Settling accounts with the sociology of knowledge: The frankfurt school, mannheim, and the marxian critique of ideology qua mental labor

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 108, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 331-363

  Fischer, Ariane ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67649804366     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-2008-036     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. It has been argued that the concept of the division of labor in The German Ideology is unclear and crude, serving as a catchall label. Ali Rattansi, for example, has maintained that Marx systematically conflates the concepts of class and of the division of labor in this text. Ali Rattansi, Marx and the Division of Labour, Contemporary Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1982), 80. I want to claim, however, that the two ideas are not confused but deliberately fused; that is, they are viewed as interconnected in reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers, 1976); hereafter cited parenthetically by page number as MECW 5
2. Robert Kurz, "Die Macht der toten Dinge" ("The Rule of the Dead Objects"), Marxistische Kritik 3 (June 1987): 106; translation by author. Similarly, the knowledge factories called college campuses are largely based on the exploitation of the "proletarian man [or woman] of letters" (Karl Marx, Capital, ed. David McLellan [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008])
3. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 29 (New York: International Publishers, 1987), 264
4. Alex Callinicos, Marxism and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 46
5. See, for example, Etienne Balibar, "The Vacillation of Ideology in Marxism," Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy before and after Marx, trans. James Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994), 87-123
6. Virtually every discussion of Marx and the ideology concept complains about an apparent lack of consistency in the way Marx employed it. Political scientist Martin Seliger, for instance, wrote in 1977 that "Marx did not use 'ideology' according to a uniform definition." Citing supposed synonyms like Einbildung (fantasy), Vorstellung (imagination), and Illusion (illusion), he goes on to say that Marx "used interchangeably Ideologie, Ideen [ideas], Anschauungen [views] and Doktrin [doctrines]." Martin Seliger, The Marxist Conception of Ideology: A Critical Essay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 26. Jorge Larraín, while offering superior readings of Marx, agrees: However, the task of ascertaining the specific, critical character of ideology in Marx confronts the particular difficulty that there is no general definition or systematic treatment of the concept in his writings which provides a definitive version. Of course, Marx gives numerous clues by using the concept in a certain way and by describing some of its essential features in the context of concrete analyses. But on the whole it is necessary to accept that the concept of ideology is not satisfactorily elaborated in Marx's writings and that in consequence it must be reconstructed and theoretically elaborated from the various scattered elements provided by the texts. Jorge Larraín, Marxism and Ideology, Contemporary Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1983), 7
7. It is generally known that French sensualist Destutt de Tracy coined the term in reference to his "science of ideas" that was to derive concepts from experience rather than transcendent sources. See, for instance, the classic essay by George Lichtheim, "The Concept of Ideology," The Concept of Ideology, and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1967). However, the notion that a "reversal" in the meaning of ideology occurred (from positive to derogatory) is somewhat misleading, given that Marx was in fact criticizing what he felt was the German equivalent of Tracy's "materialist" critique of religion in France. The direct connection between Tracy and Marx is convincingly asserted by historian Emmett Kennedy, who states: "But Marx inherited the word 'ideology' not from Hegel, who used the word once in reference to the French ideologist and therefore cannot be, strictly speaking, credited with an explicit theory of ideology, but only from the cumulative usages current in the 1830s and 1840s and specifically from Destutt de Tracy." Emmett Kennedy, "'Ideology' from Destutt de Tracy to Marx," Journal of the History of Ideas 40.3 (July-September 1979): 366
8. This "extension" of Marx's concept of ideology was first developed in the sociology of knowledge of Karl Mannheim. See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (1936; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952). The twentieth-century appropriation of ideology by essentially idealist theories is further exemplified by the critical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur. See, for instance, Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on "Ideology and Utopia", ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)
9. This point is also made by Robert Kaufman in "Red Kant, or the Persistence of the Third 'Critique' in Adorno and Jameson," Critical Inquiry 26.4 (Summer 2000): 682-724. Discussing The German Ideology, Kaufman seeks to raise "serious doubts . . . [about whether] Marx and Engels intend[ed] a critique of idealism per se . . . [and express] skepticism about the extension of such a critique to the realm of the aesthetic and its attendant ideology" (ibid., 694)
10. For an analysis of this trend, see Sebastiano Timpanaro, On Materialism (London: Verso, 1985)
11. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge, 1973), 3
12. Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991)
13. See, for instance, John B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
14. See, for instance, MECW 5, 145 and 282
15. Marcuse, "The Sociological Method," 134
16. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research-1923-1950 (1973; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 64
17. See, for instance, Leon Bailey, Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge: A Comparative Study in the Theory of Ideology (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 64
18. For a recent example of this idea, see, for instance, Moishe Postone, "The Limits of Traditional Marxism and the Pessimistic Turn of Critical Theory," in Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 84-120