Marx's Theory of Ideology (RLE Marxism) by Bhikhu Parekh

Author:Bhikhu Parekh [Parekh, Bhikhu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317499121
Google: m3NKCAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-04-17T11:08:22+00:00

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We outlined above some of Marx’s basic criticisms of classical political economy. It is sometimes argued that, for Marx, all the limitations of classical economy sprang from its ideological bias, and that the influence of the bias, like that of a virus, was direct and easily identifiable. Both these are mistaken readings of Marx. For Marx not all the limitations of the classical economists could be explained in terms of the ideological bias, and the bias operated in a highly complex, mediated and uneven manner. Since the point is of considerable importance, it would be useful to list most of the limitations and briefly explore how each is related to the ideological bias. Needless to say, our analysis is extremely sketchy and tentative, and only designed to show how complex the whole question is, and how much work still needs to be done by Marx’s commentators if they are to give an adequate account of his theory of ideology.

Marx made the following criticisms of the classical economists. First, they committed factual errors and were not always rigorous in their investigations. Second, they sometimes made mistakes in logic, drew wrong conclusions and failed to notice the inconsistencies and contradictions in their arguments. Third, they were not always able to liberate themselves from the ordinary ways of thinking about economic life. They sometimes borrowed the ordinary man’s vocabulary, and asked questions which made sense at the commonsensical but not the scientific level. Fourth, they were guilty of indiscriminate abstraction, or what one might call overabstraction. They abstracted and concentrated on the general features shared in common by all modes of production. As a result they more or less completely ignored the historical specificity of each mode, especially capitalism, and used ahistorical concepts and methods of analysis. Fifth, they were guilty of inadequate abstraction or what one might call underabstraction. They did not sufficiently abstract an entity from its different forms, and tended to confuse it with one of them. Sixth, they asked questions, used concepts and drew distinctions, etc. which were biased, and made sense only on the assumption that the capitalist mode of production was natural, non-contradictory and the most rational way to organise the economy. Seventh, which is but a converse of the sixth criticism, the classical economists did not ask questions and use methods of analysis capable of illuminating the innermost nature and historical specificity of capitalism, and took an extremely narrow view of their subject matter.

Marx nowhere says that all the limitations of classical political economy listed above are traceable to its ideological bias. Although he is not entirely clear, his view seems to be that its ideological bias was the sole source of some of its limitations, and an important contributory factor in the case of the others. Let us briefly examine how this is so.

For Marx the ideological bias was obviously responsible for the last two limitations. In his view it explains, and can alone explain, why the classical economists asked biased questions, used biased concepts,

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