>
> Marx was never God, socialism was never religion, so no point in feeling
> 'betrayed by the God That Failed.' Either _we_ (the working class) make
> socialism or we don't, under the circumstances not of our own making.
> That's all there is to it. Nothing was ever guaranteed. If we are weak,
> chalk it up to the cunning & strength of our enemies.
No disagreement here. My points are merely:
a) The reality of ideology: as Marx said, when sufficient numbers of people believe in an ideology, it becomes a material force. (Gramsci used to quote this all the time when developing his thinking around hegemony)
b) The interlacing of science and ideology: it is not possible, except in trivial cases, to point to a specimen of 'knowledge' and say 'this is ideology', or 'this is not', given that the processes of acquiring knowledge (science) and the processes of producing and reproducing 'common sense' (the hegemonical process) are interlaced. (I think this might be related to that 'subsumption' stuff Angela is talking about)
c) The existence of humanity outside of the bounds of theory: we're surrounded by ideology, we're not subsumed in it. (Here I need to step no further than Marx, and the Grundrisse)
Oh, and I'm not so certain that, in advanced capitalist societies (like the one in the UK), it is so easy to tell apart the 'working class' and the 'middle class', and, as I argued following Carrol's posting on the subject, the identities set up around that distinction are themselves powerful ideological elements.
It might be nothing new, but it still doesn't seem to have penetrated into political practice.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.