Barker ch 3&4
January 18, 2008 at 10:32 pm (Barker Interaction)
The double character of ideology as expressed by Althusser strikes me as a humbling realization. The concept that an ideology can simultaneously be correct and incorrect should constantly be at the back of each of our minds. just because an ideology is formed out of the real conditions of peoples lives doesn’t mean that those conditions were evaluated accurately.
I hate/despise/have nothing but contempt for communism and socialism and am therefore predisposed to dislike Marxism. That said, I think it’s still a fair statement that the Marxist concern with concepts of ideology, as stated on pg. 76, overlook the likely option that Marxism simply miss-evaluated capitalism. The reason why the working class didn’t overthrow the structure wasn’t because they failed to understand the world or suffered from false consciousness, but because it didn’t represent the kind of oppressive force that Marxism thought it did. Instead of going back to the drawing board and reevaluating the interaction between capitalism and the working class, the Marxist response was to deride the intelligence of the people who didn’t respond the way they “should” have.
In what ways do we risk making the same assumptions?
