S&S Quarterly, Inc.Guilford Press

Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Secret of These New Times by David Kettler;Volker MejaReview by: Michael LöwyScience & Society, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Winter, 1997/1998), pp. 559-561Published by: Guilford PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40403673 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 559

Karl Mannheim and the Crisis of Liberalism: The Secret of These New Times, by David Kettler and Volker Meja. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995. $39.95. Pp. 350.

This intellectual biography, based on impressive scholarship, is an outstand- ing contribution to the rediscovery of a major figure of modern social sci- ence. Following a historical and chronological order, it deals with the main moments of Karl Mannheim's life (1894-1947) and work: his youth in Budapest, as a lecturer at the "Free School for Studies of the Human Spirit"; his exile in Germany, after the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919; his academic career in Heidelberg and Frankfurt, and the publication of his major work, Ideology and Utopia (1929); the reception of his sociology of knowledge in Weimar Germany and, during the 1930s, in the United States; his new exile, in England, after Hitler's triumph in 1933; and finally, dur- ing his last years, his adjustment to the conservative strand in English liber- alism. Considering that his English period is, in the authors' own words, his "least attractive phase," it is surprising that more than half of the book is dedicated to the post-1933 years.

Since the book was written by two authors, it is understandable that, from time to time, differences of viewpoints appear between distinct chap- ters. For instance, the thesis argued in chapter 1 ("Politics as Science"), that Mannheim "belongs to the history of liberalism," is hardly confirmed by the next three or four chapters. The main document for sustaining this argu- ment is a letter from Mannheim to the Hungarian social scientist Oscar Jaszi, in which he speaks of the need "to carry liberal values forward with the help of the techniques of modern mass society," but this piece from November 1936 cannot be taken as representative of his pre-1933 views.

In fact, as the author of chapter 1 himself acknowledges, "to classify Mannheim as a political partisan who fits neatly into one of his own catego- ries of ideological ideal types - as conservative, liberal, or socialist - would be to close one's thinking to the principal challenge implicit in all of his essays." Why then attempt to define his style of thought as "predominantly liberal"? The author himself points out that "George Lukács was more im- portant to Mannheim's intellectual formation than Oscar Jaszi," but he pre- tends, against all evidence, that Mannheim's youthful anti-positivism and anti-liberalism - strongly inspired by Lukács - can be considered as "a lib- eral objection to the prevalent form of liberalism."

The term "liberalism" can perhaps be applied to the English period in Mannheim's work, and even in this case with many reservations, consider- ing his strong emphasis on planning - hardly a liberal concept. In any case it is quite inadequate to describe his style of thought during the Budapest

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560 SCIENCE & SOCIETY

and Weimar years, when he considered liberalism as a perfectly obsolete system. This, by the way, is one aspect of Mannheim's thought that justifies a renewed interest in his work nowadays, when liberalism parades as the only possible rational paradigm.

There is little reference to liberalism in the chapters dealing with Mann- heim's Hungarian and German years. We have here a brilliant analysis of the intellectual process through which, moved by Romantic protests against rationalism and positivism but refusing to dismiss science as such, Mannheim began to develop a cultural sociology, as opposed to the civilizational one inspired by the paradigm of the natural sciences.

The first product of this new approach was the essay "Conservatism" (1925), a masterpiece in the sociology of knowledge. Studying the conser- vative style of thought and its social roots in traditionalist social layers threat- ened by the rise of capitalism, it traces the conservative geneology of his- toricism, as well as its change of function and transformation, through Hegel and Marx, into a method of modern revolutionary thought. Far from being "written under the pressure of the nationalist right," as the first chapter of the Kettler and Meja book suggests, its strategic aim, as correctly indicated in the second chapter of the book, is to document the convergence between the old and the new anti-capitalism against the process of liberal/bourgeois rationalization.

Mannheim's most important writing, Ideology and Utopia (1929) , widely perceived as the cornerstone of the sociology of knowledge as a scientific discipline, takes some of its key concepts - such as "ideology," perceived as the intellectual expression of social classes - from Marxist social theory. However, it sharply distinguishes itself from Marxism by crediting the "so- cially unattached intellectuals" with the capacity of producing a dynamic synthesis of the opposed ideologies and social viewpoints.

The book was widely reviewed (by, among others, Paul Tillich, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt and Hans Speier), and was welcomed by sectors of the left intelligentsia (such as the socialist journal Die Gesellschaft) who shared Mannheim's interest in neoromantic critiques of liberalism and rationalism. But within German academia his sociology of knowledge was viewed with some diffidence, as voiced, for example, by Alfred Weber after Mannheim's presentation at the 1928 Congress of German Sociologists: "Is all this anything more than a brilliant rendition of the old historical materi- alism, presented with extraordinary subtlety?"

In spite of this, and of his Jewish-Hungarian origin, Mannheim was able to secure a professorship in Frankfurt; but when he applied in 1932 for funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the head of the Paris office wrote a negative report (unearthed by Kettler and Meja), explaining that "any large aid (in Frankfurt) just now would be badly received by German

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BOOK REVIEWS 561

public opinion" because of the "international and Jewish" atmosphere of the University.

This problem was soon to be solved by the Nazis' dismissal, in 1933, of Mannheim and other "Jewish and international" figures. Exiled in England, Mannheim tried, during the following years, to adjust his writings to the lib- eral/conservative strand in Anglo-Saxon culture. One important step in this direction was the translation into English of Ideology and Utopia, which he supervised himself. Published in the United States in 1936, this edition was in fact a rewriting of the book, replacing the post-Hegelian Gasteswissenschaft by a post-utilitarian philosophy of mind. The authors offer us a fascinating account of this attempt and of the failed American reception of the book, in spite of the efforts of Louis Wirth and Hans Gerth.

In Mannheim's writings from his last years, the sociology of knowledge is increasingly replaced by a new conception of the role of the sociologist as a social therapist and as a counselor to the elite. The authors do not hide their critical assessment of this English period.

Combining new historical information with insightful reflection on social theory, this book is a remarkable scholarly achievement.

Michael Lówy

4, rue de la Glacière 75013 Paris, France

Shantytown Protest in Pinochet's Chile, by Cathy Lisa Schneider. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1995. $59.95; paper, $19.95. Pp. xxiv, 269.

Cathy Lisa Schneider has written a fascinating study of protest in Chile based on interviews with shantytown residents from both Santiago and Valparaiso who were active in the movements that led to Chile's 1990 supposed transi- tion to democracy. She skillfully weaves the insights and experiences of her friends in the movement into a compelling analysis, which draws also on the extensive literature on protest movements in general and on Chilean social movements in particular. She writes with clarity, precision, and passion as she analyses the uprisings of Chile's poorest and most oppressed citizens while she traces the rise, transformation, and decline of authoritarian rule.

Schneider begins with a sensitive discussion of the 1973 coup that toppled Salvador Allende, and a quick overview of the protest movements that led to the re-emergence of civil and political life. She presents a brief

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