Political Ideology: Views & Concepts

• All people are political thinkers, using political ideas and concepts when expressing opinions.
• Terms like freedom, fairness, equality, justice, rights, conservative, liberal, socialist, communist, and fascist are often used without precision.
• This book examines the substantive ideas and beliefs of the major political ideologies.
• This chapter reflects on the nature of political ideology, the concept of ideology and the structure of ideological thought.
• This analyzes differences between classical and new ideologies and the question of whether ideology has or could come to an end.

Views of Political Ideology

• The book studies political ideologies and the nature of ideology
• Ideology and ideologies are different things to study
• Examining ideology means considering a particular type of political thought, distinct from political science or political philosophy.
• Studying political ideology involves reflecting on the nature, role, and significance of this category of thought.
• It includes deciding which sets of political ideas and arguments should be classified as ideologies.
• Studying ideologies means analyzing the content of political thought.
• It also includes analyzing ideas, doctrines, and theories within ideological traditions.
• There is no settled or agreed definition of ideology.
• Ideology links theory and practice and uncovers debates about the role of ideas in politics of beliefs and theories.
• Ideology has been used as a political weapon to condemn or criticize rival sets of ideas or belief systems.

Meanings Attached to Ideology

• A political belief system
• An action-orientated set of political ideas
• The ideas of the ruling class
• The world-view of a particular social class or social group
• Political ideas that embody or articulate class or social interests
• Ideas that propagate false consciousness among the exploited or oppressed
• Ideas that situate individuals within a social context and generate a sense of collective belonging
• An officially sanctioned set of ideas used to legitimize a political system or regime
• An all-embracing political doctrine that claims a monopoly of truth
• An abstract and highly systematic set of political ideas.
• The word ideology was coined during the French Revolution by Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754 – 1836), and was first used in public in 1796.
• "idéologie" referred to a new science of ideas.
• de Tracy believed that the origins of ideas could be uncovered objectively and would come to enjoy equivalent status to biology.
• All forms of inquiry are based on ideas, de Tracy suggested that ideology would become the queen of the sciences.

Marxist Views

• Karl Marx helped make ideology a key political term.
• Marx used the term in the title of his early work "The German Ideology" ([1846]1970), written with Friedrich Engels (1820–95).
• The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.
• The ruling class has the means of material production at its disposal and controls the means of mental production.
• The ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to those of the ruling class.
• Ideology is about delusion and mystification, perpetrating a false view of the world.
• Engels later referred to ideology as 'false consciousness.
• Marx used ideology as a critical concept to unmask systematic mystification.
• His own ideas were scientific because they accurately uncover the workings of history and society
• The distortion implicit in ideology reflects the ruling class's interests and perspective.
• The ideology of a capitalist society is bourgeois ideology.
• The ruling class is unwilling to recognize oppressors and anxious to reconcile the oppressed to their oppression.

Marxist Ideology

• Ideology is a manifestation of power, concealing the contradictions on which class societies are based.
• Ideology serves to hide exploitation from the exploited proletariat and upholds a a system of unequal class power.
• Marx treated ideology as a temporary phenomenon.
• Ideology will only continue as long as the class system that generates it survives.
• Later Marxists held a greater interest in ideology than Marx himself.
• Marx’s doom of capitalism proved to be highly optimistic.
• Important shifts in the meaning of ideology took place, with all classes seen to possess ideologies.
• For Lenin and most later Marxists, ideology refers to the distinctive ideas of a particular social class.
• Antonio Gramsci argued that the capitalist class system is upheld by the 'hegemony' of bourgeois ideas and theories.
• Hegemony means leadership or domination.

Hegemony

• Ideological hegemony refers to the capacity of bourgeois ideas to displace rival views and become common sense.
• Gramsci highlighted how ideology is embedded in society through art, media, and language.
• Bourgeois hegemony can only be challenged at the political and intellectual level.
• This is done through establishing a rival proletarian hegemony based on socialist principles, values, and theories.
• The Frankfurt School argued that advanced industrial society had a totalitarian character through its ideology.
• It can manipulate thought and deny expression to oppositional views.
• Marcuse indicated that freedom serves a repressive purpose, concealing indoctrination and ideological control.

Non Marxist Views

• Karl Mannheim attempted to construct a non-Marxist concept of ideology.
• Like Marx, he acknowledged people's ideas are shaped by social circumstances.
• He portrayed ideologies as thought systems that serve to defend a particular social order and express interests of its ruling group.
• Utopias idealized representations of the future to imply the need for radical social change.
• He distinguished between particular and total conceptions of ideology.
• Particular ideologies are ideas and beliefs of specific individuals, groups, or parties.
• Total ideologies encompass the Weltanschauung of a social class, society, or historical period.
• Ideological systems are distorted because each offers a self-interested view of social reality.
• Objective truth need is is the preserve of the socially unattached intelligentsia.
• Totalitarian dictatorships and Cold War tensions marked the concept's career.
• Liberal theorists portrayed regimes in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as uniquely oppressive.
• They highlighted the role played by official ideologies in suppressing debate and promoting obedience.
• Ideologies are 'closed' systems of thought that refuse to tolerate opposing ideas, and are 'secular religions.

Ideologies

• A conservative concept of ideology is based on distrust of abstract principles and philosophies.
• The world is viewed beyond the capacity of the human mind to fathom.
• Michael Oakeshott argued that ideologies simplify and distort social reality, equating to dogmatism.
• Conservatives have rejected the 'ideological' style of politics, preferring a 'traditionalist stance' and pragmatism.
• Pragmatism is behaviour shaped by practical circumstances and goals, not principles or ideological objectives.
• It benefits from judging policies 'on their merits' and prevents ideology from becoming mere wishful thinking.
• The term ideology gained a wider currency and was refashioned according to conventional social and political analysis since the 1960s.
• Ideology is a set of ideas that explain and justify the ends and means of organized social action.
• The social-scientific concept of ideology is inclusive, but the negative concept is highly restrictive.
• A neutral concept of ideology has its dangers and may be generalized.

Perspectives on Ideology

• Liberals view ideology as an official belief system that claims a monopoly of truth and is inherently repressive.
• Conservatives regard ideology as a manifestation of the arrogance of rationalism and systems of thought.
• Socialists see ideology as ideas that conceal contradictions of class society, and so they promote false consciousness.
• Fascists are dismissive of ideology because it is an over-systematic form of political understanding based on reason rather than will.
• Feminists have seen ideology as a means of legitimizing women's subordination in a patriarchal society.
• Ecologists tend to regard all conventional political doctrines as part of a super-ideology of industrialism.
• Fundamentalists have treated religious texts as ideology, providing a programme comprehensive social reconstruction.
• An ideology is a more coherent set of ideas that provides the basis for organized political action.

Basic Features of Ideologies

• Advance an account of the existing order
• Outline a model of the desired future
• Explain how political change can and should be brought about
• This highlights differences between political theory or philosophy and political ideologies.
• Political ideologies differ from political theory in at least three respects.
• Rather than focusing on particular ideas and concepts, political ideologies look at contrasting perspectives on political thought.
• Ideologies provide a context in which political concepts can be analyzed.
• Ideologies straddle the boundaries between descriptive and normative thought.
• Political theory examines the ends and means of political action, whereas ideologies go further.
• They are concerned seeks to change the world, and are action-orientated.
• Ideologies are only more or less coherent.
• They are typically fluid sets of that overlap with and shade into other ideologies.
• Each ideology contains divergent, traditions and viewpoints.
• There are disputes between supporters of the same ideology, because the true nature of the ideology is at stake.
• Concepts can be contested and there is no common meaning.
• Ideologies are characterized by a cluster of core, adjacent and peripheral concepts.
• A morphology, a form and structure in terms of key concepts, is important to the ideology.
• Ideologies may be either thick or thin.

Classical vs New Ideologies

• Ideologies are an inseparable feature of politics since the late eighteenth century.
• Its content has changed since the 1960s.
• New ideologies emerged, some once-potent ideologies faded, all radical redefinition and renewal.
• Classical ideological traditions developed as contrasting attempts to shape emergent industrial society.
• Liberalism, conservatism and socialism are such traditions.
• As the nineteenth century progressed, each became associated with a class or stratum of society.
• Liberalism was for the middle class, Conservatism was for the aristocracy, and Socialism was for class.
• Economic philosophy was the central theme that emerged from ideological argument and debate.
• This was the battle between capitalism and socialism and led to Russia becoming the first socialist state.
• Since the 1960s, the ideological landscape has been transformed.
• The designation of these ideologies as 'new' may mislead.

Ways the Focus of Ideologies Has Been Changed

• There has been a shift away from economics and towards culture.
• New ideologies are more interested in values, beliefs and ways of life.
• There has been a shift from social politics to identity politics.
• Feminism, green ideology and fundamentalism provide options rather than worked-out sets of political solutions.
• Classical ideologies have been subjected to greater critical scrutiny as a result of 'decolonizing the curriculum.

The Campaign Rhodes Must Fall Was Linked to Several Goals, Including

• Decolonizing the curriculum
• Challenging cultural ideologies
• Broadening perspective
• Rectifying underrepresentation

Left, Right, and Beyond

• Categorizing political ideologies is done per position on the left-right political spectrum.
• Those terms date back to the French Revolution.
• The left/right divide reflected the stark choice between revolution and reaction.
• Left and right are understood as poles of a political spectrum.
• Left-wing thinking welcomes political change and believes in progress.
• Right-wing thinking resists change and seeks to defend the status quo.
• Left-wing supports intervention and collectivism.
• Right-wing favors the market and individualism.
• Bobbio argues that the basis for distinction between left and right lies with differing attitudes to equality.
• As all ideologies contain elements, locating them clearly on a linear political spectrum can be difficult.
• In European countries, populism is anti-immigrant and xenophobic, giving it a right-wing character.
• The linear spectrum has seemed simplistic, and this has given rise to the idea of the two-dimensional spectrum.
• Contemporary political ideologies have gone beyond the left/right divide via new ideologies of identity rather than economic organization..
• Anthony Giddens indicates developments associated with globalization have exhausted both left-wing and right-wing ideological tradition.
• Globalization may be placing the left/right divide with one based on 'open' and 'closed' political leanings.
• People with closed attitudes are suspicious of globalization, fear cultural diversity, and usually support conservative social norms and values.

The End of Ideology?

• The notion of the end of ideology was fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Daniel Bell was impressed by the fact that politics in the West had broad agreement and an absence of debate, focused mostly on economics.
• In effect, economics had triumphed over politics, and ideology had become an irrelevance.
• This was the view of the post economic prosperity era.
• Bell indicated there was a broad ideological consensus, and therefore suspension of ideological debate.
• The the major Western ideologies accepted managed capitalism.
• An ideology of welfare capitalism had triumphed over its rivals, temporarily.
• The 1960s had more radical New Left ideas, a revival of Marxism and anarchism growth of 'new' ideologies .
• Economic recession in the 1970s provoked interest in long-neglected, free-market doctrines.
• Communism remained firmly entrenched in the Soviet Union and Easter Europe.
• Revolutionary political movements operated in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
• Communism was defeated in 1945, and Fukuyama believed collapse of communist marked the passing of Marxism-Leninism as ideology of signifcance
• Fukuyama meant history of ideas had ended, and with it, ideological debate..
• There was an emerging agreement about the desirability of liberal democracy and market economy.
• Western liberalism has triumphed over rivals.
• Successor ideology to fallen communism has become nationalism the eruption of ethnic violence.
• Ideologies are never destined to end.

Explore political ideologies, their concepts, and views. Understand the distinction between ideology and ideologies. Examine political thought, setting it apart from political science and philosophy. Reflect on the role and significance of political thought.