In any economic system, those
who control the modes of production will control society; their thinking,
values, and
perspectives will be dominant.
Ideology prevents the dispossessed of any economic system from seeing
their real
relationship to power structures.
Ideology, in classical Marxism, produces a false consciousness of
oneself and one's
relationship to history; ideology
is that which is taken to be common sense or undisputed truth, i.e. Woman
is the weaker sex.
So a capitalist system is
dependent on ideologies like meritocracy ("anyone can grow up to be president")
that mask
the realities of exploitation
and privilege and keep the proletariat (working class) subjugated
to the bourgeoisie (middle class)
who grow rich on the surplus
value of labor. It is this surplus value that creates capital--not
money, but the
accumulation of wealth
that accrues to the class who own means of production. Through this
process, the labor of the
proletariat becomes alienated.
Louis
Althusser (1918-1990) modified Marxist understandings of ideology.
For Althusser, ideology is not exactly a
false system of ideas but
rather the conceptual framework through which one interprets self, culture,
and history.
Ideology saturates everything,
from language to cultural practices. Both the oppressors and the oppressed
see the
world through the same screen
of ideology. Human life as we understand it is dependent on a functioning
ideology
that makes sense of self and
world. So ideology produces not only our culture (the superstructure) but
our very
consciousness of ourselves.
Thus there is no essential individual human subject that pre-exists society;
rather society
creates subjectivities and
teaches us how to be "subject." Althusser contrasts ideological state
apparatuses--the political
system, religion, schools,
advertising, the law, the media, sports--that evoke willing submission
to dominant culture with repressive
state apparatuses like prisons
and the military that compel submission. For Althusser, there is very little
hope for social
change or betterment because
of the pervasive and invisible dominance of ideology and ideological state
apparatuses. For
Althusser, interpellation
is a key factor--the way in which ideological state apparatuses call forth
a particular identity
that we then recognize in
ourselves, i.e. the way in which an advertising campaign can create a desire
to be or look in a
certain way. We "see ourselves"
or hear ourselves spoken to in the image and findour identity in buying
the product.
You've Come a Long Way Baby!
Be a Sassy Girl.
Antonio
Gramsci (1891-1937) explored the concept, then, of hegemony, the notion
that domination in a capitalist
economy is not achieved through
force but through complex negotiations among various interests. Dominance
is never imposed from the
top down nor is it articulated univocally through language or ideological
apparatuses.
Hegemony is achieved not primarily
through compulsion, but rather, through continual negotiation and the winning
of
active or inactive consent
from a majority of parties.
There is more, of course...particularly with respect to how gender is and is not a part of Marxist analysis.