasp the sheer size of it? involved in the quest for man We are still it has become more urgent. Berlin .- makes the point in this way: If men or circumstances alter radically, or new empirical knowledge is gained which will revolutionize our concept of man, then certainly some of (these) will be forgotten like the ethics and metaphysics of the Egyptians or the Incas. - But so long as men are as they are, ~he debate will contigue in terms set by these visions and others like them. . . For those who do not understand what a philosophical question is, he continues, "the answers in this case the main political doctrines of the West -- may well seem j..ntellectual fancies, detached philosophical speculations and constructions without much relation to acts o~ -events".? 6 - Ibid., p. 31 ?T. B. Bottomore, "Some Reflections on the Sociology of Knowledge", British Journal of Sociology, VII (1956), pp. -52-58. 60 Daniel Bell, however, paradoxically, insists that he is not calling for an end to "ideologies tt • Where are these ideologies to come f:r:om if everything is relegated to the empirical ladder? The rash of empiricism within -the new behavioural sciences is, in Herbert Marcuse's view, part of what might well be termed a "total ideology". The ideology of 'advanced industrial culture' he regards as ttmore ideological than its predecessor ll • 8 It has produced in the end-of-ideology argument its own philosophy of history: been stood on his head once more.,,9 "Hegel has We have in an epistemological sense ttarrived", epistemology becomes methodology. We no l-Onger ask hoy, we know that freedom I democracy, and so forth are what our concepts "say" they are -- we are supposed to accept them as established facts. Indeed, a large proportion of the social scientists in the United States are now employed to help maintain a war machine, raised to defend. and bring 'new' nations into this 'true' world of freedom and democracy. The may, then, be the reflection of the genend~of-ilgy eral malaise among the. intellectuals of the \vest. . - Are not linguistic philosophy, some aspects of behaviouralism, and the general lack of intellectual criticism a negation of what is a very human activity -a contemplative inquiry into what we should be? 8Marcuse~- One-Dimensional Man, Boston; p. 11. 9For an excellent exposition of this view, see Stephen W. Rousseaus and James Farganis, "American Poli ti-cs and the End of Ideolg!"~ in I. L. Horowitz (ed.), The New Sociolog;[, pp. 268-287. '-., - 61 Total ideology is still with us. The content of "ideologies" appears t,o be changing in the East and in the West, and yet between the two world spheres there is not very much sign of a lessening of ideological conflict. The conflict in Vietnam and the Soviet action in Czechoslovakia are signs of this. " The conflict betwe.en extremes of 'left' and 'right" has become muted witnin the countries of the West, the language of politics has changed. In so far as this is an ideological condition, we should be questioning it, IJ.ot condoning it. The feelings of social well-being could change. "that which is, cannot be true ll • 10 " I 10 - Herbert' Marcuse, OPe cit., p. 120.· As Marcus~pt it: 62 BIBLIOGRAPHY Books:: Aiken, H. D., The Age of Ideology. 1956. New York: Apter, D., Ideology and Discontent. Glencoe, 1964.- New York: Mentor Paperbacks, Free Press of Arendt, H., Between Past and Future. -Six Exercises in PoliticalThought. New York: Meridian Books, 19510 --------,The Human Condition. 1959. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, --------,The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1958. - Meridian Books, Aron, R., The Opium of the Intellectuals. 1957. N. Y. Doubleday & Co. Inc., Barry, B., Political Argumen:!:.. 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