Ideologies and the Corruption of Thought

Joseph Gabel, Alan Sica, Alan Sica

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351291903
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Categoria: Politica

Edited and with an introduction by Alan Sica.

In 1975 Joseph Gabel published a modern masterpiece which appeared in English as False Consciousness: An Essay on Reification. Combining his special knowledge of existential psychiatry, axiology, Marxism, and political history, Gabel proposed the utterly novel idea that victims of serious mental disturbances (especially paranoia and schizophrenia) reproduce those distorted thought patterns commonly associated with ideological beliefs at the collective level. Such beliefs initially had been laid bare in the 1920s by Gabel's intellectual progenitors, Karl Mannheim and George Lukacs. Gabel's remarkable innovation was to transfer the private crisis of mental collapse into the analytic framework previously reserved for ideological critique, making him an expert on what was later called "the micro-macro problem."

Ideologies and the Corruption of Thought includes Gabel's essays over the last 40 years, characteristically treating micro and macro theoretical matters simultaneously. Originally written in French and German, they have been recast in idiomatic English and bibliographically updated. Using a unique mode and vocabulary of analysis, Gabel offers theoretical investigations of McCarthyism and Stalinism (original and more recent types), as well as Althusser, Orwell, and Jonathan Swift in his capacity as a psychiatric theorist. He also explores anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and a fascinating case study of a paranoid who regarded himself as the pope. In addition this volume includes a range of general commentaries on ideological "thought, " utopianism, and false consciousness.

This rich feast of social and political analysis and theory illuminates a range of contemporary concerns: racism, utopian fantasy, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, the interplay of social structure and mental illness, and ideological transformations of social life, which only Gabel's unique mixture of the clinical and the political could achieve. It will be studied with interest by all theorists and politically alert readers in the social sciences, philosophy, and related fields of study.

1

Utopian Consciousness and False Consciousness

The concept of false consciousness occupies a unique place in Marxist theory, although it is stili rarely used by Marxists and, unlike the theory of allenation, is just beginning to infiltrate non-Marxist intellectual life. This concept has only recently become accepted in the university, having been previously rejected by both orthodox Marxists and “bourgeois” intellectuals. Following Lukàcs, Lucien Goldmann was very interested in the problem of false consciousness, though it did not become the centrai theme in his work.¹ Despite his shaky interpretation of the issue, he did have the merit of posing an important problem. Goldmann essentially saw the phenomenon of false consciousness as a collection of errors—or inadequate theories—conditioned by a given sociological situation. From this perspective, the theory of false consciousness should be situated in the trajectory of the sociology of knowledge and of epistemology-

For me, on the contrary, false consciousness appears indeed to be a form of inadequacy, but one that goes beyond the notion of error. False consciousness is a type of insane (délirant)—more precisely—schizophrenie—“inadequacy.” Consequently, it should be studied as an extension of the theory of allenation and of psychopathology and should only indirectly concern epistemology and the sociology of knowledge. The following simple example illustrates the difference between ordinary and pathological error. Imagine two neighbors, a foreign military attaché and a peaceful business man. Their telephone lines are connected to the same cable which is not functioning properly. They hear interference and both come to the same conclusion: their lines are tapped. Materially, they are making the sanie mistake, and yet, in another sense, it is not the same. For the possibility of tapped lines is mostly probable and possible in the mode of “being-in-the-world” of the military attaché. Thus, his error is the result of an inadequate choice between two legitimate possibilities. By contrast, the identical error of his neighbor is symptomatic of a profound disturbance in the coordinates of his existence (in the sense of a deterioration of the dialectical quality of the insertion of the Self into the World) and could be a preliminary manifestation of a paranoid sequence. It is in this latter sense that I have previously tried to speak of the schizophrenie character (”morbid rationality”) of false consciousness. It is this “existential” interpretation—as opposed to Goldmann’s cognitive-Manichean version—that I will attempt to apply to the problem of utopian consciousness.²

Is utopian consciousness false consciousness? Mannheim thought so and his formulation was unequivocal: “The common and ultimately cruciai characteristic of ideological and utopian thinking is that one experiences with both the possibility of false consciousness.”³ But Mannheim makes such an assertion without any proof, and within the context of a general theory of utopia that is often rejected. For Mannheim, as for Ernst Bloch, utopia is a positive historical phenomenon, a factor of social change with liberating potential. Elsewhere, Mannheim unenthusiastically prediets a decline of the utopian element in our civilization.⁴ Yet if the eventual disappearance of the utopian element from our politicai space would leave such a vacuum, how could Mannheim speak about a false utopian consciousness? Here we are confronted with one of the major inconsistencies in Mannheim’s work which forces us to rethink our concepts, especially that of utopia.

The concept of utopia has been characterized by its ambiguity; both its negative and positive role have been subject to debate. However, such a terminology conveys disturbing Manichean overtones. In one of my earlier studies, I suggested a distinction between two types of psychopathological impairments: the surrealist, characterized by an overly dialectical, and therefore insufficiently reified perception of reality, and the subrealist presenting a diametrically opposed structure.⁵ This distinction has interesting sociological applications for the study of utopian consciousness. The surrealist concept of utopia sees it essentially as a factor of sociohistorical change, as a revolutionary instrument that “shatters” being (”fait éclater l’etre”). On the contrary, the subrealist concept points to unrealizable projects without historical validity elaborated by marginai people. Instead of displaying a “historical-generative” (”historiogéne”) quality, the subrealist version offers a pretext for escaping from history.

As an example of the ambiguity of the concept of “utopia,” the traditional designation by Thomas More could prove useful. He is generally considered to be the first and model utopian, whereas Marx is considered to be a “futurologist.”⁶ However, when one recalls that More anticipated social imperialism or colonialism, the utilization of fifth columns, and slave labor, while Engels had “envisioned” the withering away of the state, one can wonder which one is the utopian and which one is the futurologist. With good reason, true utopians have often been reproached for failing to recognize the coherence of historical situations, that is, for ignoring the historical validity of the dialectical principle of totality. Yet More’s sense of this coherence is astonishing. He understood perfectly that the socialist organization of society has for its permanent and necessary corollary, the existence of a strong state—a fact which an Engels could never comprehend. Strange as it may seem, the creator of the word “utopia” must be excluded from the circle of traditional utopians even though he undoubtedly considered himself to be one. In fact, More unknowingly discovered one of the great historical laws of the founding of collectivist systems. This process has nothing to do with either the “withering away” of the state or the leap from the “reign of necessity” to the reign of “freedom” as expounded by the “utopians,” Marx and Engels.

The category of false consciousness does not belong to the surrealist conception of utopia represented by the writings of Bloch and Mannheim. In this context, a precise example can be provided by the question of a Zionist “utopia.”⁷ According to Bloch and Mannheim, Zionism is entirely utopian: an instrument which shatters Jewish “being”—the long reification and extra-historicization of the exile (galuth). Hence, if Zionism seems to be a typical utopia,⁸ can one stili speak of a Zionist false consciousness? Personally, I do not think so. The Zionist idea may have crystallized a politicai error and it may have brought forth injustice, but it is very difficult to describe it as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness is a corollary of allenation and reification. Racism is an “alienating ideology” not because it perceives ethnic differences, but because, by biologizing these differences, it reifies them, and then legitimates this reification with terms drawn from the naturai Sciences. In contrast, Zionism constitutes a sociohistorical functionalization or relativization of such differences. It is by no means certain that the “Zionist man” occupies on the human scale, a higher position than the pre-Zionist Jew. His advances in “civic” virtues and dignity may be compensated and over-compensated by a regression of intellectual insight and of universalistic inclinations.

I understand fully the nostalgia for the Jew of yesterday as a representative of this “sens de la souffrance” (Scheler) and at the same time, as a bearer of universal messages; in this sense we may say—and Nietzsche would not disagree—that no Jew was more Jewish than Christ. It follows that from another perspective, it nevertheless seems true that the prodigious human mutation instigated, in such a short time, by Zionism constitutes an ultimate refutation of racism. Zionism is a disalienating ideology that has killed the stereotype of the masochistic, cowardly Jew. But it is impossible to kill a stereotype without shattering all other stereotypes such as the “lazy Negro” or “inefficient Arab” and all sterotypical thinking in general. Therefore, Zionism offers a “principle of hope’ not only for the Jews, but for all oppressed or “undervalued” minorities in the world. Perhaps, the time will come when an objective historian will explain the relation between the contemporary Arab renaissance and this Zionist model; there is certainly a phenomenon of “identification with the aggressor,” in Anna Freud’s terminology. Indeed, in turning back on this model, black Africa makes a dangerous concession to racism. Hence, the Zionist example proves that Bloch’s surrealist utopia is not necessarily a corollary of allenation or of false consciousness.

Following Laplantine’s formulation, I understand the “subrealist” conception of utopia as the “mathematical, logicai and rigorous construction of a perfect city subject to the imperatives of an absolute pian which tolerates neither deviations nor questionings: it becomes a synonymfor totalitarianism. The ethnopsychiatric diagnosis which can be applied to utopia is that of a devitalizing nationalism, a morbid inclination for stereotypes and abstraction, and politicai schizophrenia.”⁹ This judgment is severe, but not in the least unwarranted, for it is only the assimilation of utopia to totalitarianism that gives rise to reservations. Unequivocally, the term “politicai schizophrenia” poses the problem of utopian false consciousness.¹⁰ My principal reference on this question will be Ruyer’s classic work Utopie et les Utopies which delineates the most important features of this utopian consciousness, namely: (a) fixism; or the fact that “Utopia is essentially anti-historical,” or according to Dòblin, it is “a human pian to interrupt history, to jump out of history and reach a stable perfection;”¹¹ (b) the feeling of omnipotence,¹² frequent in the type of schizophrenie psychosis defined by Roheim as a “magic psychosis”; (c) the intellectualism of utopian constructions whereby individuals seem to completely lack an unconscious, as well as human warmth (which recalls Minkowski’s characterization of “morbid rationalism” or Binswanger’s analysis of the temporality of love); (d) its comic aspect which is essentially the consequence of dissociation;¹³ and finally (e) its antidialectical character. This last point is a key one, for in the universe of utopian construction, quantity is never transformed into quality: “Utopia … is at the antipode … of a dialectical conception of things.”¹⁴

As a consequence, the dialectical category of totality is allen to the utopian mentality that mechanically juxtaposes incompatible assertions linked by the common denominator of their positive valuation. An unexpected analogy can be drawn between the structure of the utopian universe and politicai demagoguery which also blithely juxtaposes incoherent themes and issues, but generally with a rather negative valuation. According to Aron, “one chooses, in history, between sets (ensembles). The worst form of utopian thought leads to the failure to recognize the interdependence between some goods and evils or the incompatibility between some equally precious goods.”¹⁵ Here is one of the reasons why Marx should not be classified among the utopians; his historical vision is in fact very totalizing. He “chooses between sets,” knowing perfectly well that in politics, at least, every rose has thorns.¹⁶

The schizophrenie structure of utopian consciousness is particularly clear in the genre called anti-utopia or dystopia.¹⁷ In reality, nothing unites utopias and dystopias except the description of an imaginary society based on Reason. Otherwise, they are opposed in all aspects. And even if the term is recent, the genre of dystopian literature has a long history behind it. Perhaps Aristophanes’ Women is the earliest significai example of a dystopia. Certain chapters of Gulliver’s Travels are authentically dystopian, especially the journey to Laputa-Balnibarbi which presents a caricature of a society integrally founded on reason and also constitutes a coherent description—perhaps the first in literature—of the “morbid rationalist” variety of schizophrenia.

The master of the genre, however, is Orwell. His novel 1984 is certainly one of the key works of our epoch. Based upon an ingenious extrapolation of the lessons of the Moscow show trials, it provides a description of a totalitarian society which has successfully utilized scientific progress to establish a total control of private life. The dominant chracteristics of this world are: (a) a suppression of history by a Constant re-evalution of the past based on the exigencies of the present; (b) a dissociation of thought (”doublethink”) as a consequence of extreme subordination; (c) a repression of sexuality; (d) an antihumanism and a generalized depersonalization; and finally (e) the development of a new artificial language (”newspeak”) designed to enforce intellectual uniformity.

Some claim to discern certain traits of the People’s Republic of China in Orwell’s satire, whereas, myself, I find a curious analogy with the development of one of the most important currents of contemporary Marxism: the Althusserian school. This analogy is centered on two important and corollary points: its antihistoricism, which is symptomatic of a hidden rejection of the dialectic,¹⁸ and its antihumanism. Furthermore, it is an ideology, that is, the theoretical expression of a form of false consciousness.¹⁹ The popularity of the Althusserian school is contemporary with the profound crisis in the European Left. We have entered a historical period in which egali...