Page 72 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

60 JORGE LARRAIN

For Marx neither ideologically distorted ideas nor correct ideas can be
explained as emerging from an empiricist relation whereby the real world
indelibly imprints its meanings, be they distorted or sound, directly into
our consciousness. This assumes that the real world is simple and
transparent and that subjects are rather passive recipients. For Marx, on
the contrary, the real world of capitalism was not transparent; phenomenal
forms created by the market concealed the real relations at the level of
production. But subjects were not passive either, bound to be deceived or
bound to scientifically understand reality; they were actively engaged in
practices which, in so far as limited and merely reproductive, enhanced the
appearances of the market, in so far as transformatory or revolutionary,
facilitated the apprehension of real relations.
When Hall says that the first thing to ask about an ideology which
succeeds in organizing a substantial section of the masses is not what is
false about it but what about it is true, he overlooks two things. First, in
talking about an ideology which succeeds in organizing masses, he
is clearly using a neutral concept of ideology in the Gramscian tradition.
Marx worked with a different, negative concept and, therefore, to criticize
him for not putting the problem of ideology in terms of political ideas
which become popular does not make good sense. Second, even if one
accepts Hall’s Gramscian definition of ideology as useful, as I do, he does
not seem to see the different but complementary contribution which
Marx’s concept of ideology could make to it. For why should we restrict
ourselves to finding out what makes good sense in an ideology? Is it not
also quite necessary to find out what is wrong and expose it? Assuming that
nazism and fascism were ideologies in the Gramscian sense which, however
unexpectedly, succeeded in organizing important sections of the German
and Italian masses, was it not important to find out not only what was true
about them, the good sense which seduced people into accepting them, but
also to find out and expose what was false and did not make good sense
about them?
Finally, Hall castigates Marx’s theory for assuming that vast numbers of
ordinary people could be duped into misrecognizing where their real
interests lie, whereas a few privileged theoreticians could see right through
into the truth. But this is a misunderstanding. For misrecognition, in
Marx’s terms, had nothing to do with the mental equipment or intelligence
of people. The concept of ideology was not a device to label a part of the
community as stupid or less intelligent. According to Marx, capitalists
themselves, just as much as the workers, as the bearers and agents of the
capitalist system, were deceived by the very operation of the market. As he
put it,

The final pattern of economic relations as seen on the surface, in their
real existence and consequently in the conceptions by which the