Page 68 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

56 JORGE LARRAIN

hidden extraction of surplus value in the process of production, it naturally
tends to be reproduced in the minds of both capitalists and labourers as
equality and freedom, the linchpins of capitalist ideology.
There is no doubt that Marx proposes a form of opposition between
science and ideology. If ideology is a distorted form of thought that
remains trapped in appearances, science, on the contrary, is an intellectual
activity which is able to penetrate the veil of appearances to reach the inner
relations of reality. As Marx puts it, ‘all science would be superfluous if the
outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided’ (Marx,
1974:III, 817). But this opposition is not conceived in the positivist manner
which entails that science can overcome ideology as truth overcomes error.
For Marx science cannot overcome ideology because ideology is not simply
an intellectual error, but it has its sources in a contradictory reality. Only
the practical transformation of that reality, the practical resolution of its
contradictions, can overcome ideology.
So, the emphasis is put by Marx not on ideology being a world-view, or
a discourse consisting of articulated concepts and images by means of
which we try to make sense of social existence; the emphasis is put on
ideology being a specific form of distortion, not just false consciousness in
general. The specificity of the distortion is its function of sustaining
domination and reproducing the capitalist system by masking
contradictions. So not all forms of distortion are necessarily ideological.
And precisely because of this restricted and negative character, ideology
cannot be confused with the ruling ideas. The confusion would entail that
all ruling ideas are distorted. Marx never condemned the whole of
bourgeois thought as ideological. He appreciated the scientific contributions
of bourgeois authors just as much as the literary production of bourgeois
artists. That he clearly distinguished between the ideological and other
‘free’ forms of consciousness of the ruling class is shown by his critique of
Storch for not conceiving material production in historical form. Storch,
Marx says, ‘deprives himself of the basis on which alone can be understood
partly the ideological component parts of the ruling class, partly the free
spiritual production of this particular social formation’ (Marx, 1969: I,
285).
However, some ambiguities in Marx and Engels’ formulations and,
especially, the fact that The German Ideology was not published in the
West until the 1930s, made it more difficult for the first generations of
marxists to apprehend the sense in which Marx and Engels had used the
concept. In the absence of The German Ideology other, more ambiguous
texts became central for the conceptualization of ideology such as Marx’s
1859 Preface, Engels’s Anti-Dühring and various letters and prefaces.
Kautsky, Plekhanov and others began increasingly to use ideology in a
neutral sense. Lenin, in the context of exploding class struggles in Russia
and driven mainly by the urgent need to theorize the working-class critique