Class 3 (Week 4)

7/31/2019 Class 3 (Week 4)

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Aspects of Ideology: science, anti-science, vision, discourse

Noel Parker

Class 3 (week 4): Marx’s concept as a critical perspective

Part II: Ideology as critique

1) Three shifts in ‘ideology’:a) From science to object of scienceb) From neutral position to incurably loaded positionc) Ultimately, from ‘academy’ to inter-party, inter-class & inter-cultural object of

dispute – producing, finally, the exhaustion of the term…and itsreappearance (Part III)

2) Last week’s working questions (now as group discussion)

• How can an ideology be defined to enable study of it to begin and toprogress?

• What is ideology’s relationship to politics?

• What are the best tools to analyse ideologies? (Give your own

answers!)

Aspects of Ideology – Classes 1

7/31/2019 Class 3 (Week 4)


This week’s new material

3) What Marx was doing in The German Ideology .a) Expressing (with another emigrant, Engels) his disdainful rejection of his

own Left Hegelian intellectual background. b) By using the term ‘ideology’ in referring to that intellectual style and,

beyond that, all contemporary German reformist thinking.c) Reviving the distaste that all the reactionary critics had of Ideology/ists,

and gave it new life as a target of the revolutionary left!d) Even though the text was not published in his lifetime, Marx gave the term

‘ideology’ a developed meaning (& new currency) within his broader system of thought.

• What may have been the effect of this text, if any?


7/31/2019 Class 3 (Week 4)


4) The text:a) Rejecting his own intellectual heritage (pp.57-70):

i) Marx was enthusiastic about Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel, but dissentedfrom the method. It was that the ‘religion’ of the ‘spirit’ of the totality wasmerely ‘projection’ of humanist hope, and should be inverted.

ii) His own ‘method….starts out from the real premises…’(69) as against(German & Feuerbach’s) intellectual practice. ‘Positive science’.

iii) There follow three forms of property (similar to Adam Ferguson, 1776)progressively dissociating property from those doing the work (not Marx’sfinished version).

b) ‘History: Fundamental Conditions’ (pp.70-76):i) ‘Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of

premises…’(70)!ii) Introduces materialist conditions that include continuing life & relations:

‘…men, who daily remake their own life…the relation between man andwoman, parents and children, the family .’(72 – first to emphases added)

iii) This is the prelude to practices & values that continue the sameconditions

c) Ways to form property relations (pp.76-82):i) Property can be seen in two possible relations: to the whole, or to a part

of the whole (= ‘communist’ or ‘private’ – both broad-brush terms)ii) Hence the state: ‘…contradiction between the interest of the individual

and that of the community the latter takes an independent form as theState, divorced from the real interests of individual and community…’(77)

d) ‘Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas’i) The ideas of the ruling class are…the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is

the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its rulingintellectual force’(92 – emphasis in original)…which seems to refer to:(1) The most frequently heard ideas,(2) The ideas that fit the life of the dominant class, and/or (3) The ideas that most advantage the ruling class’s domination.

ii) (Like Adam Smith etc.) the division of labour has an extended

significance over the structure of political power.(1)Marx interprets this (97-113) in the geographical relation between

town and country, taking ‘bourgeois’ in its current sense.(2)Hence, the totality of property law & the state overall function

(‘ideologically’) to legitimize the property relations of the existingsociety(114-6).


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• How can the stages of Marx’s argument be given coherence?


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5) Conceptual shifts in the transition from to Marx’s thinkinga) ‘Abstract’ becomes ‘Idealist’:

i) The earlier accusation that the College of Ideology expounded ‘hot air’was given a ontological meaning by identifying it with thinking not takingaccount of human physical needs.

ii) Human physical needs are at the very least causal pre-conditions for allother human practices – as Aristotle, who also has anormative/teleological interpretation of this causality.

b) Sensationalism becomes phenomenology:i) Marx correctly understood that the Ideologists, as sensationalist

philosophers, were targets of the same criticisms as he levelled v. Hegel.ii) Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit was non-individualist in its starting

point, because it holds that human consciousness is not articulated in theindividual consciousness, but in common practices of a society.

• The Ideologists reached collective human consciousness only bysumming up individual consciousnesses

c) Marx’s materialism includes a place for all of state power:i) Human physical needs are at least a pre-condition for all other human

practices →(according to Marx) all human thinking must be ‘determined’by the prior satisfaction of physical needs.

ii) This requires (probably!) the recognition (= either acceptance or conscious awareness) of society’s property relations. So this will bedecisive in thinking.

iii) The structure of state/political power is placed (following Rousseau, LaMettrie etc) alongside the forced exclusion/suppression of the interests of a large proportion of the human population.

iv) Idealism (& religion à la Feuerbach) – according to the Marx’s ‘materialistmethod’ – functions to the same end: i.e. to exclude understanding theinterests of a majority of human beings.

v) Hence ‘idealist’ thinking, and all thinking with which the state ismaintained , is equivalent in terms of the structure of a society.

d) Non-materialist positions become ‘false’ consciousness:i) Non-materialism = not taking account of the implications of materialism.

ii) (Marx’s) materialism entails that human thinking is ‘determined’ byphysical needs? This can only imply that either (see c)ii) above):(1) Society’s thinking is limited by the prior material (property) conditions,(2) One must distance oneself from (the rest) of society’s thinking by

opposing society’s existing property conditions• What conceptual change is entailed in the Marx’s placing of

‘ideology’?


7/31/2019 Class 3 (Week 4)



Class 3 (Week 4)

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Transcript of Class 3 (Week 4)