The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar, and Future of Ideology

315 Pages·1976·33.986 MB·English

by  Alvin W. Gouldner (auth.)

The Dialectic
of ldeolony
and Technolony
CRITICAL SOCIAL STUDIES
Editors: JOCK YOUNG and PAUL WALTON
The contemporary world projects a perplexing picture of political, social and
economic upheaval. In these challenging times the conventional wisdoms of
orthodox social thought-whether it be sociology, economics or cultural
studies - become inadequate. This series focuses on this intellectual crisis,
selecting authors whose work seeks to transcend the limitations of conven
tional discourse. Its tone is scholarly rather than polemical, in the belief that
significant theoretical work is needed to clear the way for a genuine
transformation of the existing social orders.
Because of this, the series will relate closely to recent developments in
social thought, particularly to critical theory and neo-Marxism-the emerging
European tradition. In terms of specific topics, key pivotal areas of debate
will be selected, for example mass culture, inflation, problems of sexuality and
the family, the nature of the capitalist state, natural science and ideology. The
scope of analysis will be broad: the series will attempt to break the existing
arbitrary divisions between the social-studies disciplines. Its aim is to provide
a platform for critical social thought (at a level quite accessible for students)
to enter into the major theoretical controversies of the decade.
The
Dialectic
of Ideology
and Technology
The Origins, Grammar,
and Future of Ideology
Alvin W Gouldner
M
© Alvin W. Gouldner 1976
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1976
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published in the United States of America 1976
by The Seabury Press, Inc.
First published in the United Kingdom 1976 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York, Dublin,
Melbourne, Johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 19756 9 (hard cover)
SBN 333 19757 7 (paper cover)
ISBN 978-0-333-19757-8 ISBN 978-1-349-15663-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15663-4
This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net
Book Agreement
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
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which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Dedicated to the memory of an historical non-person:
Frederick Lewis (Henry) Demuth
(23 June 1851-28 January 1929),
son of Helene Demuth
Who knew something of the dark side of the dialectic
Ideas like that, thought Skelton, could set a man to barking. Even a brief
soulful howl beside the garbage would help . . .
There was a knocking on the door of the fuselage. Skelton opened it. It was
the wino drill sergeant from next door. "Come in."
"Thank you, sir. Do you have a dog?"
"No, I don't."
"I thought I heard barking."
"I was clearing mythroat."
THOMAS McGuANE,
Ninety-Two in the Shade
" " "
Where there is a kinship of languages, it cannot fail, due to the common
philosophy of grammar-! mean, due to the unconscious domination by
similar grammatical functions-that everything is prepared from the outset
for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems . . .
NIETZSCHE
" " "
Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct.
MAX WEBER
" " "
. . . our conclusions agree with the general point of view expressed by
Chomsky that dialects of a language are apt to differ from each other in
low-level rules, and that superficial differences are greater than those
differences found (if any) in their deep structures.
WILLIAM LABOV
Contents
PREFACE xi
Part One. Ideology and the Communications Revolution
1. The Splitting 3
Bibliographical Note 19
2. Ideological Discourse as Rationality and False
Consciousness 23
Bibliographical Note 64
3. Surmounting the Tragic Vision: Generic Ideology as
Idealism 67
4. The Communications Revolution: News, Public, and
Ideology 91
5. From the Chicago School to the Frankfurt School 118
6. Toward a Media-Critical Politics 138
Bibliographical Note 165
7. Ideology, the Cultural Apparatus, and the New
Consciousness Industry 167
8. Ideology and the University Revolt 179
Part Two. Ideology and the Modem Order
9. Ideology and the Bourgeois Order 195
10. Interests, Ideologies, and the Paleo-Symbolic 210
11. Ideology and Indirect Rule: Technocratic Consciousness
and the Failure of Ideology 229
12. From Ideologues to Technologues 250
Bibliographical Note 273
13. Ideology Critique and the Tension of Parts and Whole 275
Index 295
ix
Preface
This study is about ideologies as a form of discourse; i.e., as a culture of
critical speech; i.e., as an elaborated sociolinguistic speech variant. It is part
of a larger work, including two other volumes: On Marxism, and Revolution
ary Intellectuals.
Being about such topics, inevitably this present study has implications for
the ongoing world convulsions, although these are exhibited only in a set of
side-steps. For who longs to address these head-on? In such a situation one
must lay one's cards on the table, but there is no obligation to read them out
loud. In a serious game, the convention is always the same: it is the cards, not
the player, who speaks. But one should never forget, this is a convention.
Like anyone else, I write out of the interaction between where I have been
and where I now find myself, inevitably tacking between what I did
previously and the work remaining to be done. Some will remember the last
serious effort as being The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. Unless,
however, their memory is a bit longer, and can go back to my Enter Plato,
they will not altogether understand the present offering.
Since "ideology" is now a topic of inquiry historically continuous with the
problematic formulated by Marx and Engels (rather than with the earlier
French "ideologues"), I have naturally asked myself: What is the relationship
of this work to Marxism, and is it Marxist at all?
To answer this in the flat negative seems both ungrateful and, in my case,
just plain wrong; for I am well aware of how much I have learned from the
work of Marx and from Georg Lukacs, whom I think the greatest Marxist
theorist of the twentieth century.
At the same time, simply to affirm the connection also seems presumptuous
in the manner of a "name dropper," who seeks to borrow luster by intimating
a closeness with the great. This view of the matter may seem strange to
"normal," academic sociologists who commonly know little, and think less, of
Marxism. My judgment, however, differs. I think of certain Marxists as having
made Promethean achievements; as having risked and accomplished much in
the world; of some, as brave men who have torn their lives out on behalf of
their convictions; and of some few as men of intellectual genius and heroic
xi
xii Preface
action with whom I, as a rather unworldly scholar, have no urge to connect
myself.
What, then, is my relationship to Marxism? A British reviewer (of my last
book, For Sociology) has seen fit to characterize my position as a "critical
Maoism." The reader will be better able to judge whether this designation is
apt after he reads my chapter on Maoism, in my as yet unpublished book on
Marxism. For my part, I am all too keenly aware that, if I am Marxist at all, I
belong to no Marxist community, and certainly to no Marxist establishment. If
my own view is solicited, I would have to label myself as a-Marxist outlaw.
For essentially what I am engaged in here, in the larger project, is a
demystification of Marxism, which often proceeds by grounding itself in
certain Marxist assumptions. It is an exploration of the limits of Marxist
consciousness. It is therefore necessarily a study of the linkages between
Marxism as an articulate, self-conscious technical theory, as an extraordinary
and elaborated linguistic code, with the less reflexive reaches and (hence less
articulate or more silent) paleosymbolic levels in Marxism.
A concern with the demystification of Marxism is grounded in and justified
hy the assumption that Marxism today-as a real historical movement-has
not produced the human liberation it had promised. Certainly there are great
parts of the world, such as China, in which Marxism has successfully
overthrown archaic systems of exploitation and colonial domination. When
one remembers the unbelievable misery to which such societies had been
subjected, there seems little doubt that the new societies by which Marxists
have replaced them are much to be preferred, allowing as they do both more
human dignity and more adequate subsistence.
At the same time, however, Marxism has also helped to produce, in other
parts of the world, grotesque political monstrosities such as Stalinism. The
need to conceal Marxism's own partial implication in the political and human
catastrophe of Stalinism is one central source of Marxism's contribution to
social mystification. Paralyzed by defensive impulses, many Marxists have
either refused to speak at all about the implications of Stalinism for Marxism,
while others who confront the issue sometimes act as if Marxism had
absolutely nothing to do with it, and allege that Stalinism is to be explained
solely in terms of certain peculiar historical or Russian characteristics,
"Asiatic backwardness."
The concealment of Marxism's implication in (which is not equal to saying
its causation of) Stalinism, has been one major reason for the blunting of
Marxism's own demystifying edge and for the corresponding growth in its
own role as a social mystifier. One way of documenting this would be to study
the reactions of even non-Soviet Marxists to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag
Archipelago; this detailed exposure of Soviet prison camps has often caused
Marxists great anguish and generated a kind of repressive impulse toward the
book, either by not talking about it at all or else by softening the impact of its