Karl Mannheim - Diagnosis of Our Time V 3: Collected Works Volume Three

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.

First published 1943
by Routledge, Trench, Trubner
Reprinted 1997
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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First issued in paperback 2010

1943 Karl Mannheim

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ISBN 9780415150811 (hbk)
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W ITH the exception of one (), these essays were written in war-time. They originated as lectures or as memoranda for groups who wanted to know what the sociologist had to say about certain aspects of the present situation.

For a while I hesitated to publish them in their original shape, and in normal times perhaps I should have preferred to knit them together more closely. But it was felt that the direct approach and the personal appeal should not be sacrificed to a more systematic and academic treatment. The independent essay, which can be read for itself and can become the basis of group discussion, conveys more directly the essential ideas than a comprehensive treatise. The book, as it stands, attempts to apply the method and the accumulated knowledge of scientific sociology to our reality. By shelving the work for later elaboration the time might be missed for whatever small contribution it might make to the discussion of the burning issues of the moment.

There are constellations in history in which certain possibilities have their chance, and if these are missed the opportunity may well be gone for ever. Just as the revolutionary waits for his hour, the reformer whose concern it is to remould society by peaceful means must seize his passing chance. For years it has been my conviction, which I have tried to bring home in my lectures and other activities, that Britain has the chance and the mission to develop a new pattern of society, and that it is necessary that we should become aware of it and act on it. In various ramifications this idea is applied in the present book to some concrete problems of the day.

It remains to indicate some of the occasions when the papers were read:

I. Diagnosis of our Time: January 1941, lecture at a Conference of Federal Union at Oxford; July 1941, at the Week-End Summer Meeting of the Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford; August 1941, at the International Gathering of Friends Service Council at Woodbrooke.

II. The Crisis in Valuation: January 1942, lecture in a series of public lectures on The War and the Future given by various speakers and arranged by the London School of Economics (University of London) at Cambridge.

III. The Problem of Youth in Modern Society: April 1941, opening address to the New Education Fellowship Conference at Oxford; May 1941, lecture given to the Masaryk Society, Oxford; July 1941, at Youth Leaders Conference at Oxford, arranged by the Board of Education.

IV. Education, Sociology and the Problem of Social Awareness : lecture at the University of Nottingham jointly arranged by the Institute of Education (University of London), Goldsmith College (University of London) and Nottingham University; lecture given to a group of members of the staff of the University of Newcastle, Durham, both in May 1941.

V. Mass Education and Group Analysis: reprint from Educating for Democracy, planned and edited by J. I. Cohen and R. M. W. Travers. Macmillan, London, 1939.

VI. Nazi Group Strategy: B.B.C. Overseas broadcast, 1941; reprint from The Listener, 19th June 1941.

VII. Towards a New Social Philosophy: see footnote, p. 100.

Acknowledgments and thanks are due for permission to reprint to Messrs. Macmillan and Co., and to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

I wish to express special thanks to the Social Research Division of the London School of Economics (University of London) for a grant for a scientific research assistant. In this capacity Dr. Charlotte Luetkens collected documentary material which forms a part of the background of these studies; she helped me in editing the manuscript and I owe much stimulation to the discussions I have had with her. I also take this opportunity to thank all those who in discussion groups or after the lectures contributed to a broader understanding of the problems.

Let us take the attitude of a doctor who tries to give a scientific diagnosis of the illness from which we all suffer. There is no doubt that our society has been taken ill. What is the disease, and what could be its cure? If I had to summarize the situation in a single sentence I would say: We are living in an age of transition from laissez-faire to a planned society. The planned society that will come may take one of two shapes: it will be ruled either by a minority in terms of a dictatorship or by a new form of government which, in spite of its increased power, will still be democratically controlled.

If that diagnosis be true, we are all in the same boatGermany, Russia, Italy, as well as Britain, France and U.S.A. Although in very many respects still different, we are all moving in the same direction towards a kind of planned society, and the question is whether it will be a good sort of planning or a bad one; for planning with dictatorship or on the basis of democratic control will emerge. But a diagnosis is not a prophecy. The value of a diagnosis does not mainly consist in the forecast as such, but in the reasons one is able to give for ones statements. The value of a diagnosis consists in the acuteness of the analysis of the factors which seem to determine the course of events. The main changes we are witnessing to-day can ultimately be traced to the fact that we are living in a Mass Society. Government of the masses cannot be carried on without a series of inventions and improvements in the field of economic, political and social techniques. By Social Techniques I understand the sum of those methods which aim at influencing human behaviour and which, when in the hands of the Government, act as an especially powerful means of social control.