For more information
Call 1-800-351-0222
Call 1-800-351-0222
MARXIST IDEOLOGY.
Term Paper ID:19955
Essay Subject:
Impact on development & expression of ideas, socialization, culture, class issues, change v. rigidity, art.... More...
13 Pages / 2925 Words
8 sources, 22 Citations,
TURABIAN Format
$52.00
More Papers on This Topic
Paper Abstract:
Impact on development & expression of ideas, socialization, culture, class issues, change v. rigidity, art.
Paper Introduction:
The writings of Karl Marx contain a number of different uses of the term "ideology," and the issue of what Marx means by the term is much discussed in the literature. The meaning of ideology has significance for later debates in media and cultural studies, as well as for an understanding of Marx's conceptions of culture. "Ideology" may be defined as a system of ideas, theories, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and social practice that is, first, characteristic of a class society or a class or other primary social group in a class society and, second, that serves principally the interests of a class, typically a class in that society, or other primary social group while putting itself forward as answering to the interests of the whole of the society. The people who have been socialized into a particular ideology will see themselves and their own position within their
Text of the Paper:
The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper.
Boston: Twayne, 1974.Sowell, Thomas. [14]Ibid., 76. This the dominant class does by promoting only those institutions and ideas that strengthen its hold over the rest of society.[15] Within the ruling class there is a group of intellectuals who earntheir livelihood by promoting class ideology. Ideology played a special part in theSoviet Union developed under Stalin, for instance. Ideas andideological systems do not have an independent existence or history, and asthe mode of material production undergoes historical changes, so does theintellectual production. They see the process of ideologyas one in which human beings form ideas under the force of circumstances,or materialism, and these ideas then compel them to change thecircumstances (dialectical interaction with the source of the idea). In every epoch, the ideas that rule are the ideas of theruling class. [11]Ibid., 78. He never neglected this detailedhistorical analysis in favor of general statements about economictendencies. If each classperceives the situation ideologically, or as a clash of fundamentalprinciples and ideals, with the fate of society as a whole hanging in thebalance, then the stage is set for a revolutionary fight to the finish.[18] Marx and Engles held ideology to be a rigid perception that was theresult of history more than the driving force of history, but later Marxiantheorists tended to make Marxism itself into an ideology, a prescriptiveforce such as Marx warned against. Thethinker has found ways of grasping reality in thought, and he or she thusconsiders that in this thinking alone, and in his or her mind, somethingnew has developed, something new in ideas having been originated: "Hecomes to think that ideas develop according only to some laws of their own,to do with the nature of thinking itself . The people who have been socializedinto a particular ideology will see themselves and their own positionwithin their social environment in terms of this system of ideas, beliefs,and values, and they will explain, evaluate, and justify the way they livein terms of this system: Sometimes socialization into a particular ideology embraces the vast majority of the people comprising the various classes within the society. Marx thought that it was always an obligation to carry out themost detailed analysis of the actual clash of class forces in each period,taking into account all available data on political and ideologicalinfluences entering into the class struggle and the historicalpeculiarities of given nations. It is virtually free to advance its own interests at the expense of others. The history of any twocapitalist countries will vary significantly in ideological terms. When Marxwas working and writing, however, it was common to give the decisive rolein history to ideas and consciousness, and Marx countered this with hishistorical materialism, which began from the ways in which socialproduction of the means of life is effected. The meaning of ideology has significance forlater debates in media and cultural studies, as well as for anunderstanding of Marx's conceptions of culture. BibliographyEagleton, Terry. [6]Martin Seliger, Ideology and Politics (London: George Allen & UnwinLtd., 1976), 2 . which, in turn, determines the ideological superstructure consisting of noneconomic social institutions and a corresponding framework of ethical, philosphical, and aesthetic ideas.[13]The true explanation of the human being's intellectual life is therefore tobe found in material surroundings, in the production process. Rather, new necessities in social life, such as theorganization of capitalist forms of production and exchange, demand peopleof a new type, people who will justify their actions in new ways, peoplewho will be sufficiently confident in their beliefs and morality tochallenge the old ways, people who are not held back by fears of the oldsociety: In a series of class struggles, some political and economic, some religious or philosophical (that is, ideological), men work over and test out the existing and newly developing ideological forms, selecting some and rejecting others, resurrecting some which have been left aside, perhaps, and suppressing others.[2] Engels wrote a series of letters in the last years of the nineteenthcentury and explained how he and Marx saw the process by which ideologicalthinking was developed. The dominant classcontrols the process of production and through this the prevalent ideas ofthe period. When there is a threat to the intellectual validityof the system, or when there is the advocacy of a different ideology, itrepresents a mortal danger that must be thwarted. For the newcontent to find ways of emerging into consciousness, it must do so throughthe existing forms in which people think. . . It is thissensitivity to ideological criticism on the part of the system that givesthe intelligentsia its special role as protector of the ideology and thatremoves its more traditional role as gadfly, a role which is not tolerated. Social classes are the key element. Atthe center of the Marxian conception is the bond between politics andprimarily material group interests. On the one hand, though, it has the effect of making whatever theruling party says into truth, but at the same time it must be presented asa general theory with a consistency all its own. Humanideas were for Engels a complex mixture of the most varied concerns withexternal objects, ambition, whims, and so on. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origin, Growth, and Dissolution. Eliminating growth and change doesnot serve the ends of social evolution as Marx developed the notion.Ideology is now rigid rather than a developing and evolving response tochange. While there is free will, Engels said that history was notthe carrying out of freely willed intentions. The thinker develops oradapts philosophical thoughts to changing reality. [18]Thomas Sowell, Marxism : Philosophy and Economics (New York:William Morrow, 1982), 61-62. It thus becomes the driving force in a culture rather than being theaccrued thought of the ruling class based on change in the system. He does not mean that theruling class consciously works out a set of ideas that suits its politicalrequirements. [3]Ibid., 62. There is a circularity about theprocess as described by Marx and Engels. They did so quite often out of scholarly consideration forfactual evidence and in response to the political requirements of theircause. These purveyors of classideas can sometimes come into conflict with the active members of the classor with those who control and manage the production process. Marx saw ideas assubjectively felt motivations including old memories, personal emnities,fears and hopes, prejudices and illusions, sympathies, convictions, faith,and principles. [19]Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origin, Growth,and Dissolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 9 . Eachsociety has its ideology, and Marx states that the ruling ideas of anysociety are the ideas of its ruling class. This is not what Marx had in mind and notwhat he saw as a cultural development. Theruling class can suddenly become quite small and impose ideas rather thandeveloping them. Engels says that whatarises from this is an illusion that is specifically ideological. Suchconflicts are short-lived: "If the interests of the entire class arethreatened, the two groups invariably reconcile their differences, therebyproving that no genuine conflict had ever existed."[16] In Marx's view,writers and artists are of necessity committed to the ruling class becauseonly by promoting the interests of that class can they afford the time todevelop their talents and earn a livelihood. This is precisely what happened in the post-Stalinist period.[2 ] Marx rejected the notion of noncommitted literature and art in classsocieties and asserted that all artistic endeavors are simplymanifestations of prevailing material conditions.[21] In a Communistsociety, art and literature can be understood only within the context ofMarx's general philosophy. [22]Ibid., 88.----------------------- 6 Marx and Marxism. If the ideology is effective, peoplesocialized into the ideology find that it mystifies or distorts theirunderstanding of their society and indeed their understanding of the worldin which they live. For Marx, the ideologicalsuperstructure of bourgeois society must do violence to facts, and thebourgeoisie must do violence to the proletariat. [15]Ibid., 76. For thatmatter, all advancement was related to the productive process, and peoplehad become more dependent upon it as it had evolved: The emergence of division of labor, private property, and classes reflects the fact that the mode of production had acquired a decisive influence in human relations. Ideology. This discounting of the extremepoles--that over and against proletarian class-thinking, all socialthought, particularly bourgeois thought, is false--is invited by the factthat Marx and Engels themselves offended against the standpoints formingthese poles. No matter what new life experiences and phenomenaconfront the thinker, he or she can at first think only in terms of thelanguage and concepts that already exist and that have been handed down inthe particular sphere of thought being considered. [8]Nielsen, 14 . Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. The writings of Karl Marx contain a number of different uses of theterm "ideology," and the issue of what Marx means by the term is muchdiscussed in the literature. [12]Ibid., 78-79. "A Marxist Conception of Ideology." In Anthony Parel. He mistakes the form forthe content."[3] There may be new content in the develping idea, but thesource of this content is the world external to thinking. [2]Cliff Slaughter, Marx and Marxism (New York: Longman, 1985), 62. [21]Smulkstys, 78. The way these people act, react, and view themselvesis strongly conditioned by their ideology.[8] Much of the account of ideology by Marx and Engels depends on aconception of inversion, a metaphor for what they say about the distinctionbetween what is real and what is an idea. Marx and Engels related thedevelopment of an intellectual life to the process of production. [13]Julius Smulkstys, Karl Marx (Boston: Twayne, 1974), 75. . The dominant classis in fact the only class in society that has the opportunity to assumecontrol over the social, political, ethical, and aesthetic spheres of humanbehavior. . New York: William Morrow, 1982.Tucker, Robert C. Now, every mode of production, in the most general terms, has adistinctive type of exploitation and type of ruling class so that it alsohas its characteristic ideological assumptions about human nature, aboutmorality and values, about the possibilities available to humanity, andabout the social distinctions between individuals. The results which follow actions are therefore not intended or haveconsequences that are not intended. "Ideology" may be definedas a system of ideas, theories, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and socialpractice that is, first, characteristic of a class society or a class orother primary social group in a class society and, second, that servesprincipally the interests of a class, typically a class in that society, orother primary social group while putting itself forward as answering to theinterests of the whole of the society. [2 ]Ibid., 9 -91. This is the strict meaning ofideology as used by Marx, while Marxists often use the term in a broadersense to mean the general outlook or ideas characteristic of a class oreven a party. As it does this, it transformsthese old ways and gives them new life: "The development as a whole is onewhere ideology comes to correspond to the newly arising economic base, butnot by the latter producing its own new and freshly baked ideology."[4]This is rather part of the illusion. At other times, when class conflict is overt, widespread, and it is perceived on all sides that there are antagonistic class interests, socialization into an ideology will be principally the distinctive socialization of members of a particular class into the ideology of that class.[1] Marx was well aware of the power of ideas in inspiring people and ingiving them the ability to understand the situations in which they findthemselves. New York: Verso, 1991.Kolakowski, Leszek. Ideology inverts the normalprocess in the Marxian view: "Instead of deriving ideas from reality, itderives reality from ideas."[9] Terry Eagleton further sees that ideologyin this conception is essentially otherwordliness: "an imaginaryresolution of real contradictions which blinds men and women to the harshactuality of their social conditions."[1 ] Ideology in this conception isessentially an illusion that does not equip the holder with certaindiscourses of belief and value that will be relevant to his or her dailytasks. It is weak to the extent that any crack inthe ideological monolith is a threat to its existence. The economic structure of societyplaces each class in a different position to observe what is happening andalso to influence what is happening. New York: Longman, 1985.Smulkstys, Julius. Seliger finds that the Marxian theory of ideology reflectsparticular strands of a long tradition of thought extending back to Plato: Yet no major thinker who contributed to that tradition adopted, like Marx and Engels and after them Parieto, the proposition that in existing society all social thought must be false because it is conditioned, while claiming exemption from this rule for his own system of social thought.[7]Marx and Engels agreed with earlier thinkers, though, in the assumption ofthe dependence of behavior and ideas concerning political behavior andorganization on economic, psychological, environmental, and politicalfactors. Instead, what happens isthat the clash and conflict of the many individual free wills produces astate that is analogous to what prevails in the unconsciousness of nature. [4]Ibid., 62. Another way of viewing the issue is described by Robert Tucker whenhe states that Marx joins the philosophical false consciousness with thereligious and other non-scientific forms of consciousness under the generalcategory "ideology." Ideology is described as the consciousness of realityin which people and their circumstances appear upside down, and it istherefore an illusory consciousness, although the ideological thinker doesnot know it to be illusory.[5] Martin Seliger states that the conception of ideology by Marx andEngels is based on a restrictive and pejorative (truth-excluding) view. Its immediate impact was seen in the productive relations, or the economic structure . Ideology and Politics. This class is wealthy and free from the necessity to work. The consequences of an ideology, once formed, are seen in the actionsof the particular class which rules and which will use the ideology toserve principally its own interests. [7]Ibid., 21. The totalitarian statecan never become completely invulnerable, nor can it ever stamp outcritical thought altogether. Material production must be dealt with as adefinite historical form: "If material production is not grasped in itsspecific historical form, it is impossible to understand the concretenature of the intellectual production corresponding to it and the interplayof both factors."[14] Marx's conception of ideology determines his conception of culture.Marx and Engels never elaborated systematically on the exact relationshipbeween different modes of production and their intellectual counterparts,but based on their comments as scattered throughout their writings, it ispossible to piece together a general picture about the nature of thisrelationship. Eagleton states that ideological consciousness as described by Marxand Engels would seem to involve a double movement of inversion anddislocation as ideas are assigned priority in social life while at the sametime being disconnected from it: "One can follow the logic of this dualoperation easily enough: to make ideas the source of history is to denytheir social determinants, and so to uncouple them from history."[11] Marxand Engels are not assuming that every abstract idea is ideological, sincemathematical concepts are abstract and are clearly not ideological: "Butthe disconnectedness of thought from practical existence, in ways whichserve objectionable political ends, would seem for them definitive of thenotion."[12] The Marxian conception of ideology had much to say about thedevelopment and meaning of culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.Nielsen, Kai. As long as this is thecase, however, it may include the seeds of its own destruction becausethere is no guarantee that it will not acquire a momentum all its own andbe used against its chief representatives and sole authorized interpreters. Karl Marx. Just as the members of this class rule as a class, so dothey also rule as thinkers and as producers of ideas. London: Cambridge at the University Press, 1972.----------------------- [1]Kai Nielsen, "A Marxist Conception of Ideology," in Anthony Parel,Ideology, Philosophy and Politics (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: WilfridLaurier University Press, 1983), 139. This is what happened in the Soviet Union: Stalinist socialism created an empire ruled from Moscow, the basis of whose legality is entirely derived from ideology: in particular, from the doctrine that the Soviet Union embodies the interests of the working people and especially the working class everywhere, that it represents their desires and aspirations, and that it is the first step towards a world revolution that will liberate the toiling masses wherever they may be.[19]Without ideology, the Soviet system could not have existed at all, forideology was the sole reason for the existence of the apparatus of power,which was essentially ideological and internationalist in character andcould not be replaced by the police, the army, or any other institution.Such a system does not have to justify its actions to the public becauseideologically it represents their interests and desires, a fact that cannotbe altered. Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. [1 ]Ibid., 77. [16]Ibid., 77. Ideology in this viewis not simply an aid or adjunct to the system but is rather an absolutecondition of its existence, no matter whether the people believe in it ornot. The basic structure of histheory is seen in the sum of the social relations of production, but onthis foundation is built a political, legal, and ideologicalsuperstructure. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983.Seliger, Martin. [17]Ibid., 78. The key to their social being is to be found in themode of production. In such a system, the intelligentsia plays a part not seen orparalleled elsewhere. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976.Slaughter, Cliff. In this process, they acquirethe ruling-class mentality and world view, and these things color theirwork and also help rationalize it: "The intellectuals, like everyone else,behave in accordance with their material interests."[17] While Marx and Engels find that the ruling class controls theintellectual forces and thus controls ideology, it is just as true to saythat ideology controls the ruling class. He saw ideas as having power such that they could become amaterial force as soon as they were grasped by the multitude. Social consciousness may be defined as people's ideas,assumptions, and characteristic ways of thinking, and this is a reflectionof their social being. Once the ideas that human beings react to have beenformed, these ideas react back on the economic base. Seliger points out thatMarx and Engels were unable to maintain consistently that the ideationaland political superstructure represents "false consciousness," in Engel'sphrase, inasmuch as the superstructure is seen as the conditioned reflex ofthe interplay between the forces of production and social relationships: The ideas that, since thought is false, because it is conditioned; that falseness is, above all, inherent in bourgeois thought; that, to the extent that all social thought is conditioned, it must be false while the division of labor lasts and that in any case "false consciousness" does not greatly matter because ultimately in the course of development it is pre-determined by the development of the forces of production--all these ideas circumscribe what must be called the dogmatic position of Marx and Engels, which they never ceased to assert, although in all their writings they deviated from it.[6]Seliger says that, if we discount the extreme poles between which Marx andEngles moved in their notions about ideology, it is possible to discern theelements of a tenable theory of ideology. Marx and Engels alike opposed those of theirfollowers who tried to apply this general principle to every historicalperiod. Communism was to liberate people in a varietyof ways, and at this stage professional artists and writers would bereplaced by a mass of individuals who, depending on their talents andinclinations, devote varying degress of time and effort to aestheticpursuits: [In this conception,] like other intellectual phenomena with social implications, art and literature become liberated from the clutches of materialism, class content, specialization, exclusiveness, "provincialism," and turn into a part-time preoccupation for everyone.[22]In the Soviet conception, which twisted Marx to fit its own ends, ideologynever ceases to be the reason for being of art and literature, which isalways expected to serve the interests of the state so that ideology neverends as it does in Marx. Marx and Engels,however, asserted that in the long run it was the contradictory developmentin the economic base which was decisive in determining the outcomes of allgreat historical struggles. Italone can thus afford activities unrelated to the struggle for subsistence: The monopoly on participation in matters outside the production process puts the dominant class in a highly advantageous position with regard to its opponents. Ideology, Philosophy and Politics. [5]Robert C. The position of a given class and thedirection in which it is moving, upward or downward in relation to societyas a whole, determines how members perceive change. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (London:Cambridge at the University Press, 1972), 18 -181. In truth, though, such a system creates a certain tension on its ownbecause it is difficult to maintain where ideology is deprived of its ownmaterial movement and reduced to nothing more or less than the actualdictates of state authority. [9]Terry Eagleton, Ideology (New York: Verso, 1991), 76.
If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again:
or
We can write a Custom Essay just for you.
Browse Essays by Subject