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CHAPTER 1 that is produced by a camera lens or the human eye. Liberalism, which portrays rights that can only be exercised by the propertied and privileged as universal entitlements, is therefore the classic example of ideology. Third, ideology is a manifestation of power . In concealing the contradictions on which capitalism, in common with all class societies, is based, ideology serves to hide from the exploited proletariat the fact of its own exploitation, and thereby upholds a system of unequal class power. Ideology literally constitutes the ‘ruling’ ideas of the age. Finally, Marx treated ideology as a temporary phenomenon. Ideology will only continue so long as the class system that generates it survives. The proletariat – in Marx’s view, the ‘grave digger’ of capitalism – is destined not to establish another form of class society, but rather to abolish class inequality altogether by bringing about the collective ownership of wealth. The interests of the proletariat thus coincide with those of society as a whole. The proletariat, in short, does not need ideology because it is the only class that needs no illusions. Later generations of Marxists showed, if anything, a greater interest in ideology than did Marx himself. This largely stems from the fact that Marx’s confident prediction of capitalism’s doom proved to be highly optimistic, encouraging later Marxists to focus on ideology as one of the factors explaining the unexpected resilience of the capitalist mode of production. However, important shifts in the meaning of the term also took place. In particular, all classes came to be seen to possess ideologies. For Lenin and most later Marxists, ideology therefore came to refer to the distinctive ideas of a particular social class, ideas that advance its interests regardless of its class position. However, as all classes – the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie – have an ideology, the term was robbed of its negative or pejorative connotations. The Marxist theory of ideology was perhaps developed furthest by Antonio Gramsci (see p. 5). Gramsci ([1935]1971) argued that the capitalist class system is upheld not simply by unequal economic and political power, but by what he termed the ‘ hegemony ’ of bourgeois ideas and theories. Hegemony means leadership or domination and, in the sense of ideological hegemony, it refers to the capacity of bourgeois ideas to displace rival views and become, in effect, the common sense of the age. Gramsci highlighted the degree to which ideology is embedded at every level in society: in its art and literature; in its education system and mass media; in everyday language; and in popular culture. This bourgeois hegemony, Gramsci insisted, could only be challenged at the political and intellectual level, which means through the establishment of a rival ‘proletarian hegemony’, based on socialist principles, values and theories. The capacity of capitalism to achieve stability by manufacturing legitimacy was also a particular concern of the Frankfurt School, a group of mainly German neo-Marxists who fled the Nazis and later settled in the USA. Its most widely known member, Herbert Marcuse (see p. 94), argued in One-Dimensional Man (1964) that advanced industrial society has developed a ‘totalitarian’ character through the capacity of its ideology to
manipulate thought and deny expression to oppositional views. According toMarcuse, even the tolerance that appears to characterize liberal capitalism serves a repressive purpose, in that it creates the impression of free debate and argument, thereby concealing the extent to which indoctrination and ideological control take place.
Hegemony: The ascendency or domination of one element of a system over others; for Marxists, hegemony implies ideological domination.
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