The real world of ideology

169 Pages·1980·7.13 MB·English

by  Joe McCarney

The Real World of Ideology
HARVESTER PHILOSOPHY NOW
General Editor: ROY EDGLEY, Professor of Philosophy, University of Sussex
English-speaking philosophy since the Second World War has been dominated by
linguistic analysis, the latest phase of the analytical movement started in the early
years of the century.
As our twentieth-century world has staggered from crisis to crisis, English-
speaking philosophy in particular has submissively dwindled into a humble
academic specialism on its own understanding, isolated from substantive issues in
other disciplines, from the practical problems facing society, and from
contemporary Continental thought.
The books in this series are united by discontent with this state of affairs.
Convinced that the analytical movement has spent its momentum, its latest phase-
perhaps its last -the series seeks in one way or another to push philosophy out of its
ivory tower.
1 Freedom and Liberation
BENJAMIN GIBBS
2 Hegel's Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction
RICHARD NORMAN
3 Art, An Enemy of the People
ROGER TAYLOR
4 Philosophy and Its Past
JONATHAN REE, MICHAEL AYERS AND ADAM WESTOBY
5 Ruling IUusions: Philosophy and the Social Order
ANTHONY SKILLEN
6 The Work of Same: Volume l : Search For Freedom
ISTVAN MESZAROS
7 The Work of Sartre: Volume 2: The Challenge of History
ISTVAN MESZAROS
8 The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the
Contemporary Human Sciences
ROY BHASKAR
9 The Real World of Ideology
JOE McCARNEY
Forthcoming
Hegel, Marx and Dialectic: A Debate
RICHARD NORMAN AND SEAN SAYERS
The Dialectic of Revolution
CHRIS ARTHUR
Science and Ideology
ROY EDGLEY
The Political Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty
SONIA KRU KS
Philosophical Ideologies
ROY BHASKAR
The Real World
of Ideology
JOE McCARNEY
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Polytechnic of the South Bank
HARVIE STER PRESS
HUMA ;P RES! JERSEY
First published in Great Britain in 1980 by
THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED
Publishers: John Spiers and MargaretA . Boden
16 Ship Street, Brighton, Sussex
and in the USA by
HUMANITIES PRESS INC.,
Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey W716
0 Joe McCarney, 1980
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McCarney ,J oe
The real world of ideology. -(Philosophy now; 9).
1. Ideology 2. Communism
I. Title 11. Series
145 B823.3
ISBN 0-85527-8668
0-85527-438 7 (pbk)
Humanities Press Inc.
lSBN 0-391-01704-7
0-391-01705-5 (pbk)
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Redwood Bum Limited, Trowbridge and Esher
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
Preface
1. Marx's Conception
2. The Burden of Social Theory
3. The Burden of Epistemology
4. Traditions in Marxism
Notes
Index
PREFACE
This essay is a study of the treatment of ideology by Marxist
thinkers. The topic has a life outside that context, and issues
of great interest have been raised there. Nevertheless, there
is a case for regarding its place within it as crucial for the
debate as a whole. Marx is usually acknowledged as,
historically, the most important influence in the field, with
the main responsibility for introducing the notion into
general intellectual currency. Moreover, his work continued
to shape its fortunes thereafter, in that later writers have felt
obliged to define their position in relation to what they take
to be his, whether in order to support or attack it. This in
itself, of course, would not justify yet another discussion ofa
well-worn theme. For that one has to rely on a claim which
the body of the essay will seek to substantiate, that the
character of the Marxist tradition in this area is now
generally misunderstood by friendly and hostile com-
mentators alike. The failure has a radical aspect: it is rooted
in a mistaken view of the nature of the conception of
ideology held by Marx and the classical Marxist thinkers.
Hence, the first chapter will be concerned to explicate that
conception. The next two chapters will pursue the argument
in relation to the main lines of misconceived development in
the later period. The final chapter will try to locate the theme
of ideology within the overall pattern of the historical
development of Marxist thought.
There are some debts that should be acknowleged here.
The first is to Dr Otto Newman, Head of the Department of
Social Sciences, Polytechnic of the South Bank, for his
consistent encouragement of this project, and in particular
for its practical expression in arranging the measure of relief
from teaching responsibilities that facilitated its completion.
My thanks are due to a number of colleagues for their
co-operation in this, and most of all to Dick de Zoysa who
had to bear the brunt of the inconvenience that resulted. I
should like to add that it was the experience of planning and
teaching a course with him that led to my serious interest in
the questions discussed in this book
I am indebted to Nick Worrall for confirming that the
standard translations of Lenin could be relied on to the
extent I required.
I am grateful most of all to Roy Edgely, General Editor of
the 'Philosophy Now' series. He has read the entire
manuscript in draft, and his detailed comments have been
very helpful in preparing the final version. I also attach
considerable importance to his interest in the project at an
early and difficult stage of its development.
Finally, I wish to record my sense of the incalculable debt
I owe my wife for her support throughout the period of
writing this book.
JOE MCCARNEY
CHAPTER l
MARX'S CONCEPTION
SOMEp reliminary remarks should be made about the
method of inquiry to be used in this chapter. The task of
explicating Marx's view of ideology is one which, notori-
ously, gets no systematic attention in his own writings.
Indeed, for all the use made of the concept there is little that
may safely be taken even by way of oblique comment on its
grammar. We are given a set of clues and left to discover the
pattern for ourselves. Here is a central fact of his procedure,
and one must come to terms with it. The reticence of the
texts has to be respected as a true reflection of the nature of
his interests in this area. These are overwhelmingly
conjunctural and instrumental, scarcely ever taking a turn
towards analysis or general reflection. The problems that
result will be familiar enough to students of what Antonio
Gramsci has called 'a conception of the world which has
never been systematically expounded by its founder'. The
l
founder's treatment of ideology might have been designed to
point up this description, and in the circumstances some
degree of methodological austerity seems advisable. At any
rate this discussion will concentrate initially on the explicit
references to ideology and the ideological to be found in
Marx's work: these are the primary clues that have to be
fitted together. It will be assumed that where he wishes to
use the concept he will generally be prepared to do so under
its own name. The inquiry will then be directed to
reconstructing the principle of this usage. It will ask what it
presupposes, what general assumptions it is shaped by and
what view of the nature of ideology can best make sense of it.
The decision to develop one's account of a concept on the
2 The Real World of Ideology
basis of the clear-cut instances of its use may seem
uncontentious and indeed scarcely worth stating. In the case
of most major thinkers this might well be so. It does not
generally seem to occur to interpreters of Locke on 'primary
and secondary qualities' or Wittgenstein on 'family
resemblance' to set about their task in any other way, and
there is no reason why Marx should not be shown the same
respect. The exegesis of his work has, nevertheless, its own
distinctively relaxed traditions. The proposal made here
would in fact be hard to square with much of what currently
passes for discussion of his views on ideology. The standard
weakness of this literature is an insensitivity to its
subject-matter, a failure to respond to the pressure of its
concrete details. The varied ways in which the tendency
manifests itself will be documented in the later cdurse of the
discussion. It is mentioned here to lend point to the
suggestion that in this area a certain dryness may now be in
order. Such an emphasis has its familiar risks of scholas-
ticism and the fetishism of the quotation, of being
overwhelmed by details or of treating them with a literalness
that misses the spirit entirely. But no such fate is inevitable.
It may help to bear in mind the rules of method which
Gramsci prescribed for himself in this kind of situation. He
lays due stress on the importance of what he calls
'preliminary detailed philological work' to be carried out
'with the most scrupulous accuracy, scientific honesty and
intellectual loyalty and without ariy preconceptions, aprior-
ism or parti pri~'.B~u t the advice is to be taken in
conjunction with the later warning: 'Search for the
Leitmotiv, for the rhythm of the thought as it develops,
should be more important than that for single casual
affirmations and isolated aphorism^.'^ The guiding assump-
tion of this discussion is that a sense of the Leitnzotiv is best
developed out of attention to detail. It must be recognized,
however, that unless such a general understanding is
achieved all the preliminary detailed work is in vain.
Moreover, once established it need not be permanently