Page 37 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

THE PROBLEM OF IDEOLOGY: MARXISM WITHOUT GUARANTEES 25

But first, why has the problem of ideology occupied so prominent a place
within marxist debate in recent years? Perry Anderson (1976), in his
magisterial sweep of the western European marxist intellectual scene, noted
the intense preoccupation in these quarters with problems relating to
philosophy, epistemology, ideology and the superstructures. He clearly
regarded this as a deformation in the development of marxist thought. The
privileging of these questions in marxism, he argued, reflected the general
isolation of western European marxist intellectuals from the imperatives of
mass political struggle and organization; their divorce from the ‘controlling
tensions of a direct or active relationship to a proletarian audience’; their
distance from ‘popular practice’ and their continuing subjection to the
dominance of bourgeois thought. This had resulted, he argued, in a general
disengagement from the classical themes and problems of the mature Marx
and of marxism. The over-preoccupation with the ideological could be
taken as an eloquent sign of this.
There is much to this argument—as those who have survived the
theoreticist deluge in ‘western marxism’ in recent years will testify. The
emphases of ‘western marxism’ may well account for the way the problem
of ideology was constructed, how the debate has been conducted and the
degree to which it has been abstracted into the high realms of speculative
theory. But I think we must reject any implication that, but for the
distortions produced by ‘western marxism’, marxist theory could have
confortably proceeded on its appointed path, following the established
agenda: leaving the problem of ideology to its subordinate, second-order
place. The rise to visibility of the problem of ideology has a more objective
basis. First, the real developments which have taken place in the means by
which mass consciousness is shaped and transformed—the massive growth
of the ‘cultural industries’. Second, the troubling questions of the ‘consent’
of the mass of the working class to the system in advanced capitalist
societies in Europe and thus their partial stabilization, against all
expectations. Of course, ‘consent’ is not maintained through the
mechanisms of ideology alone. But the two cannot be divorced. It also
reflects certain real theoretical weaknesses in the original marxist
formulations about ideology. And it throws light on some of the most
critical issues in political strategy and the politics of the socialist movement
in advanced capitalist societies.
In briefly reviewing some of these questions, I want to foreground, not so
much the theory as the problem of ideology. The problem of ideology is to
give an account, within a materialist theory, of how social ideas arise. We
need to understand what their role is in a particular social formation, so as
to inform the struggle to change society and open the road towards a
socialist transformation of society. By ideology I mean the mental