>>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 09/15/99 03:59AM >>>
I would argue that the second definition is the most important, but that the first compliments it while the third loses the usefulness of the distinction.
Terry Eagleton gives no less than Napoleon pride of place in coining the word. But the idea behind it is straight-forward enough in European philosophy - that opinion or dogma, is an inferior kind thinking to more reasoned or scientific thought.
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Charles: Raymond Williams (_Marxism and Literature_) has a contrary point of view. He says ( and I think someone posted on de Tracy before on this)
" 'Ideology' was coined as a term in the late eighteenth century, by the French philosopher Destutt de Tracy. It was intended to be a philosophical term for the 'science of ideas'. Its use depended on a particular understanding of the natue of 'ideas', which was broadly that of Locke and the empiricist tradition. Thus, ideas were not to be and could not be understood in any of the older 'metaphysical' or 'idealist' senses. The science of ideas must be a natural science, since all ideas originate in man's experience of the world. Specifically, in Destutt, ideology is part of zoology:
"We have only an incomplete knowledge of an animal if we do not know his intellectual faculties. Ideology is a part of Zoology, and it is especially in man that this part is important and deserves to be more deeply understood ( _Elements d' ideologie, 1801, Preface) "
CB: So by this originally "ideology" is so scientific it is part of Zoology.
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Jim: What Marx adds to that is that in the sphere of social thinking, spontaneous thought will tend merely to reproduce the status quo, while scientific materialism will penetrate beneath the appearances of the market to uncover the transient nature of capitalist society and the formation of the new society within the womb of the old.
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Charles: I agree that this is in Marx, but I don't think that Marx thought that his scientific materialism , even comprehended by many workers, realizes or actualizes the potential radical change of the status quo if not taken as an ideology or philosophy of, by and for the working class, i.e. not understood as neutral in the sense that many describe science as ideologically neutral.
Afterall, the bourgeoisie can learn the ideologically neutral or objective aspects of Marx's science , and put it to service of their class interests. I would argue that a major development of world capitalism today and since Marx and Lenin, is that the bourgeoisie have used Marxism to become a class for-themselves, to gain a more objective understanding of themselves (and the working class) and their struggle with workers, and used it to thwart the working class revolution. The neutral validity of Marx's science has backfired.
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Jim: In Marx's version mere ideology (or what is sometimes called 'false consciousness', though that it itself a flawed concept) is the natural product of the bourgeois standpoint.
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Charles: But the bourgeoisie are subjects, not objects, and they know it better than the workers know that they ( the workers themselves) are subjects. The bourgeoisie are not restricted to any "natural" ideology or view of the system. The classical political economists' view was improved upon by Marx, and the smart bourgeoisie know it, and take it ( Marxism in ideological reverse) as their standpoint. Marx revealed the secrets of the bourgeois system , and the bourgeoisie have learned their own secrets better than the workers and the petit bourgeois (Neo-classical economics is a false consciousness of mainly petit bourgeoisie).
>From the bourgeois standpoint, false consciousness of the bourgeois system is to fool the working class and petit bourgeoisie, not for self-understanding.
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For the revolutionary proletariat, by contrast, only science will do. With nothing to lose but their chains, the workers have the capacity to look beyond the given state of things, that the bourgeois, condemned to insist that his is the only possible way, lacks.
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Charles: They might look past the given state of things, but they can't get there without a working class ideological , non-neutral attitude toward what they can see in the future. That is , they must see that the status quo will not change without a partisan working class use of their understanding of capitalism. They must have a consciousness that unites politics and science, i.e. an ideology in Williams sense number (i) below.
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Jim: Hence, for Marx, the working class is the 'universal class' that Hegel tried to find in the state officials, because only its immediate needs coincide with the transcendence of the status quo.
Marx also insists that illusion can only be dispelled with the dissolution of the state of affairs that demands illusions to sustain it (as PA Van Heusden quotes on the bottom of his posts). With that twist in the argument, Marx gives the philosophical idea of higher reason a materialistic twist. In the section on commodity fetishism in Capital, vol 1 Marx shows how the illusions of the market are 'real illusions', ie they correspond to real (though partial) existences of the market.
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Charles: I agree. I take " the dissolution of the state of affairs that demands illusions to sustain it" as The Revolution. This is specifically a reference to religion. Religion will whither away with the end of capitalism. Of course, commodity fetishism, neo-classical economics, and other illusory, partial, false consciousnesses about what is really going on will dissolve too.
But the key, is getting enough dissolution of illusions in the working class before the rev. so that they will make the rev. i.e. dissolve the existing state of affairs. A problem Marx doesn't address is that his science has dissolved illusions among the bourgeoisie more than among the workers, and the bosses use their objective viewpoint to preserve their affairs.
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Jim:
The vulgarisation of Marx by such as Manneheim and Simmel effectively reduces Marx's materialistic argument to a relativistic epistemology by rejecting the concept of the universal class. With that simple stroke, all knowledge is identified with interests, and we are immediately thrown back 2000 years to the wilful stupidity of the Sophists, like Thrasymachus. And this is what is called progress by our friends the deconstructionists.
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Charles: I agree, if the concept of a universal class is both an objective and ideological concept. The knowledge of the universal class must be united with action by that class, unity of theory and practice. Marxist science unites theory and practice, is their identity. Thus, the Second Thesis on Feuerbach, the test of theory ( science) is practice (ideologically guided action). But this test is part of the science too.
The Marxist view on this unites knowledge with class interest, but working class interest only. Put it this way: Knowledge will inevitably,unite with a class interest. It cannot remain neutral in fact. The question for Marxists is which side are you going to unite your knowledge with. ((((((((((((((
Jim: (Incidentally, Charles, I am sorry I did not reply to your earlier post on this, which I inadvertently deleted. My only thought on that would be Lukacs' argument that the most important conflict in philosophy is less idealism v materialism than rationalism v irrationalism.)
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Charles:
Rationality means toward a purpose. The bourgeoisie are rational in a narrow sense. The act toward their class purpose and interest. They are not rational with respect to the interests of whole human species. Unfortunately, they have a greater command of objective knowledge and are using it to serve their narrow, private interests (property) quite successfully. The bourgeoisie are quite materialist in the sense of objective.They are not idealists. So, in this sense Luckas comment clarifies somethings. Afterall, once Engels pronounced that the main question of all philosophy was idealism vs. materialism, that discovery changed philosophy itself, and perhaps its main question relocated as Luckas observed.
CB
In message <s7de6163.057 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>In re a definition of ideology (vs science) from a few days ago, Raymond
>Williams in _Marxism and Literature_, Chapter 4 ,"Ideology" says:
>
>"The concept of "ideology" did not originate in Marxism and is still in no way
>confined to it. Yet it is evidently an important concept in almost all Marxist
>thinking about culture., and especially about literature and ideas. The
>difficulty then is that we have to distinguish three common versions of the
>concept , which are all common in Marxist writing. These are broadly:
>
>(i) a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group;
>
>(ii) a system of illusory beliefs - false ideas or false consciousness -
>which can be contrasted with true or scientific knowledge:
>
>(iii) the general process of the production of meanings and ideas.
>
>
>In one variant of Marxism, sense (i) and (ii) can be effectively combined. In a
>class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of
>belief of all classes - or, quite commonly, of all classes preceding, and other
>than, the proletariat, whose formation is the project of the abolition of class
>society - are then in part or wholly false (illusory). The specific problems in
>this powrful general proposition have led to intense controversy within Marxist
>thought. It is not unusual to find some form of the proposition alongside uses
>of the simple sense (i), as in the characterization, for example by Lenin of
>'socialist ideology'. Another way of broadly retainng but distinguishing senses
>(i) and (ii) is to use sense (i) for systems of belief founded on class position
>, including that of the proletariat within class society, and sense (ii) for
>contrast with (in a broad sense) scientific knowledge of all kinds, which is
>based on reality rather than illusions..."
>
>
>
>CB
>
-- Jim heartfield