On John Pocock's "Communication"Author(s): Richard AshcraftReviewed work(s):Source: Political Theory, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Nov., 1975), pp. 464-466Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/190841 .Accessed: 25/05/2012 10:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory.

http://www.jstor.org

COMMUNICATIONS

On John Pocock's "Communication" (Volume 3, No. 3, August 1975)

Of course, I never imagined that Professor Pocock (in commenting on my "On the Problem of Methodology..." in Vol. 3, No. 1, February 1975) was restricting himself to "language" in his conceptualization of politics, certainly not in the sense that he is unawre of "extra-linguistic" phenomena. Nevertheless, one of the general points of my article was that the bracketing of the non-linguistic, non-philosophical, non-scientific aspects of political life in order to develop a methodology which focusses upon language, science, and philosophy does, as a matter of fact, have practical consequences in shaping students' conceptions of the nature and purpose of political theory.

To which Professor Pocock replies in terms of his intentions, but, as he himself has acutely noted, the use of political speech always conveys more than the author specifically intended to say, in part, because of the socially-imposed ambiguities contained in the language he uses (Politics, Language, and Time, pp. 23-24). Thus, "it is part of normal experience to find our thought conditioned by assumptions and paradigms so deep- seated that we did not know they were there until something brought them to the surface" (p. 32). The importance attached to paradigms as socially-contextual phenomena, therefore, "takes precedence" over the

question of the author's "intention" (p. 25). Moreover, since speech is not self-locating, but is placed by the interpreter within the range of paradigms available to him, this means that "in using a socio-political language at all, we commit ourselves to a tissue of political implications, to a variety of

political functionings, and to the recommendation of a variety of authoritative structures greater than we can critically distinguish at any one moment" (p. 286). So far, I believe, Pocock and I are travelling down the same road. What I wished to point out, however-and to which he

apparently registers an objection-is that the "political implications" of the currently dominant approaches to political theory are such that the

[464]

COMMUNICATIONS [465]

struggle between classes for the control of social goods is de-emphasized as a way of "understanding" the origins, nature, and purpose of political theory.

Pocock refers in his reply to those pages m his book where the dichotomy which he believes is important is introduced as the general framework for the consideration of the relationship between language and the social context. This is "the idealist/materialist dichotomy" which leads to "the problem of reduction" (p. 35). Apparently, the choice for Pocock, as for Weber, is that of regarding language or ideas as "eplphenomenal" or

viewig them from "the inside" (pp. 38-39). Thus, he concludes, "under pressure from the idealist-materialist dichotomy, we have been giving all our attention to thought as conditioned by social facts ... and not enough of our attention to thought" in its relatively independent functions (p. 37). This explains -his choice of methodology, there being "no more

profound reason" for his rejection of the other side of the dichotomy than that "the time has come for a change." As an empirical descrption of the

present state of political theory, I find this simply incredible. One might imagine that political theory had suddenly fallen under the domination of Marxist materialists (and "crude" materialists at that). Yet, the only reference provided in the text following this general charactenzation is to C. B. Macpherson's book, which surely stands as the exception to the scores of works on seventeenth-century political thought written from a non-Marxist, non-social contextual standpoint. Since there is no actual

predominance of a social contextual methodology within the field of political theory, and since Macpherson's Marxist approach is referred to several times by Pocock as a paradigmatic alternative to his own viewpoint, we may suspect that there is a "more profound reason" underlying Pocock's rejection of that alternative.

Put another way, the question I raised m my article was whether the so-called "intellectual" (non-profound) choices of methodology with respect to the study of political theory were not bound up with political nmplications flowing from the political paradigms available to contempo-

rary interpreters of political theory, through which their "intentions" are expressed. Thus, "we need to pay attention both to what we may be saying and to the political context m which we may be sayig it" (p. 287). Furthermore, m seeking to uncover these unexammed or implicit political assumptions, we ought to look for "reasons of a contemporary nature that render it plausible that (an individual's) thought should have been so conditioned" (p. 33).

The real issues between Professor Pocock and myself, therefore, are not about the existence of extra-linguistic phenomena, reductiomsm, nor the

[466] POLITICAL THEORY / NOVEMBER 1975

emprcally-grounded character of language. Rather, the poit I raised was that any approach to political theory ought to forge an explicit link between its conceptualization of political theory and an empincally- grounded theory of social change, such that the meaning of "political" theory would derive from the relationshup between these two and the existing alternatives available to the interpreter. Pocock replies that "sometimes" it is "a good idea" to examine changes m language in order to understand politics and/or social change. Phrased in this way, it is difficult to see why it is a good idea, or why only sometimes, or what criteria would enable us to determine when we ought to reject such an approach, and so on. Of course, the mdefiniteness of this standpoint makes it much easier to reject an alternative as bemg, m prnciple, dogmatic. Thus, the "materialist" approach is rejected because "moSt commonly" it employs "a rather crudely applied correspondence theory," treating ideas as mere "reflections" of material interests (pp. 105, 36).

The "crudity" of a definite, but "reflective" materialism versus the sophistication and complexity, but theoretical indefmniteness, of an "autonomous" treatment of ideas or language-the classical intellectual formulation of the anti-Marxist critique by Weber-is not itself a sufficient or especially useful characterzation of the theoretical possibilities for stating the relationship between ideas and social reality, although such a charactenzation does serve a useful polemical function from the stand- poit of one of the available political paradigms. If we heed to Professor Pocock's warning that no amount of itellectual clarification can remove the iterpretive use of language from its political context (p. 20), we rmght be prepared to view the "autonomous" methodological approach defended by Pocock (pp. 13, 15, 104) as not bemg without its political implications, given the context within which it appears.

"Understanding" the uses of language or political theory, in short, has very much to do with granting a primacy to the political conflict within society as the supplier of meaning to the available interpretive paradigms. Beneath the bogus ssues of false dichotomies, dogma, reductionism, or the exclusion of language from politics, there are some serious problems concerning the importance of making distinctly political judgments as a way of understanding the uses of language, changes in the social structure and political theores, and the relationship between these and the various social groupmgs within society which deserve further and closer explora- tion.

-Richard Ashcraft Umversity of Califorma, Los Angeles