penguinfoot
29th September 2010, 15:21
I've noticed from looking at some introductory materials on Marxism that there seems to be a particular conception of Marx's theory of ideology that is pretty widespread amongst those who don't have a wide reading of Marx's texts to the point where it's seen to be what makes Marx's own views on ideology distinct from other approaches - broadly speaking this conception seems to be one centered around the idea of false consciousness, in that it sees ideology as anything that prevents the working class from gaining an accurate or undistorted view of the world (this view being based on the assumption that there is indeed an accurate understanding of the social world that can be gained once the influence of ideology has been stripped away) and characterizes the role of revolutionaries as being to remove ideology or "false consciousness", so as to place the working class in a position where it can carry out its historic mission. I think there are defiantly some elements of Marx that you can cite in order to provide support for this view but at the same time I would argue that it is a view that is largely drawn from Engels, not least because Engels was the only one of the two authors to ever use the term false consciousness, which is the term that has come to be closely associated with this conception of ideology, and a more thorough look at the entire breadth of Marx's intellectual contributions seems to indicate that he actually had a more nuanced view of ideology, rather than one based on a simple distortion/clarity dichotomy, in which ideology is reduced to a weapon in the hands of the ruling class.
I think that this is most true if we look at concepts like commodity fetishism where Marx makes clear that at least one aspect of ideology under capitalism - namely the willingness of human beings to treat value as if it were something inherent in goods and services rather than being something that is specific to the commodity-form and to attribute independent power to commodities rather than acknowledging their origins in the labour activity of human beings - is not mere illusion and is not a myth that the bourgeoisie knowingly propagates as a means of supporting its own class rule but instead something that derives from the relations of production themselves, and, in a way, reflects the nature of capitalist society, especially the very real experience of humans being dominated by their own creations. Apart from commodity fetishism I would also point to certain aspects of 'Poverty of Philosophy', where Marx, in the course of exposing Proudhon's failure to historicize his account of concepts like the division of labour and his reliance on a history of ideas in place of a history that begins with material conditions and activity, notes that feudal and capitalist societies can be described in terms of the "manifestation" of different "principles", with the principle of "authority" being attached to the 11th century, and the principle of "individualism" being attached to the 18th century. Marx does not then go on to say that the principles of authority and individualism were merely the respective ideological means by which the ruling class dominated the working population in the respective epochs and what we are left with is an almost Durkheimian or Foucauldian argument which makes it seem as if each mode of production carries with it its own set of cultural and ideological discourses which apply to society as a whole, being rooted in material conditions - and this particular example seems to parallel a separate passage in The German Ideology where Marx argues that the conflict between the aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie at the advent of capitalist society expressed itself in the form of the doctrine of the division of powers (which seems to be an expression of ongoing class conflict rather than a tool of oppression - suggesting that ideology can also reflect the balance of class power in a society and embody a degree of consensus between rival classes) despite it also being The German Ideology that is most often quoted to show that Marx accepted the distortion/actuality view of ideology.
What do other members think about Marx's theory of ideology? Is there a single theory of ideology in Marx? If the distortion/clarity conception is inaccurate, why has it becomes so popularly accepted as a characterization of the Marxist theory of ideology?
I think that this is most true if we look at concepts like commodity fetishism where Marx makes clear that at least one aspect of ideology under capitalism - namely the willingness of human beings to treat value as if it were something inherent in goods and services rather than being something that is specific to the commodity-form and to attribute independent power to commodities rather than acknowledging their origins in the labour activity of human beings - is not mere illusion and is not a myth that the bourgeoisie knowingly propagates as a means of supporting its own class rule but instead something that derives from the relations of production themselves, and, in a way, reflects the nature of capitalist society, especially the very real experience of humans being dominated by their own creations. Apart from commodity fetishism I would also point to certain aspects of 'Poverty of Philosophy', where Marx, in the course of exposing Proudhon's failure to historicize his account of concepts like the division of labour and his reliance on a history of ideas in place of a history that begins with material conditions and activity, notes that feudal and capitalist societies can be described in terms of the "manifestation" of different "principles", with the principle of "authority" being attached to the 11th century, and the principle of "individualism" being attached to the 18th century. Marx does not then go on to say that the principles of authority and individualism were merely the respective ideological means by which the ruling class dominated the working population in the respective epochs and what we are left with is an almost Durkheimian or Foucauldian argument which makes it seem as if each mode of production carries with it its own set of cultural and ideological discourses which apply to society as a whole, being rooted in material conditions - and this particular example seems to parallel a separate passage in The German Ideology where Marx argues that the conflict between the aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie at the advent of capitalist society expressed itself in the form of the doctrine of the division of powers (which seems to be an expression of ongoing class conflict rather than a tool of oppression - suggesting that ideology can also reflect the balance of class power in a society and embody a degree of consensus between rival classes) despite it also being The German Ideology that is most often quoted to show that Marx accepted the distortion/actuality view of ideology.
What do other members think about Marx's theory of ideology? Is there a single theory of ideology in Marx? If the distortion/clarity conception is inaccurate, why has it becomes so popularly accepted as a characterization of the Marxist theory of ideology?