Carrol Cox wrote:
> Just a note. Marx never said this. He said that when *ideas* (not
> "ideology") grip the masses they become material forces.
I may have misquoted too -- did Marx say "ideas" or "theory"? I think the latter but right now can't even remember where it occurs in his works. But what I said about "ideas" in contrast to "ideology" would apply even more strongly to "theory."
And to carry one of my points a bit further -- I think Marx's point applied *only* to revolutionary theory, and is false when applied to ideas in general or, especiallly, when applied to capitalist *theory*. Capitalist ideology (in 9 out of 10 of the meanings of that term) permeates mass thought and feeling, of course, but one of the frustrations often in teaching college courses is that the students, while imbued with capitalist ideology, have no conception whatever of capitalist theory. Can you imagine the ordinary worker (including college faculty) saying, "I'm going to vote for X because she upholds the theory of comparative advantage"? Ideology is a "material force" only in a very indirect way: it blocks off or makes more difficult access to theory, to conscious and deliberate thought. That is, it operates as a barrier to theory seizing the minds of the masses.
Carrol