"Ideology" from Destutt De Tracy to MarxAuthor(s): Emmet KennedySource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1979), pp. 353-368Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709242Accessed: 17/02/2010 14:27

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"IDEOLOGY" FROM DESTUTT DE TRACY TO MARX

BY EMMET KENNEDY*

I. Historians of ideas have come to recognize the value of histories of words for tracing the evolution of mentalities. Lucien Febvre's study of the eighteenth-century origins of the word "civilization,"' Karl Grie- wank's study of the word "revolution,"2 Michel Vovelle's analysis of the use of the word "bourgeoisie" in Versailles just prior to 1789,3 and Keith Baker's study of the word "social science"4 have all helped to enrich our understanding of eighteenth-century attitudes as well as to warn us against the often dangerous practice of mistaking one generation's or one class's use of a word for another's. The general history of the concept "ideology" has been admirably outlined by George Lichtheim5 in a brilliant, if brief, article and at greater length in German by Hans Barth.6 Lichtheim and Barth, however, focus on the philosophical underpinnings and ramifica- tions of the concept even where the word itself is not explicitly used. Both studies only sketch the pre-Marxian uses of the term by the French group of ideologues and their opponents. Consequently, it has not yet been fully explained how "ideology," the synonym Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) proposed in 1796 for "science of ideas" (understood in the sensationalist tradition of Condillac) could come to mean "false class consciousness"

* An abridged version of this paper was read at the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Society for French Historical Studies at the Univ. of Rochester, April 9, 1976. I am indebted to Brandeis Univ. for the Sachar International

Fellowship in 1970-71, to the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library for a grant-in- aid in 1969 which made the research for this paper possible, and to the American

Philosophical Society for allowing me to extract quotations and a few paragraphs from my fuller biographical study published in 1978 in the Society's Memoirs

(vol. 129): A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution: Destutt de Tracy and the

Origins of 'Ideology.' 1 "Civilisation: Evolution of a Word and a Group of Ideas," in Peter Burke, ed.,

A New Kind of History from the Writings of Lucien Febvre (New York, 1973), 219-57.

2 Der Neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff (Weimar, 1955), 171-82. 3 M. Vovelle, D. Roche, "Bourgeois, rentiers, proprietaires: Elements pour

la definition d'une categorie sociale a la fin du XVIIIe siecle," Actes du quatre vingt-quatrieme Congres national des Societes savantes (Dijon, 1959), Section d'Histoire moderne et contemporaine (Paris, 1960), 419-52.

4 "The Early History of the Term 'Social Science,'" Annals of Science 20

(1964), 211-26. 5 "The Concept of Ideology," History and Theory, 4 (1965), 164-95 6 Wahrheit und Ideologie, 2nd ed. (Zurich, 1961), 13-31; cf. also Jay W. Stein,

"The Beginnings of 'Ideology,'" South Atlantic Quarterly 55 (1956), 163-70.

353

354 EMMET KENNEDY

less than fifty years later. How could the name for the science of ideas- whose contributions to psychology, physiology, anthropology, medicine, and political science have been so amply studied by Professor Sergio Moravia7-so quickly acquire its pejorative sense? An answer is needed, for the history of the word is to a large extent the history of the school. What happened to "ideology" illustrates very well what happened to the Enlightenment after the French Revolution.

Napoleon's disdain for the "metaphysicians" some of whom had helped bring him to power on 18 Brumaire is well known. After convers- ing with the "ideologists" of the National Institute about the relationship of signs or words to ideas, after sharing or pretending to share their liberalism, he nastily called them by the name "ideologues"8 when he consolidated his power in the early months of Year VIII of the French Republic. This opportunistic betrayal arose from the association of this "science of ideas," whose founders had sat in many of the representative assemblies since 1789,9 with a political liberalism of the 1789-92 vintage, updated by the anticlerical republicanism of the Directory and abstracted into a political science by Sieyes, Talleyrand, Merlin de Douai, Baudin des Ardennes, and Dupont de Nemours.10 It was their republicanism which Napoleon came to distrust and upon which he eventually declared

open war by purging the Tribunate in January 1802 and suppressing the

dangerous "ideological" Section of Moral and Political Sciences of the National Institute in January 1803.

What has often been ignored is that this association of sensationalist psychology with republican politics was not fortuitous but quite explicit in Destutt de Tracy's mind when, in a clearly positive spirit, he coined the word in a "Memoire sur la faculte de penser," read in installments before the Institute from 1796 to 1798. "Ideology" was a necessary neologism, he announced on June 20, 1796, because "metaphysics" was too discredited and "psychology" implied a knowledge of the soul, knowl-

edge which no one could any longer claim to have. "Ideology," on the other hand, "was very sensible since it supposes nothing doubtful or un-

7 11 Tramonto dell' illuminismo, Filosofia e politica nella societa francese (1770- 1810, (Bari, 1968); 11 Pensiero degli Ideologues, Scienza e filosofia in Francia 1780-1815 (Florence, 1974).

8 See the Messager des relations exterieures, Jan. 12, 1800, cited in F. Brunot, C. Bruneau, Histoire de la langue franpaise des origines d nos jours, new ed., G. Antoine, G. Gougenheim, R. Wagner (13 vols. in 19, Paris, 1966-68), IX, Pt. II, 847.

9 Members of the Class of Moral and Political Sciences included the abbe

Gregoire, Talleyrand, the Director La Revelliere-Lepeaux, the regicide Lakanal, Daunou, Cambaceres, Merlin de Douai, Dupont de Nemours, Sieyes, and Roederer to name only the politically most important.

10 See their various memoirs in Memoires de l'Institut national. Classe des Sciences morales et politiques (5 vols., Paris an IV-an XII [1798-1804], I, II passim. This collection will henceforth be abbreviated MIN.

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 355

known; it does not call to mind any idea of cause. ... Its meaning is very clear to everyone,"1 for it was the Greek for "science of ideas." Historians have been too quickly satisfied with this explanation of the new science and have neglected the broader implications of the term. "Ideology" in 1796, we are led to believe, had little political content, but Tracy never intended "ideology" to refer only to the psychology of Locke and Condil- lac. Ideology was to be not only "positive" but useful.'2 "Its purpose," he told his Institut colleagues, was "knowledge of effects and their practical consequences."13 Two months before he introduced the new word, in his first lecture at the Institut April 21, 1796, Tracy announced his aim and that of his whole section of the Institut: to establish a sound "theory of the moral and political sciences."14 The science of ideas was genealogically the first science; all of the others would spring from "ideology" in the fashion of biological encasement (emboitement) or

preformation.15 Since all sciences consist of different combinations of ideas, the science of ideas takes clear priority. Specifically, it is the basis of grammar, logic, education, morality, and "finally the greatest of arts, for whose success all the others must cooperate, that of regulating society.'16 Not even from its inception, then, was the word "ideology" meant to have either "metaphysical" or apolitical connotations.

The breadth of the term's connotation was clearly detected by Degerando, (himself a prize-winning "ideologist" who was careful to adhere more closely than Tracy to the "pure ideology" of signs and ideas) in his memoir, published shortly after Brumaire, Des Signes et de lart de penser consideres dans leurs rapports mutuels:

A contemptible play on words has cast some ridicule on the expression "ide- ology," adopted by different writers; as if ideas were not something very real, as if they were not even what is most real for us, since our knowledge is only our ideas. All science is truly an "ideology" or a reasoning on our ideas, and if this expression has any defect, it is its universality, which renders it too vague. Far from being subject to the criticism that it is unreal, it can perhaps only be accused of having too broad a meaning.17

It was the extension of the meaning of "ideology" which led to its

pejorative use. In an article, "Systeme methodique de bibliographie,"'8 Tracy reordered the prevailing Baconian and the French Encyclopedia's conception of the hierarchy of the sciences, depriving theology of the

11"Memoire sur la faculte de penser," MIN, I, 323. 12 Ibid., 1, 318. The word "positive" was used in the eighteenth century to

mean "exact" and "scientific." 13 Ibid., I, 324. 14 Ibid., I, 285. 15 The theory in seventeenth-century embryology that every germ cell contains

all the parts of the future organism. Ibid., I, 383-84; on Leibniz see Bentley Glass et al., Forerunners of Darwin 1754-1859 (Baltimore, 1959), 42-44. 16 MIN, I, 287.

17 (4 vols., Paris, an VIII [1800]), IV, 101. 18 Moniteur, 8, 9, Brumaire, an VI [October 29, 30, 1797], 151, 152, 156.

356 EMMET KENNEDY

pre-eminent position which d'Alembert had perhaps insincerely con- tinued to accord it in the Discours preliminaire, and placing Ideology squarely in its seat as the new queen. In a series of anonymous articles in the Mercure of 1799, Tracy summarized Dupuis' Origine de tous les cultes, trying, like Dupuis, to reduce all religions, including Christianity, to some form of sun or zodiac worship.19 A year earlier, in the same journal, he had responded to the Institute concours, "What are the in- stitutions for establishing morality in a people?" Tracy argues that an invigorated police force for which rewards would be commensurate with captures, and repressive laws and secular institutions, rather than Theo- philanthropic, religio-civic festivals would solve the Republic's problems. The preacher could be silenced by the legislator who could discontinue his salary. Ideology, not religion, was the basis of morality, which was "only an application of the science of the generation of our sentiments and of our ideas from which it derives."20 As a counsellor of Public In- struction in 1799-1800, Tracy drafted circulars for the professors of the Directory's central schools; in the circulars he stressed the crucial role of Ideology in each subject to be studied by the young elite of the French nation. History, for example, was to be taught from Enlightenment texts only after a firm introduction in the true principles of Ideology and legislation, which would protect the student from past moral and meta- physical errors.21 When these schools came under attack, Tracy tried to avert their suppression by a defense of their curriculum designed frankly for the only completely educable class-the propertied savant class whose lessons children of the unpropertied would receive in abridged form.22

At stake was a whole political and social philosophy, a conservative

post-Thermidorean liberalism of a part of the propertied class, an Ide-

ology which was strongly materialist in its conception of the relationship between the physical and moral. The Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme,23 the work of Tracy's co-ideologist, Dr. Georges Cabanis, published first with Tracy's lectures in the Institute memoirs, furthered the Enlightenment physiology of Maupertuis, La Mettrie, Diderot, and d'Holbach. Tracy incorporated much of it in his Projet d'elemens d'ide- ologie a l'usage des ecoles centrales (1801), the last and most rigorous sensationalist statement of the eighteenth century. "Ideology," as one historian astutely comments, "was not the truly neutral term which Destutt

19 Analyse de l'Origine de tous les cultes (Paris, an VII [1799]). 20 Quels sont les moyens de fonder la morale chez un peuple? (Paris, an VI

[1798]), 19. 21 "Pieces relatives a l'instruction publique," in Elemens d'ideologie (5 vols.,

Brussels, 1826), II, 257-318, passim. 22 Observations sur le systeme actuel d'instruction publique (Paris, an IX

[1801]). 23 (2 vols., Paris an X [1802]); several chapters had been published previously

in MIN, I, II.

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 357

de Tracy believed he had chosen; or rather it ceased to be once these savants brought a doctrine [materialism] to their specialty"24 [ideology].

The scope of this ideology became even more apparent when Tracy finished his first three volumes (Part One) of the Elemens d'ideologie in 1805, containing his "Ideology properly speaking" (as the second edition of the first volume was obliged to clarify it), Grammar, and Logic. He then set out to outline "applied" "Ideology"-future volumes which would treat of political economy, morality, and social organization (Part Two), and physics, geometry, and calculus (Part Three)-all under the title Elemens d'ideologie. This expansion of his original conception of "ideology" led him to comment:

We can never pay too much attention to the illusions which certain words pro- duce. Nothing proves better how vague and confused their meaning is.25

Maine de Biran, the brilliant disciple of Cabanis and Tracy who won the Institute prize in 1802 for his memoir on the "Influence de l'habitude sur la faculte de penser,"26 was quick to perceive the ramifications of the new science. Biran was equipped to examine the school's philosophical attitudes for he had been studying some "ideological phenomena" which Tracy had outlined for investigation-unconscious intellectual habits, the "liaison" or association of ideas, particularly in language. From habit alone, Tracy had written, "stem practically all the difficulties of the science called ideology."27 Ideology was supposed to study intellectual habits, not succumb to them like schoolmen, Platonists, Scotists, Thom- ists, and Cartesians, who only prove "that we accept from the same pen both what is proven and what is only apparently so, that the authority of the man is still considerable and that the force of demonstration does not

prevail alone."28 Tracy assured his Institute audience that in contradistinc- tion to Kantians, "ideologues" did not form a sect, used strictly empirical methods, and adulated no one philosopher. However, this was not strictly the case. Divided as they were on many issues, the ideologues formed a

group around Tracy and Cabanis, both of whom Biran visited in July 1802. "The two friends." he wrote:

seem to have only one opinion, they live only for their families and the ideology, the progress of which interests them above all else. Ideology they told me would

24 Joanna Kitchin, Un Journal "philosophique": "La Decade" (1794-1807), (Paris, 1965), 120.

25 Elemens d'ideologie, Troisieme partie, Logique (Paris, an XIII [1805]), 429, Only four volumes of the Elemens were published; the fourth is vol. 1 of part II.

26 Oeuvres de Maine de Biran, ed. Pierre Tisserand (14 vols., Paris, 1922-

1949), II. 27 "Memoire sur la faculte de penser," MIN, I, 444. 28 Tracy, "De la metaphysique de Kant, ou Observations sur un ouvrage

intitule: Essai d'une exposition succincte de la Critique de la Raison pure, par J. Kinker," MIN IV (an XI [1803]), 547.

358 EMMET KENNEDY

change the face of the earth, and that is exactly why those who wish the world to always remain stupid (and with good cause) detest ideology and the ideo- logues.29

Clearly here is something which approaches the secular millenarianism of modern ideologies. "Ideology" was, in the minds of its founders, more than the Greek translation of "science des idees." It was a political and social ideology as well, although not so clearly a class ideology of the bourgeoisie as some have maintained, since its philosophical presupposi- tions were not shared only by the bourgeoisie and since two of the three most important Ideologues (Tracy and Volney) were nobles. Rather it was the ideology of a group of propertied intellectuals in power after Thermidor, who hoped to use it to transform and stabilize post- Revolutionary France.

Because this political ideology of free thought, free press, individual liberties, the integrity of representative assemblies, and secularization differed so markedly from that which Napoleon sought to inculcate after Brumaire, the First Consul adopted the tactic of ridiculing Ideology as

metaphysical revery. Sieyes was derided for abandoning "his constitu- tional dreams for a round sum [the estate of Crosne] .... When it comes to money, Sieyes is very positive and dismisses ideology."30 By January 1800, when Benjamin Constant in the Tribunate was protesting govern- ment time limitations on debate of bills, an article, probably government inspired, appeared in the newly controlled press. "The civilian faction is also called by the name metaphysical faction or 'ideologues.' Flatterers of

Robespierre, they drove him to death, by the very excess of power they allowed him. They used the Directory to proscribe talents which over- shadowed theirs. They looked for heroes to bring down the Directory. Today they have hatched new plans."'3 The Ideologues were being vilified not only for venality, and for propounding metaphysics (which they actually wished to bury), but also for bringing into power Robespierre whom they all abhorred. This diatribe was to be repeated by Napoleon personally, on February 2, 1801, before the Council of State when he denounced "Windbags and ideologues who have always fought the exist-

ing authority."32 As the Concordat was being ratified, the Ideologues were reproached

for their irreligion and the Institute was labeled a "College of Atheists."33

29 Biran to abbe Feletz, 11 thermidor X [July 30, 1802], Oeuvres de Maine de

Biran, VI, 140. 30 L. A. Bourrienne, Memoires, 3rd ed. (10 vols., Paris, 1829-1830), III, 128. 31 Messager des relations exterieurs, loc. cit. 32 Quoted in A. Vandal, L'Avenement de Bonaparte (2 vols., Paris, 1902-

1907), II, 451; cf. Journal de Paris, 12 pluviose an IX [Feb. 2, 1801]. 33 "Lettre des agents du prince de Conde," 2 janvier 1800, quoted in Vandal,

II, 30.

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 359

"Our recent ideologues," Chateaubriand wrote in the Genie du Christian- isme,34 "have fallen into the great error of separating the history of the human mind from the history of divine things by maintaining that the latter do not lead to anything positive and that only the former can be of immediate use."

Napoleon asked Chateaubriand, "Did not the ideologues want to make Christianity a system of astronomy? Even if that should be so, do they think they can persuade me that it is insignificant?"35 "Won't this ideology do some harm to your religious sentiment," Ballanche asked the future founder of electrodynamics, Andre Marie Ampere. "Take care, my dear friend, you are on the edge of a precipice ... "36

At Erfurt in September of 1808, arranging for the transfer of the Grande Armee from Prussia to Spain, Napoleon marshalled all his argu- ments to warn the Prussians against the Ideologues:

I have some in Paris. They are dreamers and dangerous dreamers; they are all disguised materialists and not too disguised. Gentlemen, philosophers torment themselves to create systems; they will search in vain for a better one than Christianity, which in reconciling man with himself assures both public order and the peace of states. Your ideologues destroy all illusions, and the age of illusions is for individuals as for peoples the age of happiness.37

The apologetic of the social usefulness of Christianity-precisely the gospel Marx was to attack later-was now fully established. It was no longer "the mystery of the Incarnation, but the mystery of the social order."38 "Ideology" undermined this social utility, not just because it was too metaphysical, nor because it denied the mystery of the Incarna- tion, but because it was politically dangerous. Just three months before

Napoleon's Erfurt harangue, the first Malet conspiracy had been un- covered in Paris, and several Ideologues, including Tracy, had been

implicated, although only one was imprisoned. Their meetings, Napoleon informed Fouche in June, "cannot be regarded as simple philosophical conversations with disreputable and unphilosophical men like Malet, Guillot, and other generals, all men of action, little inclined towards philosophy. This is not ideology, but a real conspiracy."39 But was not the danger which Napoleon feared precisely that the first could lead to

34 New ed. (4 vols., Paris, an XI [1803]), vol. III, Pt. III, bk. I, ch. 3, 77. 35 Quoted in Louis de Villefosse and Janine Bouissounouse, L'Opposition a

Napoleon (Paris, 1969), 254-55. 36 A. M. et Jean Jacques Ampere, Correspondance et souvenirs, 1805-1864

(2 vols., Paris, 1875), I, 17. 37 Talleyrand, Me'maires, ed. Due de Broglie (5 vols., Paris, 1891), I, 452. 38 Conseil d'etat, 1806, quoted by J. Christopher Herold, The Mind of

Napoleon (New York, 1955), 105. 39 Napoleon to Fouche, 17 juin 1808 in Leon Lecestre, Lettres inedites de

Napoleon ler (2 vols., Paris, 1897), I, 206.

360 EMMET KENNEDY

the second? When Napoleon learned in Smolensk that the second Malet

conspiracy had come far closer than the first to achieving a coup d'etat on October 23, 1812 and that Ideologues had again been elected in num- bers to Malet's fifteen-man government, even though they had nothing to do with this second attempt, he returned rapidly to France, denouncing "ideology" uninterruptedly from that time until the debacle of 1814. The Ideologues were "brooders" from Auteuil40 who sought vengeance by the pen and voted against the Emperor in the Senate. They were

"empty brains" who cried against despotism in a country, where if there had been any despotism in it, they would have been muzzled.41 He hoped that the new spiritualism of Royer-Collard would "kill them [and their

liberalism] on the spot."42 Soon "almost all religious and philosophical thought," even "noble sayings," were proscribed as "ideology."43 The clas- sic denunciation had come as soon as Napoleon returned to France in his speech before the Council of State on December 20, 1812:

We must lay the blame for the ills that our fair France has suffered on ideology, that shadowy metaphysics which subtly searches for first causes on which to base the legislation of peoples, rather than making use of laws known to the human heart and of the lessons of history. These errors must inevitably and did in fact lead to the rule of bloodthirsty men. Indeed, who was it that proclaimed the

principle of insurrection to be a duty? Who adulated the people and attributed to it a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising? Who destroyed respect for and the sanctity of laws by describing them, not as sacred principles of jus- tice, but only as the will of an assembly composed of men ignorant of civil, criminal, administrative, political, and military law? ... .44

It was to be expected, therefore, that Destutt de Tracy would propose the deposition of Napoleon on April 2, 1814.45

II. New editions of the writings of the Ideologues were in vogue during the Restoration (more editions of Tracy's works appeared then than during the Empire) as were all Enlightenment works. Their connec-

40 Villefosse and Bouissounouse, p. 326; Abel Francois Villemain Souvenirs

contemporains d'histoire et de litterature (2 vols., Paris, 1854-55), I, 152. 41 J. Hanoteau, ed., Memoires du general de Caulaincourt (3 vols., Paris,

1933), II, 310. 42 Quoted in Antoine Guillois, Le Salon de Madame Helvetius (Paris, 1894),

245-46. 43 Villemain, I, 282.

44"Reponse a l'adresse du Conseil d'Etat,' in Moniteur, 21 decembre 1812, 1408. I am indebted to Professor James Friguglietti for revising my translation of this and other passages in this paper.

45 Lambrechts is usually credited with making the proposal to depose Napoleon. According to Lafayette, Tracy's close friend, Lambrechts wrote the preamble and

Tracy made the proposal. Memoires correspondance et manuscrits du general Lafayette, publies par sa famille, eds. F. de Corcelles, Georges Washington Lafayette (6 vols., Paris 1837-38), V, 305.

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 361

tion with the new liberal and Carbonarist opposition to throne and altar is very clear.46 Stendhal, who took Tracy's Ideology more seriously and more literally than perhaps any of Tracy's readers, termed it in 1805 "the only durable thing,"47 which effected "an astonishing change in all my ideas."48 He continued to publicize his infatuation with it in his cor- respondence and in articles in the Paris Monthly Review, the London

Magazine, and the New Monthly Magazine.49 In his De l'Amour, much indebted to Tracy's De I'Amour, Stendhal wrote, "My intention is cer- tainly not to usurp a title which belongs to someone else. If ideology is a detailed description of the ideas and all the parts which may compose them, the present [work] is a detailed and minute description of all the sentiments which compose the passion called love .. ."50 While his use of the word closely approximated Tracy's "Ideology properly speaking," i.e., science of ideas, Stendhal was well aware where these ideas were supposed to lead. He embraced the applications as enthusiastically as he did the metaphysics, calling Tracy's Commentaire sur l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu51 (a political manifesto that was supposed to serve as the rough draft of Tracy's fifth volume of Ideologie) his "credo poli- tique."52 Likewise Thomas Jefferson, who supervised the translation of this credo into English, understood its broad implications. In 1816, John Adams asked Jefferson to explain the word.

"3 vols. of Ideology" Pray explain to me this Neological title! What does it mean? When Bonaparte used it, I was delighted with it, upon the Common Principle of delight in every thing we cannot understand. Does it mean Idiotism? The science of Non compos Menticism? The Science of Lunacy? The theory of Delirium? Or does it mean the Science of Love? Of Amour propre? Or the Elements of Vanity?53 Jefferson answered soberly: "Tracy comprehends, under the word 'Ide- ology' all the subjects which the French term Morale as the correlative to Physique. His work on Logic, government, political economy and

46 See my A Philosophe in the Age of Revolution: Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of "Ideology," ch. 6.

47 Stendhal to his sister Pauline, 7-25 brumaire XIII [29 oct.-16 nov. 1804], Correspondance, ed. Henri Martineau (10 vols., Paris, 1933-34), I, 290.

48 Stendhal to Pauline Beyle, 24 brumaire XIV [15 nov. 1805] Correspondance, II, 72.

49 Published in Stendhal, Courrier anglais, ed. H. Martineau (5 vols., Paris, 1935-36) I, 97, 327-31, II, 167, 246-47, 367, III, 123, 408-10, 443, V, 266.

50 Stendhal, De l'amour, ed. H. Martineau (Paris, 1957), ch. 3, 13 n. 51 (Paris, 1819). This work was sent in manuscript to Thomas Jefferson in

1809. Jefferson arranged for its translation and publication in Philadelphia in 1811. Tracy finally published the French original during the Restoration when it went through numerous editions. See my Destutt de Tracy .. . , ch. 6.

52 Stendhal to baron de Mareste, 24 juillet 1819, Correspondance V, 261. 53 Adams to Jefferson, Dec. 16, 1816 in Lester J. Cappon ed., The Adams-

Jefferson Letters (2 vols., Chapel Hill, N. C., 1959), II, 500-01.

362 EMMET KENNEDY

morality, he considers as making up the circle of ideological subjects. "54

Partisans of the Restoration continued to use "ideology" in the pejo- rative sense. On May 5, 1816, the Annales politiques, morales et lit- teraires denounced "philosophical charlatanism" and "fantastic ideology," products of the "school of Diderot and Holbach" which "made both ego- ism and anarchy sacred . . (and) lead us to materialism and atheism." Shortly before the agitation of 1820, before the assassination of the duc de Berri, the Russian ambassador, Pozzo di Borgo, warned that France "had fallen into the hands of persons, interests, and the spirit of the former army, the doctrinaires, ideologues, or anarchists.... This state of things . . will lead to the fall of the legitimate dynasty . . . and an inevitable war in Europe."55 In August 1829, the government-owned, Gazette de France leveled a full-blown attack against the latest edition of the Ele- mens d'ideologie, asserting that "ideology," that "geometry of incredulity," was only one of "two conspiracies" the common ultimate aim of which was to overthrow "the ancient confraternity of throne and altar .... Never had irreligion and illegitimacy been so tightly linked. It is now well proven that the enemies of the intellectual order are the most intense adversaries of the political order .. ."56 Writing in a similar vein a cor-

respondent of Melchiorre Delfico, the Neapolitan liberal revolutionary, wrote of "French Ideology, conceived and developed to spread atheism and materialism among the youth. What a barbarous and vile desire."57 Nonetheless, in Italy and Spain there were numerous translations of

Tracy's Ideologie and numerous imitations of this "science of ideas" which used "ideology" in their titles. "Ideology" was used in a non-

pejorative sense but the authors recoiled from accepting its full materialist

implications. Indeed the controversy over Ideology in France was not just a duel

between Ultras and liberals, for there were the Doctrinaires who be-

longed to the opposition from the left during the Restoration yet repudi- ated eighteenth-century materialism. This group, often called spiritualist or eclectic, and whose philosophy tended to be dominant in France into

54 Jefferson to Adams, Jan. 11, 1817, Cappon, II, 505. 55 Quoted in Bertier de Sauvigny, La Restauration, rev. ed. (Paris, 1955), 160. 56 De nos sages modernes, M. Destutt de Tracy," Gazette de France, 8 aout

1829, 3-4. 57 G. M. Giovene to M. Delfico, 16 settembre 1834, in Delfico, Opere com-

plete, ed. G. Pannella, L. Savorini (4 vols., Teramo, 1901-04), IV, 202; for a list of translations of Tracy's works see the bibliography of my Destutt de Tracy; The following are some works of "ideology" in Italian: Don Giuseppe Mazzarella, Corso d'ideologia elementare (Naples, 1826); Evasio Andrea Gatti, Principi d'ideologia (Florence, 1827); Ermes Visconti, Riflessioni ideologiche intorno al

linguaggio grammaticale dei popoli colti (Milan, 1831); Giovanni Reguleas, Nuovo piano d'istruzione ideologica sperimentale (Catania, 1833); Pietro Buttura, Ideologia (Zara, 1835); Melchiorre Gioia, Ideologia (Milan, 1822).

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 363

the Second Empire, found its most eloquent spokesman in Victor Cousin, himself an active Carbonarist. Cousin admired Tracy, the man, as did Damiron another popular spiritualist, yet he criticized the authoritarian character of Ideology which had come to be revered in certain circles "almost like a religion," and which refused "to step down from its throne, appear in the crowd [amidst the other constituents of eclecticism], justify its claim by the sweat of its brow . . . submit to the right of examination. .. ."58 Like Napoleon, who had called Ideology "metaphysical," Cousin accused this systematization of "free thought" of being dogmatic and intolerant. Another Cousinist, J. G. Farcy, writing from Italy about

Tracy's profound influence there, talked, perhaps with some exaggeration, of the Italians' "exclusive adoration of one system."59 The science, which, like all Enlightenment thought which it synthesized, was supposed to eschew the "esprit systematique," was now being criticized for its sys- tematic spirit-a characteristic of all ideology. Indeed, as early as 1805

Tracy had referred to his Ideology as "a solid and well-linked system."60 By this time, however, Ideology was beginning to be dated. It no

longer enjoyed the monopoly its critics claimed. As early as 1812, an

accomplice in the first Malet conspiracy, the defrocked abbe Lemare, who had written primers in which he had spoken of Ideology in the re- stricted sense as the "torchlight of grammar,"61 repudiated the rumor that Malet was attempting to restore the Bourbons: "Malet and his fellow

conspirators continued to follow another ideology."62 "Ideology" in this

usage, was strictly political ideology; it was not forcibly associated with ideologue republicanism, for there was also the explicit recognition of at least another ideology-royalism. Lemare completed the association of "ideology" with politics, but also accepted, long before the modem

dictionary, the plurality and conflict of ideologies. Noteworthy in the spiritualist-doctrinaire repudiation of Ideology

after Tracy's death was an article in the Dictionnaire des sciences phi- losophiques of Adolphe Franck, which claimed Tracy "had carried sen- sualism with him into the tomb."63 After giving the "legitimate" meaning of the word, Franck's work noted, "Today, the word 'ideology,' invented

by the eighteenth century and for its uses, carries the mark of its coiners. In a restricted sense ideology is no longer the science of ideas, abstracted

58 V. Cousin, ed., Tennemann, Manuel de l'histoire de la philosophie, 2nd ed., (2 vols., Paris, 1837), I, xi.

59 E. Garin, Storia della filosofia italiana (3 vols. Turin, 1966), III, 1059. 60 Elemens d'ideologie, Troisieme partie, Logique, 429. 61 Cours de langue latine, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1819), 189. 62 Lemare, Malet ou Coup d'oeil sur l'origine, les elements, le but et les moyens

des conjurations formees, en 1808 et 1812, par ce general et autres ennernis de la tyrannie (n.p., Paris, n.d. [1814]), 7.

63 Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques par une societe des professeurs de

philosophie (6 vols., Paris, 1844-1852), II, 90.

364 EMMET KENNEDY

from time and men; it is the science of ideas as the school of Condillac understood it."64 While the 1835 Dictionnaire of the Academie Francaise included the word65 for the first time, giving it a perfectly straight and restricted meaning (Tracy had participated in the composition of this

Dictionnaire), Franck's observation deprived the "science of ideas" of its

universality by circumscribing it in time. The enthusiasts of the 1813 War of Liberation from Napoleon de-

fended their ideology as a permanent force which had survived the

ephemeral Empire and would become "solid and almighty in the future." So one German (U. Jung) concluded in 1842 that "Napoleon . . . discovered later with his ingenious, prophetic eye that the dangerous power of Germany lay in its ideology."66 But Napoleon's association of

"ideology" with abstract metaphysics and utopian, political liberalism be- came a widespread pejorative usage after 1848. The Prussian Minister von Manteuffel spoke after 1848 of the "real misfortune of the German

ideologues . . . who never accomplish anything, because they form their ideas in advance, stick fast to them and beat their heads against the wall." In 1860, Wilhem Dilthey contrasted "inspired ideologues" against "ex-

perienced politicians."67 Another significant trend was to interpret "ideology" as a form of

idealism or classicism. There was an idealist strain in Tracy's "ideology" when he stressed the importance of the study of ideas as the only things that exist for us, the only means we have to know things.68 This strain

was virtually nullified by his doctrine of motility and his attempted refuta- tions of Malebranche and Berkeley,69 in which he sought to prove the real existence of the external world. Nonetheless, Bonald defined "ideo-

logy" as "a sterile study, thought's work upon itself which can never

produce anything."70 Goethe equated it with fantasy.71 Schopenhauer

compared the idealism of ideology unfavorably with physiology72-which is indeed a strange twist since Tracy had claimed "ideology was a part of zoology."73 Remusat's syllogistic parody was adroit if fallacious: "All

64 Ibid., III, 208. 65 6eme ed. II, 3. 66 Treubners deutsches Worterbuch (8 vols., Berlin, 1939-1957), IV (1943),

4-5. 671bid., cf. Comte, Systeme de politique positive (4 vols., Paris 1851-54), I

(1851), 76, 115, and Proudhon quoted in the Grand Larousse encyclopedique, VI

(1962), s.v. "ideologie." 68 "Memoire sur la facult6 de penser," MIN, I, 286. 69 Dissertation sur l'existence, et sur les hypotheses de Malebranche et de

Berkeley a ce sujet," MIN III, (an IX [1801]), 515-34. 70 Quoted in Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universal du XIXe siecle (17 vols.,

Paris, 1865-90), IX, 549. 71 Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen iiber Literatur und Ethik, in Werke,

(55 vols., Weimar, 1887-1918), XLII, pt. II, 209, no. 9. 72 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, II, ch. 22, cited in Barth, op. cit., 29-30. 73 Projet d'elements d'ideologie a l'usage des ecoles centrales (Paris, an IX

[1801]), 1.

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 365

that exists for us are our ideas"; since it is "impossible for us to conceive of anything that is not material," and since ideas are for us necessarily immaterial, "ideology is the study of nothingness."74 Taine much later used "ideology" in the sense of "science of ideas," and felt that Tracy and Condillac knew more about psychology than the reigning spiritualist school of Jouffroy, Royer-Collard, and Cousin.75 The Ideologues had rightly concentrated on the genealogy of ideas. But Taine also felt the Ideologues were too dominated by the classical spirit and had left the collection of facts to Bacon.

They are called ideologues and properly so because they operate on ideas and not on facts. . . . The peculiar character of the French mind is to clarify, to develop, and proclaim general truths.... If this is so, ideology is our classical philosophy. It has the same consequences and the same limitations as our literary talent.76

Most noteworthy, perhaps for the final non-Marxian destiny of the word are Comte's comments on Ideology to which positivism owed much. Tracy, according to Comte, had "undeniably come the closest of all metaphysicians to the positive state," but he had not reached it for no sooner had he declared that "ideology is a part of zoology," than his "metaphysical nature soon gained the upper hand and led him to discard this luminous principle immediately. ..." Tracy, Comte argued falsely, presupposed that intelligence reigns in human affairs and that conse- quently the science of understanding is the key to all moral and political science. Passions, penchants, and affections are the principal motives of human behavior, according to Comte. "Metaphysics finds itself radically discredited by a metaphysician who believed he had escaped it because he had the firm intention to do so, the whole effect of which was essentially limited to the simple change of names." For "psychologists or ideologues" -the name made little difference-"the mind has become practically the exclusive topic of their speculations." Tracy had failed to go beyond "the

ordinary paths of metaphysical aberration."77 Ideology was a science of method applicable to all science, but it had nothing special to offer

politics, which had its own rules, its own data-"facts which are peculiar to it."78 Social problems required social science.

III. How different is Comte's critique from that of Marx, who was familiar with Napoleon's derision of Ideology? In Die Deutsche Ideologie, Marx wrote:

74 Essais de philosophie (2 vols., Paris, 1842), I, 491. 75 Taine to Georges Fonsegrive, 18 juin 1887, Taine, Sa vie et sa correspond-

ance (4 vols., Paris, 1902-07), IV, 240; Taine to Sainte-Beuve, 15 juin 1867, ibid., II, 541-42.

76 Les philosophes francais du XIXe siecle (Paris, 1857), 19. 77 Cours de philosophic positive (6 vols., Paris, 1830-42), III (1838), 776-78. 78 "Materiaux pour servir a la biographie d'Auguste Comte," Revue occidentale,

8 (1882), 399; cf. ibid., 395-99.

366 EMMET KENNEDY

No specific difference distinguishes German idealism from the ideology of all other peoples. The latter ideology also considers the world as governed by ideas, that ideas and concepts are determining principles, that certain ideas constitute the mystery of the world accessible to philosophers.79

Tracy's sensationalist Ideology which sought to overthrow metaphysics was, for Comte, only a neologism for essentially the same metaphysical endeavor. Similarly, Feuerbach's atheistic sensualism, which reduced "the religious essence of man to the human essence" and a priori intuition to "sensuous intuition" or "contemplative materialism," still did "not understand sensuousness as practical activity" but as "the contemplation of single individuals in bourgeois society."80 For Marx, the "self," "sub- stance," "will," "liberty," and the "pure individual," however "sensation-

ally" or psychologically conceived, were still abstractions. All philoso- phers, Marx felt, end up reducing everything to "consciousness."81 "Mind," Comte had written "has become the exclusive subject of [the Ideologues'] speculations."82

The idealism of Ideology was not the only ground of complaint. It is crucial to realize that the only work of Tracy which Marx cited and

possibly the only one he ever read was the 1826 edition of the fourth volume of the Elemens d'ideologie, viz., Tracy's Traite de la volonte or, as the 1823 edition entitled it, his Traite d'economie politique. Certainly Marx inverted the Hegelian dialectic of reason in history into dialectical materialism in which mode of production and class conflict determine consciousness. But Marx inherited the word "ideology" not from Hegel, who used the word once in reference to the French Ideologists83 and therefore cannot be, strictly speaking, credited with an explicit theory of

ideology, but only from the cumulative usages current in the 1830s and 1840s and specifically from Destutt de Tracy.

The Traite, written in 1811 and published in Paris in 1815, was con- sidered by economists of the whole nineteenth century a classic statement of liberal economic theory84 in the tradition of Adam Smith and J. B.

Say. For Tracy, this treatise could still be called Elemens d'ideologie,

79Marx and Engels, Werke (41 vols., Berlin, 1960-68), III, 14. 80 "Thesen fiber Feuerbach," no. 2, no. 3, no. 6; Werke III, 5-7. 81Die Deutsche Ideologie, Werke, III, 83, 178, 228-29, 238, 292-93, 362,

19-20. 82 Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, III, 778. 83 Hegel, Vorlesungen iber die Philosophie der Geschichte, in Simtliche Werke,

(22 vols., Stuttgart, 1958), XX, 286: ". . . what the French call ideology as . . .

abstract metaphysics, an enumeration and analysis of the simplest determinations of thought They will not deal with dialectics, but rather with our reflections, with our thoughts .. ."

84 See Frederic Bastiat to Felix Coudroy, 8 janvier 1825 in Bastiat, Oeuvres

completes, 2nd ed. (7 vols., Paris, 1862-64), I, 16; J. B. Say, Oeuvres diverses (Paris, 1848), 275-77, 302; Charles Dunoyer, Oeuvres, ed. F. Mignet, (3 vols., Paris, 1870-86), III, 537; Adolphe Blanqui, Histoire de l'economie politique en Europe depuis les anciens jusqu a nos jours (2 vols., Paris, 1837), II, 395.

"IDEOLOGY" FROM DE TRACY TO MARX 367

because it was to be seen as a part of psychological faculty analysis, not- ably an analysis of the will. "Conventional" property is seen as the in- evitable consequence of "natural" property: one's faculties, one's self, one's needs. "Yours" and "mine" derive unavoidably from the prior dis- tinction of "you" and "me." "There is a fundamental property, prior and superior to any institution."85 Justice and injustice, rights and duties are inconceivable without property.86 Personality derives from the self, and

property and wealth from personality,87 the will, or the consciousness of a separate existence.88 Property is therefore "the inevitable consequence of our nature."89 The natural inequalities in men's faculties lead to the

inequalities in distribution of wealth and consequently to the swelling of the ranks of the poor. Social conflict is not seen as class conflict, but as

part of the "universal struggle,"90 the movement of individual wills in conflict with other wills. It is useless to speak of the propertied and un-

propertied classes, since even the poor have as much interest in preserving their most precious property, i.e., their faculties, as the rich. All men are

capitalists since the worker must clothe and feed himself with the fruit of

previous labor (Tracy's definition of capital) before going to work. Landowners are no more a class than capitalists, because the peasant with one half a hectare is also a landowner, although his interests are hardly the same as those of a noble like Tracy who owned four thousand. In this classless society, Tracy preferred to group men as rich or poor, employer or wage-earner, producer or consumer, rentier or capitalist, but even these categories were not mutually exclusive. For class interests, Tracy would prefer to substitute the general interest of property owner and con- sumer.91 While he would have society definitely make the interests of the

poor "the most constantly consulted and respected,"92 poverty and in-

equality were nonetheless inevitable in industrial economies. Private

property is natural and its abolition, Tracy stated, would lead only to an

equality of misery.93 Tracy's labor theory of value and his theory of "concours de forces"

in production led Marx to consider him "to a certain point a light among the vulgar economists."94 But his definition of society as commerce

("Society is purely and uniquely a continuous series of exchanges"),95 his assertion, in spite of his labor theory of value, that only the capitalist is

John Ramsay MacCulloch, Principes d'economie politique (Brussels, 1854), II,

823-30; J. Garnier, Traite d'economie politique, sociale ou industrielle (Paris,

1880), 654, 656. 85 Elemens d'ideologie, lVe et Ve parties, Traite de la volonte et de ses effets

(Paris, 1815), 77. 86 bid., 57. 87 Ibid., 96. 88 Ibid., 57. 89Ibid., 284ff. 90 Ibid., 191. 91 Ibid., 184-85, 293-96, 374-75, 326, 327, 332-33.

92Ibid., 323. 93Ibid., 289-90. 94 Das Kapital, Bk. II, Sec. III, ch. 20, art. XIII, Werke XXIV, 484. 95 Elemens d'ideologie, IVe et Ve parties . . ., 144.

368 EMMET KENNEDY

truly productive ("Industrial entrepreneurs are really the heart of the body politic and their capital is its blood"),96 his identification of all particular interests with the general interest, his unqualified enthusiasm for the limitless division of labor, and his "ideological" defense of private property led Marx to call Tracy a "fischbliitige Bourgeoisdoktrinar."97 The uniqueness of Tracy's liberal economics is its title, which Marx frequently cited as an exemplary defense of capitalism. Ideology, thanks to Tracy, became for Marx neither simply science of ideas nor liberal political theory, but a system of thought which seeks to justify the existing mode of production and the social relationships which spring from it.

The conclusion one can draw from this survey of the history of the

meanings of the word "ideology" from 1796 to 1867 can only be ironical. The word that was to supplant metaphysics and denote something more scientific and positive had undergone a metamorphosis in the Empire due to its political connotations and to what Napoleon considered, in spite of

Tracy, its metaphysical character. By the time Marx used the word it had already acquired a pejorative sense, but it was specifically Marx's

reading of Tracy's economics in the Ele'mens d'ide'ologie which led him to associate the word with bourgeois class interests-and that despite the high pedigree of nobility of the Comte Destutt de Tracy.98

George Washington University, D.C.

96 Ibid., 372. 97 Das Kapital, Bk. I, Sec. VII, ch. 23, Werke, XXIII, 677. 98 Cf. Emile Cailliet, La Tradition litteraire des Ideologues (Philadelphia,

1943), 237: "The Ideologues are essentially liberal bourgeois. .... " Georges Lefebvre wrote: "In their manner, they therefore justified the domination of the

bourgeoisie . ... ," in his review of Van Duzer, Contribution of the Ideologues to French Revolutionary Thought (Baltimore, 1935), in Annales historiques de la Revolution franfaise 15 (1938), 177; Stein, "The Beginnings of Ideology," loc cit., 167: ". .. the Ideologues joined their interests to those of the Girondin and other

bourgeois forces in power;" Sergio Moravia speaking of Tracy's political and economic works writes: "These writings, even if they are in certain parts heavy and dry, were nonetheless well read, and assured a noteworthy diffusion of Tracy's thought, thus contributing in some measure, to form a definite type of political consciousness in the heart of the French bourgeoisie at the beginning of the nine- teenth century." II Pensiero degli Ideologues, op. cit., 804 (Moravia's concluding words). The present author reminds his readers that Tracy was a noble of the court before the Revolution, that he recovered his nobility during the Empire and Restoration when he sat in the Chambre des Pairs, and that his own economic interests were indisputably tied up in his 4000 odd hectare estate of Paray-le-Fresil near Moulins in the chateau of Francieres in the Oise, and in the land of Tracy in the Nievre. He had very few investments in finance and virtually none in

industry. Nonetheless his economic theory does speak for the interests of capitalists and denigrates agriculture. His political and philosophical works do not speak any more for the bourgeoisie than they do for the liberal nobility.