Diagnosis Of Our Time V 3

Karl Mannheim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134551903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1943. This is Volume III of the collected works of Karl Mannheim and focuses on a collection of sociological works written to give viewpoints and perspectives during the time of war around 1941.

VII

TOWARDS A NEW SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

A CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIAN THINKERS BY A SOCIOLOGIST¹

PART I. CHRISTIANITY IN THE AGE OF PLANNING

(1) Christianity at the Cross-roads. Will it associate itself with the Masses or side with Ruling Minorities ?

With the coming of the Renaissance and Liberalism, Christianity failed to remain the basic ferment and integrating force in social life. The main consequences of this failure deserve special attention.

(a) The spiritualization and regulation of human affairs, public and private, has gradually been left to the competing institutions in society—to family, community, business, trade unions, parties, army, public opinion and its exponents, press, wireless, cinema, associations, age groups, groups of intelligentsia, clubs, etc. At the beginning of the new era, this secularization of the forces in society produced a stimulating variety of human experience, brought the idea of spontaneity and experimentalism home to the members of the community, and led to a process of constant re-valuation. But in its final outcome this great variety of experience, and the fact that the competing value systems cancelled each other out, led to the neutralization of values in general. This is one of the reasons why liberal society at its present stage is handicapped in resisting the spiritual and political challenge coming from the totalitarian states.

(b) Of course the withdrawal of the Christian Churches from the main zones of social life was not complete: wherever they maintained their hold on tradition and influenced the ways of life, their impact was very considerable. But wherever they lost touch with the concrete, topical issues of social life, this immediately reacted upon them by increasing formalism and reducing religion to an affair of attending Sunday sermons. This applies less to this country than to the Continent, but the general trend seems to be the same.

(c) To this loss of a foothold in society at large by the Churches very often corresponded a readiness on the part of their leaders to co-operate with the ruling classes and to identify themselves with their vested interests both in a spiritual and in a material sense. Still even here there seems to exist an important difference between the basic situation on the Continent and in England. As the emergence of Capitalism and the corresponding social revolutions occurred at a very early stage in England, when religion was still alive and permeated society as a whole, both the conservative and the progressive forces developed their philosophies within the set framework of religion. For that reason it is in this country still possible to be progressive and religious at the same time, whereas on the Continent, where the social antagonisms were formulated before and during the French Revolution, the dominant polarity (with some exceptions) is to be either progressive and an atheist and rationalist, or conservative and very likely religious.

(d) This close association between Conservatism, or even Reaction, and the Church contributed a great deal in its turn to the prevailing distrust felt by the public regarding most of the proposals coming from the Church to give a lead to social change and organization.

(2) Why the Liberal Era could do without Religion. The Need for Spiritual Integration in a Planned Society

A liberal and competitive economy and its society can function quite well with neutralized values as long as there is no threat from within or without which makes a basic consensus imperative. This is obviously the case when totalitarian states attack our societies. But not only this negative instance, the assault from outside, makes it a social necessity to have society integrated on those deep levels on which religion integrated pre-industrial societies; the need for planning within our own societies calls for a similar integrating bond. It is not a matter of chance that both Communism and Fascism try to develop and superimpose a pseudo-religious integration in order to create a psychological and sociological background for planning.

It is one of the most important tasks of the sociologist to point out those new functions in the system of planning which make that basic integration necessary, with which a liberal society could dispense. I shall only enumerate some of these functions.

(a) Planned democratic society needs a new type of party system, in which the right to criticize is as strongly developed as the duty to be responsible to the whole. That means that the liberal education for intelligent partisanship, which is mainly defending the interests of your faction and party and leaves the final integration to a large extent to the natural harmony of interests, must gradually be replaced by a new education for responsible criticism, wherein consciousness of the whole is at least as important as awareness of your own interests. In a planned society it is not the natural interplay of interests which gradually leads to a total scheme of action, but a plan intelligently conceived and accepted by all parties. It is obvious that such a new morality can only be achieved if the deepest sources of human regeneration assist the rebirth of society.

(b) As I pointed out, formerly there was need for short-term decisions only. The more matters become interdependent in planned society, the more the long-range consequences of a decision become relevant. The conflict between short-term interests and long-range responsibilities becomes a matter of daily deliberation. Only a generation which has been educated through religion, or at least on the religious level, to discriminate between immediate advantage and the lasting issues of life will be capable of accepting the sacrifice which a properly planned democratic order must continually demand from every single group and individual in the interests of the whole.

(c) Planned society needs a unifying purpose. This can be achieved either by the extermination or internment of those who do not agree, or by a spiritual integration of the members of society.

This statement requires some further qualification. One could argue that, as far as economic planning is concerned, there is no need for an all-embracing purpose, for a unifying philosophical outlook. The superimposing of the latter is mostly due to the exaggerated zeal of intellectual groups in totalitarian states, who wish to dominate other people. From the limited point of view of economic planning, it is only necessary to agree on economic issues, as, e.g., how much should be produced, what should be produced, how much should be accumulated, how much immediately consumed. Even in the case of total economic planning it is not necessary to plan spiritual issues, just as it is sufficient to co-ordinate the time-tables of the different railway lines without controlling the topics of conversation inside the carriages. But this is exactly what the totalitarian systems demand from their citizens, namely, not only to accept guidance in matters of organization but to allow their whole intellectual outlook and emotional life to be moulded by the central authority. It is possible to a large extent to isolate economic issues from the spiritual ones, and every form of planning for freedom will try to confine the powers of the planner in the economic field to that minimum of interference which is wanted in order to avoid chaos (to avoid, for instance, the development of the trade cycle). Yet, even so, there will be economic regulations which through their implications or immediate consequences will affect spheres of human life other than economics.

Most of the relevant economic decisions affect some groups and classes favourably and others unfavourably. The planner may be careful only to decide the crucial issues from the centre and to allow the maximum of freedom to individual initiative in the elaboration of the plan in the sphere of production and to personal choice in the sphere of consumption; yet his decisions will inevitably prejudice many decisions in the wider life of the community. It will, for instance, somehow be settled in advance at what speed we shall spend or invest, where we shall invest, and, by implication, decisions will be taken as to how much should be spent on social services, religion, education, art, science and so forth.

It would, however, be a great mistake to regard this sort of interference as an entirely novel development. After all, every democratic system has to deal with such issues in its budget and has to develop methods of reaching agreement on controversial issues, even if they affect the differing interests or divergent creeds prevailing in the community. The novelty in a planned system is that such agreements will be reached not by stages only, bit by bit, through compromise on partial issues, but through agreement on a coherent plan founded on consistent principles, a plan which will undertake to determine the general direction of the development for five or ten years to come.

There is yet another reason why the unifying purpose in a planned society is more relevant than in a laissez-faire system. There are issues on which we must agree, not because they are economic in nature or are affected by steps taken in the economic field, but because the chaos of the last twenty years has revealed that not only economic laissez-faire produced structural maladjustment, e.g. mass unemployment, but that nearly every other sphere of social life has a chaos of its own. Therefore, it is not sufficient merely to say with the planning-minded economists, “Let us get things right in the economic sphere and the remainder of the life of society will then take care of itself.” It would be very desirable if that were true and everything beyond economics were arranged by the spontaneous self-regulating powers of group life. It certainly would be more pleasant to live in a world where there was no need for interference whatsoever with the life of the spirit. Unfortunately, the planning-minded economist’s generosity and laissez-faire attitude in fields other than economics is really due to his lack of knowledge of those other fields, and to his inability to realize that the method of spontaneous adjustment has failed in them too.

Sociological analysis reveals that what we call “the moral crisis” or the crisis in valuations¹ does not simply arise from wickedness in modern man but to a considerable extent is due to the failure of Great Society to re-establish on a larger scale the methods of value adjustment, value assimilation, value reconciliation and value standardization which were always active in small communities, and which, owing to the limited size of those communities, could do their work spontaneously. In the same way, simpler societies could do without a consistent and closely argued educational policy, because their traditions contain co-ordinating influences which work unconsciously. Under the changed conditions of Great Society, however, lack of conscious direction of educational issues leads to what has been called “Education for Chaos.” Or to mention another instance: Non-interference with the press led to freedom of opinion as long as little capital was needed, and one could always found a new paper if the existing ones failed to tell the truth. In an age of large industrial combines, lack of community control places the power to shape public opinion into the hands of a few great monopolists.

It is always the same story: laissez-faire, free competition, free adjustment were efficient as long as small self-adjusting units governed the field—whereas the same laissez-faire leads to monopolies, maladjustment of various types and in all fields of social life as soon as the units grow in size and if there is nobody to watch the symptoms of disorganization and to check the cumulative effects of unco-ordinated growth. Under these conditions freedom will not consist in non-interference, but in a control which gives guidance in a democratically agreed direction. What we have learned is that with the advent of Great Society the habit of letting things take their own course does not represent the principle of real freedom, but simply surrenders the cultural inheritance to a few Capitalist concerns, which reflect only too often the lowest common denominator of democratic culture, such as Hollywood, privately owned radio stations and the press. At the present stage of development, Freedom can only be achieved if its conditions are organized according to the democratically agreed wishes of the community. But the latter can prevail only if the community has a vision of aims to be achieved and a knowledge of the means by which they can be achieved. Although even here Planning for Freedom will consist in avoiding interference where it is avoidable there will still be need for agreement where direction is lacking. This guidance can only be given if the integration of the community goes much deeper than is the case at this moment when the forces of disintegration have done their best to undermine tacit consensus and to over-emphasize differences existing in our midst.

(d) Another reason why religious and religion-like movements develop in the present age is that the transition from a laissez-faire liberal system to one utterly different, a planned society, can only occur if the attitudes of men, their whole set of valuations change in a relatively short time. Now, it is a psychological experience that such a sudden change of habits can only take place if enthusiasm or an emotionalization of the new issues accompanies it, and the latter occurs only when the crucial issues of life can be re-defined and gain new significance. This re-definition of the issues in our world does not occur in a piecemeal fashion, and this general re-valuation can only happen if each new objective is part of a new world view and a new way of life. It is this entirely new enthusiasm which lends significance to every individual’s life and every activity in it. I pointed out the need and scope for such new experiences on the religious level in order to show where modern society is open to religion; it is a matter of human quality whether genuine religious experiences will emerge, or pseudo-religious movements will be produced as a substitute, as has happened in the totalitarian states. Of course, this complete penetration of life by religion will only occur if those who represent Christian tradition are once more able to go back to the genuine sources of religious experience and do not think that the habitual and institutional forms of religion will suffice for the reconstruction of man and society. Only if the rebirth of religion, both in terms of a popular movement and of regenerated leadership, coincides with the forthcoming social transformation can it happen that the new democratic order of this country will be Christian.

(3) Catholicism, Protestantism and the Planned Democratic Order

In this new penetration of Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism have a different position. Catholicism has the advantage of having in many aspects maintained the pre-Capitalist and pre-individualist interpretation of Christianity. In many ways it may be easier for this tradition to understand the needs of a social order beyond individualism. Protestantism, in its genuine forms, is handicapped in that it itself helped to produce the modern individualist mind and to develop those psychological attitudes which keep the system of Capitalism, competition and free enterprise going. On the other hand, the advantage of Protestantism is that it is nearer to modern man’s predicament, and thus might genuinely produce out of the existing state of mind those transformations which will represent adequate solutions for our age. Again, Catholicism, through its Thomistic traditions, very early developed a kind of sociology which was accustomed to deal with social institutions in terms of functions. This produced an attitude of mind in which it is a matter of course to look at institutions not as they present themselves to personal experience and in the individual’s private life, but in terms of the objective functions which these institutions fulfil in the life of society as a whole. Protestantism, laying all emphasis on the Augustinian tradition of inner experience, tends to become vague about the social implications of human activities. Another asset of Catholicism is its courage to associate religious experience, wherever possible, with strict rationality and responsible thought. In this, it is a great counterpoise to the woolliness of unbridled irrationality of modern movements. This does not mean that emotions and irrationalism do not represent real power in human life, but only that without an ordered life, the spiritualization and rationality which go with it they are destructive and self-defeating.

On the other hand, the danger of this Catholic sociology is that it leads to mediaevalism, to a kind of reapplication of mediaeval patterns of social organization to large-scale society. There is a profound difference between the community spirit in a pre-individualist age and the new forms of collectivism and integration following the breakdown of Liberalism. The first corresponded to an agricultural society with small cities, where handicraft prevailed: the latter will have to solve the problems of a Great Society with a world economy, in an age of large-scale industrial and social techniques. This at once raises the question of how far the return to a guild system (e.g. “Corporativism”) is an adequate solution. So far, it seems to have served as a fagade to the Fascist type of minority rule. On the other hand, this should not make us blind to the possible merits of syndicalist solutions. It may be that they went wrong in the existing totalitarian experiments but have significance and merits to be used in our social reconstruction.

The genuine contribution of Protestantism is bound to come from its emphasis on the freedom of the individual, its selfdetermination, its emphasis on voluntary co-operation, self-help and mutual aid. These will always be the great antitheses to the coming forms of authoritarianism, centralization and organization from above. It would be misleading to interpret our appreciation of the significance of systematic thought in Thomism as an attempt to ignore the contribution Protestantism has made to the growth of modern rationalism. Just the opposite is true. Max Weber’s² historical investigations have shown how the spirit of modern Capitalism—foresight, calculation, systematization of life—developed as an answer to the challenge of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Let us add to this that the attempt to replace the Church-dictated interpretation of the world by sects and individuals represents a continuous effort to reinterpret the world in terms of one’s own peculiar experiences. Those reinterpretations equally make use of rational thinking, but in a completely new sense. It is as if one were to look at a previously established universe from the angle of one’s own, i.e. from the individual’s perspective. In this perspective rationality is still the way to the understanding of the world, but this time it is handled in a different way. Rationality becomes individualized rationality, departing very often from the authoritatively established universe of discourse to lend expression to the experience of the world as it presents itself to struggling smaller groups or to the lonely individual. If I propose to call this rationality, by comparison with Thomist Rationality, an Individualized Rationality, I am aware of the fact that the difference between them needs further elaboration. But there seems to me no doubt that modern experimentalism is born out of this individualized rationality which does not accept a pre-established system of metaphysics, but is ready...