FREEDOM, POWER AND DEMOCRATIC PLANNING
The Sociology of Karl Mannheim
K. Mannheim (1935) Ideology and Utopia: an Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (new edition 1991).
K. Mannheim (1940) Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
K. Mannheim (1943) Diagnosis of our Time: Wartime Essays of a Sociologist. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
K. Mannheim (1951) Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
K. Mannheim (1952) Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
K. Mannheim (1953) Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
K. Mannheim (1956) Essays on the Sociology of Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (new edition 1992).
K. Mannheim (1957) Systematic Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
K. Mannheim and W. A. C. Stewart (1962) An Introduction to the Sociology of Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
K. Mannheim (1982) Structures of Thinking. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
K. Mannheim (1986) Conservatism: A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
FREEDOM, POWER AND DEMOCRATIC PLANNING
Collected Works Volume Four
Karl Mannheim
With a Note by Ernest K. Branstedt and Hans Gerth
First published 1951
by Routledge
Reprinted 1997
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2007
1951 Karl Mannheim
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ISBN 0415144485 (set)
ISBN10: 0415150825 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0415436656 (pbk)
ISBN13: 9780415150828 (hbk)
ISBN13: 9780415436656 (pbk)
Foreword
When Karl Mannheim died early in 1947 in his fifty-third year, he left a number of unpublished manuscripts in varying stages of completion. At the invitation of Dr. Julia Mannheim, the authors widow and lifelong collaborator, I assisted in forming an editorial team, selected from Mannheims friends and former students, for the purpose of making at least part of this material available to the wider public. We were united in the conviction that not only do the ideas laid down in these writings form an essential key to the full understanding of Mannheims work, but they contain a most important and topical contribution to social theory as well as impetus for social action.
The present book is the first of the posthumous volumes. The editorial work on it was performed by Dr. Hans Gerth, of Madison, Wisconsin, and by Dr. Ernest K. Bramstedt, in close co-operation with Dr. Agnes Schwarzchild, both of London, England. Dr. Julia Mannheims participation was essential in every phase of the work. The section on Control of the Economy, in , had to be rewritten completely; the responsibility for its present form is mine. The final draft was rechecked against the original manuscript by both editors. The bibliographic and other documentary material was added mainly by Hans Gerth, who must be regarded as primarily responsible for the text as it now stands. The Rockefeller Foundation generously awarded a grant to the Institute of World Affairs of the New School for Social Research for the work of preparing the various manuscripts for publication.
Probably, had the author lived to revise it, he would have changed and supplemented the text in many directions. But what could still be preserved is a work, complete in itself, that may well be considered his political testament.
Adolph Lowe
April 1950
Institute of World Affairs
New School for Social Research
New York, N. Y.
A Note on the Work of Karl Mannheim
I
In common with great sociologists of the past, such as Comte and Spencer, Marx and Max Weber, Mannheim engaged in sociological study as a response to the challenging present. For him sociology was a specifically modern way of thought which contributes to the rational self-orientation of man in industrial society. By raising us to a new level of self-awareness, the intellectual tools that the sociologist forges open up for us an insight into the dangerous process of the modern world with its drift toward social upheavals and world wars.
In many ways the present book rounds out Mannheims attempts at analyzing the contemporary crisis. Originally departing from abstract philosophical concerns, he addressed himself, during his German period, primarily to the intellectual constellation of modern society. The main fruit of these studies was Ideology and Utopia, first published in German in 1929 and issued in an enlarged English edition in 1936. In it, following the tradition of Max Weber and Max Scheler, Mannheim fully developed what has come to be known as Wissenssoziologie or sociology of knowledge.
The main thesis of this approach to social thought is that ideas emerge and develop in response to, and are determined by, the social-historical situation in which intellectual skill groups find themselves. And not only do such social-historical factors account for the particular political expectancies and demands that representative thinkers elaborate, but social determination reaches into the most intimate recesses of mans mind. The basic categories that inform ones view of social reality, the vision of past and future, especially the conception of human freedom, are shown to be bound up with the thinkers basic political stand and group identification. Even where the social observer is careful to control his personal bias, to argue objectively by not indulging in special pleading and subjective value preferences, his social-historical background can be shown to condition his ways of thought.
For Mannheim, thinking about social reality means first to see something, to bring facts into perspective, and by so doing possibly to overlook and bypass other things. Thus social thought is necessarily perspectivist thought, and derives from a standpoint located in the historical and social context. Thinkers of comparable rank and stature may view the identical object from different standpoints and then reach from divergent perspectives apparently opposite conclusions. But what becomes of truth if this is the basic intellectual situation? Mannheim sought to implement the quest for objectivity by assessing the angle of vision in which social reality presents itself to men in different social and historical situations. Since the waning of the Middle Ages, social thought has manifested itself in competitionsocial and intellectual. Ever broader groups have awakened to the fact that history is made by man, and have, with varying success, claimed to enter ever broader decision-making processes. They have found representative spokesmen, skilled in elaborating and justifying their aspirations and outlook.
