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4.
Ideology
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Ideology
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' Ideology' was coined as a term in the late eigh teen th century,
by the French philosopher DestuJ!AJ} I.rltg. It was intended to
be a philosophica l term (QfThc 'scieD~ of ide,, ~:. It s use
depended on a particular understanding of th e nature of , ideas '
which was broad ly that of Locke and the empiricist tradition .
Thus ideas were not to beand could not be understood in aoyor
the older 'metaphysica l' or 'id ealist' sen ses. The science of ideas
must be a natural scien ce , since a ll ideas origi nate in man's
experience of th e world. Specifica ll y, in Destutt, ideology is part
of zoology:
We have only AA Incomplete k.nowledge of an animal if we do not k.now
his intellectual faculti es. Ideology is a part of Zoology, and It is especially in man thallhis part is important and deserves to be morc deeply
understood. (Elements d'idloJogie, 1 801, Preface)
The description is ch aracteristic of scientific e mpi ricism. The
'real elements' of ideology are 'our intellectual fa culties, their
principa l phenomena and their most evident circumstances'.
The critical aspect of this emphasis was at once realized by one
kind of opponent, the reactionary de Bo na ld: 'Ideology has
replaced metaphysics ... beca use modern philosophy sees no
oth er ideas in the world but those of men'. De Bonald rorrectly
related the scientific sense of ideology to the empiricist tradition
which had passed from Locke through Condill ac. pointing out
its prooccupation with 'sign s and their influence on th ought'
and summarizing its 'sad system' as a reduction of 'our thoughts'
to 'tra nsformed sen sa tions' . 'All the characteristics of intelligence', de Bona ld added, 'disappea red under the sca lpe l of this
ideological dissection .'
The initial bearings o f the concept of ideology are th en very
com plex. It was indeed an assertion against metaphysics that
there are 'no ideas in the world but those of men '. At the sa me
time, intended as a branch of empirical science, ' ideo logy' was
limit ed , by its phil oso-phica l assumptions, to a versio n of ideas
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Ideology
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probably relate to (though in fact , as examples, they work .against) ~derlyil.!.S. cr~te!~Q.n of 'd~!l!ositiy.eJc!!..o~I~&~~ ... ~ I
They are in a way very like the use of'lheidea of gravity' to refute
the noti on of the control ling power of ideas. If the idea had been
not a practical and scientific understanding of a natural force
but , say, an idea of ' racial superiority' or of 'the inferior wisdom
of women ', the argument mi ght in the end have come out the
same way but it would have had to pass throu gh many more
significant stages and difficulties.
This is also true even of the more positive definition!
We do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men
as narrated , thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men
in the fl esh. We set out from real. aclive men, and on the basis of their
real life-process we demonstrate the devefo'pmenLof the -idooiogrcar
-reflexes ati1l-echo~fs-of thig life-process. Th'e phantoms formed in the
human bfallf8realso.ii'i.tcessanTy-,SiililiJnates of their material lifeprocess, which is empirica lly verifiable and bound to material premisses. Morality, religion. metaphysics, all the rest or ideology and their
corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the sem
blance of independence. (GI, 14)
This goes perhaps even too much the other way, but its difference from the world of'reflexes', 'echoes', 'phantoms', and 'su bIimates' hardly needs to be st ressed.~~sciousn~.:b~ is seen frgm I':
the beginning_a~ _qf th.e pum_~ ,m~teri81 SOCial proc~~s, anf4J..'
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its products in ' ideas' are then as much part of this process as
material products themselves. This. centrally. was the thrust of
Marx's whole a rgument. but the point was lost, in this crucial
8.cea , by 8 temporarysurrenderlo the cynicism oC'practicaJ m e n'
Ideology
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Marxism a nd Literalure
Ideology
manifestly so-which are masked and idealized as 'consciousness and its p roducts' but which, when seen without illusions.
'thinking' and5!D8.s;in!.n...&'
areJ!gm.Jb ~ _~~ginQ!p.vru:l!L
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abandon their a
become t e
~wi1l
tr~ct
(gfMt.1 22)--- - - - - -
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Ideology
positive science', in the sense of detailed and connected knowledge of 'the practical process of development of men'. then the
distinction may have sign ificance as an indication of the
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Ideology
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.Th e division of labou r . .. manifests itself also in the ruling class as the
division of mental and material labour. so that inside thiselsss ono part
appears as he thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive Ideologists.
wbo.,)n~Q...1be-perr.. cling..oLthe....iU.usi.Q{LC!.Lth~. ~ I Af~ abo,.Yt illiQlf \hei
_ chief SOI!f'Q) ~ f liveHhOQd) while the 0 her's attitude to these ideas and
Hlusions is more pas!live and I1lCeptive, because they are in reality the
active members or this elassand have less time to makeup iJluslonsand
ideas abouLtlu.'IIUlJ,yps.j GI , 39-401"
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0rell/he
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But ' ideology' then hovers between 'a system of be liefs characteristic of a certain class' and 'a system of illusory beliefs- false
ideas or fal se consciousness-which can be contrasted with true
or scientific knowledge'.
This uncertainty was never reall y resolved. Id eology as 'sepa
rated th eory'-the natural home of illusion s and false co n
scious ness-is itself sepSIated from the (intrinsicall y limited)
'practica l con scious ness of a class'. This separation, h owever, is
very much easier to ca rry out in theory than in practico. The
immense body of direct c1assconsciousness, directl y expressed
and agai n and again directly imposed, ca n appear to escape the
taint of 'ideology'. which would be limited to the universaliz
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ideological- forms in which men become conscious of this confli ct and fight it out ". The infection hom ca tegorica l argument
against specialists in ca tegori es has here been burned out. by 8
practical recogni tion orthe whole and indissoluble material and
socia l process. 'Id eology' then reverts to a specific and practical
dimension : the complica ted process within which men
'beco~o' (are) conscious of their interests and their ronnie Is.
The ca tegorical short-cut to an (abstract) disti nction between
'true' and 'false' consciousness is then effectively abandoned, as
in all practice it has to be.
All these varying u ses of 'ideology' ha ve persisted within the
general development of Marxism. There has been a conven ient
dogmatic retention, at some leve ls, of ideology as 'false 000
sciousoess'. This has oft en prevented the more specific an alysis
of operative distinctions of 'true' and 'false' consciousness at the
practical level. which is always that of socia l rela ti onships. and
of the pa rt played in these relationships by 'conceptions,
thoughts. ideas '. There was a late attempt, by Luklics, to clarify
this analysis by a di stinction between 'actu al consciousness'
and 'imputed' or ' potential' con sciousness (a full and 'true'
understanding of a real social position}. This has the merit of
avoiding the reduction of aU 'actual consciousness' to ideology,
but the ca tegory is specu lative, and indeed as a ca legory cannot
easily be sustained. In History and ClassConsciou sness it
dependml 0 1'1 a last abstract attempt to identify tru th with lhe
idea of the proletariat, but in this Hegelian form it is no more
convincing than the earlier positivist identification of a ca tegory
of 'scientific knowledge'. A more interesting but equally dif
ficult attempt to define 'true' consciousness was the elaboration
of Marx's point about changing the world rather than interpreting it. What became known as the 'test of p ractice' was offered as
a criterion of truth and as the essen tial distinction from ideo
logy. ln certain general ways th is is a w holl y consistent projec
lion from the id ea of 'practical consciousn ess ', but it is easy to
see h ow its appli ca tion to specific theori es, formulat ions, and
programmes ca n result either in a vulgar 'success' ethic. masquerading as 'hi storica l truth' , or in numbness or con fu sion
whan there are practical defeats and deformations, The 'test of
practi ce', that is to say, ca nnot be applied to 'scientific th eory'
and 'id eology' taken as abstract ca tegories. The rea l point of the
definition of 'practica l consciousness' was indeed to undercut
Ideology
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Ideology
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not ideas or theories, but whic h are the very different works we
call 'art' and 'literature ', and which are normal elements of the
very general processes we caJl 'culture' and 'la nguage', can be
approached in ways other than reduction, abstraction, of assimi
lation. This is the a rgument that has now to be taken into cuI
tural a nd literary stud ies, a nd especia i1 y in to the Marxist co ntribution to them , which, in spite of appearances, is then likely
to be even more controversia l than hitherto. But it is then a n
open Question whether 'ideology' and 'ideological' , wit h their
senses of 'abstractio n' and 'illusion', or their senses of 'ideas'
and 'theories', or even their senses of a 'system' of beliefs or of
meanings a nd va lues, are sufficie ntly precise and p racticable
terms for so far reaching and radical a redefinition.