Among the big-but-not-so-interesting-questions-of-social-sciences, I used to regard the ancestral individualism/holism issue as the clear winner. So many useless and nonsensical pages have been and continue to be written on this problem. The debate is generally addressed at such a level of abstraction that it is irrelevant to understanding the actual practice of social sciences and the real methodological challenges that emerge in this context.[1] A close competitor in this category is in my eyes the (more substantive, less methodological) dispute over whether social events and history are essentially driven by ideas or interests, by ideologies or “material conditions of existence.”
The question is surely very old, but its modern roots can be traced back to the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. On the one hand, Marx’s historical materialism tends to be viewed as the typical “economicist” approach that makes interests and material conditions of existence the main driver of historical change. The economic infrastructure (the mode of production and social relations of production) determines the legal and ideological superstructure and its evolution. On the other hand, Max Weber is often cited as one of the major social scientists who promoted an “ideational” account of the emergence of modern capitalism. Weber’s famous study of the relationship between Calvinism and capitalist practices and, more generally, his sociology of religion, are cited as representative examples of the approach that takes ideas, broadly speaking, as determining economic behavior.
We could probably argue about these respective readings of Marx and Weber. But I’m not interested here in exegesis or history of thought. At the most general level, the problem with the interests/ideas issue is similar I believe to the one with the even older nature/nurture debate. Basically, at the most general level, the question makes no sense because there is no reason to expect that social events and history must be systematically driven by one rather than the other. For sure, at the dawn of humanity, a factor must have predominantly determined the shape of the first communities and societies, as well as the behavior of their members. But this is more a metaphysical than a historical point that is mostly irrelevant to account for human history. As with the nature/nurture debate, the general answer to the question of whether interests or ideas determine societies and behavior is the non-very informative “both, in a way that is difficult to decipher.”
Counterintuitively maybe, despite the fact that the question and its answer are not very interesting when formulated at a very abstract level, I think that the interests/ideas issue cannot be easily evaded and even provide a valuable framework when you consider more specific historical events or trends. I will briefly discuss three such events or trends.
As a first case, take the so-called “revolutionary spring” that saw the simultaneous emergence of revolutions across Europe in 1848. In his recent book on the subject, the historian Christopher Clarke addresses the multiple causes that led to the 1848 uprisings.[2] No simple picture of linear causality emerges. Nonetheless, you can see some kind of pattern. Economic precarity was widespread across Europe during the years preceding the revolutions, with some populations facing famines, as in Ireland for instance. However, Clarke argues that economic precarity was not the trigger of revolutions. Quite the contrary, “impoverishment and the loss of remunerative labour were more likely to render people ‘speechless’ and inactive than to drive them to concerted action.”[3] What Clark calls the “geography of hunger” does not map into the “geography of revolution.” Misery has rather provided the soil on which radical and liberal ideas, which were already in the air for decades, have been able to grow and progressively feed political protests and revendications. The economic and social background has not directly caused the revolutions but has been nonetheless essential as a factor in facilitating the diffusion and entrenchment of liberal and radical ideas.
A similar pattern may have been at play with the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. Historical and social scientific work tends to indicate that it is impossible to reduce the causes of totalitarianism in Germany neither to the economic conditions created by the 1919 Versailles treaty nor to the propaganda machinery building on decades of “historicist” and nationalist thoughts and making the German people more likely to buy in pseudoscientific theories and myths legitimizing aggressive expansion. The picture is more complex.[4] What is true however is that the economic conditions and the perception by the population (whether it was founded or not is not the issue) that they were wounds intentionally inflicted by other nations gave credibility to some of the ideas constitutive to the nazi propaganda and made people more prone to endorse them.
Finally, consider how liberal democracy first rose to dominance by the end of the 20th century and is now threatened by the populist wave. There is absolutely no doubt that the stellar economic performance of Western countries after World War II contributed to the progressive domination of this model of society. Indeed, as long as communist regimes were able to keep up (at least in appearance) with the West’s economic performance, the battle of ideas remained undecided. It was only when it became obvious to everybody (especially outside observers not confronted with the harsh reality of a communist regime) in the 1980s that a communist regime is economically unsustainable that the communist ideology definitely receded and died. What came after communism was however largely ideologically driven, for the better and the worse.
The interplay between ideas and interests is now again in the spotlight. As I’ve noted in a preceding essay, proponents of liberal democracy have a persuasion problem. It is becoming increasingly difficult to convince people living in liberal democracy that (genuine) democracy is better than (soft) authoritarianism, that personal freedom and tolerance (especially religious) are major values that should trump more parochial considerations, and other liberal claims in the same vein. This is largely due, I think, to the way individuals perceive their economic situation and its (past and future) evolution. In many Western countries, the populist vote comes from those parts of the population who have seen their relative economic conditions worsening. While the transformation of the “epistemic order” related to the development of social networks and the emergence of multiple partisan information providers surely contributes to the polarization of views that makes the whole persuasion enterprise more difficult, it is plausible that the “ideational polarization” is related to an underlying “economic polarization.” Or, in other words, the economic soil is less and less fertile for liberal ideas to grow and spread, irrespective of their (truth-) value. You can still argue – rightfully – that economic and political liberalism contributes to the reduction of poverty worldwide, liberates people from illegitimate forms of domination, and it fosters a more inclusive morality, but this is practically irrelevant. Many people will not listen to you.
This is however a too simplistic picture. There is no doubt that economic growth has slowed down in Western countries and that economic prospects have deteriorated. But it is for instance more controversial to determine to what degree economic inequalities have increased or if the poorest absolute economic situation has worsened. How economic conditions are perceived may be largely driven by partisanship, as Paul Krugman suggests in the case of American republicans. One’s ideological stance or predispositions may influence one’s perceptions of their situation and interests. So, we seem to fall back on the initial metaphysical question that I discarded: what comes first, what is more fundamental, ideas or interests? That doesn’t make the question more relevant. The (uninformative) answer is still “both.” The idea/interests conceptualization nevertheless provides a framework based on which we can dig deeper into the complex machinery that drives history.
[1] For the anecdote, almost ten years ago now, I became full professor of economics by successfully competing in the French Agrégation de sciences économiques, a typical French exercise where assistant/associate professors who apply are judged on their ability to give lessons on any economic topics, some well-beyond their domain of expertise. For the last of the three examinations (the leçon de spécialité), the topic I was submitted was “Methodological individualism in economics.”
[2] Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring : Fighting for a New World 1848-1849 (London: PENGUIN UK, 2023).
[3] Ibid, p. 88.
[4] See for instance the brief discussion of the nazi and communist propaganda in Vikash Yadav, Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism, (Chicago London: University of Chicago Press, 2023), Chapter 11.