the problem of ideology michael rosen and jonathan wolff

THE PROBLEM OF IDEOLOGY

Michael Rosen and Jonathan Wolff

/—Michael Rosen

^ H P h e strongest', Rousseau writes in the Social Contract, 'is A never strong enough always to be master unless he converts

his force into right and obedience into duty. The thoughts behind Rousseau's statement appear to be as follows.

(1) Given the disparity in numbers between rulers and ruled, the latter, in the end, always hold the advantage in force over the former.

(2) Thus unequal social power relations must rest on acceptance of those relations by those on whom they fall,

and,

(3) this takes the form of a belief on the part of the ruled that the power relations involved are legitimate.

One way for obedience to be converted into duty is if power relations are legitimate and if those subject to them are sufficiently capable of perceiving and being motivated by that fact. But it seems reasonable to believe that not all persisting social orders are like that. The theory of ideology presents an explanation of how, nevertheless, these societies can survive. In its classic form, that

1. Du Contrat Social, Bk I, Ch. 3, p.44. 2. Thus John Rawls denies that ideology would be a feature of a just society:

... a well-ordered society does not require an ideology in order to achieve stability, understanding 'ideology' (in Marx's sense) as some form of false consciousness or delusory scheme of public beliefs. Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory, p. 539n.

3. Someone who disagrees is Hobbes. For Hobbes, a social order is legitimate just by being preferable to the state of nature and it is that just by being able to command obedience. Nevertheless, the problem of compliance is important for Hobbes, for he believes that human beings are very limited in their capacity to act on what is rationally in their own interests:

For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying glasses, (that is their passions and Self-love,) through which every little payment appeareth a great grievance; but are destitute of those prospective glasses, (namely Morall and Civil Science,) to see a farre off the miseries that hang over them, and cannot without such payments be avoided. Leviathan, p. 239.

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210 I—MICHAEL ROSEN

explanation has two parts. In the first place, the theory of ideology asserts that the acceptance of oppressive or otherwise illegitimate social orders depends upon (even if it is not exclusively the result of) a certain state of mind (a set of beliefs, attitudes, values or whatever) on the part of the oppressed. The second element is that this state of mind is neither a mere accident nor the intended outcome of conscious propaganda or manipulation on the part of the powerful. It is, in a way that obviously requires explaining, held to be an intrinsic (perhaps functional) characteristic of the social system in question that it should produce such states of mind. To put it succinctly, then, ideology is, in Theodor W. Adorno's phrase, 'necessary false consciousness'.

To speak of the theory of ideology is an oversimplification. There exists, rather, a collection of explanatory models that fall within this general framework. In this paper I shall present a critical account of the five explanatory models that I find more or less fully articulated in the writings of Marx, the founder of the theory of ideology in the sense presented here. Between them, these models cover the most plausible approaches for the construction of a theory of ideology, but they are all, I shall argue, in different ways unsatisfactory.

I

The Reflection Model. Let me start with perhaps the most famous passage in Marx's The German Ideology:

If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor

4. These have their effect either, positively, because they lead people to see the social order as worthy of acceptance, or, negatively, because they prevent them from developing an awareness of its illegitimacy and/or openness to change. The first possibility is sometimes called the 'dominant ideology thesis'. While this has been challenged (most persuasively by Abercrombie, Hill and Turner in The Dominant Ideology Thesis), to reject it is not to reject the theory of ideology entirely.

5. 'Ideologie',p.l69. 6. A less oversimplified account of these issues is to be found in my book On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology.

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THE PROBLEM OF IDEOLOGY 211

from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in die flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate die development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of dieir material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.

Let us call this the reflection model of ideology. The idea is that ideology relates to material life as images do to reality in a camera obscura or on the retina of die human eye: each individual item in reality is reproduced accurately, but in reverse. The apparent advantage of the reflection model is that it seems to give a clear sense to the claim that ideology is 'false consciousness': ideology is not just a reflection of material life but an inversion of it.

Yet brief consideration of the analogy shows mat it is inadequate. It is indeed true mat the images on the human retina are 'upside-down'. But does mis mean mat human beings do not perceive the world about them accurately? Of course not. The fact is mat, as far as human perception is concerned, 'upside-down' is the right way up for images to be on our retinas. Marx's analogy appears to give a sense to the idea mat ideology is 'false consciousness' by describing all the 'reflexes and echoes' of our iife-purposes' as reversed or inverted. Yet this leaves no room for the contrast between 'true' consciousness and 'false' consciousness and, for tiiis reason, the notion of false consciousness loses the purchase it needs: initial appearances to the contrary, Marx's analogy gives no sense to me idea that ideology is 'false consciousness'.

II

The Interests Model. But there is also another model at work in the German Ideology. While me reflection model drew on me apparent parallel between the ideological process and a traditional, realist account of perception (the immaterial mind mirrors passively a mind-independent reality) the interests model, as I shall call it,

7. The German Ideology, p. 47. 8. This criticism is made on the most natural reading of the passage: namely, that Marx is here suggesting that inversion is characteristic of consciousness in general. But, one might say, is it not possible that Marx means that only that portion of consciousness that is 'ideological' is inverted? In that case, the criticism becomes that Marx has given us no basis to differentiate the way in which ideological consciousness is formed. So how does it come to be upside-down?.

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develops from a more pragmatist approach to epistemology. The problem with the interests model does not lie in the view that ideas are the product of interests itself, but the fact that ideological ideas are not simply ideas formed in the pursuit of interests. They are, in fact, supposed to be ideas that go against the interests of those who hold them (and in this way further the interests of others). How do ideas of this kind come to be accepted?

Marx's answer starts from the idea that 'the ideas of the ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas'—that is, he claims:

... the class which is the ruling material force of a society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.

But this is not a satisfactory solution. Marx now seems to have switched to a view of those who live under the domination of the ruling class as passive victims, taking their ideas from those who control the 'means of mental production' like obedient chicks, with no critical reflection on their part as to whether the ideas are either true or in their own rational interests. Why should one suppose that the ruling class is capable of promoting its interests effectively, forming its ideas in response to those interests, whereas the dominated classes simply accept whatever is served up to them?

Marx attempts to make his claim more plausible by what he has to say about the nature of mental production. It is, he says, the most significant development in the division of labour that mental and manual labour become separated:

From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of 'pure' theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc.11

9. That Marx was (at this time, at least) attracted to such views is apparent from the Theses on Feuerbach. In the fifth thesis Marx writes: 'All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice.' Theses on Feuerbach, pp. 121-122. 10. The German Ideology,?. (A. 11. The German Ideology, pp. 51-52.

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The separation between mental and manual labour, Marx maintains, does not lead to the formation of truly autonomous ideas: the ideologists who produce ideas are still part of the ruling class whose interests their ideas represent. Nevertheless, it offers an explanation as to why such ideas should be accepted by those, the dominated classes, whose interests they go against: they are accepted because they are (apparently) disinterested. The ideologist, on this view, is like a bribed referee: able to influence the outcome of the game because he is (falsely) believed to be impartial, and to do so all the more effectively because (unlike the bribed referee) he is sincere. Yet here is the problem. How are we to suppose it to be true that the ideologists should both be constrained so that they produce ideas in the interests of the ruling class of which they are, appearances to the contrary, a part and that they (and those who accept the ideas from them) remain unaware of the nature of this connection—so much so that what the ideologists believe about the source of their own ideas is, in fact, the exact opposite of what is really the case?

Ill

The Functionalist Model. My third model for the theory of ideology draws on the preface that Marx wrote in 1859 for his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Marx writes there that:

With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic —in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.12

In other words, apparently, ideology should be understood as part of a 'superstructure' which corresponds to an economic 'base'. In what follows I shall, his own reservations notwithstanding, use G.A. Cohen's analysis of the correspondence between base and

12. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 21. 13. Cohen himself argues for a distinction between the superstructure and ideology. Karl Marx's Theory of History, pp. 45^6 .

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superstructure in terms of functional explanation as the most defensible form of this model. In his book, Cohen first presents his account in terms of the correspondence between relations of production and forces of production, but what he has to say holds, mutatis mutandis, for base and superstructure as well:

When Marx says production relations correspond to productive forces, he means the former are appropriate to the latter, and we may impute to him the further thought that the relations are as they are because they are appropriate to productive development.14

We see here, then, the two elements that are central to functional explanation, in Cohen's view.

(1) The first condition of one phenomenon, A, being functionally explained by another, B, is that A should be appropriate to (be good for, promote) B.

But the second condition is also necessary:

(2) That A should have come about because it is good for B.

Why should we impute this second condition to Marx? Consider Robinson Crusoe. The food and fresh water on Robinson's island are good for him. Nor would he survive unless the food and fresh water were there. But, although we can infer from the fact that Robinson Crusoe is alive on his island that there must be food and fresh water on it, this does not mean that they are there because they are good for Robinson. If such explanations were all that there were to the theory of ideology then there would obviously be something lacking. It would be simply a happy accident (from the point of view of the existing social structure) that society should happen to produce the ideas that it needs, just as it is a happy accident for Robinson Crusoe that he should have been washed up on a fertile island. Only if the second condition is also true and the ideas that help to sustain society are there because they help to sustain it can we see the ideas in question as a systematic part of the way that unequal societies are able to maintain themselves.

The functionalist interpretation of the theory of ideology, then, claims that certain beliefs (or other forms of consciousness) exist just because they maintain the social structure. The correlative

14. Karl Marx's Theory of History, p. 136.

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question is: how do they come to be there? For Darwinism, for instance, the answer is by natural selection—genetic inheritance, differential survival, and so on. Although we do not observe these processes in detail, there are enough reasons for confidence in their existence for us to accept them as a general explanation of the changing characteristics of species through time. And it is this that allows us to justify our belief in species as having the characteristics they have because those characteristics are good for them (to be more precise, because they are good for those genes, of which individual animals are the bearers and of which the species is the collective instantiation). According to Cohen, the case of social theory is exactly the same:

The background against which consequence explanation is offered in biology or anthropology or economics is a conception of species or societies or economic units as self-maintaining and self-advancing...15

This is an absolutely crucial passage. If, indeed, it is legitimate to see 'societies or economic units' as self-maintaining, then we shall have a strong presumption in favour of the existence of the kind of mechanism that must be supposed by the theory of ideology. But what would justify a materialist making such an ontological assumption about the nature of society? Would we have to identify a process akin to the process of natural selection before it could be rationally maintained? Not necessarily, Cohen believes. He maintains that it is not in all cases necessary to support claims made for functional explanation in social theory with the kind of 'elaborating explanation' that Darwinism provides for the functional explanations presented in biology:

... in the absence of such [an elaborating] theory we shall still observe provocative correlations between the requirements of living existence and the actual endowments of living things, correlations fine enough to suggest the thesis that they have those endowments because they minister to those requirements. We can rationally hypothesize functional explanations even when we lack an account which, like Darwin's, shows how the explanations work... [The] fact that functional explanations may reasonably be proposed, in the light of suitable evidence, but in advance of an elaborating theory, is very important for social science and for

15. Karl Marx's Theory of History, p. 264.

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216 I—MICH AEL ROSEN

history. For functional explanations in those spheres often carry conviction in the absence of elaborative context.16

Cohen is clearly right to assert that we do not—should not— limit our explanations to cases where we can support them by means of an elaborating explanation. Consider how we explain individuals and their capacities. I know that if I were lucky enough to be able to spend some months in France my French would improve. My accent would be less foreign and my ability to find the words I need would become more fluent. Such explanations are so well-accepted as to be practically banal, but we have, in fact, very little idea of the mechanism (assuming that there is one) which lets human beings operate in this way. Could we not, then, use just the same reasoning in the case of society? But there is an absolutely crucial dissimilarity between human beings and societies. Societies and the way they operate are a matter of dispute in the way that— at the simple level—human beings are not: we do not have a 'folk sociology' to match the 'folk psychology' by which we explain people's everyday beliefs and actions. The suggestion that we should use the idea of society as a self-maintaining system as the starting-point for social theory carries far less force than the corresponding idea of individuals as cognitively developing rational agents has in psychology.

At one point Cohen remarks that:

There are traces in Marx of a Darwinian mechanism, a notion that thought-systems are produced in comparative independence from social constraint, but persist and gain social life following a filtration process which selects those well adapted for ideological service.

But this only returns us to the problem encountered with the previous model. A 'filtration process' can be imagined by which thought-systems are selected that confer an advantage on those who hold them—that are in agents' interests—but the characteristic of ideological thought is that it goes against the interests of those who accept it. How is a quasi-evolutionary selection mechanism supposed to explain thafi.

16. Karl Marx's Theory of History, pp. 285-86. 17. Karl Marx's Theory of History,^. 291.

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IV

Essence and Appearance. Although Marx uses the term 'ideology' quite infrequently in Das Kapital this is not because he is no longer concerned with the issue. On the contrary, it is one of Das Kapital's central claims that the capitalist system is not just antagonistic, exploitative and in other respects undesirable but that it is also deceptive (chiefly in concealing such defects from those who suffer under them). Marx writes in the third volume:

It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the alienated outward appearances of economic relations, in which these prima facie absurd and complete contradictions appear and that these relationships seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things coincided.

Some such contrast does indeed seem obvious and unproblematic: we do posit internal properties (the molecular structure of materials, for example) as an explanation for their behaviour (that they bend, break or dissolve in certain circumstances) and such properties are quite distinct from the immediately observable properties of the material. But Marx goes beyond this: his claim is not just that the outward appearance of things is insufficient to explain their properties; it is actually false. In discussing the way in which, in capitalist society, labour is sold to capitalists as a commodity, in exchange for wages, Marx writes:

This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalist mode of production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the vulgar economists.19

Thus we see Marx making three claims:

(1) that we should see reality as layered, having a surface appearance governed by an underlying structure.

(2) that to make such a distinction is characteristic of the

18. Das Kapital, 3, p. 825 [E., p. 817]. 19. Das Kapital, 1, p. 562 [E., pp. 591-92], my emphasis.

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scientific approach to reality in general.

(3) that the phenomenal form conceals the real relations and falsifies them (it 'makes the actual relation invisible and indeed shows the opposite of that relation').

According to claims (1) and (2), the way that we see the world is not, immediately, adequate for us to explain the way that the world is. But that does not make our perception of the world false. The truth is, surely, that we simply lack a theory. Yet Marx's claim (3) is much stronger: reality (at least, social reality under capitalism) presents itself in a way that mystifies those who live in it. The point is that our perceptual engagement with reality is not, in the first instance, a theoretical one; so the fact that appearances do not 'reveal' what will be discovered by theory should not be taken as in any way a criticism of the appearances or the immediate perceptual judgements based upon them. In what sense, then, might one say that surface appearances could be 'false' ?

It would be wrong to deny altogether that there are cases when things misleadingly 'look a certain way'. Thus, to take the most celebrated example, it looks as if the sun goes round the earth. The reason is that the natural (although, as it turns out, incorrect) inference from the fact that the sun moves relative to other items within the perceptual field (which themselves stay stationary in relation to one another) is that the sun really is in motion and that those other objects are stationary. The most detailed discussion that Marx provides of a case where the surface of reality presents itself as 'false' is to be found in the section of the chapter on Commodities in Das Kapital called 'The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof'.20 The case of commodity fetishism as Marx presents it runs parallel to the 'geocentric' illusion:

The secret of the commodity-form thus simply consists in this: that it reflects back to men the social character of their own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as social natural properties of these things [gesellschaftliche Natur-eigenschaften dieser Dinge]...

20. As Cohen points out, commodity fetishism is not the only kind of fetishism with which Marx is concerned—indeed, Cohen claims, it is not even the most significant. However that may be, it is certainly the example that Marx treats in the greatest detail. 21. Das Kapital, 1, p. 86 [E., p. 83].

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Those who suffer from commodity fetishism in this respect do not suffer from a practical inability to conduct economic transactions in terms of values but from a theoretical deficiency in understanding what is ultimately, according to Marx, the nature (and determining cause) of economic values.

Society generates such false beliefs spontaneously, Marx claims—the world of commodities 'veils rather than reveals', he says, the social character of private labour and of the relations between the individual producers.22 That the true source of the value of commodities lies in the labour expended in their production is, Marx maintains, a matter of simple scientific truth. So, too, is the fact that the social character of private labour consists in the equalization of that labour under the auspices of the market. But, Marx says, knowledge of these facts does not dispel such false appearance:

The recent scientific discovery that the products of labour, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labour spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the development of the human race, but by no means dissipates the objective illusion [gegenstdndlichen Schein] through which the social character of labour appears to be an objective character of the products themselves. What is true only of the particular form of production with which we are dealing, the production of commodities, namely, that the specific social character of independent private acts of labour consists in their equality by virtue of being human labour, which character assumes in the product the form of value—this fact appears to the producers, notwithstanding die discovery above referred to, to be just as real and final as the fact that, after the discovery by science of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remained unaltered.23

Yet Marx's analogy fails. While he is right to say that the discovery of the component gases of air leaves the atmosphere unchanged, this is beside the point. It is not a question of whether the atmosphere itself changes but whether what we believe about it does. The atmosphere is something that we 'perceive', if we can be said to do so at all, by interacting with it (that is, breathing), rhis activity is wholly untheoretical. So it is not in the least

12. Das Kapital, 1, p. 90 [E„ p. 87]. 23. Das Kapital, 1, p. 88 [E„ pp. 85-86].

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surprising that a theoretical discovery about the atmosphere should leave that practical engagement 'unaltered'. On the other hand, the false beliefs that Marx alleges that we have about the economy—that the value of commodities is intrinsic to them and that the social character of labour derives from the exchange of commodities—are false beliefs of a theoretical character. Why should we assume that these beliefs will persist in the face of contrary evidence?

V

The Hegelian Model. One phrase that Marx uses in the passage quoted above is particularly revealing. 'Objective illusion' (gegen-stdndlicher Schein), with its echo of Hegel, indicates that the theory of the fetishism of commodities has its ancestry not just in Enlightenment theories of religious illusion but also in Idealist aesthetics ('the beautiful has its life in Schein', Hegel says).24

Schein for the Idealists is not a cognitive illusion but a perceptible characteristic inherent in objects. Thus it is not dissipated by an intellectual discovery on the part of the perceiver; it has its source in the activity of a higher kind of agency. The failure to make good the claims of the theory of fetishism by means of the analogy with the natural sciences should make us take such language seriously. In this section I shall examine how far an interpretation of Marx that confines itself strictly to what is licensed by the parallel with the natural sciences should be supplemented (or, indeed, supplanted) by a collectivist or quasi-Hegelian reading of Das Kapital.

The crucial deficiency of the 'base and superstructure' approach was its failure to provide a plausible 'elaborating explanation' for the 'conception of... societies or economic units as self-maintaining and self-advancing' .25 A 'Hegelian' or collectivist reading of Marx would, in a sense, turn that difficulty on its head. If societies really are self-maintaining systems then this is as much a basic truth about societies as the fact that human beings are agents who act on the basis of their beliefs and desires; there is no need for an elaborating explanation to persuade us to accept that fact. For Hegel, men become reconciled when they live in a society in which Geist, the collective subject in which all individuals participate, has attained

24. Vorlesungen ilber die Asthetik I, Werke, XIII, p. 17. 25. Karl Marx's Theory of History, p. 264.

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a point of completion such that it is possible for individuals to know themselves as its members and to realize that their own rationality and will come to fulfilment in Geist. For Marx, of course, it is not simply a matter of coming to recognize the rationality of a social system that already exists but of replacing an irrational system with a rational one.

Das Kapital thus involves not one collective agency but two: capital (which plays the dominant role under capitalism) and the latent collective subject—social collective labour {Gesamtarbeit) —that lies unrealized beneath it. Under capitalism, the individual is subordinated to the circulation-process of capital which is, in relation to him, oppressive and unintelligible. The condition for reconciliation is that the false subject—capital—should be practically overthrown and the true subject—collective labour— that is latent within capitalism should be released.

Because commodity production takes place as a process by which the producers 'do not come into contact with one another until they exchange their products', it follows, Marx claims, that:

the specific social character of their private labour does not show itself except in this act of exchange. In other words, the private acts of labour actually assert themselves as elements of the social collective labour [Glieder der gesellschaftlichen Gesamtarbeit] through the relations which exchange establishes between the products of labour and, through them, between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the social relations between their private acts of labour manifest themselves as what they are—that is, not as the immediate social relationships of persons in their labour but as material relationships between persons and social relationships between things.26

In what sense is this a matter of illusion or false consciousness? To the extent that social production takes place on the basis of individuals labouring independently, their activities being coordinated through the imperatives of a system of market exchanges, then production is indeed, Marx says, a matter of 'material relationships between persons and social relationships between things'. Hence such a perception is not misguided; it reflects the reality of a form of economic life in which the members of the collective body labour in isolation, rather than

26. Das Kapital, 1, p. 87 [E., p. 84].

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cooperating as part of a system of 'immediate social relationships'. It is, then, this form of society itself that is to be counted as false.

What is thereby distorted and violated, the Hegelian interpretation maintains, is the nature of social labour. If labour appears to be atomized and individualized (to be collective only as a result of the activity of capital) then this is because it really is atomized and individualized. Yet, should capital, the false collective subject, be destroyed, what follows? According to Marx, the producers will now be able to assert themselves collectively, as elements [Glieder] of the 'social Gesamtarbeit'', by means of the 'immediate social relationships' they enter into in their labour. The character of this connection to social Gesamtarbeit remains completely mysterious and unexplained, however. Just as Hegel leaves it unclear how it is that the individual comes to identify herself rationally with Geist (does everyone have to be a philosopher to recognize herself in it?) so Marx offers no account of how these two subjects—the individual producer and the collective Gesamtarbeiter—are supposed to communicate with one another.

Marx's return to Hegelianism represents a reversion to an ontological model that is inconsistent with his simultaneously expressed intention to prosecute the critique of political economy as a science that is scientific in just the same way as the natural sciences. But the inconsistency is not unmotivated. The Hegelian ontology is adopted by Marx in lieu of the elaborating explanation for the conception of societies as 'self-maintaining or self-advancing' that a social science modelling itself strictly on Darwinian biology would require.

VI

The Alternatives. For various reasons, then, Marx's theoretical models for the theory of ideology are unsatisfactory. Those models that profess to stick strictly to the example of the natural sciences (the correspondence model and the contrast between essence and appearance) fall far short of establishing what the theory of ideology claims, whilst the Hegelian model establishes

27. False in the sense of being defective; failing to satisfy a standard or ideal that is, somehow, implicit within itself.

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the deceptive character of capitalism only at the price of adopting ontological commitments—a conception of social reality as poised between true and false collective subjects—that most of us will find vastly over-ambitious. Returning to our quotation from Rousseau, let us consider briefly what might be the alternatives.

One possibility is that Rousseau's suggestion, plausible though it sounds, may be wrong: it may not be true that oppressive societies depend for their survival on false consciousness (in some form) on the part of those who live under them. While it is true that, in the end, the balance of power lies with the majority, perhaps we are being too hasty in assuming that it can be collectively mobilized.

For an intuitive image of what is at stake, consider a gunman with a group of hostages. The hostages know that, if they were all to attack the gunman together, they would overpower him, although there would be some casualties. On the other hand, if any individual were to attempt such an attack, then they would be shot. What determines the individual's decision? Looking at it in narrowly prudential terms, we can say that the individual has a reason to act if the expected gain is greater than the expected loss. But both the gain and the loss will be dependent on what others will do: the expectation of gain will be the greater and the risk of loss will be the smaller the more that others participate.

Thus one can imagine a situation in which the individual would argue as follows: if I could be confident that others would follow suit then it would be prudentially rational to attack the gunman (the benefits outweigh the risks). But, if I were to be left on my own, then it would not. It follows that I have a good reason for acting myself if and only if others too have a good reason for acting. But let us assume that they are in exactly the same situation as me. Then they will argue in just the same way. In that case, they will realize that they have a good reason if I have a good reason— just as I have a good reason if they have a good reason. So it seems that our assessments of the situation will be mutually supportive and that it will be rational to take action.

Yet a very slight modification of this model in the direction of reality produces a quite different conclusion. Let us take it that the chances of successfully overpowering the gunman increase sharply with the number of hostages participating in the attack so

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that success becomes practically certain at some point well before unanimous participation. And let us take it, too, that the chances of becoming a casualty are greater for participants in an attack than for non-participants. In other words, treating the matter in purely prudential terms, there are three possible classes of outcome, in increasing order of desirability from the individual's point of view. (1) The first is that the gunman remains in charge. (2) The second is that a sufficient number of hostages, of which the individual is one, attack the gunman so that they overpower him at relatively small risk to themselves. (3) The third is that a group of hostages other than the individual overpower the gunman (thus the individual gets the benefit without assuming the risk).

The possibility of 'free riders' (those who benefit from collective action without contributing to its costs) changes the calculation facing each individual drastically. If the individuals are rational and motivated by narrow prudence then it will not be possible to assure themselves of the conditions required for it to be rational to act. For, although they would all prefer the second outcome to the first, the fact that they would prefer the third to the second means that each individual has a reason to doubt whether other individuals have a sufficient reason to participate in collective action—and hence not to have such a sufficient reason themselves. In this way, mutually beneficial collective action may fail to take place, although not, it should be noted, because of 'false consciousness' or a failure of rationality on the part of the individuals. I am not deluded in thinking that you would prefer to have the benefits of an attack on the gunman without bearing the risks, and you— although you may not, perhaps, be heroically virtuous—are not at all unreasonable in so preferring.

Seen in this way, the rule of the many by the few becomes not so much a matter of false consciousness as a coordination problem. Simple though my presentation of it here has been, the model does seem to be very illuminating in helping to explain empirical processes. We can see, for example, how it is that dissent has a 'snowball' structure. By the assumptions of the model, individuals' willingness to participate in action against a regime will be extremely sensitive to their assessment of others' willingness. But the most obvious indicator of others' willingness to participate is participation itself. Thus once public actions

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against a regime reach a certain point they tend to expand rapidly. If it proves to be possible to demonstrate dissent successfully, then the willingness of non-participants to participate will rise exponentially. The history of the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe seems to bear this out.

The final possibility is that oppressive societies do depend upon some form of false consciousness, but that that false consciousness is not systematically explained by the nature of the society in question. One author who has pursued this line of argument is Jon Elster.28 Elster describes what he is advocating as a reconstruction of the Marxist theory of ideology, but, in my view, it is better seen as an alternative to it. Elster divides forms of false consciousness along two axes. He distinguishes between cognitive and 'motivational' states of consciousness on the one hand, and between cognitive and motivational mechanisms to explain those states, on the other. However, in identifying specific ways in which unequal societies receive voluntary but non-rational compliance, Elster concentrates on only three forms: (1) fallacies of inference (cognitive false consciousness that is cognitive in origin); (2) 'sour grapes' (a motivational state that has been altered by a motivational mechanism); and (3) wishful thinking (cognitive false consciousness that is motivational in origin).

Limitations of space prevent me from exploring these ideas in detail. One general point, however, is worth making. Whether compliance is supposed to be induced either by fallacious reasoning or by an adjustment of our cognitive or motivational states in response to affective factors, it is not obvious why the effects of such factors should be conservative. Why should we, for instance, be more likely to suppose, mistakenly, that an illegitimate social order is legitimate than the other way round?29

Elster describes feudalism and the Roman relationship of patronage between servants and masters as sustained by what he calls an 'optical illusion' .30The servant in these societies characteristically believes that his relationship with his master is a mutually beneficial one, a conclusion that he draws from the fact that his

28. See particularly Sour Grapes and Making Sense of Marx. 29. Hobbes, it will be recalled, believes that failures of rationality run in just the other direction. 30. Making Sense of Marx, p. 488.

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economic contribution to the welfare of the master is apparently matched by the protection that the master gives to him. The fallacy, as Elster sees it, is in the servant failing to recognize that the protection that he receives is from other masters: it is only a benefit to the servant so long as there are masters to be protected from.

Elster suggests that the illusion that servants and masters engage in mutually beneficial exchange results from the tendency individuals have to generalize illegitimately from particular cases. But this is not sufficient to explain why generalization (which, in the normal case, is a cognitively reasonable process) should here prove to be both misleading and conservative in its social consequences. Is it just a matter of good luck (from the point of view of the social system in question, mat is) that human beings' cognitive limitations favour the existing social order, or is there something about the nature of that system that tends to encourage false beliefs about itself? In other words, is the system a deceptive object! Marx himself, as we have seen, is strongly committed to this claim in relation to capitalism, but, as he presents it, the claim draws on a version of the distinction between essence and appearance that is, in the end, derived from a Hegelian ontology of social life. Nevertheless, the idea of a deceptive object does not have to be ontologically problematic (anyone, whatever their wider philosophical commitments, should agree that the tiger's stripes make the tiger a deceptive object).

The best line of argument would seem to be the claim that societies that are individualistically organized—societies in which economic life is a matter of market exchange and the social interactions of individuals are regulated principally by a system of enforceable individual rights—are prone to characteristic illusions regarding collective processes. For instance, it is plausible to think that it is the market itself that encourages the (false) belief that the

31. A similar point applies to 'sour grapes'and to 'wishful thinking'. As presented by Elster, 'sour grapes', is a reasonable (although not rational) response to a situation in which a desired satisfaction is unobtainable—a response that advances the agent's interests in some degree but would not be the outcome achieved by the conscious application of reasoning. It seems to be in the interests of the fox to alter his attitude towards the grapes by altering his belief about them—like a prisoner who adapts to the locked cell by failing to value his freedom. But the essential structure of the problem to which the theory of ideology has to respond is quite different: not: Why do prisoners locked in their cells abandon their appetite for freedom?, but: Why do they fail to notice that the cell door is open?

Similarly, it is not clear why, other things being equal, we should 'wishfully think' that a social order is legitimate when it is not.

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returns that an individual receives from market exchanges reflect the contribution that she makes to the welfare of society.

Although it would be fair to call this account a reconstruction of the Marxist theory of ideology, it differs substantially from either the functionalist interpretation of the correspondence model or the Hegelian interpretation. What those approaches had in common was the commitment to the idea of societies as self-maintaining entities. On the view being canvassed here, however, the best explanation for the deceptiveness of capitalism is its defectiveness. Capitalism is defective in the individualistic way in which it organizes collective processes and deceptive in the way in which those processes present themselves at first sight to those who are engaged in them. Yet, although the deceptiveness of capitalism is functional for it, and although the deceptiveness is explained by the defectiveness, that explanation is not a functional one, derived from an ontology of capitalist society as a self-maintaining system. That capitalism should spontaneously promote ideas that help its survival is a fact (if it is one at all) about capitalism specifically, not a consequence of a general truth about the nature of societies and the production of ideas as the theory of ideology would have it.

REFERENCES

Abercrombie, N, S. Hill, B. Turner, The Dominant Ideology Thesis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980)

Adomo, T. W., 'Ideologic', in Soziologische Exkurse (Frankfurt a.M.: Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1974)

Cohen, G., Karl Marx's Theory of History: a Defence (Oxford: O.U.P., 1978) Elster, J., Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1985) Elster, J., Sour Grapes (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1983) Hegel, G.W.F., Werke, edited by K.-M. Michel and E. Moldenhauer (Frankfurt

a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1971) Hobbes, T., Leviathan, edited by C.B.MacPherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1968) Marx, K., and Engels, F., The German Ideology, edited by C.J. Arthur (London:

Lawrence and Wishart, 1970) Marx, K., "Theses on Feuerbach', in K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology,

edited by C.J. Arthur (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), pp. 121-23 Marx, K., A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (London: Lawrence

and Wishart, 1971) Marx, K„ Das Kapital, 3 Vols., (Berlin: Dietz, 1980) (Volume 1 translated by E.

Aveling and S. Moore, N.Y.: Modern Library, 1906; Volumes 2 & 3, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972))

Rawls, J., 'Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures 1980', The Journal of Philosophy (77), 1980, pp. 515-72

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Rosen, M., On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)

Rousseau, J.-J., Du Contrat Social, (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966)

1

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THE PROBLEM OF IDEOLOGY

Michael Rosen and Jonathan Wolff

//—Jonathan Wolff

Michael Rosen begins with a thought of Rousseau's: 'The strongest is never strong enough always to be master unless

he converts his force into right and obedience into duty.' (p. 209) This expresses two ideas, or more precisely, a question and an answer:

Rousseau's Problem: How can the ruling minority retain their power in the face of the greater force of the ruled majority, when the rule of the minority is likely to be against the interests of the majority?

Rousseau's Solution: The ruled majority must come to believe that the rule of the minority is legitimate.

Possible responses to Rousseau can take several forms. One, of course, would be to deny that he has identified a genuine problem. But the theorist of ideology accepts both Rousseau's problem and his solution, adding two further claims:

1. Societies have a systematic tendency to produce in the majority beliefs which tend to legitimate the rule of the minority.

2. The existence of such a tendency can be explained.

One might ask how often theorists of ideology really do attempt to make any headway on the second project, but I shall assume that any offer of evidence for (1) is no more than more or less plausible speculation unless (2) is also attempted.

Much of Rosen's paper is taken up with the task of isolating various models of ideology in Marx, and all are found wanting for a variety of reasons. Some fail an initial test of providing a characterisation of the distinction between ideological and non-ideological belief, but the major fault of the various models is perhaps even more serious: their failure to explain how

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230 II—JONATHAN WOLFF

individuals can systematically come to hold beliefs which are against their interests to hold.

Faced with the apparent failure of all of Marx's models, Rosen makes two proposals of his own. First, he suggests that long term stable rule can be a consequence of collective action problems faced by the numerical majority. To this extent, Rousseau's problem can be solved without appealing to the device of false consciousness. Second, he concedes that capitalism might produce forms of false consciousness that will tend to legitimise the rule of the minority, but claims that the explanation is too specific to generalise into a theory of ideology.

I want to add additional support to Rosen's claim that Rousseau's problem can be finessed. To this end I will briefly look at issues of coalition formation. But I also want to argue that— contrary to his own claims—Rosen's concessions regarding capitalism are, in fact, compatible with a form of functionalist theory of ideology.

Nevertheless there is some tension here. To put it crudely, a functionalist theory of ideology appeals to the idea that ideology is needed to explain social stability, but the availability of explanations which do not appeal to the notion of false consciousness puts in doubt that there is any such need. Or rather one should say that it puts in doubt that there is always such a need. Consequently I will ultimately agree with Rosen that there is no real motivation to generalise his account of belief formulation under capitalism into a general and systematic theory of ideology. But our reasons for this claim, I think, are different.

Before I can go any further, I shall need some definitions and distinctions. This is the task of Parts I and II. Part III looks at coalition formation. Part IV combines elements from Rousseau and Rosen to present a functionalist model of ideology. But despite its conceptual possibility, I shall argue that there is little reason to give it a central place in the explanation of social stability.

I

Characterising Ideological Belief. The theory of ideology, we saw, claims that societies have a systematic tendency to produce in the majority beliefs which tend to legitimate the rule of the minority, and hence to stabilise society. Clearly this is an

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interesting claim only if those beliefs are in some way under suspicion. We might, for example, be able to show that democratic regimes are more stable when people believe that the government has been elected by fair process. But if we could also show that the government had in fact been elected by a fair process, and the people have fully adequate reason to believe this, then the situation hardly calls for theoretical enquiry. Thus it seems that we have an interesting issue only if the legitimating beliefs tend to be held irrespective of their truth, and/or irrespective of normal standards of justification, and furthermore, that the persistence of such beliefs is in some way no accident.

The following seems a promising approximation of the type of data a theory of ideology is supposed to explain:

1. There are occasions upon which certain beliefs or systems of beliefs are widespread in a given society.

2. Although to believe something is to believe it to be true, nevertheless these particular beliefs are held for reasons other than their truth or approximation thereto. (One sign of this might be a refusal even to consider or take seriously counter-evidence and arguments.)

3. The prevalence of these beliefs tends to have some sort of beneficial effect upon the preservation or stabilisation of that society.

4. That beneficial effect arises through apparent legitimisation of society or its elements (rather than, say, through contribution to efficient production).

In sum, then, there are occasions upon which a set of beliefs are widespread in society; these are largely held for non-rational reasons; and these beliefs tend to support or stabilise society by contributing to its legitimisation. We will take this as a first approximation to an account of what constitutes an ideology.

The first condition—certain beliefs or systems of beliefs are widespread—seems relatively trivial as part of a characterisation of ideology. We might want to know just how widespread such a collection of beliefs need to be, but given that the role of an ideology—in the sense under consideration—is to help stabilise a society, then it must be sufficiently widespread to achieve this goal.

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The second condition—that the belief is held for non-rational reasons—is extremely important, and as we have seen, motivates interest in the theory. But mere is no reason to think that the theory of ideology needs to appeal to its own special form of irrational belief creation. After all, this is only one element in the characterisation of ideological belief. Distinctive about ideological belief might be the combination of elements as much as the novelty of any element.

Thus it may be useful to look elsewhere. One possibility would be Charles Sanders Peirce's, The Fixation of Belief, in which he distinguishes four 'methods of fixing belief, which he calls 'tenacity', 'authority', 'the a priori', and 'science'.1 All but science are in some sense non-rational but not simply crazy.

Tenacity is a method of retaining belief 'come what may'. Here Peirce anticipated Quine's thought that if one wishes to hold a belief, or set of beliefs, nothing in one's experience need force one to give it up. Tenacity is simple dogmatism, and as Peirce points out, it yields great peace of mind. This is its attraction. Why be rational if you can be comfortable?

But the reason, according to Peirce, that tenacity does not survive much in practice is not that we are attracted to rationality, but to conformism: 'the social impulse is against i t . More common than tenacity is authority, whereby a set of beliefs is publicly deemed correct. The method of authority is described in terms that could also be used to present a crude theory of ideology. Various methods, from public disapproval, to inquisition, are used to suppress contrary opinions. Thus Peirce sees this method as particularly associated with theologically inspired regimes, yet he also points to the sophistication of cultures, and cultural artefacts, which have flourished under this system.

The weakness with authority is the possibility of enlightenment. Historical and sociological reflection on cultures which have managed their affairs in other ways will reveal the arbitrariness of certain of our enforced beliefs and practices. Thus we begin to look for those beliefs which are most 'agreeable to reason'. This

1. Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings ed. P.P. Wiener (New York: Dover, 1966), pp. 91-112. 2. Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings, p. 103. 3. Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings, p. 106.

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is the a priori method, most perfectly found in metaphysical philosophy. According to Peirce the idea here is that one should think as one is inclined to think having considered the options. Peirce sees this method as largely subjective, as subject to changes in taste as other inclinations. Its attraction, presumably, is that it offers the appearance of rationality, while avoiding the dirty work of having to find supporting evidence for one's beliefs.

The method of science is intended to remove the subjective elements which lead to disagreement, for it rests belief on experience of a world outside of us. This is not the place to look further at Peirce's conception of science, for the present interest is in the other three categories. The relevance of Peirce's work to the topic of ideology is simply that he demonstrates three sample ways—and there may be many others—in which non-rational beliefs can be derived and maintained by perfectly sane individuals. This is exactly the sort of account of belief formation and persistence needed by the theorist of ideology.

The third aspect of the initial characterisation of ideology was that ideological beliefs tend to support the societies in which they exist. Now, clearly, this is not true of everything that is called an ideology. In some circles all political views are labelled ideologies. Obviously not all these views can support the status quo. Clearly, though, the theory of ideology appeals to a difference sense of ideology, in which it refers only to the dominant ideology.

Need even the dominant ideology support society? Some have argued that contemporary capitalism is in the grip of an ideology that will eventually undermine it. Note that if this is true, then Rousseau's solution cannot possibly be right: legitimating belief cannot be necessary to support the rule of the minority, if they can sustain their rule (at least in the medium-term) even in the face of an opposed dominant ideology. But in any case, we can make this a definitional claim about the type of dominant ideology under consideration: it is a form of specially-explained widespread belief held for non-rational reasons which tends to stabilise society by supporting minority rule.

Now, how does a dominant ideology do this? We can distinguish three theses:

4. This is the explicit theme of Part II of Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 5th edition (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976).

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a) By means of beliefs with the content that the rulers hold their power legitimately.

b) By means of beliefs from which it is rational to infer that the rulers hold their power legitimately.

c) By means of beliefs and practices which preclude individuals from considering the question of whether the rulers hold their power legitimately.5

Perhaps there are few plausible examples of false consciousness of type (a). Even the view that the King has been appointed by God could be represented as a belief of type (b). Other cases of (b) would be those where the rulers are members of a traditional ruling aristocracy, which has also been able to establish a quite undeserved reputation for wisdom. Under (c) we might have examples of religious persuasion, where individuals are encouraged to think only of heaven and hell, and to think of life on earth as a matter of rather minor importance.

Often, I think, these positions are not distinguished, and it is assumed that the theory of ideology must claim that ideological beliefs are of form (a) or perhaps (b). Yet (c) is also of great interest. Not only would it be a significant achievement to show that societies tend to produce beliefs of that form, but it would solve Rousseau's problem. Hence, in my view, Rousseau's solution should be modified: i

Rousseau's Solution Modified: The ruled majority must not hold the belief that the rule of the minority is illegitimate.

Self-maintaining systems. Of the various Marxist models, the functionalist theory appears to hold out the most promise: ideological beliefs not only help stabilise society, but that is why they exist. Clearly, though, more needs to be said to elaborate such an explanation: some sort of mechanism which produces and sustains such beliefs, where such beliefs are produced and sustained for their stabilising effects. Rosen's extension of Cohen's version of functional Marxism appeals to an analogy with Darwinian theory to provide such a mechanism. '

5. cf Rosen footnote 4, p. 210. I

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The background for such a mechanism—Rosen quotes Cohen—'is a conception of species, or societies or economic units as self-maintaining and self-advancing.' (p. 215) Now Rosen correctly observes that it would be wrong to use the idea of society as a self-maintaining system as the starting point for 'scientific' materialist social theory. Or at least this is so if one feels that science requires one to appeal only to broadly individualistic models of explanations. But need this conception be the starting point, rather a consequence of other factors; for example, a Darwinian filtration mechanism? Rosen is sceptical: how could a Darwinian mechanism explain how individuals could come to beliefs which are against their interests to hold? How could this be a positive adaptive trait?

I shall argue in Part IV that Rosen has over-estimated the force of this objection. To do this, though, I need to pursue the comparison between Darwinism and functionalist social theory a little further. We should start by focusing on the idea of society as a self-maintaining system.

Now it seems to me important to distinguish two different ways in which we could think of society—or of anything—as a self-maintaining system. First we need the idea of an equilibrium point or state, such that, once reached there is a tendency for the system to remain in equilibrium. We can now distinguish strong self-maintenance from weak self-maintenance. In the case of strong self-maintenance there is both an equilibrium point and a tendency to achieve it; for weak self-maintenance there is again an equilibrium point, but no tendency to reach it. In the former case, if we are not at equilibrium then, in certain circumstances at least, we can rationally predict that it will be achieved; in the latter case, if we are not at the point then there is no more reason to believe that we will reach equilibrium point than any other point. All we can say is that if we reach it, then we are very likely to remain there.

Weak self-maintenance is often illustrated by the example of a stone with one large flat side and many smaller flat surfaces. It has no tendency to lie on the large flat side, but once there remains so, in an equilibrium state. Other objects could illustrate strong self-maintenance: a weighted sphere will have a tendency to reach the state with that weight at the bottom, in additional to remaining at that point once reached.

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To go a step further, we can introduce the idea of dynamic self-maintenance, or, more simply, self-advancement. Here there is not so much an equilibrium point as an equilibrium curve, such that the system undergoes improvements, suitably understood. In this sense, species are typically thought of as self-advancing systems, as, of course, are organic individuals as they grow to maturity. Again we can introduce a distinction between strong self-advancement and weak self-advancement. Weak self-advancement says that, when the system achieves an improved state, it tends to keep it; strong self-advancement, that there is also a tendency for reaching improved states. Now while the development from infancy to maturity of organic individuals is a matter of strong self-advancement, we can take Darwinian theory as attributing only weak self-advancement to the unit of selection: the gene or species (depending on one's version of the theory). Random mutation means that there is no tendency for the unit of selection to generate improved states—it may or it may not. Survival of the fittest is the idea that there is a tendency for improved states, once generated, to remain.

Marxist functionalist theory has often taken Darwinian theory as a paradigm of explanation, and also a source of comfort. My point here, though, is that the analogy with Darwinian theory provides no warrant for historical materialism to use stronger models of explanation than those used in Darwinian theory. If biology restricts itself to the general thesis that species or genes are weak self-advancers, then Marxist theory needs some other inspiration to go beyond the idea that societies are weak self-advancers (or even weak self-maintainers) too.

We can distinguish different functionalist theories of ideology exactly on this point of difference between society as a self-maintaining system and society as a self-advancing system. Or rather, we can make a three-way distinction. A narrow functionalist theory need only think of societies as self-maintaining; a wide functionalist theory considers, if not societies then history, as undergoing a process of improvement in stages; and Marxist functionalist theory sees this process of improvement as leading to a given end. Clearly in Darwinian biology there is no ambition to suppose that species are evolving towards a particular goal. Despite Marx's admiration for Darwin, and his belief that he

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was following Darwin's own method, he appeared to overlook this crucial difference between their systems: a point on which Marx clearly shows Hegel's influence.

The disanalogy between Darwin and Marx can be pursued in a different, though related, way. Evolutionary theory offers compelling functional explanations. Marxist theory offers far less compelling examples of functional explanation, but this modesty of achievement engenders no modesty of ambition. It goes further —much further—than evolutionary theory, offering functional predictions about the nature of future societies. Outside of closely observed, highly localised, small-scale conditions, serious biologists dismiss the idea of making reliable predictions about the future direction of evolution. But despite the less reliable functional explanations they offer, historical materialists lack no confidence in making predictions about the future direction of society. My point is not that it is obvious that they are wrong to do this (although I do believe that it is obvious that they are wrong) but that, at this point, historical materialism's Darwinian crutch falls away. Historical materialism, methodologically, is either on its own, or in debt to Hegel.

Ill

Ideology and coalition formation. Can we solve Rousseau's problem without appealing to his solution? Of course. Rosen has shown us one way. Although it may be in the majority's interests to engage in revolutionary action to bring about a change in rule, it may be that each individual lacks the assurance that others will act, and so out of rational risk-avoidance, refrains from action. This is obviously one reason why Marx thought that a revolutionary consciousness was far more likely to form in the factories than in the fields. The concentration of individuals in a similar plight will lead to a greater appreciation of each other's situation, and increase their preparedness to act, under the right conditions.

Rosen's analysis is illuminating. But a simpler idea yet seems to me even more effective. The point is that, from the fact that a given minority's rule is against the interests of the majority, it does not follow that a majority could rule in their own interests. For there may be many different groupings who agree on just one thing: the

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present form of rule is unacceptable. It may be that no alternative grouping can command any greater support. In short, the majority may be as distrustful as other members of the majority than they are of the minority. Divide and rule.

Marx was keenly aware of this problem in Germany of the 1840's. Despairing of the political situation he writes: 'princes struggle against kings, bureaucrats against aristocrats, and the bourgeoisie against all of these, while the proletariat is already beginning to struggle against the bourgeoisie.

For the young Marx the only possibility of a revolution is to vest one's hopes in the emerging proletariat which, through some verbal trickery, is represented as a class with radical chains; as a class which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating the whole of society. Yet why should there always—or ever—be such a class? We have no general reason to think that majority opposition can find a focus on a single positive scheme.

In sum then, to Rosen's problems of the majority forming itself into a collective actor, we can add the problem of the possible lack of unity of the majority. Thus the majority might acquiesce in the rule of the minority not because they believe it to be legitimate, but out of pessimism about being able to achieve anything better.

IV

A Darwinian Model of Ideology. Now it seems to me that the above speculations are sufficient to demotivate Rousseau's solution, and with it the theory of ideology, at least in its most ambitious forms. Rosen's claim, though, seems to be that the failure of the theory of ideology is deeper than this: that it suffers from metaphysical difficulties. This seems to me something of an exaggeration. I want to show how a 'naturalised' Darwinian/ Marxist/functionalist theory of ideology can be set out.

Before going forward, we need to take one step backwards. Of the various features of ideological belief distinguished earlier, two seem particularly salient, and provide the key to understanding the supposed distinctive nature of ideological belief. These are, first, that an ideological belief is held for non-rational reasons, and, second, that the belief has a particular functional role—to help

6. Karl Marx, Early Writings, ed. Lucio Colletti (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 255.

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support minority rule. The functionalist theory of ideology claims that the fact that a belief has this role enters into the explanation of why it is held. Theories will differ in strength and character on the question of how exactly the function of the belief enters into the explanation of why it is held.

The most ambitious type of theory claims that the functional role of the belief is part of its causal genesis. That my belief that p helps support the ruling minority goes some way to explain why I hold it. And we do have models of how this can be—Peirce's notion of authority; the fact of brain-washing; and other forms of overt and deliberate manipulation of beliefs. What links all of these is an external agent who perceives that a belief, if held, will have certain effect, and, for that reason, sets about installing this belief, by whatever means are available, into the less perceptive population at large.

Against this model Rosen in effect points out that it simply can not be believed that, in the modern world at least, everything called an ideological belief could be installed in individuals this way. The model requires us, dumbly and uncritically, to accept beliefs which are against our interests to hold. Now it would be hard to deny that we often do—dumbly and uncritically—accept beliefs which are against our interests to hold. The problem, though, is causation and scale. The model requires a successful conspiracy to fool most of the people all the time.

A less ambitious theory claims that the functional role of the belief need not enter into its causal genesis, but nevertheless, explains its persistence. This immediately brings to mind the Darwinian model: random mutation of beliefs and the persistence of those most fit to survive. Against this Rosen argues that if the functional role of the belief is that it stabilises society, and it is against the interests of the individual to hold that belief, then its persistence cannot be explained by an evolutionary mechanism. Unless we have a supplementary mechanism to draw on, only those beliefs functional for the individual who holds them can be selected for by a Darwinian mechanism which works at this level.

However Rosen makes what will turn out to be an important concession to the ideological theory-builder by allowing that it is plausible that 'the market itself... encourages the false belief that the returns that an individual receives from market exchanges

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reflect the contribution that she makes to the welfare of society.' (p. 226) From this individuals might infer that the capitalist order is legitimate. Rosen thinks that even allowing the truth of such a thought is no help to the theorist of ideology on the grounds that 'That capitalism should spontaneously promote ideas that help its survival is a fact (if it is one at all) about capitalism specifically, not a consequence of a general truth about the nature of societies.' (p. 227)

Well, maybe. But perhaps we can go further. Let us consider again Rousseau's problem and its solution. If Rousseau is right, then societies are either stable, with the majority believing that minority rule is legitimate, or unstably drifting from unsupported rule to unsupported rule. We need to weaken this picture: earlier we noted that a belief can support society by distracting people from asking the question of whether or not it is legitimate. Rosen has suggested that at least one form of society—and so if one, why not several?—can generate false beliefs which tend to support it. Putting these two ideas together seems to be enough to generate the idea that society is, in this respect, a weakly self-maintaining system.

Thus we have a conceptual model of ideology. Societies stumble from ruler to ruler in an unpredictable process which may extend indefinitely. If, however, it chances upon a ruler that converts force into right and obedience into duty, then that ruler would obtain stable, long-term rule. If we also add that nonsupported rule is always short-lived, then it is possible that much of history is characterised by stable rule. But this does not show that there is any tendency to reach stable rule, only that once achieved it tends to stay for a long time. Societies, then, accordingly to this model, weakly self-maintain themselves, in the terminology introduced above.

The point is that, even though there may be no systematic explanation of why individuals come to hold particular beliefs which go against their interests, this does not rule out the possibility that a neo-Darwinian filtration method can operate on a society-wide scale. We have a close analogy to random mutation and survival of the fittest. Societies generate belief systems for various rational and non-rational reasons. Other things being equal, the forms of societies that will survive the longest are those which

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generate beliefs which do not challenge their legitimacy. No 'tighter' connection between the causal genesis and persistence of a belief, and its functional role, can be plausible in this context, unless we appeal to overt and explicit manipulation, such as coerced belief or brainwashing.

Still, we do have a model of ideology: non-rational beliefs— including beliefs which go against the interests of those who hold them—come about for various reasons and will tend to survive if they help society to survive in its present form. Does this vindicate the theory of ideology? Only if illegitimate societies can survive only as a result of false consciousness. But if collective action problems of the type discussed in Rosen's paper, and problems of coalition formation, as discussed here, can also explain the stability of such societies, then that vital premise is false.

What this means is that we have no a priori reason to believe that any given stable, though illegitimate, regime is supported by false consciousness. On the other hand, we have no reason to rule this out in advance either. Sometimes it will be the only available explanation of the persistence of a society. In other cases it might be one among a number of factors. And in still others it will have no role to play whatsoever. Strictly, though, the considerations presented here and in Rosen's paper refute the theory of ideology if we take it as claiming that illegitimate societies have a systematic tendency to produce false consciousness.

Finally, even if problems of collective action and coalition formation get solved in the sweep of history, thus leaving false consciousness as the only explanation for the stability of illegitimate regimes, this is still not a vindication of the broad functionalist theory of ideology, and still less for Marxist theory. For the theory of ideology gives us no reason to think that societies are succeeded by others that are in any sense improvements. And the idea that forms of society are marching towards a given goal is, while compatible with the model, certainly not entailed by it. But the observation that the motor of historical materialism cannot be the theory of ideology should come as a surprise to no one.

7. I am grateful to Michael Martin, Veronique Munoz Darde, Michael Rosen and Nick Zangwill for very helpful written and verbal comments on earlier drafts. Distant ancestors of this paper were presented to a seminar series on Ideology at UCL in 1989 and to the University of London Political Philosophy Group in 1993.

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the problem of ideology michael rosen and jonathan wolff

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