Page 67 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

STUART HALL AND THE MARXIST CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY 55

contradictory world and is simultaneously projected into distorted forms of
consciousness which conceal and misrepresent that contradictory reality.
The role of ideology is to help reproduce that contradictory world in the
interest of the ruling class. But ideology is not the result of a conspiracy of
the ruling class to deceive the dominated classes, nor is it an arbitrary
invention of consciousness. It is rather a spontaneous or elaborated
discursive attempt to deal with forms of oppression and contradictions
which is unable to ascertain the true origin of these problems and therefore
results in the masking and reproduction of those very contradictions and
forms of oppression.
The contradictions Marx refers to in his treatment of ideology within
capitalism are all derived from or express an aspect of the principal
contradiction of capitalism, namely, the contradiction which is constitutive
of the very essence of the capitalist mode of production, the contradiction
between capital and labour. These two poles relate in a contradictory way
because they presuppose and negate each other. As Marx puts it, ‘capital
presupposes wage labour; wage labour presupposes capital. They
reciprocally condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring
forth each other’ (Marx, 1970a:82). But this mutual conditioning
engenders mutual opposition because ‘the working individual alienates
himself; relates to the conditions brought out of him by his labour as those
not of his own but of an alien wealth and of his own poverty’ (Marx, 1973:
541). Live labour engenders capital (dead labour), but the latter controls the
former; capital reproduces itself by reproducing its opposite, wage labour.
It is this contradictory process of continuous reproduction whereby capital
reproduces itself by reproducing its opposite that explains the origin and
function of ideology. The process, in so far as it is contradictory and
alienates the worker, needs to be concealed in order to be able to continue
to reproduce itself.
The way in which ideology is produced as part of the process of
reproduction of the capitalist main contradiction can be ascertained by
focusing on the way in which the two poles, capital and labour, relate to
each other. Although the production and appropriation of surplus value
occurs at the level of production, capital and labour first come into contact
through the market. This contact through the market appears perfectly fair
and equitable, for capital and labour exchange equivalent values. So the
process of production and extraction of surplus value is concealed by the
operation of the market which becomes the source of ideological
representations such as the idea of a ‘fair wage’, equality, freedom, etc.
According to Marx, the labourer’s ‘economic bondage is both brought
about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of
masters, and by the oscillation in the market-price of labour-power’
(Marx, 1974:I, 542). Because the exchange of equivalents by free
individuals in the market is seen on the surface of society and conceals the