What is an ideology?

An ideology is a set of beliefs that affects our outlook on the world. Our ideology is our most closely held set of values and feelings, and it acts as the filter through which we see everything and everybody. In fact, these beliefs are often so close to us that we do not realize that they are there. We simply think that our beliefs are natural and obviously true. Religion is one type of ideology, and religious belief affects a person’s views.

Characteristics of Ideologies

Ideologies can vary greatly in the following ways:

The characteristics of political ideologies may be summarized by noting their following traits. They are:

• a coherent set of views on politics
• produced by intellectual elites
• dissemination among the mass population
• subject to alteration
• susceptible to distortion and oversimplification
• powerful motivators of human behaviour
• manipulated by political movement leaders

Over the millennia, political philosophers have expounded on a variety of political ideologies, or ways governments and societies can be organized.

 Evolution of the idea of ‘ideology’

1796

• Antoine Destutt de Tracy
• Attempt to explain “a new science of ideas” or an idea-ology, like in biology, or psychology.

1846

• The German Ideology (Karl Marx)
• Marx’s concept of ideology has a number of key features:
  • Ideology is about delusion and mystification
  • Ideology is linked to the class system
  • Ideology is a manifestation of power
  • Ideology is a temporary phenomenon

1902

• What is to be Done? (Lenin)
• “socialist ideology”, “Marxist ideology”
• ‘ideology’ referred to distinctive set of ideas of a particular social class

1929

• Ideology and Utopias (Karl Mannheim)
• Ideas are shaped by people’s social circumstances
• No negative implications of word/phrase ‘ideology’
• Ideologies are thought systems that serve to defend a particular social order and broadly express interests of dominant/ruling group
• All ideological systems are distorted – they only offer a partial of self-interested view of social reality

1935

• Antonio Gramsci
• “hegemony” of bourgeois ideas an theories (common sense of the age)
• Can only be challenged by a ‘proletarian hegemony’ based on socialist principles, values and theories

1945

• Karl Popper
• Liberalism is based on commitment to freedom, tolerance and diversity (clearest example of an ‘open’ system of thought
• Contrasts with Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism which are ‘closed’ systems of thought (monopoly of truth, intolerance and oppression)

1962

• Rationalism in Politics (Michael Oakeshott)
• Ideologies are abstract systems of thought – they claim to explain what is incomprehensible
• Conservatives reject ideological style politics to reshape the world in accordance with a set of abstract principles or pre-established theories
• “Traditionalist stance” – favours pragmatism over ideology

1964

• One Dimensional Man (Herbert Narcuse)
• Society developed a ‘totalitarian’ character in the capacity of its ideology to manipulate thought and deny expression to oppositional views
• Manufacturing false needs and turning humans into consumers – modern societies paralyse criticism through spread of affluence

1976

• Martin Seliger
• Term gained wider usage as a neutral and objective concept
• “a set of ideas by which men posit, explain, and justify the ends and means of organized social action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order”
• Ideologies are neither good, bad, true, false, open, closed etc – they can be all or none of these things
• Social-scientific concept – inclusive (can be applied to all –isms)
• However – neutral concept off loads the political element of the meaning of ideology
• Should it be used interchangeably with ‘belief system’, ‘world view’, ‘doctrine’ or ‘political philosophy’? If so, why bother with the word at all?

Thinking Ahead:

What is the relationship between ideology and truth?

In what sense can ideology be seen as a form of power?