CHAPTER 2

IDEOLOGY

‘Ideology’ must be the most overworked word in political debate. The word has been drained of most of its analytic content and has become a mere label to be tied on doctrines which we dislike. ‘Ideological’ is rarely used except pejoratively, as a synonym for ‘doctrinaire’ and ‘dogmatic’. But the contention of this book is that all coherent political doctrines are ideological, as is our use of political ideas themselves: if this is accepted, the pejorative connotations of the term must be laid aside. This chapter examines the various concepts of ideology which have developed, and their significance for political theory.

The debate about what ideology actually is is traced historically in this chapter, as it is in some ways a debate primarily located in the past two centuries. Today, many thinkers would contend that we are in a ‘post-ideological’ era, and would agree with Fukuyama that liberalism has won the struggle between ideologies and is the only game in town.1 That claim must be contested, since emerging ideologies such as religio-political doctrines, which could be considered ideological, Green ideologies and the anti-globalization movement pose major challenges to the supposed liberal-democratic hegemony.

MARX ON IDEOLOGY

The term ‘ideology’ literally means ‘the science of ideas’ but in the early nineteenth century a more critical usage was established: it came to mean an abstract, visionary or speculative way of thinking. While it was Marx who offered the first major analysis of ideology as such, the philosophical problem which gave rise to the notion had been widely debated during the Enlightenment. The problem is that of the status of knowledge. Many previous cultures had believed knowledge to be certain, absolute and objective: Plato thought that there existed in some metaphysical dimension Ideas or Forms, absolute truths which served as models which men should strive to realize in society. The knowledge of these Ideas (such as Justice and the Good) was absolute knowledge, attainable through philosophical contemplation. Despite its pre-Christian origins, Platonism later influenced the Christian view of knowledge and truth. Mediaeval Christian theology held that truth was God-given and absolute, reflecting the divinely ordained and fixed order of the world. The chief source of such knowledge was the scriptures, although during the Renaissance the experimental, scientific method of gaining knowledge was reconciled with Christian precepts. According to both Platonic and Christian views, knowledge ‘exists’ independently or emanates from a non-human source, and so is objectively established. Knowledge is to be discovered, not created, by human beings.

Enlightenment philosophers, many of whom were atheists, used reason as an implement for destroying the prejudices and mysteries of Christianity, arguing that the world was in principle explicable scientifically. A new conception of knowledge resulted: the thinking being was seen as the creator of knowledge. Kant and Hegel developed theories of knowledge, epistemologies, on the basis of this insight, which abolished the polarity between the individual as a thinking subject, passively absorbing objective knowledge, and the external world, the source and object of knowledge. The new theories emphasized the subjective aspect of knowledge: the thinker inevitably intrudes herself into her perception of the object which she is trying to know. This had been implicit in Locke’s argument, a century before, that knowledge of the external world is gained through our senses and so is sense-dependent, and therefore subject-dependent: for example, given a different eye structure, the world would appear to us as black and white. Kant emphasized that knowledge results from an active process, not mere passive absorption of data, while Hegel’s dialectical account of knowledge described the constant dialogue between the conscious subject and the object, each stage raising the subject to a higher form of knowledge.

Marx’s achievement was to codify the ways in which the social identity of the ‘knowing subject’ altered her knowledge, and to describe the process of knowing in concrete terms. As a materialist, he believed that material causes could be found for all events and phenomena in the world: there were no mysterious or metaphysical events and everything was scientifically explicable, including humankind. All human thought, ideas and theories (in general, ‘consciousness’) were determined by material factors and, more precisely, by social circumstances.

Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning, a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all.2

Marx considered that the economic structure of society determined all its other aspects, from social relations and political institutions to law, morality and knowledge itself. Each economic system gave rise to the existence of classes in society, and people’s knowledge and beliefs were determined not only by the general social context but by their particular class position in society. In propounding this materialist theory of consciousness, Marx challenged the ‘Young Hegelians’ and, indirectly, Hegel himself, who were, by contrast, idealists. They believed that ideas had an autonomous existence and could act as independent causes of events in the material world: the intellect had priority over mere physical existence. Revolutions, even, were made by ideas. Hegel had seen history as the movement of ‘Spirit’ through the world, realizing itself in different social forms. Marx thought such idealism (not to be confused with ‘idealism’ in the sense of ‘the pursuit of ideals’, although the two meanings are related) illusory and philosophically false.

Marx never set out his theory of ideology systematically in one text, but a coherent doctrine can be extrapolated from his works. Social reality itself is contradictory, Marx held: capitalism fosters two antagonistic classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, whose interests are diametrically opposed, and which will finally come into direct conflict. Ideology is a resolution of these contradictions in the mind: thus, capitalist ideology may ‘resolve’ class conflict by emphasizing the common interests and harmony between the classes, or the ‘organic’ nature of society, but this cannot alter the real antagonism between the interests of those classes. Because ideology tries to resolve the irresoluble, it gives an inaccurate and distorted representation of material reality.

The elaboration of this general conception of ideology shows what Marx thought its social functions to be. An individual’s consciousness is determined by his class position, his ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, and the social relationships into which he enters as a member of a certain class. Marx gave an account of the genesis of different class viewpoints in economic circumstances, showing how each point of view distorts reality according to its own interests. His dialectical view of social processes (discussed in Chapter 4) entailed that in every conflict the opposing classes or groups had their own partial understanding of the process: he described the production process from the viewpoint of the capitalist and from that of the labourer, showing the differences between these subjective, one-sided accounts of the same phenomenon.3 Because such knowledge was bound up with the knower’s class position, it was necessarily a partial and inaccurate representation of the world: hence, it was ideological. For Marx, the only escape route from ideology to accurate knowledge was via a synthetic account which comprehended both sides of the process, as did his own theory, which he designated ‘scientific’, in contradistinction to ‘ideological’ social theory.

Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie reinforces its dominant position in the economy by all possible social and political means, including the creation of the state. Ideology is viewed by Marx as a major instrument of repression in the hands of the ruling class, used to deceive subordinate classes about the true nature of capitalism and to perpetuate its own domination. The law, religion, morality, social theory and philosophy all evolve or are refashioned so as to reflect the bourgeois standpoint, and they become part of the wider ideology, functioning to disguise the contradictions in society and the grievances and discontent of the proletariat. Although the worker’s class position should give him a set of ideas which reflect his own reality, he may instead absorb the all-pervasive bourgeois ideology which misleads him as to his own (exploited) situation: then, he is said to be the victim of false consciousness, which makes him unlikely to rebel against his oppressed condition. The idea of ‘inverted’ or false consciousness attributed to Marx did not mean anything so simple as the direct deliberate deception of gullible proletarians by a malevolent bourgeoisie. Bourgeois ideology invades the consciousness of workers through the propagation of commonsensical, seemingly non-dogmatic ideas, such as ‘Everyone should pay their way’, which establish the work ethic, the consumption ethic and the ideal of the ‘self-made man’, all of which are vital to capitalism. A doctrine of individualism likewise develops which teaches that we establish our personal...