A Marxist Theory of Ideology

Praxis, Thought and the Social World

Andrea Sau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367409630
• eBook ISBN: 9781000073348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

This work explores the question of defining ideology from a Marxist perspective. Advancing beyond the schemas of discussion presented in current Marxist literature, the author offers an account of how the concept of ideology should be defined and what role it plays within historical materialism. Through a close reading of Karl Marx's relevant writings, this volume demonstrates that while there is no coherent, single account of ideology in Marx's work, his materialist framework can be reconstructed in a defensible and 'non-deterministic' way. The definition of ideology presented is then articulated through a close reading of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Efforts are also made to demonstrate that Gramsci's interpretation of historical materialism is indeed consistent and compatible with Marx's. A systematic articulation of a theory of ideology that combines the works of Marx and Gramsci, as well as adding elements of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory and William James's psychology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in political economy and Marxist thought.

1 Why another Marxist theory of ideology?

Classical Marxism, neo-Marxism, and post-Marxism

This chapter will attempt to justify our enterprise. We will first discuss whether we need to return to Marx’s texts by addressing criticisms against his method presented by various thinkers, as well as some of the alternative frameworks proposed. After that, we will try to justify our project of creating a systematic theory of ideology based on Marx’s works. Then we will discuss the need for (yet another) theory of ideology. On the one hand, any attempt to construct theories has now been judged to be a doomed effort (especially by the postmodern tradition) at best, and at worst, a reiteration of rationalistic and metaphysical logics which serve the interests of dominant powers. On the other, theories of ideology are deemed impossible due to the contradictory epistemic stances they entail. Finally, we will discuss conceptions of ideology presented by Adorno and Žižek.

It would be impossible to address all criticisms of Marxism coming from all traditions. So, we will focus on some of the intellectuals who have been (to different extents) inspired by Marx, but that are critical of his enterprise. To make our discussion more intelligible, I propose some (schematic and rough) distinctions between different approaches to the study of society by reference to their relationship to Marx’s political economy. The first group (of which this work is an instance) could be called the ‘classical Marxists’. These are thinkers who state the importance of Marxist concepts such as ‘relations of production’, ‘class’ etc., while also attempting to reconstruct/develop historical materialism. We must bear in mind that there are hardly any authors who agree with Marx on everything, so that classical Marxists are not defined by their complete embrace of Marx’s thought, but rather by their efforts to develop his framework. Thus, authors as diverse as Althusser, G. A. Cohen, Eagleton, Rehmann, Alex Callinicos, Raymond Williams, Jon Elster, Brenner, and E. M. Wood could be considered ‘classical Marxists’. The second group is what we might call ‘neo-Marxists’. Despite borrowing some concepts from Marx and presenting a ‘materialist framework’, those thinkers (whether implicitly or explicitly) reject attempts to develop a ‘theory of history’. Authors in this category would be Horkheimer, Adorno, Žižek, Holloway, Cleaver, Werner Bonefeld, Negri, Gianni Vattimo, and Moishe Postone. The third group could be called post-Marxists. These are thinkers who, while acknowledging Marx’s importance, reject most of his concepts along with his materialism. Nevertheless, these thinkers see Marx as a precursor of their own ‘brand’ of critical theory. This group includes Castoriadis, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Derrida, Michel Foucault and other post-structuralist/modern authors.

These distinctions do not do justice to the authors mentioned. They should not be used as schemas to analyse those scholars, who are all original thinkers that resist labelling. Furthermore, it is hard to draw the line between neo-Marxism and post-Marxism. One might argue (for example) that Žižek and Negri are better placed among the post-Marxists. It is thus important to understand that these categories have only been created for the purpose of this work, to explain how those authors stand in relation to it. They are simply tools to make things easier for those unfamiliar with critical theory.

As stated in the Introduction, what I propose here is a return to Marx and a reconstruction of historical materialism that relies on most of the concepts appearing in his works. Therefore, we must first justify our need to look back at the corpus of literature produced by Marx and ‘classical Marxist’ authors by answering the criticisms of neo-Marxists and post-Marxists while also showing that those thinkers’ frameworks cannot provide a solid basis for social analysis. Discussing criticisms of (what is perceived as) ‘classical Marxism’ is not only necessary to rebut those attacks and prove the ever-lasting importance of Marxist concepts, but also to highlight how certain interpretations of those notions are (as critics rightly claim) problematic. Therefore, I will not necessarily disagree with the arguments presented against certain ‘versions’ of Marxism. Indeed, it is important to take them seriously so that we can reject certain variants of historical materialism and begin (in a simplified manner at this stage) to construct the core features of our interpretation.

Why Marx? 1 (neo-Marxist criticisms and alternatives)

Horkheimer and Adorno

The first authors we will be examining are Horkheimer and Adorno, also known as prominent members of the so-called Frankfurt School, which takes its name from the Institut fur Sozialforschung, established in 1923 in Frankfurt. Both were heavily influenced by Marx’s works, yet they became increasingly suspicious of what they perceived as a dogmatic ‘orthodox’ current of Marxism. The reason for this suspicion can be traced back to the crisis socialist movements faced at the time.¹

Members of the Frankfurt School became disillusioned with Marx’s political predictions. Adorno discusses this at length in Negative Dialectics:

The economic process, we hear, produces the conditions of political rule and keeps overturning them until the inevitable deliverance from the compulsion of economics. (…) The revolution desired (…) was one of economic conditions in society as a whole, in the basic stratum of its self-preservation; it was not revolution as a change in society’s political form, in the rules of the game of dominion. (…) They (Marx and Engels) could not foresee what became apparent later, in the revolution’s failure even where it succeeded: that domination may outlast the planned economy.²

1 See Jay, M. (1972) p. 285.

2 Adorno, T. (2004) pp. 321–322.

Marx’s writings sometimes suggest a teleological determinism according to which the various conflicts between economic classes, coupled with technological development, will ultimately lead to a classless society (communism). Adorno highlights that, even when such ‘revolutions’ succeeded they gave rise to totalitarian regimes which, rather than ‘liberating’ people from class relations, substituted them with authoritarian state power. Indeed, Adorno realises how Marxism could become the very theory justifying tyrannical states: ‘On the threadbare pretext of a dictatorship (now half a century old) of the proletariat (long bureaucratically administered), governmental terror machines entrench themselves as permanent institutions, mocking the theory they carry on their lips’.³

Adorno and Horkheimer blamed those atrocities on a vulgarised understanding of Marx’s materialism. The Frankfurt School addressed this issue from its early days. Horkheimer explicitly discussed it during his inaugural address for the Institute for Social Research⁴, where he criticised degenerations of Marxism conceiving the economic side of social life as the substance, while everything else is reduced to developments within such substance.⁵ As we will see, trying to escape this vulgar determinism has always been the most pressing tasks for Marxist thinkers. For Horkheimer and Adorno, the dangers of this deterministic framework were both theoretical (as Marxism is perceived as an objective science akin positivism, and its propositions are taken as universally valid, and thus accepted dogmatically) and political (as the revolution is seen as inevitable).

This leads Adorno and Horkheimer to abandon the historical narrative presented by Marx’s method, while further developing his materialism to analyse the economic, cultural and political condition of their time.⁶ The revolutionary role of the working class is also abandoned. Capitalism has developed in ways Marx could not have predicted, so that his political programme (along with his faith in the working classes’ revolutionary potential) could not be applied to the post-war socio-economic order:

The living conditions of laborers and employees at the time of the Communist Manifesto were the outcome of open oppression. Today they are, instead, motives for trade union organization and for discussion between dominant economic and political groups. (…) In the minds of men at least, the proletariat has been integrated into society.⁷

3 Ibid., pp. 204–205.

4 Horkheimer became its director in 1930.

5 Horkheimer, M. (2018) p. 119.

6 Therefore, the Frankfurt School’s criticism of historical materialism is more directed towards perceived degenerations and vulgarisations of the doctrine, rather than the theory per-se.

7 Horkheimer, M. (1975) p. vi.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, the two thinkers explain the reproduction of capitalism by appeal to the concept of reification (originally coined by Lukács):

With bourgeois property, education and culture spread, driving paranoia into the dark corners of society and the psyche. (…) The less social reality kept pace with educated consciousness, the more that consciousness itself succumbed to a process of reification. Culture was entirely commoditized, disseminated as information which did not permeate those who acquired it. Thought becomes short-winded, confines itself to apprehending isolated facts.⁸

Although reification is never defined, (except by the enigmatic statement: ‘reification is forgetting’⁹) it relates to Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism and his claim that, under capitalism, relations between people become relations between things. Furthermore, the text suggests that reification is a practical consequence of the economy’s organisation (commodities’ exchange regulates the economy), while also manifesting the same rationalistic (means-to-ends) way of thinking they perceive to be characteristic of the Enlightenment. Thus, capitalist production, means-to ends rationalistic thinking, the equivalence of every commodity (insofar as they can all be exchanged), and the Enlightenments’ faith in objective science, are all combined into a socio-cultural whole preventing individuals from realising the harsh realities of exploitation underlying this profit-driven clockwork system:

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes dissimilar things comparable by reducing them to abstract quantities. For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion modernism consigns it to poetry. Unity remains the watchword from Parmenides to Russell. All gods and qualities must be destroyed.¹⁰

Everything that does not fit into positivism and means-to-end rationalistic thinking is not knowledge. At best it can find expression in aesthetics and poetry. At worst, it must be destroyed. The text is an incessant attack against the dehumanising logics of capitalist production, the practical behaviour this system creates, and the theory (Enlightenment) supporting and enhancing (through scientific/technological development) this process:

8 Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. (2002) p.163.

9 Ibid., p. 191.

10 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

Enlightenment consists primarily in the calculation of effects and in the technology of production and dissemination; the specific content of the ideology is exhausted in the idolization of the existing order and of the power by which the technology is controlled.¹¹

The Enlightenment and instrumental rationality are also ‘transformed’ into an ‘ideology’ by ‘The Culture Industry’; which through film and radio ‘graphically’ express ‘the idolization of the existing order and of the power by which the technology is controlled’.¹² Entertainment helps creating consent for the socio-economic order (by ideologising technology, the enlightenment and instrumental thinking), and contributes t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Why another Marxist theory of ideology?
• 2. Historical materialism and ideology
• 3. Commodity fetishism
• 4. Gramsci’s Marxism
• 5. Praxis, thought, and the social world
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index