Abstract
My chair at Sheffield was called “Political Theory and Institutions”. I often wonder whether the men who named it thought that they were creating two jobs or one. What was meant to be the force of that “and”? I suspect that they thought, not very precisely, that there were indeed two positions, but that they wished, as a good English compromise, to keep them close together, at least to stop them getting too far apart. They probably did not wish for a “mere theorist” or for a menu too theoretical however scholarly, therefore “and Institutions” which would seem something practical, not simply descriptive.
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This is only an essay, very literally, for any full account of the relationship of political theory to political practice would have to be a treatise on the dominance of all modern politics by the vocabulary and concepts of the Graeco-Romano-European tradition. (For I admit to finding no evidence that even if there are distinctive forms of politics in the contemporary “Third World” that they are or even can be sensibly expressed in an alternative vocabulary. “Western” political thought, like “Western” science — a term less often used -is a product with particular cultural roots but with a universal human relevance). So in an essay and not a treatise, I ask pardon for reasons of space and time for not giving footnotes to authorities, even those who obviously influence what I will now argue. The first section of this essay follows closely but revises heavily part of a short review article, “Philosophy, Theory and Thought” which appeared in Political Studies, February 1967, pp. 49–55 (by kind permission of the editor and the publishers). And some of my distinctions on “practice” I took from a thoughtful, unpublished paper to a seminar-discussion on this same theme of Sheffield students given by my colleague Jitendra Mohan, but I am sure he would have great reservations about the use I make of them.
In my “Philosophy, Theory and Thought” ibid. I in fact called this first category of political opinion, “political thought”; but I now think that this usage is confusing.
Published posthumously in London, 1903. The first two notes in the analytic table of contents state: “The purpose of this book is to treat the History of Political Societies or States from the point of view of Inductive Political Science.” And “It is concerned with the development as well as the classification of forms of polity.”
And this possibility of alternatives is the ground on which a vindication of the compatibility of freedom and planning would begin.
A doctrinaire, as distinct from any holder of a doctrine, is someone who cannot see the genuine theoretical element in other doctrines. This is why, quite simply, he is likely to make big mistakes.
Their writings exhibit a much more concrete sense of being oppressed by a total system (a very undiscriminating, crude and misleading flattery, incidentally) than of any clear, comprehensive ideological alternative. And their positive assertions (if one looks at what they say about the nature of the world, rather than their narcissistic preoccupation with Marxism) tend to be highly particular, peculiar, individual, romantic (in good and bad senses) but concerned with freedom and undeniably free. They furnish an odd testimony to the apparent discontinuity of things, that the world is, after all, full of contradictions, and necessarily so, rather than to “the system” or to imminent and total better ones.
If by the “end of ideology” is meant the declining plausibility of comprehensive accounts of world history, yes indeed. But those like Daniel Bell and his friends who popularised the phrase plainly meant also the decline of doctrinal conflict. This now appears to be ludicrously untrue. Indeed precisely as people lose faith in total descriptions, they also lose faith in “mere practicality” or “empiricism” as the modest-grand alternative; and they have to turn, almost perforce, to defining middle-term objectives in broad contexts, which can be justified in some universal terms: theory and doctrine. Or else, more subtly, they become more self-aware of the implicit moral assumptions on which all accounts of “practice” and “pure practicality” build.
See my In Defence of Politics, Revised Pelican Edition, London, 1964, p. 170. Before the modern era, power may sensibly be viewed as total (as by Wittfogel), but only in the restricted sense of power as something immune from challenge. But only in the modern era have people attempted to use power in a total manner to achieve, in the other vital sense of power (often confused with the first), some premeditated effect, in this case a total or fully comprehensive effect or change. I do not think that in fact this is possible, but I would defend both Friedrich and Arendt strongly against the critics of their “totalitarian hypothesis” by arguing that it has been attempted, may be still in China, and could be again. But before modern technology and technological ways of thought, power which sought to be unchallengeable had to limit its sphere of alleged competence serverely. (See my “The Elementary Types of Government” Government and Opposition, Winter 1968, pp. 000–000).
In Defence of Politics, p. 118.
Or the flabby liberal desire to be active and busy however vague the intentions or uncertain the result.
“Oh what a world of profit and delight, of power, of honour and omnipotence is promised to the studious artisan” (Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus).
Neither of these “policy science” views would be those, I am sure, of Dr. Henry Kissinger, for instance. He is an authentic theorist, but a wrong one.
There was once upon a time an English Professor of Politics who used to use the word “subtle” with an equally grim frequency to explain relationships between things which he could not understand, but was apparently impressed by (e.g. compare and contrast “the subtle relationship between liberalism and capitalism” with “liberalism and capitalism find their essential relationship in praxis” — which I overheard in a discussion with Lukac’s disciples.)
There are, of course, things which are technically possible, but politically impractical in any time span worth considering: these I would call “scientistic” or “scientism” — a kind of utopianism; but there is another kind of utopianism or visionary thinking which is moral and does not claim to be either technically or politically practical, and so is not to be criticised or despised on those grounds, but which is simply and sometimes grandly — like Sir Thomas More’s Utopia or William Morris’s News From No-where — a reminder of the perpetual gap between the “is” and the “ought”, thus valuable for this.
See further the section called “Method as Doctrine” of my In Defence of Politics, Pelican edition, pp. 190–98.
Thus the denial of the importance of theory in a revolutionary situation, as compared to tradition or circumstance (thinking of the debates on Marxism and Russia and of Naziism and Germany) is more sensibly and temperately put as the denial both that specific doctrines are necessarily entailed in specific theories (although in practice they are modified by them) and that the new practices follow directly from the doctrines (although in practice they are modified by them). The situation is always complex, many factors are involved, but the theoretical framework can still be of vital, if never of exclusive importance, a necessary if never a sufficient condition for what in fact happened (and if not, perhaps, as direct causes at all, then at least indirect causes as the explanation of the concepts that the new rulers use to interpret changing conditions). Similarly much of the debate about the importation or transference of institutions to the “third world” is confused in the same way. The claim that institutions can be transferred entirely with the same doctrines and practical consequences is as absurd and false as the belief that all such transfer is imposed and then utterly transformed by indigenous factors, unless massive external coercion is present. Such extreme cases are not likely to be found, and every actual case will vary in the manner and proportion to which the importation is changed as it changes.
For example, English and German socialists used to regard the state ownership of major industries as part of the doctrine. They are now usually wiser to see such a policy as a means, among other possible means, according to circumstances, and not as an end in itself. Other means to the ends of equality and social justice (or “liberty, equality and fraternity”) may be less radical, such as fiscal planning or “state-capitalism”, but they may also be more radical, such as ‘workers’ control” or the “communeisation” of society. Similarly much liberal theory has been notoriously over-committed to a whole host of procedural devices and an ever-lengthening list of natural rights, as if these contingent means and formulations were necessary ends. I would even argue, in another place, that both “constitutionalism” and “the multi-party system” are simply means to freedom and responsible individualism: such ends could be pursued with a minimum of formal constitutional law and even within a one-party state (or a state in which party counts for relatively less, among other kinds of interest or pressure groups, than in many past or present accounts).
“Policy” has often had a bad name for being flexible; but it is more sensible to suspect, but not to reject a priori, doctrines for commonly being inflexible.
Both these passages are quoted by Heinrich Wysling, ed., in his Introduction to Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Briefwechsel 1900–1949, Oldenburg, S. Fischer, pp. L–LI.
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© 1971 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Crick, B. (1971). On Theory and Practice. In: von Beyme, K. (eds) Theory and Politics / Theorie und Politik. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1063-9_14
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