THE IDEAS OF THE RULING CLASS IDEOLOGY THE IDEAS OF THE RULING CLASS

The Ruling Ideas: ‘The ideal expression of the dominant material relationships’ ‘The dominant material relationships grasped as ideas’ ‘The relationships which make one class the ruling one’ ‘The ideas of [the ruling class’s] dominance’

Ideas of the ruling class are expressed as eternals laws: “As they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate and produce the ideas of their age [as eternal laws].”

The division of labor: Who produces the dominant ideas?

Ideas of the ruling class are represented as the only rational, universally valid ones Universality corresponds to: Class vs. Estate Competition Great numerical strength of the ruling class Illusion of common interest The delusion of the ideologists and division of labor

“Every new class… achieves its hegemony only on a broader basis than that of the ruling class previously, whereas the opposition of the non-ruling class against the new ruling class later develops all the more sharply and profoundly.” Discussion: Are we moving towards a more democratic social order?

Critique of Hegel and Idealism: ‘Idea’ as the dominant force in history Social order to be driven by ideas rather than materialistic relationships Separation of ideas of ruling class from its base A mystical connection among the successive ruling ideas History as process of self-consciousness

IDEOLOGY Revised by Gramsci

What Is History? “The historical unity of the ruling class is realized in the State, and their history is essentially the history of States. But it would be wrong to think that this unity is simply juridical and political;… the fundamental historical unity, concretely, results from the organic relations between State or political society and “civil society”. The Subaltern classes, by definition, are not unified and cannot unite until they are able to become a “State”: their history, therefore, is intertwined with that of civil society, and thereby with the history of States and groups of States.”

Ideology: Its original meaning: Science of ideas/ Analysis of ideas In Marxist philosophy: Contains a negative value judgment As consciousness and creators of struggle and movement (a new meaning emphasized by Gramsci)

Ideology as the theoretical “front” Everything which influences or is able to influence public opinion, directly or indirectly

So what is ideology at the end? Hall argues that “ideology is a mental framework –the languages, the concepts, categories, imagery of thought, and the systems of representation – which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works.”

Ideology for Marx Practical Meaning: The thoughts of how the capitalist system works through the individual’s practical relations to it The same reality can be represented in several ways within systems of discourse The Manifestation of Bourgeois Thought: A critical weapon against Hegelianism, religion and idealist philosophy Ideology as a reflection of material conditions Economy as the last instance The fixed correspondence between dominance in the socio-economic sphere and the ideological: ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class

Critiques of Marx’s Idea of Ideology Reflexive and reductionist Ideology as a realm of pure dependency Ideology as distorted knowledge or false consciousness’ Distortion for Marx: Eternalization of relations which are in fact historically specific / Naturalization which means treating the products of a specific historical development as if universally valid, and arising not through historical processes but, as it were, from Nature itself.

How ideology works and explains Individualism as the bourgeois society’s ideology “Our ideas of “Freedom”, “Equality”, “Property” and “Bentham” (i.e. Individualism) – the ruling ideological principles of the bourgeois lexicon… may derive from the categories we use in our practical, common sense about the market economy. This is how there arises, out of daily, mundane experience of powerful categories of bourgeois legal, political, social and philosophical thought.” About political Economy explanation of market “One-sided explanations are always a distortion. Not in the sense that they are a lie about the system, but in the sense that a “half-truth” cannot be the whole truth about anything. With those ideas you will always represent a part of the whole. You will thereby produce an explanation which is only partially adequate- and in that sense “false”. Also, if you use only market categories and concepts to understand the capitalist circuit as a whole, there are literally many aspects of it which you cannot see. In that sense, the categories of market exchange obscure and mystify our understanding of the capitalist process: that is they do not enable us to see or formulate other aspects invisible.”

Base And Superstructure Marx: Base as the material relations of production (economy), superstructure as the non-material representation of the same relations (including State, religion, culture, etc.) In Marx’s theories and later in mainstream Marxism, superstructure is determined by base. Stuart Hall: “The language of determinism and even more of determinism was inherited from idealist and especially theological accounts.”

The simple notion of superstructure: the reflection, the imitation or the reproduction of the reality of the base in the superstructure in a more or less direct way

The Amendments in the notion of Superstructure Delay in times – famous lags Mediation Homologous Structure Totality Superstructure as ‘practice’ rather than object

Gramsci’s Critique of Marxist Base- Superstructure: Hegemony: “it suggests the existence of something which is truly total, which is not merely secondary or superstructural …And hegemony has the advantage over general notions of totality, that at the same time emphasizes the facts of domination.”

Hegemony Hegemony is a form of control exercised primarily through a society's superstructure--central system of practices, meanings and values.

Gramsci’s Theory “A study of how the ideological structure of a dominant class is actually organized: namely the material organization aimed at maintaining, defending and developing the theoretical or ideological “front”.”

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Hegemony Expanded Williams’ Theory: “We have to emphasize that hegemony is not singular; indeed that its own internal structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated and defended; and by the same token, that they can be continually challenged and in certain respects modified”

Hegemony Expanded Hegemony works to Distinguish the large features of different epochs of society, as between feudal and bourgeois, or what might be, than at distinguishing between different phases of bourgeois society, and different moments within the phases.

Selective Tradition Within the terms of an effective dominant culture, is always passed off as ‘the tradition’, ‘the significant past’ selectivity is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded.

Althusser Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) “A certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions.”

ISA Institutions The religious ISA (the system of the different Churches), The educational ISA (the system of the different public and private “Schools”) The family ISA The legal ISA The political ISA (the political system, including the different Parties), The trade-union ISA, The communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.), The cultural ISA (Literature, the Arts, sports, etc.).

ISA Althusser states, “The class (or class alliance) in power cannot lay down the law in the ISAs as easily as it can in the (repressive) State apparatus, not only because the former ruling classes are able to retain strong positions there for a long time, but also because the resistance of the exploited classes”

Functions of ISA State Apparatus rather I or R function both by violence and by ideology Ideological State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by Ideology and secondly by repressive (The Greatest Distinction)

Functions of ISA ISA’s contribute to reproduction of the relations of production by disseminating ideas to be commonly held (ideology) and work in concert with minimal contradiction of class structure: ruling class power and proletariat oppression.

“Belief derives from the ideas of the individual concerned, with a consciousness which contains the ideas of his belief. In this way, by means of the absolutely ideological “conceptual” device.” “The individual in question behaves in such and such a way, adopts such and such a practical attitude, and, what is more, participates in certain regular practices which are those of the ideological apparatus on which “depend” the ideas which he has in all consciousness freely chosen as a subject.”

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Althusser’s Theory There is no practice except by and in an ideology There is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects

Interpellations By the category of the subject ‘the category of the subject is only constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function (which defines it) of “constituting” concrete individuals as subjects.”

Obviousness Like all obviousness’s, including those that make a word “name a thing” or “have a meaning” the “obviousness” that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect

Functions of Interpellations Ideological recognition The second ideological function being misrecognition You and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition, which guarantee for us that we are indeed concrete, individual, distinguishable and (naturally) irreplaceable subjects. This ideological recognition is our Consciousness

The Subject Matter “All ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject” Ideology “acts” or “functions” in such a way that it “recruits” subjects among the individuals, or “transforms” the individuals into subjects by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing.”