First Published: Theoretical Review No. 10, May-June 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
With this issue, the Theoretical Review expands in scope to encompass a new field – culture and cultural criticism and general problems of ideology.
We do so fully conscious of the undeveloped state of Marxist theory in the area of ideology and culture, and the long contradictory history of communist cultural criticism, with its negative and positive features. We are, at the same time, equally conscious of the sad state of much current communist cultural criticism, the isolation of many Marxist cultural workers from the organized communist movement, and the strength and sophistication of social democratic efforts in this field.
Nonetheless, in an effort to stimulate theoretical discussion and to present some of the thinking which led us to set aside space for this new section of the Theoretical Review, we are printing the following introductory remarks.
Marxism characterizes the capitalist social formation as consisting of three necessary and inter-related levels or instances – the economic, the political, and the ideological. Each level has its own particular structure, but they are linked together and constantly kept in motion by the class struggle and the process of production and reproduction of the social formation as a whole.
At the economic level, the class struggle goes on within the structure of production relations. At the political level, it is the structure of relations of political power, the state and law. Ideological struggle and ideological practice are likewise conducted within definite structural limits.
The specific social formation of which it is an element and the class struggle appropriate to it (under capitalism, the struggle between capitalists and workers) determine and establish the character of ideology. But these factors do more than simply establish the limits in which ideology develops.
At the same time, they determine its necessarily mystified or deformed representation of the world. For ideology is not some neutral system of ideas and representations of the world which links people to their conditions of life and to each other. Rather its function is necessarily affected by the requirements of the social formation and those of the ruling class within it.
A basic characteristic of any social formation is that its structure and laws are not apparent to the individuals who occupy places within it, at the level of individual experience. At the level of individual experience, “the social whole remains opaque”[1] to the persons within it. Ideology reflects this opacity by functioning to insert individuals into the practical activities which support the system, rather than providing them with true knowledge of it. This is the first determinant of ideology’s deformed and mystified character.
At the same time, ideology is determined by the class struggle and the effects of the dominant or hegemonic class within a social formation. Ideology functions to maintain social cohesion by masking these class divisions and the benefits and liabilities accruing to different classes. Class division and class domination are the second determinant of ideology’s deformed and mystified character.
The effects of ideology, thus determined, are decisive for the reproduction of the social formation. As Althusser puts it, ideology functions “to compel people to accept in their consciousness and in their immediate behavior the place and the role which the structure of society imposes upon them.”[2]
But to say that ideology is deformed or mystified is not to say that it presents an entirely false picture of the world. Ideology presents people with representations of the world which give an allusion to reality while at the same time presenting an illusion of it. Marx recognized this duality when he described religion as both an “expression of real distress” and an “illusory” protest against real distress.[3]
However, it should be clear that, within a capitalist mode of production, the illusory aspect of ideology must of necessity be dominant. The reproduction of capitalism, that is, capitalist exploitation, requires not the exacerbation of class division and class contradiction, but the masking of these divisions. Ideology gives to the social formation a false unity, a false coherence. This is why, when seeing the social formation through an analogy to a building, if economics is described as the base or foundation, and politics is described as the superstructure, ideology can be seen as the cement holding together all the individual elements which constitute the whole.
The dominant position of one class within a social formation means that “the dominant ideas in any society are the ideas of the ruling class.” But the resulting dominant ideology is not simply a world view which the ruling class creates for itself in a vacuum. The world view of the bourgeoisie, the dominant ideology, is the product of class struggle, of both victories and concessions on the part of the bourgeoisie, in its struggle with the proletariat, the petit-bourgeoisie, etc.
Of necessity, then, it is rent by contradictions, and contains elements of the experience and conditions of existence of other classes.[4]
Ideology and ideological representations are not something which each of us is born with. Ideology, on the contrary, is produced and reproduced by the multitude of practices and institutions which pervade the social formation family, schools, churches, social organizations, the media, cultural forms, etc.
The problem of determining the correct communist approach to dealing with these practices and institutions has been a thorny one for our movement. Some have advocated a position of uncompromising hostility, while others have tended to uncritically throw themselves into the fray. Though there seems to be general agreement that the tasks of communists must be two-fold – to intervene in the practices and institutions of the dominant ideology while at the same time creating our own communist ideology and culture – there seems to be little unity beyond this point.
Schematically, we would like to put forward the following tentative points as important elements in any necessary communist ideological practice. But, first, it is necessary to reemphasize how an individual perceives (or fails to perceive) his/her own ideology. This is the way Althusser explains it:
Ideology is present in all the acts and expressions of individuals to the point that it is indistinguishable from their “lived” experience, and all immediate analysis of the “lived” is profoundly marked by traces of ideological evidence. Although he/she believes that he/she sees reality itself with a pure and clear perception or with a pure practice, in reality the individual has perceptions and practices which are impure, marked by the invisible structures of ideology. Since he/she does not perceive ideology, he/she takes his/her perception of things and of the world for the “things themselves” without seeing that this perception is not given him/her except through the veil of the unsuspected forms of ideology, without seeing that this perception is, in fact, hidden by an invisible perception in the form of ideology.[5]
Althusser makes the point that ideology functions not because it is perceived, but because it is unperceived. An essential element in the struggle against bourgeois ideology, therefore, becomes the struggle to make it apparent, to identify bourgeois ideology as such, to win the masses to a critical awareness of the ideological mechanisms and representations by which they perceive the world and themselves.
Related to this process of identifying ideology is the process of demystifying bourgeois ideology. It is not enough that workers understand that they see the world through the veil of ideology. What is decisive is that they come to recognize that this bourgeois ideology, constantly reproduced by capitalism, functions to present them with an illusory picture of the world which helps to keep them in a position of subordination and exploitation.
Finally, it is necessary for communists to win the working class to a recognition of the imperative need for a radically different ideology – one corresponding to the requirements of proletarian class struggle and inspired by the scientific theory of that struggle, Marxism-Leninism.
More difficult than identifying these goals is relating them to our intervention in the structures and institutions of bourgeois ideological practice. Necessary to this relationship is a reaffirmation of the concept that the dominant ideology is not homogeneous but contradictory, incorporating as elements in its own structure features of the ideologies of other classes. Lenin noted this when he wrote, “The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present, if only in a rudimentary form, in every national culture. ...”[6]
Elements of proletarian class and socialist consciousness are present in different aspects and areas of contemporary bourgeois ideology. Communists cannot remain indifferent or hostile to these elements or dismiss them simply because they exist within the dominant bourgeois culture. Of course, the danger is present that they will act to spread illusions as to the neutral character of the dominant ideology. But equally present is the possibility that they will serve as stepping stones in a decisive break with bourgeois ideology.
The conscious and directed intervention of communists and revolutionaries in bourgeois ideological practices and institutions will intensify the contradictions within bourgeois ideology, can strengthen the elements of working class and socialist consciousness within it, and at the same time provide a bridge to the necessary communist culture being created outside the dominant ideology.
The essentially sterile and sectarian nature of most left ideological practice is such that it treats bourgeois ideology and culture as one reactionary mass and abandons the entire ideological field to the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, in splendid isolation, left groups put on their own ideological and cultural affairs, totally divorced from the ideological structures and representations within which the working class perceives and experiences its world.
Communist ideological practice cannot be viewed as the simple replacement in the minds of the workers of one ideology for another. Ideologies are not changed like clothes. Nor is the change irreversible. Communist ideological practice is the elaboration and dissemination of Marxist-Leninist ideology in the course of class struggle.
The Ann Arbor Collective (M-L) had this definition of Marxist-Leninist ideology:
It is the formulation of the scientific truths of Marxism-Leninism in the language of popular consciousness, in a particular context which is neither fully scientific nor the complete picture (hence, the aspect of illusion), but which creates in the consciousness of the reader or listener a contradiction between his/her previous conceptions and the new Marxist-Leninist ones being presented. Marxist-Leninist ideology, whether it is agitation or propaganda, forces people to choose, to maintain old ideas or to break with those old bourgeois ideological conceptions. This is the essence of ideological struggle.[7]
Naturally, this ideology cannot be seen in isolation, but only in its two fold articulation. On the one hand, it is linked to the bourgeois ideology it seeks to transform; on the other hand, it is linked to the Marxist-Leninist theory which gives it its revolutionary liberating character.
But Marxist-Leninist ideology cannot be developed in the abstract, from an abstract idealized picture of the “mind” of the average worker. Rigorous analysis and concrete information on the nature of the audience to which the struggle will be directed is a prerequisite to effective ideological practice.
Just as ideology in general can be said to be divisible into regions – moral ideology, political ideology, juridical ideology, philosophical ideology etc. – so too can Marxist-Leninist ideology be divided. Whether it is political ideology in the form of agitation and propaganda or aesthetic ideology in the form of cultural criticism or guerrilla theater, Marxist-Leninist ideology can only be developed in and through ideological practices and systems of representation which actively confront bourgeois ideology.
It is often stated that cultural criticism is a rather simple process for Marxists, that of distinguishing “their” culture from “our” culture. Irwin Silber has defined “their” films, for instance, as “ideological commodities produced by capital for sale in the ’free’ market.”[8]
This view is deficient in a number of respects. Most importantly, it defines a cultural product solely by its origins. This reduces the “principal task” of a Marxist film critique to understanding, as Silber puts it, “what the film-makers are trying to do.”[9]
It seems to us that Marxist cultural criticism is a far more complex practice. It must take into account three basic elements, and their dialectical inter-connection: the artist or cultural workers, the work itself, and the audience. Each of these elements is not a simple totality but a complex one, marked by contradictions. To reduce criticism to only one element is to truncate Marxist cultural criticism if not to destroy it entirely.
The intention of an artist (or film producer) can never by itself determine the character of a cultural product. Engels, in an 1888 letter to Margaret Harkness, for instance, makes this point by way of reference to the French author Balzac. Balzac was, Engels says, an unabashed monarchist who sought to write a “constant elegy on the irretrievable decay of good society.” Nonetheless, he produced works which, in Engels’ words, went against “his own class sympathies and political prejudices,” presenting a “wonderfully realistic history of French society.” Lenin’s comments on Tolstoy make a similar point. In spite of Tolstoy’s own mystical religious pacifist views, his works were able to express the ideas and sentiments of protest of the Russian peasantry. In this sense, they were what Lenin called, “a mirror of the Russian revolution.”[10]
Likewise, the character and contradictions of an audience or audiences must be an integral factor in Marxist cultural criticism. Our evaluation of the same work would be very different given a very different audience. In a socialist country, a showing of the Nazi film The Triumph of the Will could have a positive effect in demystifying Nazi ideology. In West Germany today, on the contrary, its showing might very well aid in the ongoing Nazi revival.
Finally, the third factor, the cultural product itself, cannot be described by some meaningless notion borrowed from the bourgeoisie, “work of art.” Rather, it must be appreciated as a unique and specific embodiment of a determinant ideology or ideological element, reflecting their contradictions and ambiguities. But a cultural product is not simply a reflection of the ideology it embodies. It serves to develop that ideology, to constitute it in a new way, and, in turn, reflects back upon and shapes the ideology in terms of both form and content.
Recently, a Marxist critic has attempted to solve the problem of form and content by dismissing it as an “entirely bourgeois distinction.”[11] It is true that a cultural form (a novel, a play, a song, a drawing) cannot be mechanically separated from the content (ideas, feelings, etc.) embodied in it. But it is equally true that these are two distinct elements, which can be analyzed separately because each is relatively autonomous in relation to the other.
Historically, Marxism, in its reaction against the bourgeois aesthetic theory of formalism which concerns itself only with problems of form, has tended to treat cultural forms indifferently, concentrating almost entirely on the supposed “content” of a work. This approach fails to recognize that form no less than content is an historical product capable of historical analysis and linked ultimately to ideology, ideological struggle, and the mode of production. A good example of the critical analysis of form required by Marxist cultural criticism is Lukacs’s work, The Historical Novel, which seeks to demonstrate that the novel is the literary form par excellence of the capitalist mode of production.
In the final analysis, Marxist cultural criticism must view all these elements – the cultural worker, the audience, and the cultural product (in its form and content) – not simply in terms of each other and ideology but in the broader context of the class struggle – the class struggles of which each is the product, and the contemporary class struggle in which we all live.
Ideology in general and its cultural component are an integral and important part of the experience and daily struggles of the American people. Yet, a glance at the press of the organized communist movement points up the appalling indifference, ignorance, and hostility with which U.S. Marxist-Leninists treat popular ideology and culture.
Lacking a long-term conception of ideological and cultural practice, the sole criterion by which the majority of the U.S. communist movement seems to judge cultural works is the immediate political mileage which can be derived from the work in question. When a cultural product is not reducible to immediate political campaigns and slogans, when it doesn’t furnish a good jumping-off point for agitation and propaganda, then it is most likely to be either ignored or dismissed. Missing is the complexity and sensitivity which is required of a dialectical appreciation of ideology and culture and which should be the hallmark of communist cultural criticism.
The Theoretical Review hopes to contribute in some small way to the creation of the necessary Marxist approach to ideology, ideological practice, and cultural criticism.
[1] Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (NLB, 1973), p. 207.
[2] Louis Althusser, “Teoria, practica teorica y formacion teorica, ideologia y lucha ideologica,” Casa de las Americas (#34, enero-febrero, 1966), p. 23 (translated by P. Costello).
[3] Marx and Engels, On Religion (Schocken, 1964), p. 42.
[4] Poulantzas, Op. cit. , p. 209.
[5] Althusser, Op. cit., p. 20.
[6] Quoted in Poulantzas, Op. cit., p. 209.
[7] Ann Arbor Collective (M-L), Against Dogmatism and Revisionism – Toward a Genuine Communist Party (November, 1976), p. 26.
[8] Irwin Silber, “What Goes into a Marxist Film Review?” Guardian Sustainer, December, 1977.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Marx and Engels, On Literature and Art (International General, 1974), p. 116. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15.
[11] Tim Patterson, “ITT’s Cultural Politics,” Guardian, 3-28-79.