Puritanism as a Revolutionary Ideology

Ideas, like men, play many parts. They are used casuistically to justify behavior; they rationalize interests; they shape character; they inspire fanaticism and presumption. No unified theory is likely to explain all the possible connections of thought and action. The connections are different at different moments in history and at any single moment they are different for different men. Recent studies of revolutionary movements and totalitarian governments clearly suggest the shifting role of ideas during periods of crisis and relative stability. To reduce all this to a single formula would be to impoverish our historical and sociological speculation. This was probably the initial effect of Marxism upon the history of ideas, even though the theory of ideology was surely the most subtle and valuable contribution yet made to that history. The Marxist epigone, ignoring the master's metaphysics, explained the creation, spread and decay of ideological systems in terms of a unilinear economic history and a theory of reflection never satisfactorily developed in either psychological or epistemological terms. His was a view obviously inadequate to the understanding of religious thought (where the original Marxist idea of alienation might be fruitfully applied) and artistic creativity.' But it was also inadequate precisely where he claimed it to be most useful in the interpretation of revolutionary ideology. The Marxist insisted, correctly enough, upon the catastrophic character of social change; but he never studied the effects of catastrophe upon the mind and spirit of men. He tended, instead, to view revolutionary thought as the rational expression of the interests of a rising class, and he imagined interests to be objective, narrowly based in economic life, and more or less automatically expressed.2 This sort of analysis seems best suited to post-