The Demon in Democracy by Ryszard Legutko

Author:Ryszard Legutko
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781594038648
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2016-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

Ideology

1

Both communism and liberal democracy have a strong tendency to ideology. The concept of ideology owes its career to Marxism. Marx and Engels made the following argument. People, they claimed, are not in control of the views they hold and profess; they accept as their own, usually without realizing it, the ideas produced by the socioeconomic system in which they live. Every such system generates not only institutions and economic relations, but also a more or less coherent set of ideas that legitimize it and delineate the boundaries of its change. Contrary to what most of us think, the prevailing opinions, theories, and convictions that we consider timeless and self-evident are neither timeless nor self-evident, but are the product of the economic and political arrangements peculiar to a specific phase of historical development. Whoever thinks otherwise and claims he speaks from a non-committed absolutist perspective is cheating himself, failing to notice that his supposedly politically disinterested consciousness has been fabricated by material conditions. This does not mean that we are all slaves of our time. There are those who see more clearly than others, not because they are free from a historical entanglement, but because their minds have a better grasp of the world to come. It is these people who speak in the name of the future and are the purveyors of a revolutionary spirit. Both these types of consciousness—the one mystified by its false claim to timelessness, the other anticipating a new era—Marx and Engels called ideology.

The concept vaulted to unprecedented popularity, primarily because it proved to be a most convenient tool in political conflicts: it allowed discrediting one’s opponent without entering into a substantive argument. There was no sense in analyzing the opponent’s views on their merits, such an analysis being usually inconclusive and politically inefficient. It was much better to show that his views represented his interests and were conditioned by his social and economic position. This way, under communism, much of philosophy, art, and literature could be discredited as arising from a bourgeois ideology, legitimizing the domination of the bourgeoisie and representing its interests. By being identified as serving the cause of the bourgeoisie, the philosophers, artists, and writers could be arraigned on a charge of being the enemies of the socialist revolution and standing in the way of the future, often with lamentable consequences for the defendants.

Ideology is always inherently simplistic and simplifying as its function is instrumental, not descriptive. The purpose of ideology is not to disclose intricacies and ambiguities but to make a clear statement: this and this reflect the interests of capitalism, and that and that reflect the interests of communism. Lenin called it, very aptly, the principle of partisanship. One is either for something or against something. Whoever is trying to find a middle-of-the-road position, or to evade the dichotomy, automatically passes to the enemy side. All philosophy—to give a well-known example—is either materialistic, or idealistic. Whoever wants to go beyond this distinction becomes—whether he means it or not—a traitor of the materialist cause and slouches toward idealism.

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