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A Reconstruction and Critique of Marx's Theory of Ideology

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A Reconstruction and Critique of Marx's Theory of Ideology University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1987 A reconstruction and critique of Marx's theory of ideology. Phil, Cox University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Cox, Phil,, "A reconstruction and critique of Marx's theory of ideology." (1987). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2026. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2026 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UMASS/AMHERST A RECONSTRUCTION AND CRITIQUE OF MARX *S THEORY OF IDEOLOGY A Dissertation Presented By Ph i i Cox Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partiai ful f i i i men t of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 1987 Ph i i oso phy Ph i I Cox © Al I Rights Reserved A RECONSTRUCTION AND CRITIQUE OF MARX'S THEORY OF IDEOLOGY A Dissertation Presented by Phil Cox Approved as to style and content by Robert Paul Wolff, Chairper'^n —ILL.— . i P Ann Ferguson, Memb V Jo'hn Bre^tling^r Member Sara^Lennox. Outside Member Michael Jubien Head, Philosophy Dept. abstract A RECONSTRUCTION AND CRITIQUE OF MARX'S THEORY OF IDEOLOGY September 1987 Phil Cox, B.A., University of Texas Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Robert Paul Wolff The attempt to construct a marxist theory of ideology is bound up with the question of whether marxism may lay claim to a privileged perspective (i.e., value free or non- ideological) from which a critique of ideology can proceed. A source for the construction of such a theory has of course been Marx's texts themselves; a central issue in the widely varying interpretations of these texts concerns what sort of distinction Marx maintained between science (in particular, msrxist theory) and ideology. Lying beyond the textual exposition of the uses to which Marx put the term "ideology" and what sort of distinction between science and ideology he was working with, is of course the question of the plausibility and coherency of his analyisis of ideology its supposed contradistinction to science. I argue that a number of commentators, who sought to establish a distinction between science and ideology by identifying science with "truth" and ideology with the "false" or "false consciousness", rely on a selective and inadequate reading of Marx's texts. Further, I claim that a variety of recent marxist-oriented commentators, apparent critics of this close Identification of science with truth and ideology with falsity, in fact carry over the true/false opposition of this earlier true consciousness/false consciousness view which they originally sought to distance themselves from. The truth/falsity opposition which they work back into a theory of ideology undialectically opposes science to ideology and springs from a similarly inadequate reading of Marx's texts (specifically his sustained analysis of classical political economy in Theories of Surplus Value) and a parallel misrecogni tion of the ways in which science and ideology are inseparable. '7 . ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract I. The Early Marx: Ideology and Idealism DeTracy and the "Science of Ideology" Left-Hegeiians! rhie Holy ! Family: Bauer, Proudhon, Feuerbach.. The German Ideology: The Speculative Fictions TJ 1 , Consciousness. Ideology and Historical Contradiction. The Real Determinants of Social Condi tioni !!! II. After 1859: Apologia and the Critique of Political Economy Abstraction and Contradiction in Political , Economy. Advance and Regression: Smith and Ricardo.. Exoteric and Esoteric Interests of Science.. The Rise of the Bourgeoisie and the Fall of Political Economy. Appearance and Reality in Capital Contradiction in Classical Political Economy t ions of Capitalist Economy Reflection in Theory !.'!!* III. Althusser: Theory and Theoreticism The "Epistemological Break" in Marx The Divergence of Science and Ideology....'.’.’.'.'! "Scientif icity" and "Systematic! ty" as Marxist Science. The Problematic of a Science The "Practico-Social" Function of Ideology Ideology "From Above" and Ideology as Cognition Self-Criticism and Theoreticist Error IV. Marxism and Ideology After Althusser Social Determination of Knowledge and "False Consciousness "Geneticism" and Truth Science vs. Ideology in Marxist Theory: Bhikhu Parekh Colin Sumner Jorge Larrain Joe McCarney V Conclusion 255 Bibliography 262 Vll . : CHAPTER I THE EARLY MARX: IDEOLOGY AND IDEALISM The term "ideology" first occurs in Marx's major writings in the Paris Manuscripts and he continues to make use of it in most of his works up through the Critique of the Gotha Programme, written seven years before his death. Marx's frequent use of the term, and the persistence of standard references in twentieth century marxism to "Marx's theory of ideology" or the "marxist theory of ideology" should not, however, obscure the fact that Marx nowhere speaks as if he were self-consciously proposing a "theory of ideology" in any unified manner. This fact need not be so disturbing for marxist scholarship. Any account of "marxist theory of class" must come to terms with similarly beleaguering textual problems: Marx used the term "class" in widely varying contexts, sometimes used synonymously with other ambiguous terms such as "stratum" or "social group", and failed to present a systematic account of the concept-- indeed, Marx appears to announce his intention (never fulfilled) to offer such an account in the closing words of the third volume of Capital.^ As with the concept of class, Marx's account of ideology, however unsystematic, has proven rich enough to foster a significant literature in social theory With the concept of ideology, then, an accurate reading of Marx's work must remain sensitive enough to the shifting - 1 - of the term. It would be a mistake, however, to focus on one or another use as definitively suggesting the "real marxist theory of ideology" or to recklessly conjoin different uses in behalf of such a theory. Hence in what follows my approach will be to discuss the various uses to which Marx puts the concept in his early texts—primarily those written before 1859. In these texts Marx begins to use the term to refer to the mistaken "idealism" he detects in political economy, philosophy, and French political thought. In several of these early texts an important shift occurs through which Marx begins to speak of ideology as an apologetic body of thought, a label which reflects his more focused attention to the political significance of ideological thought. This survey of the early Marx's specific uses of ideology provides a foundation for the subsequent discussion of the broader parameters of his notion of ideology anticipated in these contexts. This way of proceeding should remain attentive to the continuities in Marx's treatment, yet not so neglect the discontinuities in his use of the concept as to collapse the notion into a static, reconstructed theory of ideology unfaithful to the richness (and intransigence) of Marx's texts. In the subsequent chapter I will explore the further dimensions of ideology developed by the later Marx in his critique of his predecessors and contemporaries in political economy. Of Marx's predecessors, the French statesman and political economist A.L.C. Destutt de Tracy is most often 2 credited with being the first to use and the greatest popularizer of the term "ideology". De Tracy hoped his self-conceived "science of ideas" would be the philosophical foundation for creating new "scientific institutions" which would dramatically change French society, De Tracy's "science" can thus be understood as an amalgam of certain ideas inherited’ from Condillac, Bacon, Locke, and other Enlightenment thinkers, though with grand philosophical pretensions of its own. De Tracy and the other Ideologues'^ from the Institut National (the loose collection of French politicians and statesmen whose purpose it was to create and oversee the new "scientific", viz., ideological, institutions for the new France) shared with these Enlightenment philosophers a general suspicion of medieval scholasticism. Like Bacon, they wished to overthrow the idols that becloud the mind, replacing them with the certainties of "scientific" rigor. Like Locke and Condillac, the Ideologues put great trust in the capacity for empirical analysis to discriminate between truth and illusion, and to liberate the mind from the power of the latter. The Ideologues associated the source of (social) evil with intellectual error — viz., faulty reasoning through conceptual and linguistic inadequacies. Their critique of metaphysics and religion further underscores their basic philosophical/political program: What's wrong with French society can be traced to incorrect and mistaken concepts; therefore, society can be revolutionized and its evils 3 . eliminated by supplanting these mistaken notions with the correct ideas and concepts engendered by the analysis made possible by the new science of ideas. Thus, for example, the cause of an "evil" state power is to be found in the minds of the citizenry and government officials, which must contain misguided notions of "equality", "the good", etc.; similarly, a "good" state power can be created
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