Williams, R.- Materialism, In Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Section-1976)

8/10/2019 Williams, R.- Materialism, In Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Section-1976)

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/williams-r-materialism-in-keywords-a-vocabulary-of-culture-and-society 1/4

Raymond

illiams

eywords

A vocabulary

o culture

and society

Revised edition

0

OXFOR UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York



196

Masses

systems not directed at masses (persons assembled) but at

numerically very large yet in individual homes relauvely isolated

members of audiences. Several senses are fused but also confused: the

large numbers reached

(the many-headed multitude

or

the majority

o the people); the mode adopted (manipulative or popula.r);

assumed taste

(vulgar

or

ordinary);

the resultmg relauonsh1p

(alienated and abstract

or a

new kind o social communication). .

The most piquant element

of

the

mass

and

masses

complex, m

contemporary usage, is its actively opposite social inlplications. To be

engaged in mass work to belong to

mass ~ r g a n i z a t i ~ n s ,

to val ue

mass

meetings

and mass

movements

to live wholly m the service

of

the

masses: these are the phrases of an active revolutionary tradi

tion. But to study mass taste, to use the

mass

media, to control a

mass

mark et to engage in

mass

observation to understand mass

psychology or

mass

opinion: these are the phrases of a wholly

opposite social and political tendency. Some p ~ r t of h.e r e v o ~ u u o n ' ? '

usage can be understood from the fact that m c e r t ~ social condi

tions revolutionary intellectuals or revoluuonary parues do not

come

from

the people,

and then

see

'them', beyond themselves.'

as

masses

with whom and for whom they must work:

masses as

obiect or

mass

as material to be worked on. But the active history of the levee

n

masse

has been at least as influential. In the opposite tendency, mass

and

masses

moved away from the older sintplicities of contempt

(though in the right circles, and in protected situations, the

mob

and_,

idiot multitude

tones can still be heard). The C20 forma s are

mainly ways of dealing with large numbers of people, o the whole

indiscriminately perceived but crucial to several o erauons m

politics, in commerce and i n cnlture. The

mass is

assu ed and then

often, ironically, divided into parts again: upper or lower ends of the

mass market;

the

better kind

of

mass

entertainmen't:·\Mass

socie ty would then be a society organized or perceived in such wa s;

but, as a final complication,

mass

society has also been used,

w i ~ h

some relation to its earlier conservative context as a new term in

radical and even revolutionary criticism. Mass society massifica-

tion (usually with strong reference to the

mass

media) are seen

as

modes of disarming or incorporating the

working class,

the

proletariat the masses:

that is to say they are

new

modes

of

aliena-

tion and control which prevent and are designed to prevent the

development

of an

authentic

popular

consciousness. t is thus

Masses Materiali

possible to visualize, or at least hope for, a

mass

uprisitt' ,

mass society

or a

mass protest

against the

mass media_ o : r m ~

organization against massification. The distinction that is being

made or attempted

in

these contrasting

political

uses is between

the

masses as the SUBJECT (q.v.) and

the

masses as the

object of

social

action.

It

is in the end not surprising

that

this should be so.

In

most

of

its

uses masses is a cant word, but the problems oflarge societies and of

collective action and reaction to which, usnally confusingly, it and its

derivatives and associates are addressed, are real enough and have to

be continually spoken about.

See

COMMON DEMOCRACY POPULAR

MATERIALISM

Materialism and the associated materialist and materialistic are

complex words in contemporary English because they refer i) to a

very long, difficnlt and varying set of arguments which propose

matter as

the rintary substance

of

all livin and non-living things,

including htiman beings; i to a related or consequent but again

highly

Yarious

set of explanations and judgments of mental, moral

and social activities; and (iii) to a distinguishable set of attitudes and

activities, with no necessary philosophical and scientific connection,

which can be summarized as an overriding or primary concern with

the production or acquisition of things and money. t is understand

able that opponents

of

the views indicated in senses i) and (ii) often

take advantage of,

or

are themselves confused by, sense

(iii)

and its

associations. Indeed in certain phases of sense ii) there are plausible

connections with elements

of

sense (iii), which can hardly, however,

be limited to proponents of any of the forms of sense i) and (ii). The

loose general association between senses i) and

ii)

and sense (iii)

is

in fact an historical residue, which the history of the words does

something to explain.

The central word,

matter,

has a suitably material prinlary

meaning.

It

came into English, in varying forms, from

w matere,

oF,



198 Materialism

from

rw

materia L - a building material, usually timber (with which

the word may be etymologically associated, as also with domestic;

cf.

'will sliver and disbranch from her material sap',

King

Lear IV, ii ;

thence, by extension, any physical snbstance considered generally,

and, again by extension, the substance

of

anything.

In

English this

full range of meanings was established very early, though the most

specific early sense was never impor tant and was quickly lost. Among

early established uses,

matter

was regularly distinguished from

FORM

(q.v.) which it was held was required

to

bring matter into

being. There was a related distinction between

material and

formal

but the most popular distinction was between material

and

spiritual

where spirit was the effective theological specialization of form.

Matter was also contrasted , from 1C16, with idea

but

the important

modern

material/ideal

and

materialist/idealist

contrasts, from

eC18, were later

than

the

material formal

and material/spiritual

contrasts.

It

is

this)atter

contrast which

has

most to do with the

specific meanings

ofmaterial

and

materialist

in sense

(iii). It

is not

easy to trace these but there was a tendency to associate

m teri l

with 'worldly' affairs and an associated distinction,

of

a class kind,

between people occupied with material c t i v i t i e ~ a n d others given to

spiritual or

LIBERAL

(q.v.) pursuits.

Thus

Kyd

1

88): 'not

of

servile .

or materiall witt,

but

apt

to

studie or c templat'; Dryden

(1700): 'his gross material soul'. This tendency would probabl have

developed in any event, but it was to be crncial affected b the

course and context

of

the philosophical argument.

Philosophical positions

that

we would now call

materialist

are at

least as old as C5, BC,

in the

Greek atomists, and the fully developed

Epicurean position was widely known through Lucretius. It is

significant

that in

addition to simply physical explanations

of

the

origins of nature and oflife, this doctrine had connected explanations

of

civilization (the development

of

natural human

powers within a

given enviromnent), of society (a contract for security against others),

and

of

morality (a set

of

conventions which lead to happiness and

which may be altered if they do not, there being no pre-existing

values where the only natural force is self-interest).

The

key moment

i in English

materialism,

though still not given this name, was in

Hobbes, where the fundamental premise was that of physical bodies

in

motion -

MECHANICS

(q.v.) -

and

where deduction was made from

the laws of such bodies in motion to individual human behaviour

Materialism 199

(sensation and thought being forms of motion)

and

to the nature of

society - human beings ac ting in relation to each other (and submit

tmg to sovereignty for necessary regnlation). In Cl8 France, for

example in Holbach,

it

was comparably argned

that

all causal

relationships were simply the laws of

the

motion

ofbodier;md,

with

a new explicitness t h ~ t alternative causes and

e s p e c i a l l ~ h e

notion

of Ged-fr

any other kind

of

metaphysical creation

or

direction were

false.

If

was from mC17

that

doctrines

of

this

kind became known as

materialist and

from mC18 as

materialism. The

regular associa

t10n

between physical explanations of the origins of

nature

and of

life, and CONVENTIONAL or

MECHANICAL

(qq.v.) explanations of

morality a nd society, had the understandable effect, much sharpened

when they became explicit denials

of

religion,

of

transferring

materialism

and

materialist in

one kind of popular use to t he sense

of mere attitudes and forms of behaviour. In the furious counter

anack, by those who. would give religious

and

traditional explana

tlons

of

nature and life,

and

thence other kinds of cause in moral

behaviour and social organization,

materialism

and

materialist

were joined

to

the earlier sense

ofmaterial

(worldly) to describe not

so much the antecedent reasoning as the deduced moral and social

positions and then in a leap

of

controversy to transfer the notion

of

self-interest as the only natural force

to

'selfishness' as a supposedly

recommended or preferred way of life.

It

hardly needs to be pointed

out

that

both the conventional

and

the mechanical forms

of

materialist

moral argument

had

been concerned with how this force

- 'self-interest' - might be or actually was regulated for mutual

benefit. In C18 the usage was still primarily philosophical; by eC19

the

rash

and polemical extension from a proposition

to

a recommen

dation had deeply affected the senses

of materialism

and

materialist,

and the suitably looser

materialistic

followed from

mC19.

So complex an r g u m ~ n n o t be resolved by tracing the

d e v e l o ~ m e n t of

the w o r d ~ Some people still assert

that

a selfish

worldliness IS th.e mevrtable even if unintended consequence of the

derual of any pnmary moral force, whether divine or human. Some

read this conclusion back to qualify

the

physical argnments; others

accept, explicitly or implicitly, the physical arguments

but

introduce

new. terms for social or moral explanation. In religious and quasi

religious usage materialism and its associates have become



200 Materialism

I,

catchwords for description and free association

of

anything from

physical science to capitalist society, and also, significantly often, the

socialist revolt against capitalist society. The arbitrary character of

this pop ular association has to be seen both critically and historically.

But

what has also to be seen, for it bears centrally on this argument,

is

the

later development of philosophical materialism.

Thus

Marx's

critique,

of

the materialism hitherto described, accepted the physical

explanations of the origin of nature and of life but rejected the

derived forms of social

and

moral argument, describing

the

whole

tendency as mechanical materialism. This form of materialism had

•. isolated objects

and

had neglected or ignored subjects (see

I

1

SUBJECTIVE) and especially human activity as subjective. Hence his

distinction between a received

mechanical materialism

and a new

h

historical materialism,

which would include

human

activity as a

primary force. h e ~ s t i n c t i o n is important

but

it leaves many ques

tions unresolved. uman economic activity - men acting on a

physical environm - was seen s primary, but in one interpreta

tion all other activity, social, cultural and ~ was simply derived

from (cf.

DETERMINED

by) this primary

a c t i ~ i 2 :

(This allows, inci

dentally, a new free association with the popular sense of

materialism: economic activity

is

primary, therefore materialists

are primarily interested

in

activities which make money - which is

not at all what Marx meant.) Marx's sense of interaction - men

~ o r k i n g on physical t h i n ~ and ways they do ihis, and the rela

tions they enter mto to do it working also on human nature , which

thJ;I make

in

the process of mlik ig what they need to subsist - was

generalized by Engels as DIALECTICAL (q.v.)

materialism,

and

extended

to

a sense oflaws, not only of historical development but of

all natural or physical

p r ~ s s e S I n

this formulation, which is one

v'erslon

--or-Marxism,

historical

materialism

refers to human

activity,

dialectical

materialism

to universal processes.

The

point

that matters, in relation

to

the history of the words, is that historical

materialism

offers explanations

of

the causes

of

sense

(iii)

materialism

- selfish preoccupation with goods and money - and

so

far from •recommending it describes social and historical ways of

overcoming it and establishing co-operation and mutuality. This is of ·

course still a

materialist

reasoning as distinguished from kinds of

reasoning described, unfavourably, as IDEALIST (q.v.) or moralistic

or

utopian

But it is, to take the complex senses of the words, a

Materialism Mechanical 201

mater ialis t argument, n argument b sed on materialism against

a materialistic

society. '

See

DIALECTIC, EXPLOITATION, IDEALISM, MECHANICAL, REALISM

MECHANICAL

Mechanical

now appears to be derived from machine and to carry

its m a ~ n

. s e ~ s e s

and. rmplicauons. But this is misleading. Mechanical

was earlier 10 English than machine and has long had certain separ

able senses. The rw, as in Latin machina

had

the sense of any con

tnvance, and mechanical (from fw mechanicus L) was used from

C

5

to describe various mechanical arts

and

crafts;

in

fact

the

main

range of non-agricultural productive work. For social reasons

mechanical

then

acquired a derogatory class sense

to

indicate

people engaged,

in

these kinds

of

work and

thtlr

supposed

charactensucs: mecharucall

and

men

of

base condition' (1589)·

'most Mechanicall and durty

hand'

(2 Henry JV v); •meai

mechamcal parentage (1646) . From eCl7 there was a persistent use

of

mechanical

in

the sense

of

routine, unthinking activity. This may

now be seen as

an

analogy with the actions

of

a machine and the

: ' ~ l o g y is clear from mC18.

But

in

the

earliest uses the s ~ c i a l pre

JUdice seems

to

be at least as strong.

Machine from

Cl6,

indicated any structure or framework, but

from Cl7 began to be specialized to

an

apparatus for applying power

and from Cl8 to a more complex apparatus of interrelated and

moving parts. The distinction from tool and the distinction between

machine-made and hand-made belong

to

this phase, especially from

IC18.

But

meanwhile mechanical

had

taken on a new and influen

tial meaning, primarily from the new science of mechanics. Boyle

wrotein

1671:

I do not here take the term, Mechanicks

in that

stricter

and

more

p r o ~ e r

sense, wherein it is wont to be taken, when tis used onely

to s gnifie the Doctrine about

the

Moving Powers (as the Beam,

the Leaver, the Screws, and the Wedg) and of framing Engines

to

Documents

Williams, R.- Materialism, In Keywords, A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Section-1976)