Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Read Online Free PDF Page A

possibility of scholarly consensus. We accept that for many social and historical issues there may be more than one convincing explanation or interpretation, and that scholars cannot entirely rid themselves of their values and preferences. Mannheim clearly wanted to avoid a situation in which all ideological positions asserttheir exclusive worth, and he anticipated instead ‘a new type of objectivity’. But there was no need to drop ideology, for holding on to some form of relativism does not lead to the condoning of all viewpoints as
equally
valuable.
    We might put this as follows. The objectivist claims that only one road leads to Rome. The extreme relativist claims that all roads lead to Rome (though they may lead elsewhere as well), and that we cannot know whether one route is better than another – it’s entirely up to the traveller’s opinion. The sensible constrained relativist claims that many, but far from all, roads lead to Rome, and that they vary in quality, speed, and safety. Different routes may be recommended depending on which of the road’s attributes the traveller values most, but the appraisal of these attributes is based on comparing the traveller’s private judgement with accepted standards of assessing road surfaces, traffic density, distance, and construction. At most, Mannheim could have talked of a form of intersubjectivity, that is, overlapping but still relativist understandings.
    We might also query the capacity of individuals to rid themselves so neatly of their ideologies (and shall do so in Chapter 3 ). Mannheim’s approach foreshadowed some of the ‘end of ideology’ debates of the mid-20th century. They maintained that modern societies were converging on agreed principles and policies, such as the welfare state or the consumer society. Consequently fundamental divergences of opinion would disappear. That overlooked the fact that, even when all agree on a viewpoint, you still end up with
one
ideology rather than none. We still need
a
map.
    Finally, there remains the question of the critical role of ideology. For Marx, the very notion of ideology served the one critical purpose of alerting us to its insidious nature and the need to unmask it. Mannheim appears to vacillate between that approach and the acknowledgement that ideology is a worthwhile object of study. He both wished to distil the approximate truths from withincontending ideologies and to explore their varied forms. He recognized the ephemeral and dynamically unfolding nature of human thought, but also the permanence of some of its regularities that could reveal human destiny. This was sociology with a normative twist, in which the scholar would ultimately value certain historical developments and certain ideologies more than others, and do so through understanding the totality of history. That constitutes a comprehensive view, but not a final one. Rather it is a ‘relative optimum’ for our time and our place.
    Mannheim’s subtlety of approach puts him in the very forefront of theorists of ideology, but he was still suspended in a no man’s land between old and new understandings. He undoubtedly left to posterity a cardinal imperative for political theory: it needed to be made aware of its own assumptions and categories. A naive view of thinking about politics – one that saw it as a pure form, elevated above the contingencies and imperfections of everyday life – would no longer be possible. In order to understand political thought, much of it had to be approached and deciphered as ideology, as a product of historical and social circumstances. Marx had applied the critical kernel of his notion of ideology to eliminating its distortions of reality. Mannheim applied the critical kernel of his notion of ideology to highlighting the impermanent and malleable nature of all human thought. Whether that impermanence was the consequence of a special historical context or itself a permanent feature of ideology was a question