156 Part II: A Change of Scene
only a few weapons from the arsenal of Marxist theory, Mannheim had
converted the basic terms of historical materialism into their opposites.
On the other hand, Horkheimer insisted it was an ‘idealist illusion’ to
reduce all intellectual formations to systems of world-views. ‘If all thought
as such is to be characterized as ideological, it becomes apparent that
ideology, just like “particularity”, signifies nothing other than inadequacy
to eternal truth.’^83 By conceiving of truth as tied to existence, Mannheim
empties the concept of meaning. Horkheimer further claimed that,
instead of analysing the material conditions governing the development
of different forms of consciousness, Mannheim was obsessed with
stylistic peculiarities of thought. The concept of ‘attachment to being’
(Seinsgebundenheit) is nebulous unless it is related to structures of dom-
ination with their economic foundations and political organizations.
This critical blast can be explained by the fact that Mannheim’s thesis
that all knowledge is ideological threatened to undermine Horkheimer’s
desire to produce a universally applicable theory of society directed
towards practical change. But since Mannheim’s concept of ideology
implied in principle that Marxism itself was one ideology among others,
the further development of Marxism in the Institute of Social Research
could only be pursued with this reservation in mind. It was this that
provoked Horkheimer to his attack, since he wished to retain a kind
of monopoly of research on ideology. For the current and the future
empirical projects of the institute were all concerned with exploring the
ways in which the processes of transmitting false consciousness operate
in capitalist society.
Adorno faced the same problem in the context of his sociology
of music. Just how the concrete mechanisms mediating between music
and society actually functioned, and how music actually functions as
an ideology in society, were open questions.^84 In addition to the concept
of ideology, the question of value judgements was a further bone of
contention between Horkheimer and Mannheim. Horkheimer demanded
that what counted in deciding on the truth value of a social theory was
not its explanatory power in the abstract, but its potential for bringing
about social change. In Mannheim’s view, this idea offended against the
idea of a value-free theory and went beyond the predictive capacity of
the social sciences. In his opinion, sociology should aspire to provide
people with ‘an appropriate life orientation in industrial society,...
leaving open the question whether that society was to be organized on
a capitalist or socialist basis.’^85 He inferred this idea of the function
of theory from two findings. First, from the diagnosis of the present:
following the disappearance of traditional, universally valid interpreta-
tions of the world, modernity is experiencing a general loss of direction,
resulting in a need for guidelines to political action. Second, he inferred
from the history of ideas that sociology should take over the mission of
enlightenment, replacing the dogmatism of world-views with the self-
reflexive corrections of existing systems of thought and knowledge.