End of Ideology and Political Theology

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HIROSHI OBAYASHI

THE END OF IDEOLOGY AND POLITICIZED THEOLOGY

Since the publication of Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology in I 960, controversies have been carried on as to whether there has been an end to or decline of ideology in contemporary politics. Both pros and cons with regard to this "decline" theory have argued for their respective positions with empirical evidence. 1 It seems, however, that Bell's theory has, despite some points to be modified and some empirical evidence to the contrary, an over-all apparent empirical plausibility. It has been gradually clarified that the decline theory does not and cannot imply the complete disappearance of ideological elements from the contemporary political scene. But this theory does imply that, in industrially advanced parts of the world, ideology is no longer present in the original and total sense of the term. Ideological elements are present in any political situa­ tion, but politics today (especially in North America, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Japan, Scandinavia and parts of Eastern Europe), domestically and between nations, is no longer a genuine thoroughgoing politics of ideology. The alleged end or decline of ideology involved certain conceptual limitations in defining the term. Bell's theory clearly stands on a defini­ tional presupposition. He first tried to salvage this concept from the deluge in its usage and then assigned to it only a limited meaning. Utilizing Karl Mannheim's distinction between "the particular concep­ tion of ideology" and "the total conception of ideology," Bell limited his use of this term to only the latter, "total" sense.2 "Ideology" can denote just about anything conceptually as long as it represents some common interest, as in the case of "consumer ideology," or "anti-abortionist ideology." For this reason, Bell proposed to use the Hiroshi Obayashi, professor of Religfous Studies at Douglass College, New Brunswick, NJ., has published widely in scholarly journals. An earlier article on the ambiguities of technology appeareain CROSS CURRENTS, Summer 1973.

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term "ideology" only in its total sense, clearly defined and limited in its usage: A total ideology is an all-inclusive system of comprehensive real�ty; it is a set of beliefs, infused with passion, and seeks to transform the whole of a way of life. This commitment to ideology-the yearning for a "cause," or the satisfaction of deep moral feelings- is not necessarily the reflection of interest in the shape of ideas. Ideology in this sense, and in the sense that we use it here, is a secular religion. 3 With this clear limitation in the usage of the term, Bell set out to prove that we are now living in a post-ideological era. America provided socialism, which to Bell was one of the prototypical examples of ideology so defined, with a fertile soil and plenty of oppor­ tunity to strike roots and embody its goals. There have been in actuality periods of strenuous socialist activity in the recent history of the United States. Socialism, however, never became a life option and viable alterna­ tive for American politics. It was Bell's argument that "the failure of the socialist movement in the United States was rooted in its inability to resolve a basic dilemma of ethics and politics. The socialist movement, by the way in which it stated its goal and by the way in which it rejected the capitalist order as a whole, could not relate itself to the specific problems of social action in the here-and-now, give-and-take political world. In sum: it was trapped by the unhappy problem of living in but not of the world: it could act, and then inadequately, as the moral but not political man in.immoral society. 4 Today, Bell contends, ideologies generated by the nineteenth century intellectuals such as Proudhon and Marx are exhausted. The failure of socialism in America, continued dehumanization and forfeiture of a utopian thrust even in societies where socialism became reality, and the increasing victory of "rational" expediency over hard-line ideology in the politics of the Soviet Union after Khrushchev, were all made to serve as evidence for Bell's theory of the end of ideology in the industrially advanced sectors of the world. Modern man, he says, no longer lives and thinks ideologically. "Ideology, which by its nature is an all-or-none af­ fair, and temperamentally the thing he wants, is intellectually de­ vitalized, and few issues can be formulated any more, intellectually, in ideological terms." 5 Observers who concur with Bell gave support to his theory by adding more convincing pieces of evidence. Seymour Lipset stated that politics became boring in the western world: the passionate exchange of verbal ammunition about such noble ideas as freedom and equality, between peoples of left and right, both committed to ideological goals, was now replaced by issues such as milk prices and safety equipment on au­ tomobiles, for which ideological commitment is utterly unnecessary. 6 Politics has become largely a matter of bargaining and making deals

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between groups, and largely a matter of administration through bureaucratic organizations within a larger community, rather than a matter of achieving a social change through a process of class confronta­ tion and struggle. The working class, which had been the torch bearer for an ideology of social change, and often a matrix of strong social forces, is now more or less satisfied with its own affluence in the western world. In America, politics has become the tactics of collective bargain­ ing. Workers and managers confront each other only across the bargain­ ing table, where the issues are seldom class oriented or ideologically motivated, but rather a matter of greater shares in capitalistic profits. To add empirical and statistical support to the general observation of the end of ideology, Robert E. Lane contributed the following report; In an age of affluence, (1) social alienation will decline... (2) the sense of crisis and of high national, personal and group stakes in national elections declines; political partisanship takes on a new meaning... (3) people slowly lose (or relax) their class awareness. (diminishing) the importance of class voting in many electoral dis­ tricts... (4) religious institutions- slowly lose their influence over men's thought and behavior... (5) the struggle for equality by a deprived racial group will be facilitated by the expanding economy, the availability of governmental resources for sp�cial assistance, and the relative security of otherwise challenged and more hostile "opposition" groups... (6) there will be a rapprochement between men and their government and a decline in political alienation. 7 On the basis of such an empirical plausibility one can tentatively ac­ cept, though with important qualifications to be .discussed later, the de­ cline theory of ideology as a working theory that can be applied to the contemporary political scene. What should we make of this trend? For one thing, de-ideologization can be considered the secularization process of politics. Gods of ideologies have been dethroned one after another. Ideological deities for whom men had assumed uncompromising attitudes have relaxed their holds on political decisions. A considerable amount of political activity is now carried on without reference to those ideological deities. What happened to religion in the way of secularization has also hap­ pened to politics. Secularization, which was once deplored as the demise of the sacred, has now been discov«:;red to be rather a maturation process for religion. Likewise, one can find de-ideologization, the secularization of politics, rather welcome as a step in the right direction. Such an interpretation of de-ideologization can be facilitated, especially if one recalls the fact that the degree and extent of human cruelty that our wars have incurred were proportionate to the intensity of ideological elements in them. Outright ideological warfare, not to mention religious warfare, was the worst kind, for practical limits of destruction were HIROSHI OBAYASHI

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overstepped to the point of all-out attack and total annihilation. Points to be settled were not considered in terms of a particular problem, but by a total worldview; antagonists were therefore hated as irreconcilable enemies, as if they were the cursed embodiments of devils as in religious warfare. Ideological warfare was caused by misunderstanding in locat­ ing thesources of human ills and social problems. Considered in this manner, the increasing de-ideologization, with its growing trend of pragmatization,* can be found encouraging. It allows a greater latitude to the empirical weighing of alternatives for resolving pressing socio-economic problems, and in achieving some short-range political objectives. Bell believes there is a growing consensus among contemporary western political intellectuals that includes acceptance of the Welfare State, recognition of the desirability of centralized power, and acceptance of a system of mixed economy and political pluralism. 9 The wide acceptance of these items ( often the issues that divided peoples ideologically) now dulls the cutting-edges of hard-line ideologies to the point of making them superfluous on the contemporary political scene. The pronouncement of the end of the ideological age is thus made on a note implying that we are growing up. Ari observation might be made about the recent trend in theology, from the theology of hope to liberation theologies, if we consider them in the light of this decline theory of ideology. It is interesting to note, first, that the increasing political turn in theology came during the period· marked by an increasing de-ideologization of politics. From the very outset, the trend set by the theology of hope contained seminal political implications. For hope is hinged on a God who is "the power of *The word "pragmatism" is used in the present essay in a pedest­ rian sense of the term, its concern related only to practical or mate­ rial affairs. Pragmatic man is interested in the working out of an idea in actual reality; he is interested only in specific problems and in what will work to get them solved. In so doing, however, he often sacrifices interest in ideals, or rather, he is little interested in metaphysical or transcendent meaning. This is clearly less sophist�­ cated than the specific philosophical viewpoints of William James andJohn Dewey, both of whom unequivocally affirmed the impor­ tance of ideals which kept the human process alive. The prag­ matism which has characterized recent political trends, increasingly divorcing politics from ideals and reducing it to a matter of practi­ cality and efficiency, should not be confused with that of James and Dewey. It is ironic that secular pragmatism has "pragmatized" even the noble thrust of philosophical pragmatism. 8 the future and is believed in as the creator of the new world." 10 The

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power of the future lies not only in the future; it is also at work in the present as a transforming and creative power. "By future ('advent')," Moltmann said, "we do not mean a far-away condition, but a power which already qualifies the present through promise and hope, through liberation and the creation of the new possibilities.11 While politics in the While politics in the industialized sectors of the world, whether capitalist or communist, allegedly became less ideological, theology began bearing ideological overtones; reflecting success­ ively the futurist ideological elements of Ernst Bloch, the anti­ establishment ideology of Herbert Marcuse, the New Left student ideologies, and the liberation ideologies of the revolutionary Third World. One may certainly try to account for such an ideological turn in theology by saying that it resulted from questioning the morality of American involvement in Southeast Asia or from sen­ sitivity to explosive situations in many Latin American countries. It may therefore be interpreted as theology's responsiveness to the changing human situation. Such explanations are to a large extent correct, but the question still remains: when politics itself had been de-ideologized in America and Europe, why did theology belatedly begin bearing ideolog­ ical overtones in becoming political? Politics was tending away from ideological questions and moving toward practical and empirical issues. Despite the continued presence of political parties, ideological differ­ ence� between parties have become less important in American and European politics in the last generation. Domestic politics, and to a great measure international politics as well, in the United States and Europe, is no longer an arena of ideological clashes, but has become a format for collective bargaining. The fact that theology began bearing ideological overtones precisely at the time when politics ceased to do so might ap­ pear to provide an empirical proof for a sociological theory that religion (including theology) is always a step behind the times, reflecting trends that have preceded it. It might also be taken as theology's threat to become an ideology surrogate. That is to say, theology, which has long been metaphysically abstract, spiritually inward-looking, soteriologically otherworldly, and ethically privatistic and individualistic (hence timid toward any political involvement), might appear suddenly to have be­ come politicized and come to fill the place allegedly vacated by ideologies. Theologians have always warned against reducing their task to the level of mere ideology. The threat, however, has now become real, be­ cause it seems that the ideological overtones of a number of politically oriented varieties of theology are beyond doubt. One has only to recall that Black Power was theologically sanctioned , 12 Allende's Chilean socialism was welcomed with the hosannas once accorded toJesus' entry into Jerusalem, 13 non-violent and sometimes violent revolutions were found in many theological writings in search of theological justifica-

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tion, 14 and the whole Third World, without any qualification, was vested with a messianic role in tomorrow's world against the first and the sec­ ond world (who are the Babylonians and the Romans). 15 The question we must ask has a twofold implication. From theology's side, the question is whether the ideological overtones of recent trends in theology might not be damaging to theology precisely as theology. From the side of politics, one can ask if de-ideologizing tendencies in contem­ porary politics signals a step in the right dire