The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  In sum, Marx’s theory has not been refuted by the main objections that have been raised against it. The question the theory should really provoke is instead whether or not it is empirically justified. But even our brief review of some of Marx’s own specific applications of it in areas such as religion, philosophy, law, politics, morality, and economics already suggests that it probably is. And I believe that a more exacting critical assessment of those applications and of further possible applications would only reinforce that conclusion.

  40.5 EXTENSIONS OF THE THEORY

  I want to suggest that instead of elimination what the theory really deserves is extension. As we have seen, Marx originally developed the theory through a sort of flexible generalization of a model of critical explanation that had already been developed before him concerning the Christian religion, a flexible generalization intended to make the model cover other areas of false belief as well. My suggestion is that what is required is a set of further flexible generalizations.

  A first type of further flexible generalization that seems required here consists in transcending Marx’s restriction of ideology to falsehoods. Marx’s own inclusion of art as an area of ideology, combined with his reticence about the details of this case, perhaps already points towards such an extension. For art only even purports to state facts to a very limited extent and yet it does often seem to have a character that is strikingly similar to that of purportedly fact-stating ideology, in that it likewise serves the interests of one class against another by producing certain psychological states in its recipients and occurs because it does so. Accordingly, one of the most interesting developments in the theory of ideology that has taken place since Marx has been an attempt by members of the Frankfurt School such as Adorno to extend the model of ideology beyond cases where falsehood is involved,68 especially to the area of art, notably including popular art.69

  The following are some examples of types of ideology in the arts and elsewhere that do not necessarily involve falsehood:

  (1)Selective focus. This phenomenon often occurs in art. For example, there is a selective focus on kings and aristocrats in the Homeric poems to the relative neglect of the common people, and this arguably constitutes an important part of the poems’ function as ruling-class ideology. But the phenomenon is equally striking in other areas of culture as well, such as modern newspaper and television reporting, for example. In these two areas, it is perhaps even more extreme in connection with conflicts between nations than conflicts between classes (to anticipate another sort of extension of the theory of ideology to be discussed shortly). For example, during the recent war in Iraq the case of a single Iraqi child who had suffered severe burns at the hands of “insurgents” and who was saved and brought back to the USA for medical treatment by American troops received extensive coverage in the mainstream American media, whereas the tens or even hundreds of thousands of non-combatant women and children who were killed or maimed by American bombs received scant attention. Selective focus need not involve any actual falsification, even when it takes a form that purports to be fact-stating, as in the case of newspaper or television reporting (the cases on which a report selectively focuses may be reported accurately and the existence of the excluded cases need not actually be denied). It does, however, still come close to being a form of falsification, in that it mainly works by encouraging false beliefs in its recipients (e.g. the false belief that American troops are doing more good than harm to the Iraqis).

  (2)Sentimental association. For example, a film may cultivate positive sentiments towards a certain social role, class, or institution through such mechanisms as the attractiveness of the leading actor, the content of the plot, and the use of emotive film music without making any statements that even purport to be factual, let alone any false ones.

  (3)Training in conformity. For example, Adorno has argued with some plausibility that certain forms of popular art and entertainment in the USA, such as television, sport, and even popular music/dance, not only serve to distract audiences and participants from oppression and injustice but also train them in a variety of conformist behaviors and attitudes, thereby serving the interests of the ruling class but mostly against the interests of the audiences/participants themselves.70 And such an account might plausibly be extended to other areas of culture as well. For example, does the rigid enforcement of rules of grammar and spelling in our schools and workplaces really just serve its official pragmatic purpose of enabling effective communication (was Shakespeare unable to communicate effectively, even in writing, before spelling had become regulated, for example?), or is it not rather in large part a means of instilling general habits of social conformism?

  A second type of further flexible generalization that seems attractive is equally radical. This case is closely related to the point that I made at the beginning of this chapter that Marx’s economic theory of history comes to grief on the fact that not only economic factors, in particular socio-economic class conflicts, but also further factors such as nationality, race/ethnicity, religion, language, and gender play important roles as causes in history (and I have already anticipated it with my example of reporting on the Iraq war). For it seems to me that in order to release the full potential of Marx’s theory of ideology as a tool for critically understanding culture, one ought to drop his restriction of it to competing socio-economic class interests, and recognize that it can also be applied to competing group interests of other sorts, which similarly generate their self-serving falsehoods (as well as non-false forms of ideology)—for example, national interests, gender interests, and even species interests. Let me try to illustrate this point with reference to just the classic type of ideology that involves falsification, and to just one specific area of it: philosophy.

  Marx’s own treatment of philosophy as a discipline that often propagates ideology in the interests of a socio-economic class is very plausible, for instance in the case of his star example Hegel. Nor is such an analysis any less relevant or illuminating for philosophy from other periods of history. For example, Aristotle’s dubious theory in the Politics that some men have slavish natures served the ideological function of reinforcing the interests of the slave-owning class in the ancient world at the expense of the slaves. And the striking popularity in the USA of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, with its intellectually feeble derivation from the thought-experiment of the “original position” of the “maxi-min principle,” according to which inequalities in the distribution of goods are justified to the extent that they cause the least advantaged in society to be better off than they would be without the inequalities,71 is readily explicable in terms of the ideological function that this theory serves in rationalizing the gross inequalities of American capitalism.72

  However, philosophy also often functions as ideology in relation to interests other than socio-economic class interests, including national interests, gender interests, and species interests.

  Concerning nations, when Aristotle (the teacher of Alexander the Great) argues in the Politics that because the northern barbarians lack intelligence or skill and the eastern barbarians lack spirit, whereas the Greeks have both, the Greeks should rule over the barbarians, this is a false belief that serves the interests of the Greeks as a nation at the expense of the barbarian nations and that is embraced because it does so. Or, to consider a case closer to home, when many contemporary American philosophers claim the universality of one or another aspect of psychological life, thereby flying in the face of compelling empirical evidence on the wings of specious arguments—for example, Davidson concerning beliefs and concepts in general, Quine concerning logical laws, Hardin concerning color-concepts, Searle concerning illocutionary forces, Chomsky concerning “universal grammar,”73 or Nussbaum and countless other moral philosophers concerning moral values—74 the explanation of this probably in the end lies less in the domain of evidence and argument than in the interests of the USA as a nation in competition with other nations. For one thing, the v
ery unusual internal composition of the USA out of different immigrant groups from diverse cultural backgrounds puts a premium on doctrines which encourage cultural uniformity, namely in the interests of forestalling the political fragmentation of the nation that constantly threatens and the weakening of the nation in its competition with other nations that would result from it. For another thing, the insistence that everyone else’s outlooks must be fundamentally the same as our own, when combined with the contingently refractory empirical evidence concerning what other peoples actually say and do, generates the conclusion that they must simply have a more confused version of our own outlook (or perhaps in extreme cases no real outlook at all)—which constitutes an ideological rationalization for the manifold imperial activities of the USA against other nations around the world.75

  Similarly, concerning gender, when Aristotle argues in the Politics that the female is naturally inferior to the male and that the female therefore ought to be governed by the male, this is a false ideological rationalization of the sort of gender oppression that prevailed in ancient Greece. And when Kant argues in The Metaphysics of Morals that all women are unfit to vote because their preservation depends on arrangements made by another person and that the natural superiority of the husband over the wife in the capacity to promote the interest of the household makes it appropriate for the law to designate him her master, an analogous point applies.

  Similarly, concerning species, like much religion before it (and indeed largely under its direct or indirect influence), much western philosophy has held that human beings and animals are sharply different from each other in one crucial way or another—Aristotle and his tradition claiming that, unlike human beings, animals lack rationality; Kant claiming that, unlike human beings, they lack self-consciousness; a tradition that reaches from at least the eighteenth century (e.g. Süßmilch and early Herder) up to the present day (e.g. Bennett, Davidson, and Taylor) claiming that, unlike human beings, they lack language; another tradition that stretches from at least the medieval period (e.g. Aquinas) up to the present (e.g. Huxley and Korsgaard) claiming that, unlike human beings, they quite lack morality; Descartes and his followers even claiming that, unlike human beings, they have no mental life at all; and so on. Moreover, such philosophy has in many cases gone on to argue explicitly, and in others to imply, that this alleged profound difference justifies various sorts of harm that human beings routinely do to animals (e.g. forcing them to work for us, driving them out of their habitats, killing them for food or clothing or mere sport, using them in animal experiments, including vivisections, etc.).76 However, as recent scientific work on animal cognition, language, and altruism (e.g. the work of Griffin, Savage-Rumbaugh, and de Waal) is making increasingly clear, the claims of sharp difference involved here turn out to be false, or at best very dubious. Indeed, in certain cases, such as that of the Cartesian theory, the falsehood is obvious. Moreover, the explicit and implicit inferences from the alleged sharp differences in question to the propriety of harming animals are in most cases equally dubious (here the Cartesian theory would be the one clear exception). So why have these philosophical theories nonetheless enjoyed such widespread and persistent popularity? A large part of the explanation surely lies in the fact that they provide a sort of rationalization for the selfish indulgence of human beings’ interests at the expense of animals’. So here again we have an example of philosophy serving as ideology—that is, falsehood that supports, and that exists because it supports, the interests of one group of creatures at the expense of another’s.77

  In short, while Marx’s theory that much of philosophy has the character of ideology was already illuminating under his restriction of it to competing socio-economic class interests, once the theory is allowed a more flexible application that also includes competing group interests of other sorts it promises to become an even more powerful tool for critically understanding much philosophy.

  Moreover, this is of course only an illustration of a much broader lesson. For there is every reason to believe that a similar point applies not only to philosophy but also to the other areas of culture in which ideology occurs, and that it applies not only to the classically Marxian type of ideology that involves falsification, but also to non-falsifying types of ideology such as those that were recently discussed (selective focus, sentimental association, and training in conformity).

  40.6 CONCLUSION

  In conclusion, Marx’s theory of ideology arose through a sort of flexible generalization of a model for critically explaining religion that had already been developed before him by his immediate predecessors Hegel, Feuerbach, and Bauer, leading him to a powerful diagnosis of a much wider range of false beliefs as serving class interests in competition with other class interests and as occurring because they serve those interests. The theory does not succumb to the objections that have been leveled against it. On the contrary, it deserves not elimination but extension, in particular the two important sorts of extension just discussed. Thus extended, the theory has the potential to become an even more powerful tool for critically understanding human thought and practice than Marx himself already made it.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Marx (and Engels)

  Marx Engels Werke. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1956–90.

  Marx: Selections, ed. A. W. Wood. London and New York: Macmillan, 1988.

  The German Ideology, ed. C.J. Arthur. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1972.

  Early Writings, ed. L. Colletti. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.

  On Religion, Mineola, NY: Dover, 2008.

  The Thought of Karl Marx, ed. D. McLellan. London: Macmillan, 1971.

  Hegel

  Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

  The Positivity of the Christian Religion, in Early Theological Writings, trans. T. M. Knox. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1981.

  Feuerbach

  The Essence of Christianity, trans. G. Eliot. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989.

  Bauer

  Die Judenfrage. Braunschweig: Friedrich Otto, 1843.

  Die gute Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene Angelegenheit. 1st ed. 1842; Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1972.

  Adorno

  Ästhetische Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970.

  Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft, 2 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977.

  The Culture Industry. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.

  Secondary Literature

  D. Brudney, Karl Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

  G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

  J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

  R. Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

  K. Renner, “The Economic and Social Functions of the Legal Institutions,” in Karl Marx, ed. T. Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell, 1973.

  M. Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996.

  J.-P. Sartre, Search for a Method. New York: Vintage, 1968.

  J. Wolff, “Karl Marx,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online).

  A. W. Wood, Karl Marx. 1st ed. 1981; 2nd ed. New York and London: Routledge, 2004.

  * * *

  1 For a valiant attempt to defend it, see A. W. Wood, Karl Marx (1st ed. 1981; 2nd ed.: New York and London: Routledge, 2004), ch. 15. But for some incisive criticisms of it, see J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 97, 127–41.