PSCI 3000 Long Essay 1

Consider the following points:

Our reader examined when ideology was first coined and how others interpreted its meaning overtime.

– First, Antoine Louise Claude Destutt, Comte de Tracy coined the term “ideology” as a philosophy of the mind. It developed during the Enlightenment period in France (17th-18th century), where thinkers were focused on reason. As a result, “ideology” was supposed to be a linkage between “logic, psychology, and politics” where “intellectuals discover the truth” and “enlightened politicians” that understand these truths would be able to carry out policies to help society. (pg 4-5)

– Second, Napoleon Bonaparte at first agreed with de Tracy during the French Revolution, but in his pursuit of power reverted back to supporting the Church and supernatural phenomenon as opposed to reason. As a result, Bonaparte denounced “ideology” as a sinister metaphysics, breaking that relation between intellectuals and rulers/philosophers and politicians that de Tracy advocated for. (pg. 5)

– Third, Karl Marx saw “ideology” as an abuse of power. He lived in the late 18th century when the industrial revolution not only brought about new innovation, but huge gaps in wages and an increase in poverty. Therefore, looking at things in the lens of class, he saw that those who held the means of material production also controlled the means of mental production. In other words, it was the elite who controlled ideas, or who were the ideologues/ideologists. To him, these ideologists created illusionary arguments for their own material benefit. For instance, the French Revolution spoke about rights for men and citizens, but it benefited those with private property at the expense of workers. Marx’s own concept of communism was different. He saw it as a science that identified, explained and promoted the working class’ interests that would advise rather than impose its ideas on people as ideologists would do. (pg. 5-7)

– Fourth, Friedrich Engels was Marx’s counterpart in the same time period and called ideology “false consciousness,” or concealed the explotiation of the working class in a capitalist society. In terms of Marx’s work, Engels called it “scientific socialism” because it has fundamental laws into finding the truth to how we think, particularly looking at history. Engels’ approach uses logical deduction, which Marx might not have agreed with, according to our reader. Followers of Marx who wanted to promote Marxism as a comprehnesive system began to see this idea about the working class as a “scientifc ideology.” (pg. 7)

– Fifth, Lenin was a Russian revolutionary that applied Marxism as “a comprehensive science derived from an abstract logic,” thereby accepting it as an ideology, which countered Marx’s original intentions. For Lenin, he contrasted bourgeois ideology with a “socialist ideology,” believing that the working class needed socialist intellectuals to awaken them out of bourgeois ideology and that science was there to serve the working class/proletariat interests to realize they were being exploited in a capitalist society and rise up against the elite/bourgeois. (pg. 7)

– Sixth, Karl Mannheim argued later in the 20th century that studying ideology involved unmasking the real nature of the situation at a particular and total level in which the whole of reality could be distorted by a particular ideology. (pg. 8)

– Seventh, Malcolm B. Hamilton more recently attempted to define the elements of ideology in the 1980s. He called it a “system of collectively held normative and reputable factual ideas and beliefs and attitudes” about social patterns. His focus, however, was only on “empirical application and research” taking out the element of political action. In other words, his definition made ideology apolitical and independent of the interest of human beings. (pg. 8-9)

– Eight, our textbook defines ideology as a “system of ideas that tries to link thought with action” by “explain[ing] and evaluat[ing] social conditions, help[ing] them understand their place in society [or orienting them], and provid[ing] a program for social and political action.