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"Ideology" from Destutt De Tracy to Marx Author(s): Emmet Kennedy Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.

40, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1979), pp. 353-368 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709242 Accessed: 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 Griewank'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"4have all helped to enrich our understandingof eighteenth-centuryattitudes 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 admirablyoutlined by George Lichtheim5in 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 ramifications of the concept even where the word itself is not explicitly used. Both studies only sketch the pre-Marxianuses 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"
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-inaid 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. 171-82. 2 Der Neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff (Weimar, 1955), 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 * An

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less than fifty years later. How could the name for the science of ideaswhose 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 conversing 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"8when 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 assembliessince 1789,9 with a political liberalismof the 1789-92 vintage, updated by the anticlericalrepublicanismof 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 discreditedand "psychology"implied a knowledge of the soul, knowledge which no one could any longer claim to have. "Ideology," on the other hand, "was very sensible since it supposes nothing doubtful or undell' illuminismo, Filosofia e politica nella societa francese (17701810, (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. 10See 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.
7 11 Tramonto

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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 Condillac. 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."13Two 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."14The 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.15Since 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" or meant to have either "metaphysical" apolitical connotations. The breadth of the term's connotation was clearly detected by Degerando, (himself a prize-winning "ideologist" who was careful to adheremore 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 wordshas cast some ridiculeon the expression"idewriters;as if ideas were not something very real, adoptedby different ology," is as if they were not even what is most real for us, since our knowledge only or our ideas. All scienceis trulyan "ideology" a reasoningon our ideas, and it whichrenders too vague. has if thisexpression any defect,it is its universality, Far from being subjectto the criticismthat it is unreal,it can perhapsonly be accusedof havingtoo broada 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. 12Ibid., 1, 318. The word "positive" was used in the eighteenth century to mean "exact" and "scientific." 14 Ibid., 13 Ibid., I, 324. 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.

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pre-eminent position which d'Alembert had perhaps insincerely continued 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.19A year earlier, in the same journal, he had responded to the Institute concours, "What are the institutions 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 Theophilanthropic, 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 As and of our ideas from which it derives."20 a counsellor of Public Instruction 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 metaWhen these schools came under attack, Tracy tried to physical errors.21 avert their suppression by a defense of their curriculum designed frankly for the only completely educable class-the propertiedsavant 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-Thermidoreanliberalism of a part of the propertied class, an Ideology which was strongly materialistin its conception of the relationship between the physical and moral. The Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme,23the 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'ideologie a l'usage des ecoles centrales (1801), the last and most rigorous sensationalist statement of the eighteenth century. "Ideology," as one historian astutelycomments, "was not the truly neutralterm which Destutt
19Analyse 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.

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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 neverpay too muchattentionto the illusionswhichcertainwordsproduce.Nothingprovesbetterhow vagueandconfusedtheirmeaning is.25 Maine de Biran, the brilliant disciple of Cabanis and Tracy who won the Institute prize in 1802 for his memoir on the "Influencede l'habitude sur la faculte de penser,"26 was quick to perceive the ramificationsof 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, particularlyin language. From habit alone, Tracy had written, "stem practically all the difficulties of the science called ideology."27Ideology was supposed to study intellectual habits, not succumb to them like schoolmen, Platonists, Scotists, Thomists, and Cartesians, who only prove "that we accept from the same pen both what is proven and what is only apparentlyso, that the authority of the man is still considerable and that the force of demonstrationdoes not Tracy assuredhis Institute audience that in contradistincprevail alone."28 tion to Kantians, "ideologues"did not form a sect, used strictly empirical methods, and adulatedno 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: seemto haveonly one opinion,theylive only for theirfamiliesandthe ideology, themaboveall else. Ideologytheytold me would of the progress whichinterests
Joanna Kitchin, Un Journal "philosophique": "La Decade" (1794-1807), (Paris, 1965), 120. 25 Elemens d'ideologie, Troisieme partie, Logique (Paris, an XIII [1805]), 429, four volumes of the Elemens were published; the fourth is vol. 1 of part II. Only 26 Oeuvres de Maine de Biran, ed. Pierre Tisserand (14 vols., Paris, 19221949), 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.
24

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changethe face of the earth,and that is exactlywhy those who wish the world to alwaysremainstupid (and with good cause) detest ideology and the ideologues.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 presuppositions 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 postRevolutionary 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 constitutional dreams for a round sum [the estate of Crosne] .... When it comes to money, Sieyes is very positive and dismisses ideology."30By January 1800, when Benjamin Constant in the Tribunate was protesting government 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 metaphysicalfaction 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 overshadowed theirs. They looked for heroes to bring down the Directory. Today they have hatched new plans."'3The 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 "Windbagsand ideologues who have always fought the existing 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
29Biran 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, 1902cf. Journal de Paris, 12 pluviose an IX [Feb. 2, 1801]. 1907), II, 451; 33"Lettre des agents du prince de Conde," 2 janvier 1800, quoted in Vandal, II, 30.

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"Our recent ideologues," Chateaubriandwrote in the Genie du Christianisme,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 "Won't this they think they can persuade me that it is insignificant?"35 do some harm to your religious sentiment," Ballanche asked the ideology 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 marshalledall his arguments to warn the Prussians against the Ideologues: I have some in Paris.They are dreamers dangerous and dreamers; they are all torment materialists not too disguised.Gentlemen,philosophers and disguised to create systems;they will searchin vain for a better one than themselves which in reconcilingman with himselfassuresboth public order Christianity, and the peace of states. Your ideologuesdestroyall illusions, and the age of illusionsis for individuals for peoplesthe age of happiness.37 as 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 Incarnation, but because it was politically dangerous. Just three months before Napoleon's Erfurt harangue, the first Malet conspiracy had been uncovered 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 But was not philosophy. This is not ideology, but a real conspiracy."39 the danger which Napoleon feared precisely that the first could lead to
New ed. (4 vols., Paris, an XI [1803]), vol. III, Pt. III, bk. I, ch. 3, 77. 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.
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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 numbers 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 classic 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 justice, 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 connecand Bouissounouse, p. 326; Abel Francois Villemain Souvenirs contemporains d'histoire et de litterature (2 vols., Paris, 1854-55), I, 152. 41J. 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

40 Villefosse

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.

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tion with the new liberal and Carbonaristopposition to throne and altar is very clear.46Stendhal, 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,"47which effected "an astonishing change in all He my ideas."48 continued to publicize his infatuation with it in his correspondence 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 certainly 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 .. ."50While 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 politique."52Likewise 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 Neologicaltitle! What does it mean?When Bonaparteused it, I was delightedwith it, upon the Common Does it meanIdiotism? of Principle delightin everythingwe cannotunderstand. The The scienceof Non composMenticism? Scienceof Lunacy?The theoryof Delirium?Or does it mean the Science of Love? Of Amour propre?Or the Elementsof Vanity?53 Jefferson answered soberly: "Tracy comprehends, under the word 'Ideology' 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. nov. 1804], 47 Stendhal to his sister Pauline, 7-25 brumaire XIII [29 oct.-16 Correspondance, ed. Henri Martineau (10 vols., Paris, 1933-34), I, 290. 48 Stendhal to Pauline Beyle, 24 brumaire XIV [15 nov. 1805] Correspondance, 72. II, 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


52

editions. See my Destutt de Tracy .. .

, ch. 6.

Stendhal to baron de Mareste, 24 juillet 1819, Correspondance V, 261. 53Adams to Jefferson, Dec. 16, 1816 in Lester J. Cappon ed., The AdamsJefferson Letters (2 vols., Chapel Hill, N. C., 1959), II, 500-01.

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


"54

Partisans of the Restoration continued to use "ideology" in the pejorative sense. On May 5, 1816, the Annales politiques, morales et litterairesdenounced "philosophicalcharlatanism"and "fantasticideology," products of the "school of Diderot and Holbach" which "made both egoism 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 "hadfallen 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."55In August 1829, the government-owned, Gazette de France leveled a full-blown attack against the latest edition of the Elemens d'ideologie, assertingthat "ideology,"that "geometryof 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 adversariesof the political order .. ."56 Writing in a similar vein a correspondent of Melchiorre Delfico, the Neapolitan liberal revolutionary, wrote of "French Ideology, conceived and developed to spread atheism and materialismamong 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 nonpejorativesense 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 belonged to the opposition from the left during the Restoration yet repudiated eighteenth-centurymaterialism. This group, often called spiritualist or eclectic, and whose philosophy tended to be dominant in France into
to Adams, Jan. 11, 1817, Cappon, II, 505. 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 complete, 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).
54 Jefferson
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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 "almostlike 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, perhapswith some exaggeration, The science, which, of the Italians' "exclusive adoration of one system."59 like all Enlightenment thought which it synthesized, was supposed to eschew the "esprit systematique," was now being criticized for its systematic spirit-a characteristicof all ideology. Indeed, as early as 1805 Tracy had referredto 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 restricted sense as the "torchlightof grammar,"61 repudiatedthe 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 philosophiques of Adolphe Franck, which claimed Tracy "had carried senAfter giving the "legitimate"meaning sualism with him into the tomb."63 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 restrictedsense ideology is no longer the science of ideas, abstracted
58V. 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.

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from time and men; it is the science of ideas as the school of Condillac understood it."64While 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 defended 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 became 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 "experienced 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 refutations of Malebranche and Berkeley,69 in which he sought to prove the real existence of the external world. Nonetheless, Bonald defined "ideology" 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
66

Ibid., III, 208.

65

6eme

ed. II, 3.

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. 70Quoted 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. 73Projet d'elements d'ideologie a l'usage des ecoles centrales (Paris, an IX [1801]), 1.

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that exists for us are our ideas"; since it is "impossiblefor us to conceive of anything that is not material," and since ideas are for us necessarily immaterial, "ideology is the study of nothingness."74Taine 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 ideologuesand properlyso becausethey operateon ideas and of not on facts. . . . The peculiarcharacter the Frenchmind is to clarify,to generaltruths.... If this is so, ideologyis our classical develop,and proclaim as It and philosophy. hasthe sameconsequences the samelimitations ourliterary 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 "metaphysicalnature 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 consequently the science of understandingis the key to all moral and political science. Passions, penchants, and affections are the principal motives of human behavior, according to Comte. "Metaphysicsfinds itself radically discreditedby a metaphysicianwho 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 "psychologistsor ideologues" -the name made little difference-"the mind has become practicallythe exclusive topic of their speculations."Tracy had failed to go beyond "the Ideology was a science of ordinary paths of metaphysical aberration."77 to all science, but it had nothing special to offer method applicable politics, which had its own rules, its own data-"facts which are peculiar to it."78Social problems requiredsocial 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:
74Essais de philosophie (2 vols., Paris, 1842), I, 491. 75Taine to Georges Fonsegrive, 18 juin 1887, Taine, Sa vie et sa correspondance (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. 77Cours 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.

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No specificdifference Germanidealismfrom the ideology of all distinguishes otherpeoples.The latterideologyalso considers worldas governed ideas, the by thatideas and conceptsare determining that certainideas constitute principles, the mysteryof the worldaccessible philosophers.79 to Tracy's sensationalist Ideology which sought to overthrow metaphysics was, for Comte, only a neologism for essentially the same metaphysical endeavor. Similarly,Feuerbach'satheistic 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 understandsensuousness as practical activity" but as "the contemplation of single individuals in bourgeois society."80For Marx, the "self," "substance," "will," "liberty,"and the "pure individual,"however "sensationally" or psychologically conceived, were still abstractions. All philosophers, 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 thereforecannot be, strictly speaking, credited with an explicit theory of ideology, but only from the cumulative usages current in the 1830s and 1840s and specificallyfrom Destutt de Tracy. The Traite, written in 1811 and published in Paris in 1815, was considered by economists of the whole nineteenth century a classic statement of liberal economic theory84in 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

81Die

"Thesen fiber Feuerbach," no. 2, no. 3, no. 6; Werke III, 5-7. 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.

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because it was to be seen as a part of psychological faculty analysis, notably an analysis of the will. "Conventional"property is seen as the inevitable consequence of "natural" property: one's faculties, one's self, one's needs. "Yours" and "mine" derive unavoidably from the prior distinction of "you" and "me." "There is a fundamental property, prior and Justice and injustice, rights and duties are superior to any institution."85 inconceivable without property.86Personality derives from the self, and the property and wealth from personality,87 will, or the consciousness of a separate existence.88Property is therefore "the inevitable consequence of our nature."89 The natural inequalities in men's faculties lead to the in distribution of wealth and consequently to the swelling of inequalities the ranks of the poor. Social conflict is not seen as class conflict, but as part of the "universal struggle,"90the movement of individual wills in conflict with other wills. It is useless to speak of the propertied and unpropertiedclasses, 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. Landownersare 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 preferredto 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 conWhile he would have society definitely make the interests of the sumer.91 poor "the most constantly consulted and respected,"92poverty and inequality were nonetheless inevitable in industrial economies. Private propertyis 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."94But his definition of society as commerce his ("Society is purely and uniquely a continuous series of exchanges"),95 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.

90Ibid., 191. 91Ibid., 184-85, 293-96, 374-75, 326, 327, 332-33. 93Ibid., 289-90. 92Ibid., 323. 94Das Kapital, Bk. II, Sec. III, ch. 20, art. XIII, Werke XXIV, 484.
95 Elemens d'ideologie, IVe et Ve parties . . ., 144.

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truly productive ("Industrial entrepreneurs are really the heart of the body politic and their capital is its blood"),96his 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 relationshipswhich 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 metamorphosisin 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'mensd'ide'ologiewhich 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.
Ibid., 372. Das Kapital, Bk. I, Sec. VII, ch. 23, Werke, XXIII, 677. 98Cf. 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 nineteenth 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.
97 96

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