Page 63 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

STUART HALL AND THE MARXIST CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY 51

The critique which Poulantzas (1976:202) and Laclau (1977:160–1) make
of the classical marxist theory for conceiving of ideology as the ‘number-
plates’ on the back of social classes and for arguing that each
ideological element or concept has a necessary class belongingness,
expresses similar concerns.
Second, ‘in the classical perspective, Thatcherism would be understood
as in no significant way different from traditional conservative ruling
ideas’. But Thatcherism for Hall is ‘a quite distinct, specific and novel
combination of ideological elements’ (1988a:42) which, although it
integrates some elements of traditional Toryism, does so in a radically new
way. Third, the classical theory of ideology can only explain the
penetration and success of the ruling ideas within the working class by
recourse to false consciousness. The popular classes are duped by the
dominant classes, temporarily ensnared against their material interests by a
false structure of illusions, which would be dispelled as real material
factors reassert themselves. But this has failed during Thatcherism because
‘mass unemployment has taken a much longer time than predicted to
percolate mass consciousness.’ ‘The unemployed…are still by no means
automatic mass converts to labourism, let alone socialism’ (1988a:43).
False consciousness

assumes an empiricist relation of the subject to knowledge, namely
that the real world indelibly imprints its meanings and interests directly
into our consciousness. We have only to look to discover its truths.
And if we cannot see them, then it must be because there is a cloud of
unknowing that obscures the unilateral truth of the real.
(1988a:44)

In contrast to this view Hall argues that

the first thing to ask about an ‘organic ideology’ that, however
unexpectedly, succeeds in organizing substantial sections of the
masses and mobilizing them for political action, is not what is false
about it but what about it is true. By ‘true’ I do not mean universally
correct as a law of the universe but ‘makes good sense’.
(1988a:46)

Fourth,
it is a highly unstable theory about the world which has to assume
that vast numbers of ordinary people, mentally equipped in much the
same way as you or I, can simply be thoroughly and systematically
duped into misrecognizing entirely where their real interests lie. Even
less acceptable is the position that, whereas they, the masses are the