Abstract
The marked commonalities between these three books extend well beyond their having the same publisher and being – at least in the cases of Rehmann’s and Rosengarten’s books – published in the same series of Historical Materialism. The second uniting element is thematic, covering ideology, society and anarchy. In a possible anti-Foucaultian ‘order of things’, one might start with Rehmann’s general overview of ideology before illuminating the specific ideological investigation of Rosengarten with Shantz and Williams’s work providing a possible counter-model to ideology. Following the invention of the concept of ideology by the French philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), who published four volumes entitled Èléments d’idéologie between 1801 and 1815, the idea of a ‘science of ideas’ was born. But soon, Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) abused those studying ideas as ideologists, ideologues and doctrinaire dreamers. From then on, ideology carried negative connotations, entering the canon of the Enlightenment most successfully through Karl Marx’s German Ideology (1845).
Even though ideology is a distinctive modern concept with a 200-year-plus history, and though until now ‘nobody has yet come up with a single adequate definition of ideology’ (Nescolarde-Selva & Usó-Doménech 2014: 1), two schools of thought on ideology have emerged. The first might be called, ‘everything is ideological’. But when ideology is viewed in this way, it might conversely also mean that ‘nothing is ideology’. With that, the concept of ideology loses the power to critically analyse social phenomena. Today, Freeden et al. (2013) appear to be the prime representatives of, as Leonardo (2003: 212) calls it, the ‘everything is ideology thesis’, continuing with ‘if everything is ideology, then nothing is ideological’. As a consequence, when ideology becomes ‘an all-embracing [concept it also becomes an] almost meaningless’ concept (McLellan 1995: 2). In line with that, Hinich and Munger (1992: 428) argue that ‘the neutral ideational sense of ideology simply collapses under scrutiny’. Dedicated to scrutiny is the second understanding of ideology that might be called critical, emancipatory and Marxist, with the classical representatives being Gramsci, Althusser and Therborn (the latter’s exquisite book is absent from Rehmann’s work). Perhaps the most current representatives of the second school are Rehmann and Rosengarten.
With these preliminary observations on ideology in mind, Rehmann begins his journey through the history of ideology with the indispensable calling stations of ideology’s inventor de Tracy, followed by Napoleon, Marx and Engels, Lenin, Lukács and the Frankfurt School, Gramsci and Althusser, and continues with Stuart Hall’s theory of hegemony and discourse, a critique of Foucault’s governmentality studies, postmodernism, Pierre Bourdieu, and the current domination of Herr von Hayek’s neoliberal ideology. The journey ends by arriving at the final station of ideology-critique: the Projekt Ideologietheorie (PIT). Through all this, Rehmann is able to close two vital knowledge gaps in the history of ideology when he highlights ‘the concept of ideology from the second international to Marxism-Leninism’ and details the Frankfurt School’s approximation to ideology when, for example, Marcuse notes that ‘the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of mystification’. For the second-generation critical theorists such as the Weberian-Kantian, and perhaps the more social-democratic leaning Habermas, however, ‘the time for ideologies (and therefore for an ideology-critique) has ended’. Habermas appears to have locked himself into the ‘end of ideology’ ideology that began with a totally wrong prediction made by the conservative sociologist Daniel Bell in the 1960s. Ideology has not ended, and it does not appears likely to end in the foreseeable future. Hence there has already been an ‘end of the end of ideology’ (Jost 2006).
Perhaps Habermas has fallen victim to the hallucination that market relations can be separated from the lifeworld, with one governed by communicative action and the other by markets, technicalities and instrumental rationality. Meanwhile, ideology has moved on from when Pinochet-loving Herr von Hayek (Robin 2013) propagated his neoliberal ideology. Rehmann notes, ‘Hayek reemployed the old conjurer trick of the bourgeois ideologues, namely to associate the market-exchange with the constitution of communities in general’, finishing up with one of the finest critiques of neoliberal game theory (p. 279). The final highlight in Rehmann’s book is a section about Wolfgang Haug’s project ideology-theory (1993), which emphasises that ideology remains linked to ‘domination [that] is an institutionalised, structurally anchored asymmetric power relation of superiority and subordination’ living through ‘alienated socialisation from above’. Domination and alienation are defining themes not only for Rehmann, Haug and the project ideology-theory, but also for a theorist who remains perhaps – next to Althusser – the single most defining figure in the history of ideology: Antonio Gramsci.
Gramsci’s concept of ideology is highlighted in Frank Rosengarten’s The Revolutionary Marxism of Antonio Gramsci, in which he reviews Gramsci’s work as a political thinker and activist; Gramsci’s prison experience; and current protagonists of Gramsci studies in the USA, though Gramsci’s thoughts have never been restricted to the USA (e.g. www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram), as Chapter 9 (‘Gramsci in the Caribbean’) shows. Rosengarten begins his historical account with a detailed discussion of the ‘Gramsci-Trotsky question’, as Gramsci ‘enjoyed Trotsky’s confidence during his stay in Moscow’. But imprisonment by the Italian fascists remains Gramsci’s defining experience – an experience ‘which began on 8th November 1926 and ended at this death on 27th April 1937’. Despite harsh conditions and failing health, Gramsci noted that ‘the monstrous machine of prison routines destroyed all initiative and individuality’. But in spite of this, Gramsci wrote the Prison Notebooks, which remain an unchallenged milestone in the historical development of the concept of ideology.
Perhaps Gramsci’s most significant idea on ideology remains hegemony or ideological domination. When an ideology or world-view [Weltanschauung] becomes dominant, it has the capability to suppress and eliminate – quite often with brutal, cruel, cunning, and deceptive methods – any alternative way of explaining reality. It establishes what apartheid-loving Maggie Thatcher called ‘TINA’ – there is no alternative (Goldstone 2011) – even though she was outgunned by the world in her support of apartheid. Nonetheless, such a hegemonic ideology can contain several different ideologies. Some can even be rather artificial, such as the theoretical explanations created by subservient academics and crypto-philosophers with Rosengarten’s ‘Qualities of intellectuals: Antonio Gramsci, Edwards Said, and Betty Friedan’ providing a useful and instructive counter example.
Other ideologies have been called ‘organic’ since they can even be extracted from people’s lived experience and formulated back into domineering ideologies. These consist, for example, of a top-down cultural-ideological way of being made to see and believe what is real in a particular way. These ideologies can even find expression in institutions that uphold ideological belief-systems such as religious churches, semi-educational and partly privatised institutions (universities), authoritarian family structures, and – most obviously – the globally operative corporate mass media. Perhaps there is something that might be called an ‘interest symbiosis’ between corporate mass media, multinational corporations and semi-privatised educational structures that even include the state as ‘the executive committee managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie’. While there are certainly functional reasons for such an interest symbiosis, there is also an overall unifying ideological umbrella for Hayek’s neoliberalism.
All of this assists in establishing what Adorno and Horkheimer call ‘the culture industry’ (1944). Through this, an ideological aura is created so that society can easily be made to endorse dominating beliefs (e.g. market capitalism) as a manner of accepting ‘the powers that be’. Such a hegemonic ideology can define what is true, what is right, logical and even moral (e.g. business ethics). Together, such hegemony constitutive elements can become the dominant culture, establishing what Althusser calls ‘interpellation’. The ideology of neoliberalism in the form of, for example, employability, marketable skills, being an active job-seeker, etc. calls you! This is flanked through a seamless chain of institutional setups ranging from private kindergartens through to semi-privatised universities run under managerialism (Klikauer 2013). This form of alienated socialisation gets hold of people when they are so young that alternative ways of envisioning reality are very hard to imagine. Perhaps these are, as Emma Goldman might have said, ‘the true enemies of the child’ (1906). In any case, this is how hegemonic ideologies are created and maintain their three essential tasks of camouflaging contradictions, supporting domination, and preventing emancipation.
But despite the best efforts of the cultural industry and hegemonic ideologies, the prevention of emancipation is far from being complete, as the Occupy Wall Street movement, Germany’s Die Linke, the world social forum, anti-globalisation protests, etc. have shown (Comité invisible 2009). If the triadic definition of ideology holds water and ideology does indeed camouflage contradictions, maintains domination and prevents emancipation, then perhaps a post-capitalist society, conceivably even formed as in Shantz and Williams’s book Anarchy and Society, might indeed be a society free of ideology (cf. Klikauer 2014). For Shantz and Williams, what an anarchist society might look like starts with a clear understanding that ‘anarchist sociology’ can never be armchair sociology. This is because the term ‘“anarchist-sociology” simply does not exist in any meaningful, real-world sense’ (p. x). Perhaps as a consequence, Shantz and Williams undertake the task of ‘situating anarchist-sociology’ as a politically conscious and active version of sociology. While ‘anarchism seems more sociological than vice-versa’, perhaps ‘freedom, anti-authoritarianism, direct action, mutual aid, and decentralisation’ and perhaps also anti-capitalism might be key ingredients for an anarchist-sociology.
‘Rethinking community’ describes the transition ‘from individualism to individuality’ when human beings become ‘self-determined’ (Kant) and self-actualising (Hegel), rather than market determined, as Hayek would have it. From there, ‘autonomous groups are [established and] distinguished from other organisations that are characterised by hierarchies of relationships, fixed divisions of labour and explicit rules and practices’ (cf. Diefenbach 2013; Gibson-Graham et al. 2013). How to achieve this is shown in Shantz and Williams’s Figure 2 on ‘Revolt: re-socialisation or roll-back’. For Diefenbach’s non-hierarchical and Gibson-Graham’s collective organisations, this always means a sort of double act between ‘state-repelling and state-preventing’, in which ‘communities outside the immediate reach of the state often attempt to repel its influence, while at the same time attempting to prevent state-like forms from emerging’. Perhaps the key to all this lies in the concluding chapter, which notes, ‘anarchism is not, of course, merely a socio-political philosophy, as it has been mainly referenced in earlier chapters. Its proponents constitute a “movement”, a large collection of people who share similar attitudes, identities, and goals, and who are working towards (however awkwardly) some form of radical social change.’
Preventing ‘radical social change’ has been and continues to be one of the three key tasks of ideology, alongside that of camouflaging contradictions and cementing domination. If one takes a non-neutral view of ideologies, this is what ideology has always been about, ever since Napoleon abused de Tracy’s ‘science of ideas’ as dreaming, and since Marx’s application of ideology. Perhaps next to the work of Gramsci, Althusser, Eagleton and Therborn on ideology, Rehmann’s comprehensive historical account of ideology provides the most insightful and exquisite illumination of the term ideology today. Similarly, Rosengarten’s detailed study on Gramsci avoids covering old ground by not only showing what Gramsci is famous for, but by also highlighting the reasons, struggles (personally and collectively) as well as the life experiences behind the man who gave us the highly instructive concept of ideological hegemony. Finally, by going beyond ideology, perhaps, we might find not another ideology enshrined in Hegel’s ‘Über-state’ (Nietzsche) – the super-state – but the very opposite, found on the economic side in decentralised production collectives and on the political side in autonomous workers’ councils (e.g. Comack 2012).