What is sociology for? In 1845, Karl Marx famously noted in his Theses on Feuerbach that “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” So, how do we go about producing such social change in the face of opposition? How do we reach “the promised land”, “happiness for all, -world peace”, “life in harmony with nature”, in a word, utopia. Is it possible? Several decades later, in a classic work of the sociology of knowledge, Ideology and Utopia, Karl Mannheim considers “utopia” the complex of energies that work for change in society, as opposed to “ideology,” which he considers (following the Marxist tradition of ideology as false consciousness) as the complex of energies acting to preserve and support the existing order of things. Or, as Mannheim suggests:
“The concept of utopian thinking reflects the opposite discovery of the political struggle, namely that certain oppressed groups are intellectually so strongly interested in the destruction and transformation of a given condition of society that they unwittingly see only those elements in the situation which tend to negate it. Their thinking is incapable of correctly diagnosing an existing condition of society. They are not at all concerned with what really exists; rather in their thinking they a ready seek to change the situation that exists. Their thought is never a diagnosis of the situation; it can be used only as a direction for action. In the Utopian mentality, the collective unconscious, guided by wishful representation and the will to action, hides certain aspects of reality. It turns its back on everything which would shake its belief or paralyze its desire to change things.” (Mannheim, 1929: 40)
What do we make of this? Marx himself consistently argued that his vision of the coming ideal socialist society was not a utopian dream. Instead, he attempted to show that the seeds of this society were already beginning to grow within capitalist society, as a matter of practicality. For Marx, socialism was not a fantasy but an inevitable reality, and he attempted to demonstrate through a scientific analysis of capitalist society that communism was the natural, even necessary result of the historical evolution of capitalism. This is why Gy5rgy Lukacs in a classic commentary on Marc, History and Class Consciousness, coined the term ‘false consciousness”:
“The older ‘natural’ and ‘conservative’ forms of domination had left unmolested the forms of production of whole sections of the people they ruled and therefore exerted by and large a traditional and un-revolutionary influence. Capitalism, by contrast, is a revolutionary form par excellence. The fact that it must necessarily remain in ignorance of the objective economic limitations if its own system expresses itself as an internal, dialectical contradiction in its class consciousness. This means that formally the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie is geared to ecArtofnic consciousness. And indeed the highest degree of unconsciousness, the crassest form of ‘false consciousness’ always manifests itself %Allen the conscious mastery of economic phenomena appears to be at its greatest.” (Lukacs. 1968: 64)
