Introduction:
Ideology refers to more or less a coherent set of ideas which provide a guide to action. Many historians trace the French Revolution as the beginning of notion of ideology. Thus ideology directed the French Revolution to provide the 19th century with an unusual number of competing theoretical social system. According to [1]Martin Selgier, ideology is ‘a set of ideas by which men posit, explain and justify the ends and means of an organized social action, irrespective of whether such action aim to preserve, amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order’.
Definitions:
The term ideology is believed to be coined by a French theorist Claude De Stutt De Tracy at the turn of the 19th century in his study of enlightenment. For De Tracy [2]‘Ideology was the science of ideas and their origin’. According to Tracy, Ideology to be a ‘systematic study of ideas’. The purpose is the critical examination of ideas and institutions which shape our lives and to reject such ideas which don’t appeal to reason. Thus from Tracy’s perspective, ideology is ‘scientific study of ideas’.
Daniell Bell defined ideology as an [3]‘action oriented system of beliefs and the fact that ideology is action oriented indicates its role is not to render reality transparent but to motivate people to do or to not to do certain things.’
[4]Kirk stated ideology as a ‘sham religion and sham philosophy’. It is ‘hostile to enduring order and justice and freedom’. Ideological politics is the ‘ politics of passionate unreason’ leading to fanaticism and utopian schemes’.
As David McLellan puts it as ‘ideology is the most elusive concept in the whole of social sciences’.
Types of ideologies:
Ideologies can be broadly classified into the following types: Left, centrist, right, communism, classical liberalism, fascism, anarchism, socialism, conservatism and neo liberalism. We describe a particular government ideology, an individual or a group as ‘leftist’, ‘centrist’ or ‘rightist’ and ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’, ‘status quoits’, ‘retrogressive’, ‘liberal’, ‘moderate’, or ‘reactionary’ ideologies.
For a progressive ideology, it is a change from status quo to something new and different . A retrogressive ideology may prescribe the return to a policy or institution that has been used by that society in the past. A radical ideology may be defined as something which is extremely dissatisfied with the society as it is, and it is therefore impatient to change it.
[5]Liberal ideology:
The French revolution of 1789 gave birth to three important slogans namely ‘liberty’, ‘equality’, and ‘fraternity’. The liberal ideology demands that the goals of liberty and equality are to be recognized as dominant slogans. The individual is in essence, sacrosanct and is free and equal only to the extent that he or she can pursue and attempts to realize with minimum political impediments. The basic concern of classical liberals was with the individual and more particularly with the liberty of the individual. Within the economic spheres, they seek to reduce the role of government calling for the repeal of mercantilist regulations that limited both domestic and international trade and commerce. Private property was favored to promote self reliance.
Marxist Ideology:
The system of philosophical and economic thought espoused by Karl Marx is known as Marxism. According to Marx, when mechanization and automation increases, workers are less needed therefore get lower wages. This leads to society split in two classes: the bourgeoisie who own the factories and the proletariats, who own nothing but labor and become so poor that they have nothing to loose and by inciting a revolution, and the system collapses.
After that the society becomes at first socialistic, which means that all capital is owned by the state. Finally the state becomes superfluous and the capital is directly owned by the people as a collective. At this final pint we are in the communistic stage.
Contemporary Ideology:
In the modern days, ideologies affect the national and international systems. Nationalism is prominent ideology that brought about solidarity among all the countries of the world. The third world countries, through the anti colonial and anti imperial struggles, identified nationalism as an important ideology. If the nation state system is identified as an ideology, then it is a part of the larger system that is the international system. If pacifism is an ideology then the whole world will have a supreme ideology that is internationalism. Still in the contemporary world, any movement with a revolutionary ideology on issues such as racialism, feminism, environmentalism and globalization may be the part of study.
[6]Contribution of Political Figures:
Karl Marx: On the basis of base and superstructure model, Marx has shown that ideas, ideologies, religion are a part of superstructure. The class that controls the economic structure controls the ideological structure. ‘In every epoch the ideas of ruling classes are the ruling ideas’. Thus for Karl Marx ideology is “False Consciousness” and religion is “opium of masses”.
Lenin: Lenin realized that working class will not develop true consciousness on their own. Hence he proposed Communist Party to inject “revolutionary consciousness”. He also believed that Marxism should act as ‘ideology’ for working classes. Thus contrary to the wishes of Marx he made Marxism as an ideology.
Gramsci: He gave the concept of hegemony. Hegemony determines the limits of common sense. Hence the ideas which we accept as the truth is the effect of hegemony. Gramsci saw ideology from the dimension of his theory of hegemony. According to Gramsci, liberalism is hegemony and socialism is counter hegemony. Thus he equated Marxism as well as liberalism in the sense both are ideologies.
Karl Popper: He established that Plato, Hegel and Marx as enemies of open society. According to him, Marxist ideas lead us to totalitarianism and it survives on myth. Scientific thinking is possible in only liberal societies which respect freedom of speech and expression. Hence, liberalism is necessary for scientific thinking.
End of Ideology Thesis
Since the victory of socialism in Russia in 1917, there was a clash of ideology in western world. There was a time when some western scholar held that ideological battles have lost relevance and development has become priority.
The end of ideology thesis emerged after world war second, became prominent in 1960s and primarily advocated by western scholars.
Daniel Bell was a prominent exponent of end of ideology thesis. He gave following arguments:
1: In western countries, with emergence of welfare states the conflicts between wokers and capitalists has been resolved and there is no need of ideological conflicts.
2: We are living in an age where development has become the prime question. Today ‘economy’ lies in the ‘front seat’ and ‘politics’ in the ‘back seat’.
3: Whether east or west, similar type of developments are taking place. In both worlds, we see the rise of ‘technocratic bureaucratic societies’.
This shows that ideology lacks relevance in present times.
Critic of End of Ideology Thesis: Directly or indirectly, end of ideology was justification of western way of life i.e. liberal democratic model.
End of ideology never got strong appeal . Socialists of the world never accepted this end of ideology thesis. At the same time around the world there was a greater popularity of socialist ideology.
[7]The End of History Thesis:
The sudden collapse of Communism in Soviet Union in 1991 marks the end of Cold War. This end of Cold War is described by Francis Fukuyama as ‘End of History’ in his book “End of History and the Last Man”. According to Fukuyama we are not witnessing the end of cold war but end point of man’s ideological evolution.He tried to show that the end of cold war establishes ‘liberalism’ as end of history, the ultimate ideology or way of life.
End of history is reincarnation of end of ideology in context of the end of cold war. In comparison to end of ideology, end of history is more direct and arrogant claim of superiority of liberalism. In every explicit manner, Fukuyama declared liberalism as endpoint of man’s ideological evolution. Samuel P Huntington refuted the claims of Fukuyama by giving the theory of “Clash of civilization Thesis’ in 1996. He argued that ‘history never ends’. One set of contradictions give rise to other.
Conclusion:
To conclude, the world has faced myriad of obstacles and destruction caused by the ideology. Be it First World War or the Cold War, both were a byproduct of Ideology. We have also witnessed that ideology may help in deciding the fate of a particular issue towards a particular alternative. Sometimes certain ideologies may bring the change in a smooth manner which may bestow benefits to the society too. In modern days many struggles are grounded on humanitarian needs. The time has come to put aside the debate about the ‘end of ideology thesis’ because the claims of Fukuyama has been already proved to be void and the world is in dire need of internationalism, globalization and socialistic policies to counter the other international issues which are putting the very existence of this planet at danger.
[1] Andrew Heywood, Politics,(Palgrave Macmillon,US,4th Edition,2007)
[2] Stanford Encyclopedia, Christine Syponowich
[3] Stanford Encyclopedia
[4] Vernon Van Dyke, Ideology and Poitical Choioce,pp.149
[5] Smita Srivastva, An Introduction to Political Ideologies,pp.09
[6] Geoffrey Ponton and Peter Gill, Introduction to Politics,p.246
[7] Subhra Ranjan,Political Ideologies and Thoughts,(Khan Academy Books,2017)