The Uncertain Future of Ideology: Rereading Marx
E. D O Y L E McCarthy1994, The Sociological Quarterly
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Abstract
Throughoput its history, "ideology" (the concept and theory) served as social science's foil, an opposing standard against which it defined its own knowledge-as-truth. As social science since mid-century has undergone changes in its idea of itself and its methods of inquiry, the theory of ideology has served as register, visably recording these changes. Works by the structuralists and poststructuralists, especially Althusser and Foucault, forced upon social theorists a profound rethinking of power and its operations and moved "ideology" away from the theory of false consciousness towards a view of ideology as cultural practice. For some, ideology theory is obsolete (due to its classical roots as "false consciousness") or redundant (due to its links to "culture"). Despite the merits of these arguments, a provisional argument on behalf of ideology theory is offered.
Key takeaways
- In the history of the theory of ideology that follows (admittedly brief and selective), I will describe several main themes in contemporary theories that have forced upon us a rethinking about ideology.
- "Ideology is meaning in the service of power" (Thompson 1990, p. 7).
- The political question is not, as Marx argued, ideology.
- So when we speak of the class function of an ideology it must be understood that the ruling ideology is indeed the ideology of the ruling class and that the former serves the latter not only in its rule over the exploited class, but in its own constitution of itself as the ruling class, by making it accept the lived relation between itself and the world as real and justified.
- For ideology specifically involves the relationship between social meanings and power.
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