A Critique of Relativism in Political Thought

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In the preceding chapters I have noted that relativism is a problem of ideology and of inadequate conceptions of political philosophy and political science which fail to maintain objectivity. Chapter 1 considered how logical positivists and linguistic analysts tend to dismiss all normative thought as non-scientific and identify it as ideology. Normative thought is held to lack objective verification and to be relative to the non-rational preferences of individuals and groups. Historicism also undermines political philosophy by making all values relative to historical context. One consequence of this attack on normative political philosophy is that even when the revival of the discipline is acknowledged it is suspected of being not much more than ideological. Chapters 2 and 3 noted that the problem of relativism pervades theories of ideology. Marxist theories of ideology seek, but fail, to substantiate their own claims to objectivity and truth, and so fail to demonstrate why Marxism is superior to other bodies of thought. Thus Marxism may be no more than an ideology, whose appeal is relative to a particular social class. Among non-Marxist theories of ideology, Durkheim starts with a negative and restrictive conception of ideology, which he contrasts with social science, but ends with the acknowledgement that both science and ideology are socially functional, relative to particular social formations.