jorge larrain, "marxism and ideology"

(6): two grave errors, when you try and investigate the concept of "ideology" ahistorically

1. the relation of ideology to categories in capitalism is missed
2. ideology is elevated to the concept of ideology in general, which misses the way in which it evolves through historical periods [this is going to hinge on the notion of various forms of 'personal dependence' becoming 'objective dependence']

(7): it was only when the contradictions of capitalism became apparent that a critique of the one-sidedness of bourgeois thought became possible

(9): following an 'intermediate' path between Althusser/epistemological break, and those who treat Marx's writings as a complete whole. here there will be a division into three periods:

1. period where main theoretical paramters were set by Hegel and Feuerbach (early writings till 1844)
2. period where 'historical materialism' was constructed, and where the concept of ideology was first produced (1844 and Theses on Feuerbach/German Ideology-1857)
3. period where Marx begins detailed study of capitalist social relations (1858 and Marx's re-reading of Hegel's logic, Grundrisse)

PHASE ONE

(11-12): two inversions in Hegel

1. the Idea becomes the real, and material practice is made to follow from it
2. the State determines civil society, rather than civil society (and its attendant contradictions) determining the State

(13): key--Marx's critique of Feuerbach (and the abstracted understanding of man with which he works) involves an assault on the notion that 'philosophical critique' will suffice--this is where the notion of 'revolutionary practice' is born.

PHASE TWO

(16): Larrain against Althusser's understanding of the GI (according to A, Marx's conceives of ideology as 'pure illusion', here)

(18): Marx, Larrain saying, was asserting against 'idealism', but also against a vulgar 'materialism' (which said that 'consciousness is a 'passive reflection of external reality')

(21): here, there are three important elements of the context in which 'ideology' is developed, as a concept

1. it is part of a wider theory about the 'formation of ideas' (21-22)--that, insofar as 'social reality' is practice (men's 'conscious and sensuous activity by which they produce their material existence and the social relations), men and women come to know the world through practice. their representation of the world succeeds their making of it.
   
2. 'the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas (22)--this is a formulation about 'ideas', which can be related to the ruling class 'genetically' or via what's in their interests or others', even; but it doesn't apply to 'ideology', which necessarily serves the interests of the ruling class without necessarily being produced by them (it's produced by limited material practice, it seems).
   
3. ideology, unlike 'ideas' in general, is related to contradictions in a very specific and distinctive manner.

(21): key--there is a critical distinction here, between mundane material practice (a specific division of labour, in which the individual participates but nonetheless is subject to), and revolutionary practice (which aims at abolishing that 'objective power), with the implication that different ideas can emerge from the different kinds of practice.

(23): key--here there is a distinction between 'ideas' and 'ideology'--ideas are 'real or illusory' expression of practice. 'ideology', however, has to do with those ideas that express practice inadequately, due to the limitations of practice itself (as a result of limiteed material mode of activity'--as a result of the sensation of being ruled over by an objective power). [a more complete definition, we will see, incorporates the fact that 'ideology' occludes social contradictions]

(28): 'ideology' solves contradictions by hiding them -- the real resolution, of course, requires a resolution of 'material practice' [but this elides some of the dynamics of revolutionary practice, it would seem -- after all, how can one resolve 'material practice' without having rid oneself of the ruling 'ideology']

(29): the role of ideology is not defined by its class origin but by the objective concealment of contradictions

PHASE THREE

(32-34): here Marx, of course, proceeds from a specific analysis of the contradictions of capitalism to enumerate the contours of bourgeois political ideology (circulation as the source of exchange value, the wage form as the equivalent value of a whole working day, etc.--equality, freedom, bentham). four main ideas, in short

1. ideology as the conceptions of the active participants in economic relations--spontaneous consciousness, spontaneously reproduced
2. they reverse the essential pattern
3. not an illusion without any social basis
4. there is a possibility, here, of a 'non-ideological' consciousness [this, fundamentally, is the break with foucault--the belief in a 'revolutionary practice']

(37): ideology as appearences that correspond to real relations [but can't there be very many different 'ideologies' which correspond to real relations, and mask them]

(37): key, distinctions between capitalism and 'feudalism' --before, there were relations of personal dependence; now, objective dependence. ' in the former, then, relations of dependence were in no way hidden, rather they were rationalized (recourse to a transcendent sphere, what have you); in the latter, however, there is an objective concealment of dependence, under capitalism.

(39): four different forms of 'concealment'

1. denial of contradictions--clinging to some sense of 'unity'
   
2. misunderstanding of contradictions--Sismondi, who criticizes contradictions without understanding them
   
3. displacement of contradictions--displacing the real contradiction by reference to a different conflict (over machinery, for example)
   
4. dilutement of contradictions--'social democracy'

(43-45): five problems with the concept of ideology elaborated here

1. how is it possible to have an 'ideology' of the dominated classes? a revolutionary ideology?
2. how to define 'contradiction'/'inversion' more clearly? [Fields' conception of contradiction in the Slave-owning south, for example]
3. how do you understand the 'superstructure' of which 'ideology' is simply one part? [i.e., how do you understand all the other ideas that exist]
4. is there a vantage point that promises a critique that is not ideological?
   
5. ideology will disappear in the communist mode of production?