Ideology

Ideology in Marxist Thought

This meaning was radically transformed by Karl Marx (and Friedrich Engels). In their theory—devised for the political purpose of bringing about a liberating revolution—ideology constitutes a sphere of society to be conceptually distinguished from the other two spheres, the economy and politics. Marx took up the word ideology and used it negatively to criticize the understanding that the driving force of history is ideas; Marx claimed that the driving force is not ideology but labor. Dividing thinkers into idealists and materialists, Marx declared that ideology was the idealist's illusion. However, despite the fact that society depended on the economy, ideological illusion was an essential part of that society, necessary to its operation. According to Marx, professional thinkers—that is, philosophers, clerics, jurists—believed that the world is governed by ideas. This belief had to be overturned, for in fact effective history was the history of production, labor, and modes of production. Men's consciousness, which was formalized in philosophy, religion, and law, amounted to a mystifying derivative of their material practices. In sum, Marx explained, ideology was “false consciousness,” and in their false perception, men turned reality upside down: “If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process” (Marx, The German Ideology, Pt. 1, sec. A). The error could be corrected, but the victims of the illusion were caught in a formidable trap: They did not know they were under the spell of false representations—hence Marx's stigmatizing of religion as “the opium of the people.” The same applied to belief in political representation (universal suffrage, elections, parliaments); such belief mystified men by denying the reality of class differences. Marx's theory of ideology is thus inseparable from a theory of domination (Herrschaft): Ideology works to stabilize the existing social order, wherein one group necessarily dominates all others. The dominant class dominates economically (as the labor-exploiting class), politically (it holds state power), and ideologically (its ideas impose themselves as a general belief system).

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