Ideology
Ideology
I The Conceptand Functionof Ideology
II Ideologyand the Social System
I THE CONCEPT AND FUNCTION OF IDEOLOGY
Ideology is one variant form of those comprehensive patterns of cognitive and moral beliefs about man, society, and the universe in relation to man and society, which flourish in human societies. Outlooks and creeds, systems and movements of thought, and programs are among the other types of comprehensive patterns which are to be distinguished from ideology.
These comprehensive patterns differ from each other in their degree of (a) explicitness of formulation; (b) intended systemic integration around a particular moral or cognitive belief; (c) acknowledged affinity with other past and contemporaneous patterns; (d) closure to novel elements or varia-ations; (e) imperativeness of manifestation in conduct; (f) accompanying affect; (g) consensus demanded of those who accept them; (h) au-thoritativeness of promulgation; and (i) association with a corporate body intended to realize the pattern of beliefs.
Ideologies are characterized by a high degree of explicitness of formulation over a very wide range of the objects with which they deal; for their adherents there is an authoritative and explicit promulgation. As compared with other patterns of beliefs, ideologies are relatively highly systematized or integrated around one or a few pre-eminent values, such as salvation, equality, or ethnic purity. They are more insistent on their distinctiveness from, and unconnectedness with, the outlooks, creeds, and other ideologies existing in the same society; they are more resistant to innovations in their beliefs and deny the existence or the significance of those which do occur. Their acceptance and promulgation are accompanied by highly affective overtones. Complete individual subservience to the ideology is demanded of those who accept it, and it is regarded as essential and imperative that their conduct be completely permeated by it. Consensus among all those who affirm their adherence is likewise demanded; all adherents of the ideology are urgently expected to be in complete agreement with each other. A corporate collective form is regarded as the mode of organization of adherents appropriate for maintaining discipline among those already committed and for winning over or dominating others.
Outlooks tend to lack one authoritative and explicit promulgation. They are pluralistic in their internal structure and are not systematically integrated. Lacking an authoritative promulgation, outlooks are more open to the entry and inclusion of elements from other outlooks and alien creeds than are ideologies or even creeds. Outlooks contain within themselves a variety of creeds, which differ from each other by divergent emphasis on different elements in the outlook; creeds tend, therefore, to be in conflict with each other on particular issues, while in many respects they accept the prevailing encompassing outlook of the society in which they exist. The vagueness and diffuseness of outlooks and—to a lesser extent—creeds are paralleled by the unevenness of the pressure for their observance in action. In expression, outlooks are relatively un-affective. They are also less demanding of consensus among their bearers than ideologies are.
Ideologies, especially in their incipient stage, are not usually espoused by the incumbents and custodians of the central institutional and value systems. In contrast, outlooks and their subsidiary creeds are the characteristic patterns of belief in those sections of the society which affirm or accept the existing order of society. Rulers and those elites associated with them in the conduct of the central institutional systems tend to espouse the outlook and one or several of the creeds which seek to give a more definite promulgation to certain elements of the prevailing outlook. Creeds which become alienated from the central institutional system tend to acquire the formal properties of ideologies. Whereas outlooks (e.g., Buddhism, Protestantism) bear only a very loose relationship with conduct, creeds (e.g., Quakerism, Roman Catholicism) aspire to a fuller influence on the conduct of those who espouse them.
Creeds often shade off into ideologies, but because they do not tend to take as sharply bounded a corporate form and because they have much less orthodoxy, they cannot command the concerted intellectual power of ideologies. Actual subscription to them tends, therefore, to be partial, fragmentary, and occasional. Unless a creed is taken in hand by a school of thought, it does not undergo systematic elaboration and its scope is not broadened to a point of universal comprehensiveness. Its founder or inspiring genius might have created a coherent system of moral, social, and political philosophy, which in its comprehensiveness, elaborateness, and explictness might be equivalent to the intellectual core of an ideology. However, if the founder forms neither a school of thought nor an ideological primary group, his influence, however great, will be carried by the winds. Each will take from this creed what he wants: it will become a pervasive influence, but it will lose the unity and the force which it needed to become an ideology. If, furthermore, the great thinker is neither far-reachingly alienated from the central value and institutional systems of his society nor unqualifiedly insistent on the complete realization of his doctrine in the conduct of his followers, there is little chance that an ideology will flow from his intellectual construction.
Systems and movements of thought are more or less explicit and systematic intellectual patterns developed in the course of generally undirected intellectual collaboration and division of labor (e.g., existentialism, Hegelian idealism, pragmatism). Like ideologies and unlike outlooks, they are elaborate and internally integrated. However, insofar as they do not insist on total observance in behavior, on a complete consensus among their adherents, and on closure vis-a-vis other intellectual constructions, they do not become ideologies.
A program is a specification of a particular limited objective (e.g., civil rights or electoral reform movements); thus, it represents the narrowing of a focus of interest that is implicit in an outlook and made more explicit or compelling in a creed or a movement of thought. Depending on the pattern from which a program originates, its relationship to more general cognitive and moral principles will be more or less elaborate and explicit. Since its major feature is the limited range of its objectives, it is less likely to be immediately ideological in its origin and association.
Like ideology, movements of thought and programs tend to be in disagreement with contemporaneous outlooks and dominant creeds and the practices through which they operate institutionally. But ideology differs from “dissensual” movements of thought and programs in the intensity of the affect which accompanies its dissent, in the completeness of its corporate self-separation, in its degree of intellectual closure, and in the range of its aspiration to encompass (cognitively, evaluatively, and in practice) all available objects and events.
Ideologies and those who espouse them allege that they speak for a transcendent entity—a stratum, a society, a species, or an ideal value—which is broader than the particular corporate body of those who believe in the ideology. Corporate carriers of the ideologies, whatever their actual practice, claim to act on behalf of an “ideal,” the beneficiaries of which include more than members of the ideological group. Since the ideal always diverges from the existent, the ideology contends for the realization of a state of affairs which, its proponents allege, either never existed previously or existed in the past but exists no longer. (Karl Mannheim [1929-1931] designated the former type of ideals as utopias, the latter as ideologies. Moreover, within the category of ideology, he included sets of beliefs which affirm the existing order—that is, the patterns which I have designated as outlooks and creeds, schools of thought, and programs. Neither his terminology nor his classifications are adhered to in this analysis of patterns of belief.)
Ideology and central value systems
As compared with the prevailing outlook and its constituent and overlapping creeds, an ideology characteristically contends more strenuously for a purer, fuller, or more ideal realization of particular cognitive and moral values than exist in the society in which the ideology obtains currency. Ideologies are more insistent on an actual and continuous contact with sacred symbols and with a fuller manifestation of the sacred in the existent. Whereas outlooks and creeds connected with the central institutional system demand, in their programmatic promulgations, segmental changes or changes which do not diverge profoundly from what already exists, ideologies impel their proponents to insist on the realization of the ideal, which is contained in the sacred, through a “total transformation” of society. They seek this completeness either through total conquest (including conversion) or by total withdrawal so that the purer, ideal form of value can be cultivated in isolation from the contaminating influence of the environing society. Whereas the bearers of each of the several creeds of a prevailing outlook accept some measure of community with other creeds, the exponents of an ideology, being set against other ideologies and particularly against the dominant outlook and creeds, stress the differences between their ideology and the other outlooks and ideologies within the society and disavow the identities and affinities.
Nonetheless, every ideology—however great the originality of its creators—arises in the midst of an ongoing culture. However passionate its reaction against that culture, it cannot entirely divest itself of important elements of that culture. Ideologies are responses to insufficient regard for some particular element in the dominant outlook and are attempts to place that neglected element in a more central position and to bring it into fulfillment. There are, therefore, always marked substantive affinities between the moral and cognitive orientations of any particular ideology and those of the outlooks and creeds which prevail in the environing society and which affirm or accept the central institutional and value systems.
However, in their formal structure such outlooks are constellations of very loosely integrated and ambiguous moral and cognitive propositions and attitudes toward a variety of particular, often relatively concrete, objects and situations. In the minds of most of those who share an outlook, it does not form a consistent system focused on one central theme, principle, value, or symbol. In contrast, an ideology involves an intensification and generalization of certain central propositions and attitudes, a reduced emphasis on others and their subordination to the proposition (or propositions), which is raised to a position of predominance. An ideology differs, therefore, from a prevailing outlook and its creeds through its greater explicitness, its greater internal integration or systematization, its greater comprehensiveness, the greater urgency of its application, and its much higher intensity of concentration focused on certain central propositions or evaluations.
All ideologies—whether progressive or tradition-alistic, revolutionary or reactionary—entail an aggressive alienation from the existing society: they recommend the transformation of the lives of their exponents in accordance with specific principles; they insist on consistency and thoroughgoingness in their exponents’ application of principles; and they recommend either their adherents’ complete dominion over the societies in which they live or their total, self-protective withdrawal from these societies. Even where the exponents of an ideology have been successful in attaining the key positions from which power is exercised in the central institutional system, they continue to be alienated from the outlook and creeds of the society over which they exercise power.
Ideologies passionately oppose the productions of the cultural institutions of the central institutional system. They claim that these institutions distort the truth about “serious” things and that they do so to maintain a system of injustice in the earthly order. Ideologies insist on the realization of principles in conduct; this is one of their grounds for accusing central value and institutional systems of hypocrisy, the compromise of principles, and corruption by power. Thus, ideologies and their exponents—whether out of power or in central positions of power over society—are relentlessly critical of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of conduct, evaluated with respect to rigorous principles of right and justice, in sectors of society over which they do not have complete control. Ideologies demand an intense and continuous observance of their imperatives in the conduct of their exponents.
Whereas the various component elements of an outlook may be unevenly distributed among those who share the outlook, an ideology insists on a greater completeness of possession by each of those who are committed to sharing in it. In other words, a “division of labor” in attachment to the diverse elements of ideological belief is less supportable to the most fervent exponents of ideology than a comparable division of attachment is to the exponents of an outlook, a creed, or a movement of thought.
Ideological politics
Ideologies are always concerned with authority, transcendent and earthly, and they cannot, therefore, avoid being political except by the extreme reaction-formation of complete withdrawal from society. Even in ages which saw no public politics permitted, ideological groups forced themselves into the political arena. Since the seventeenth century, every ideology has had its views on politics. Indeed, since the nineteenth century, most ideologies have come to be preponderantly political.
This appearance of thinking of nothing but politics is not identical with the attitude of the professional politician, who lives for politics to the exclusion of everything else. Ideologies which concentrate on politics do so because for them politics embraces everything else. The evaluation of authority is the center of the ideological outlook, and around it are integrated all other objects and their evaluations. Thus, no sphere has any intrinsic value of its own. There is no privacy, no autonomous spheres of art, religion, economic activity, or science. Each, in this view, is to be understood politically. (This is true of Marxism, despite the fact that it is reputed to have made everything dependent on economic relationships. In Marxist ideology the relations of production are property relations—i.e., relationships of authority, supported by the power of the state.)
Ideology, whether nominally religious or anti-religious, is concerned with the sacred. Ideology seeks to sanctify existence by bringing every part of it under the dominion of the ultimately right principles. The sacred and the sacrilegious reside in authority, the former in the authority acknowledged by ideology, the latter in that which prevails in the “wicked world,” against which ideology contends. From the viewpoint of an ideology, ordinary politics are the kingdom of darkness, whereas ideological politics are the struggle of light against darkness.
Participation in the routine life of the civil political order is alien to the ideological spirit. In fact, however, there are many adulterations of this ideological purity, and purely ideological politics are marginal and exceptional. The need to build a machine strong enough to acquire power in the state, even by conspiracy and subversion, enforces compromises with, and concessions to, the ongoing political order and the less than complete ideological orientation of potential and desired supporters. Failure, too, damages the purity of ideological politics. The pressure of competition enforces alliances and the adoption of procedures which are alien to their nature. Nonetheless, ideological politics, in splinters of rancorous purity or in attenuation, often penetrate into civil politics, and conversely, civil politics often force their way into ideological politics.
Among intellectuals there are many who have inherited an ideological tradition and to whom ideological politics appeal as the only right politics. Even where intellectuals often appear to be convinced of the inefficacy of ideological politics, the categories in which ideologies view the world, as well as the techniques and the heroes of ideological politics, often stir and master their imaginations.
The emergence of ideologies
An ideology is the product of man’s need for imposing intellectual order on the world. The need for an ideology is an intensification of the need for a cognitive and moral map of the universe, which in a less intense and more intermittent form is a fundamental, although unequally distributed, disposition of man.
Ideologies arise in conditions of crisis and in sectors of society to whom the hitherto prevailing outlook has become unacceptable. An ideology arises because there are strongly felt needs, which are not satisfied by the prevailing outlook, for an explanation of important experiences, for the firm guidance of conduct, and for a fundamental vindication or legitimation of the value and dignity of the persons who feel these needs. Mere rejection of the existing society and the prevailing outlook of the elites of that society is not sufficient. For an ideology to exist, there must also be an attendant vision of a positive alternative to the existing pattern of society and its culture and an intellectual capacity to articulate that vision as part of the cosmic order. Ideologies are the creations of charismatic persons who possess powerful, expansive, and simplified visions of the world, as well as high intellectual and imaginative powers. By placing at its very center certain cosmically and ethically fundamental propositions, an ideology brings to those who accept it the belief that they are in possession of, and in contact with, what is ultimately right and true.
Some personalities are ideological by constitution. Such persons continuously feel a need for a clearly ordered picture of the universe and of their own place in it. They need clear and unambiguous criteria as to what is right and wrong in every situation. They must be able to explain whatever happens by a clear and readily applicable proposition, itself derived from a central proposition. Other persons become ideological under conditions of private and public crisis, which accentuate the need for meaningful moral and cognitive order; when the crisis abates, such persons become less ideological.
An ideology cannot come into existence without the prior existence of a general pattern of moral and cognitive judgments—an outlook and its subsidiary creeds—against which it is a reaction and of which it is a variant. It requires, in other words, a cultural tradition from which to deviate and from which to draw the elements which it intensifies and raises to centrality. An intellectualized religion provides the ideal precondition for the emergence of ideology, since the former contains explicit propositions about the nature of the sacred and its cultivation, which is what ideologies are about. The fact that an ideology already exists serves both to form an ideological tradition and to provide a medium in which ideological dispositions can be precipitated by emulation and self-differentiation.
Ideologies and ideological orientations have existed in all high cultures. They have, however, been especially frequent in Western culture. The continuous working of the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament and the salvationary tradition of the mystery religions and of early Christianity have provided a set of cultural dispositions which have been recurrently activated in the course of the Christian era in the West. The secularization of the modern age has not changed this. Indeed, the growth of literacy and of the educated classes and the “intellectualization” of politics have widened receptivity to ideological beliefs. The spread of Western ideas to Asia and Africa has involved, among many other things, the diffusion of a culture full of ideological potentiality.
The bearers of ideology
The disposition toward ideological construction is one of the fundamental characteristics of the human race once it reaches a certain stage of intellectual development. It is, however, a disposition which is usually latent. It finds its fullest expression in a charismatic ideologist, a person with an overwhelmingly powerful intellectual and moral drive to be in contact with the sacred and to promulgate that contact in comprehensive and coherent terms. The charismatic ideologist cannot, however, construct an ideology in isolation from a collectivity on behalf of which he speaks and with which he must share that ideology. An ideologylike intellectual construction produced in isolation from a political or religious sect would be no more than a rigorous system of religious, moral, social, and political thought based on fundamental propositions about the cosmos and history. It becomes more than that only when it is shared by a community constituted on the basis of the acceptance of that outlook.
The characteristic and primal bearer of an ideology is an ideological primary group (what Herman Schmalenbach [1922] called a Bund). The bond which unites the members of the ideological primary group to each other is the attachment to each other as sharers in the ideological system of beliefs; the members perceive each other as being in possession of, or being possessed by, the sacred-ness inherent in the acceptance of the ideology. Personal, primordial, and civil qualities are attenuated or suppressed in favor of the quality of “ideological possession.” A comrade is a comrade by virtue of his beliefs, which are perceived as his most significant qualities. A fully developed ideological primary group is separated by sharply defined boundaries from the “world” from which it seeks to protect itself or over which it seeks to triumph. Stringent discipline over conduct and belief is a feature of ideological primary groups; intense solidarity and unwavering loyalty are demanded (as in revolutionary cells and in separatist religious sects).
In reality, of course, the ideological quality never completely supplants all other qualities, and the fully developed ideological primary group is never completely realized. Thus, the ideological primary group is subject to recurrent strains, not only because of the strains inherent within the ideology as an intellectual system, but also because the other qualities become, in various measures for many of the members of the group, significant qualities, on the bases of which supplementary and often alternative and contradictory attachments are formed. Even the most disciplined ideological primary group is under the strain of divergent beliefs among members, as well as the pull of their various attachments to the “world.” All these anti-ideological tendencies within ideological primary groups are greatly aggravated in modern societies in which large parties are organized and in which large-scale bureaucratic administrations are necessary. Both of these generate many nonideological tendencies and place further strain on ideological purity and its cognate solidarity.
Nevertheless, ideologies have a self-reproductive power. They are often partially espoused by more loosely integrated circles, particularly when the ideology itself has moved into a condition of disintegration. Echoes and fragments of ideologies go on after their primal bearers have died or dissolved in defeat or disillusionment. Thus, ideologies sometimes turn into movements of thought. Moreover, fragments of ideology may become transformed into creeds and re-enter the outlooks from whence they once came and which they now change.
On the social origins of the bearers of ideology, little can be said. It was Max Weber’s view that they came from the strata of traders and handicraftsmen and from sections of society which are shaken by a disruption in their conventional mode of life. There is some plausibility in this hypothesis. However, they also appear to come from educated circles as well and from ethnic “outsiders,” whose prior alienation makes them receptive to ideological beliefs.
Endogenous and exogenous changes
Proponents of ideologies obdurately resist the explicit introduction of revision of their articles of belief. Ideologies aspire to, and pretend to, systematic completeness, and they do not appear to their proponents to be in need of improvement. Nonetheless, ideologies are never completely consistent or completely adequate to the facts of experience which they claim to interpret and dominate. Even the most systematically elaborated ideology, like all systems of belief, scientific and nonscientific, contains inconsistencies, ambiguities, and gaps. These tend to result in disputes among the adherents of the ideology who espouse divergent ways of filling the gaps and clarifying the ambiguities, each claiming that his way represents the “correct” interpretation of the unchanged and unchangeable fundamentals. Inconsistencies and ambiguities may be perceived on purely intellectual grounds, and the efforts to repair them may be motivated primarily by a concern for intellectual clarity and harmony. Such efforts are likely to arouse antagonism from the more orthodox exponents of the ideology—that is, those who adhere to the previously dominant interpretation. In this way, either through the triumph of the innovators or the triumph of the orthodox, the previous formulation of the ideology undergoes a change.
In addition to these more intellectual sources of changes in ideologies, further endogenous changes occur in consequence of conflicts among the proponents of divergent policies which appear to be equally sanctioned by the ideology. As a result of the triumph of one of the contending groups over the other, new emphases and developments occur within the ideology. These very properties which are sources of instability in ideologies and in the groups which support them are also prerequisites for their further development in the face of new situations and for their adaptation and compromise with the intractability of reality as an object of exhaustive cognition and control.
Ideologies also change because of the pressure of external reality. The “world” does not easily accommodate itself to the requirements of ideologies. The “facts” of life do not fit their categories; those who live their lives among these facts do not yield to the exhortations and offensives of the ideologists. The proponents of ideologies are often defeated in their campaigns for total transformation. Defeat is a shock, a pressing occasion for revision of the ideology to make it fit the “facts” which have imposed themselves. Despite resistance, the ideology is retouched, at first superficially, later more deeply. Fissures among the ideologists accompany this struggle to cope with the impregnability of the “world.”
Another external factor which places a strain on ideology is the diminution of the crisis which gave rise to it and the consequent dissipation of ideological orientation. Those whom crisis has inflamed into an ideological state of mind either withdraw from, or loosen their connections with, the ideological primary group; if they are influential enough, they modify and adapt it to the demands of life in the environing society, into which they once more become assimilated. Under these conditions, the sharply defined boundaries of the group become eroded, and the members cease to define themselves exclusively by their ideological qualities. The specific modifications which the ideology introduced to differentiate it from the predominant outlook in the central institutional and value systems become less disjunctive, and its distinctive ideological elements fade into a ceremonially asserted formula. Under these conditions ideologies sometimes dissolve into creeds and programs or fall away into systems of thought. Quite frequently some elements of the ideology turn into accentuated and intensified forms of certain features of the prevailing outlook or creeds which had previously existed in a blurred and unemphasized state.
Quasi-ideological phenomena
The potentialities of ideological orientations relatively seldom come to realization. Quite apart from the tenacious hold of the central institutional and value systems on many persons who are simultaneously ideologically disposed, ideological orientations often do not eventuate in fully developed ideologies or ideological primary groups because the ideological needs of those who come under their influence are not sufficiently intense, comprehensive, and persistent. Without a powerful ideological personality, powerful in intelligence and imagination, ideological propensities in the more ordinary human vessels of ideological needs do not attain fulfillment.
Furthermore, once the ties binding an ideological primary group weaken, the ideology persists in a somewhat disaggregated form among the late members of the group. In that form, too, it continues to find adherents who, without the discipline of an ideological primary group, select certain congenial elements of the ideology for application and development. These elements constitute an ideological tradition which is available to subsequent ideologists and ideological primary groups.
Sometimes certain of these elements become a program of aggressive demands and criticism against the central institutional and value systems. Programs, like ideologies, are also emergents from prevailing outlooks and creeds; they “take seriously” some particular element in the outlook and seek to bring it to fulfillment within the existing order. A program accepts much of the prevailing institutional and value systems, although it fervently rejects one sector. Thus, a program stands midway between an ideology and a prevailing outlook or a creed; it can be reached from either direction (and testifies thereby to the affinities between ideologies and outlooks and creeds).
The programmatic forms of ideological orientation are sometimes concentrated on particular and segmented objects—for example, the abolition of slavery or the promotion of the rights of a particular sector of the population, such as an ethnic group or a social stratum. They do not expand to the point where they embrace the whole society as the objects of the sought-for transformation. The attachment of such programs to the central institutional or value systems may be so strong that it survives an intense but segmental alienation with respect to particular institutional practices or particular beliefs. This is characteristic of certain modern “reform movements,” such as the abolitionist movements in Great Britain in the early eighteenth century and in the United States in the period up to the Civil War. These movements have focused their attention and efforts on specific segments of the central institutional system, demanding the conformity of conduct with moral principles that can neither be yielded nor compromised. Although such programs and the movements which are their structural counterparts do not insist on the complete transformation of the whole society, they are uncompromisingly insistent on the attainment of their particular ideally prescribed ends. Often these movements have been borne by a small circle of persons organized into a quasi-ideological primary group. To some extent this type of group draws boundaries around itself and regards itself as disjunctively separated from its enemies, who are not, however, as in more fully developed ideological primary groups, regarded as identical with the totality of the environing society.
Proto-ideological phenomena
Another variant of ideological phenomena is to be seen in those collectivities—such as adolescent gangs and military and paramilitary units—which, although “sodality-like” in structure, do not have the intellectual patterns which are here designated as ideological. Such collectivities are alienated from the prevailing outlook associated with the central institutional and value systems and draw sharply defined boundaries around themselves. Moreover, they insist on a concentration of loyalty to the group and on stringent discipline to the standards of the group and have simplistic criteria of partisanship and enmity. They do not, however, develop or espouse a coherent moral and intellectual doctrine. Such proto-ideological primary groups have no well-developed and principled view of the contemporary society which surrounds them; no less important, they have no image of a comprehensive order that would permanently replace the order from which they are alienated. The “world” is the enemy with which they are at war, but they have no interest in taking it over and refashioning it in the name of a cosmically significant principle. In this respect, this type of group approximates the “withdrawn” ideological primary group; however, unlike the latter, the proto-ideological group is aggressively at war with an enemy and lacks an intellectual doctrine.
The failure of the proto-ideological primary group to develop an ideology might be attributed to the insufficient intellectual endowment of its members and, above all, to the absence of a charismatic ideological personality, that is, a founder who is sufficiently educated or sufficiently creative to provide them with a more complex system of beliefs. Such groups lack sufficient contact with both the central value system and the tradition of ideological orientation. They are “rebels without a cause.” (The boys’ gangs of the great cities of the Western world are typical of these proto-ideological formations; as such, they contrast with the more ideological youth groups which flourished in Germany from the last years of the nineteenth century to the coming of World War II.)
The functions of ideologies
Ideologies are often accepted by persons who, by temperament or by culture, are ideologically predisposed. Such persons might be inclined to express their views with aggressive affect, might feel a strong need to distinguish between comrades and enemies, or might have been raised in a salvation-ary, apocalyptic culture. There are, however, persons who do not have this predisposition but who nevertheless come under the influence of ideology because of fortuitous circumstances or through the strain of crisis. In such persons ideologies can, up to a point and for a limited time, exert a powerful influence. By making them believe they are in contact with the ultimate powers of existence, ideology will greatly reinforce their motivation to act. They will gain courage from perceiving themselves as part of a cosmic scheme; actions that they would not dare to envisage before will now have the legitimacy which proximity to the sacred provides.
Ideologies intend either the disruption of the central institutional and value systems by conflict with them or the denial of the claims of these systems by withdrawal from them. In the former case, ideologies aim at “total” replacement. However, they do not succeed in this, even where their bearers are successful in the acquisition of power in the larger society. Where an ideological primary group succeeds in overcoming existing elites and comes to rule over the society, it is incapable of completely and enduringly suppressing the previously predominant outlook. It is unsuccessful on a number of grounds. First, the ideology has to contend with strong attachments to the previously prevailing central value systems or outlook among the population at large, and the resources available to the ideological elites are not adequate for suppressing these attachments; too much remains outside the scope of their control or surveillance. Then, as time passes, some elements (although never all) of the previously prevailing outlook reassert themselves. This process is assisted by the fact that the members of the ideological primary group themselves, in the course of time, fall away from their zealous espousal of the ideology and fall back toward one of the outlooks from which the ideology sprang. As the ideological primary group continues in power, the obstacles to the realization of their goals, the multiplicity of alternative paths of action, and other circumstances cause some of the members of the group, especially newly recruited ones, to have recourse to ideas which fall outside the once-adhered-to system of thought.
Ideological primary groups, whether or not they succeed in their aspiration to rule, inevitably fail in the fulfillment of their global aspirations. The “normal” pattern of value orientations, which they have sought to overcome, either persists or reasserts itself. However, some change does occur: these groups leave behind adherents who survive despite failure and in the face of restoration. Where routinization occurs, as in the case of an ideological elite which is not expelled from authority, the new routine is never quite the same as the one which it replaced, however much it diverges from the stringent demands of the ideology in the name of which it was originally established.
Once the ideological orientation comes to be passed on to the next generation, by tradition as well as by systematic teaching, it encounters the resistance which is characteristic of intergenera-tional relationships, and this in its turn introduces modifications in the direction of compromise and adaptation to primordial and personal needs, as well as to civil exigencies. However, the ideological orientation has not lived in vain. Those who appear to have rejected it or to have become more indifferent to it live under a tradition which has absorbed at least some of the heightened accents which the ideology has brought to the configuration of elements taken over from the prevailing outlook or creeds.
When an expansive ideological primary group does not succeed in attaining dominance, yet endures for a substantial period and impinges on the awareness of the custodians of the central institutional and value systems, it precipitates a partial reorientation of the previously dominant outlook, bringing about a new emphasis within the framework of the older outlook. It renews sensibilities and heightens consciousness of the demands of moral and cognitive orientations which have slipped into a state of partial ineffectiveness. The old order, against which it contended, is never the same because the old order has adapted itself to the challenge and assimilated into itself some of the emphases of the ideology.
Truth and ideology
The question of the relationship between truth and ideology has been raised by the tradition of European thought which culminated in Marxism and in the sociology of knowledge developed by Mannheim [see the biography ofMannheim]. According to this view, ideology is by its nature untruthful, since it entails a “masking” or “veiling” of unavowed and unperceived motives or “interests.” These interests impel the deception of antagonists and the transfiguration of narrow sectional ends and interests by means of an ostensible universalization. They distort reality for the ideologists and for their antagonists. Thus, in this view, ideology is a manifestation of a “false consciousness.”
Viewed from a more dispassionate standpoint, which is less involved in a particular historical metaphysic and less involved in proving everyone else wrong and itself incontestably and cosmically right, the question of the compatibility of scientific or scholarly truth with ideology does not admit of a single, unequivocal answer. Ideologies, like all complex cognitive patterns, contain many propositions; even though ideologists strive for, and claim to possess, systematic integration, they are never completely successful in this regard. Hence, true propositions can coexist alongside false ones. Ideologies hostile to the prevailing outlook and the central institutional system of a society have not infrequently contained truthful propositions about important particular features of the existing order, and have drawn attention to particular variables which were either not perceived or not acknowledged by scholars and thinkers who took a more affirmative, or at least a less alienated, attitude toward the existing order. On the other hand, ideologies have no less frequently been in fundamental error about very important aspects of social structure, especially about the working of the central institutional system, about which they have had so many hostile fantasies.
With reference to the cognitive truthfulness of ideologies, it should be pointed out that no great ideology has ever regarded the disciplined pursuit of truth—by scientific procedures and in the mood characteristic of modern science—as part of its obligations. The very conception of an autonomous sphere and an autonomous tradition of disciplined intellectual activity is alien to the totalistic demands of the ideological orientation. Indeed, ideologies do not accredit the independent cognitive powers and strivings of man.
This view is also expressed in the proposition that ideologies must necessarily be distortions of reality because they are impelled by considerations of prospective advantage or of interest. Like the ideological orientation, the view which asserts the inevitability of false consciousness assumes that cognitive motives and standards play little part in the determination of success or failure in the assessment of reality. It assumes that training in observation and discrimination and discipline in their exercise, rational criticism, and an intellectual tradition are of little importance in the formation of propositions about reality. For example, Mannheim conceived of the freischwebende Intelligenz, an intellectual stratum which would be able to free itself from the deformations of the ideological orientation in consequence of its “socially unattached” and therefore class-disinterested character, but he never considered that detachment could be a product of moral and intellectual training and discipline. This view is obviously incorrect in principle, even though in reality, evaluative (and therewith ideological) orientations have often hampered the free exercise of the powers of reason, observation, and judgment. Its incorrectness must be acknowledged as such by those who assert that all knowledge is ideological and that truth cannot be discerned because interests and passions interfere—at least if they believe in the truthfulness of their own assertion.
The ideological culture—in the sense described earlier—does in fact often interfere with the attainment of truth. This is, however, a result of the closure of the ideological disposition to new evidence and its distrust of all who do not share the same ideological disposition. The chief source of tension between ideology and truth lies, therefore, in the concurrent demands of the exponents of ideologies for unity of belief and disciplined adherence on the part of their fellow believers. Both of these features of the ideological orientation make for dogmatic inflexibility and unwillingness to allow new experience to contribute to the growth of truth. This applies particularly to the social sciences, the subject matter of which overlaps so considerably with that of ideology and which is therefore so often the object of ideological and quasi-ideological judgments. The tension is less pronounced with respect to the natural sciences; however, there, too, ideologies tend to inhibit the growth of understanding, because of their concern with man’s nature and the nature of the universe and because of their insistence on the unity of knowledge. Thus, however great the insight contained in an ideology, the potentialities for the further development of understanding within the context of the ideology or by the efforts of the ideologists are hampered and distorted, especially where the proponents succeed in establishing control over the central institutional system (particularly the central cultural institutional system).
A related question, which has often been discussed, is whether all forms of scientific knowledge in the natural and social sciences are parts of ideologies. In the sense in which ideology has been defined and used in the foregoing analysis, this proposition must be rejected. The great advances in scientific knowledge have been influenced here and there by fragments of ideologies or quasi ideologies, just as they have been influenced, to a greater extent, by prevailing outlooks and creeds. (Outlooks and even creeds, by virtue of their inherent pluralism, allow more freedom for the uninhibited exercise of the cognitive powers of man.) But science is not and never has been an integral part of an ideological culture. Indeed, the spirit in which science works is alien to ideology. Marxism is the only great ideology which has had a substantial scientific content, and the social sciences have benefited from it in certain respects. Nonetheless, the modern social sciences have not grown up in the context of ideologies, and their progress has carried with it an erosion of ideology. It is true that the social sciences have absorbed and domesticated bits of ideologies and have formed parts of the prevailing outlooks, creeds, and movements of thought of the educated classes of various modern societies. As such they have often been opposed to, and critical of, various aspects of the existing social and cultural systems, but they themselves have seldom been ideological. Insofar as the social sciences have been genuinely intellectual pursuits, which have their own rules of observation and judgment and are open to criticism and revision, they are antipathetic to ideology. That they have come increasingly to contribute to the prevailing outlooks, movements of thought, and programs of their respective societies is not, and cannot be, relevant to any judgment concerning their truthfulness.
Although scientific activities and outlooks—in terms of both procedure and substance—are parts of a general culture or a prevailing outlook, they are very loosely integrated parts of those cultures or outlooks (just as the various parts of science are not completely integrated with each other). As explained above, it is characteristic of prevailing outlooks to be loosely integrated internally and to have no single element that predominates exclusively over the others. In a great variety of ways, the scientific and the nonscientific parts of prevailing outlooks, creeds, and movements of thought influence each other, and at the same time, each part possesses considerable autonomy. It is likely that this relationship will become more intense in the future and that scientific knowledge, although never becoming exclusively dominant, will have an even greater influence on prevailing outlooks, creeds, and movements of thought than it has had. For all these reasons, assertions to the effect that “science is an ideology” or that “the social sciences are as ideological as the ideologies they criticize” must be rejected.
The end of ideology?
In the 1950s, with the beginning of the “thaw” in the communist countries and the growing disillusionment about the realization of Marxist ideology in the advanced countries, reference was frequently made to an “end of ideology.” Those who propounded this conception originally intended it to refer only to the situation existing at that time. However, antagonists of the idea took it to imply that ideologies (in the sense used in this article) could never again exist. Moreover, they also took it to mean that ideals, ethical standards, and general or comprehensive social views and policies were no longer either relevant or possible in human society. This was a misunderstanding engendered to some extent by the failure of both proponents and critics of the concept of the end of ideology to distinguish between ideology and outlook and between ideology and program. Since a better understanding of these distinctions might obviate much of the contention, I will attempt to clarify some of the issues involved.
In the first place, it is obvious that no society can exist without a cognitive, moral, and expressive culture. Standards of truth, beauty, and goodness are inherent in the structure of human action. The culture which is generated from cognitive, moral, and expressive needs and which is transmitted and sustained by tradition is part of the very constitution of society. Thus, since every society has a culture, each will have a complex set of orientations toward man, society, and the universe in which ethical and metaphysical propositions, aesthetic judgments, and scientific knowledge will be present. These will form the outlooks and creeds of the society. Thus, there can never be an “end” of outlooks and creeds. Similarly, there can never be an “end” of movements of thought and programs. The contention arose from the failure to distinguish these and ideology in the sense here understood.
However, the theoretical conception implicit in the idea of the end of ideology goes further than this. The concept implies not only that any culture is capable of being in a state of loose integration (with much autonomy of its different parts) but also that the ongoing culture of any society which has attained a considerable degree of differentiation is loosely integrated most of the time and therefore cannot be completely supplanted by an ideology. It follows that this theory regards an ideological state, which is characterized by a high degree of integration among the elements of a culture, as inherently marginal and highly unstable. According to the proponents of the end of ideology, the ideological state is one which is incapable of enduring extension to an entire society. The exponents of the end of ideology were taking note of the recession of the titanic attempts in Europe to extend the ideologies of fascism and communism to entire societies, as well as the diminution of the belief among Western intellectuals that such extensions were enduringly possible or desirable.
Moreover, those who spoke of the end of ideology did not assert or imply that the human race had reached a condition or a stage of development in and after which ideologies could no longer occur. On the contrary, the potentiality for ideology seems to be a permanent part of the human constitution. As we have seen, in conditions of crisis, when hitherto prevailing elites fail and are discredited and when the central institutions and culture with which they associate themselves seem unable to find the right course of action, ideological propensities are heightened. The need for direct contact with the sources or powers of creativity and legitimacy and for a comprehensive organization of life permeated by those powers is an intermittent and occasional need in most human beings and an overwhelming and continuous need in a few. The confluence of the aroused need in the former with the presence of the latter generates and intensifies ideological orientations.
As long as human societies are afflicted by crises and as long as man has a need to be in direct contact with the sacred, ideologies will recur. As long as there is a discrepancy between the ideal and the actual, a strong impetus for ideologies will exist. The strongly ideological potentialities of the tradition of the modern Western outlook are almost a guarantee of the persistent recurrence of ideology. The idea of the end of ideology was only an assertion that the potentiality for ideology need not always be realized and that in the 1950s this potentiality was receding in the West. It asserted that this was coming to be recognized and that both the facts and their recognition were desirable for the good ordering of society and man’s well-being.
Edward Shils
[See alsoKnowledge, sociology of; Social movements. For specific examples of ideologies, seeDemocracy; Fascism; International relations, article onIdeological aspects; Marxism; Totalitarianism. Other relevant material may be foundinAlienation; Consensus; Political theory; and in the guide to the reader underReligion.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aron, Raymond (1955) 1957 The Opium of the Intellectuals. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ? First published in French. A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Norton. See especially pages 305-324 on “The End of the Ideological Age?”
Aron, Raymond 1965 Société industrielle, idéologies, philosophic Parts 1, 2, and 3. Preuves no. 167:3-13; no. 168:12-24; no. 169:23-41.
Barth, Hans (1945) 1961 Wahrheit und Ideologie. 2d ed., enl. Zurich: Rentsch.
Bell, Daniel (1960) 1962 The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. 2d ed., rev. New York: Collier. ? See especially pages 21-38 on “America as a Mass Society: A Critique.”
Bendix, Reinhard 1964 The Age of Ideology: Persistent and Changing. Pages 294-327 in David E. Apter (editor), Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press.
Bergmann, Gustav 1951 Ideology. Ethics 61:205-218.
Geertz, Clifford 1964 Ideology as a Cultural System. Pages 47-76 in David E. Apter (editor), Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press.
Jordan, Pascual 1955 Das Ende der Ideologien. Neue deutsche Hefte 2:581-594.
Lenk, Kurt (editor) (1961) 1964 Ideologie: Ideologie-kritik und Wissenssoziologie. Neuwied (Germany): Luchterhand.
Lichtheim, George 1965 The Concept of Ideology. History and Theory 4:164-195.
Lipset, Seymour M. 1960 Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, N.Y.; Doubleday. -? See especially pages 439-456 on “The End of Ideology.” A paperback edition was published in 1963.
Mannheim, Karl (1929-1931) 1954 Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt; London: Routledge. ? First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Harcourt.
Oakeshott, Michael J. 1962 Rationalism in Politics, and Other Essays. New York: Basic Books. ? See especially pages 1-36.
Schmalenbach, Herman 1922 Die soziologische Kate-gorie des Bundes. Dioskuren 1:35-105.
Shils, Edward 1955 The End of Ideology? Encounter 5, no. 5:52-58.
Shils, Edward 1958 Ideology and Civility: On the Politics of the Intellectual. Sewanee Review 66:450-480.
Weber, Max (1922) 1956 Umbildung des Charisma. Volume 1, pages 758-778 in Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Sozio-logie. 4th ed. Tübingen (Germany): Mohr.
II IDEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
The word “ideology” was first used, in the late eighteenth century, to mean “the study of ideas,” but it soon came to refer to ideas about society, with the connotation that these ideas were distorted or unduly selective from a rational, objective point of view. It will be useful, however, to distinguish four meanings of “ideology.”
(1) One of the most common uses of the term is defined as follows in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: “the integrated assertions, theories, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.” Note that in this meaning an ideology embraces both normative and allegedly factual elements and that the allegedly factual elements are not necessarily distorted. Only slightly departing from this conception is the following definition: “Ideology is a pattern of beliefs and concepts (both factual and normative) which purport to explain complex social phenomena with a view to directing and simplifying sociopolitical choices facing individuals and groups” (Gould 1964, p. 315). This definition suggests the almost universal tendency of sociopolitical programs, in a polemical context, to simplify (that is, to distort) to some extent. Many writers, however, would reject the (perhaps unintended) implication that such distortion is necessarily conscious. The ideologist himself frequently distorts unwittingly; and the success of ideology, in the sense of its acceptance by a public, of course depends upon the public’s being unaware on the whole that the ideas are distorted. Geertz (1964) thinks that a practical complex of ideas, values, and aims should mainly be viewed as a “schematic image of social order” in situations that are inadequately defined in traditional terms, and that the presence of distortion and selectivity should be regarded as secondary and as an empirical question in each case. “A schematic image of social order” is a possible definition of the “neutral” sense of “ideology.” Not all writers who use the term “ideology” in the neutral sense, however, would confine it to ideas developed only in periods of change—but perhaps Geertz himself would not either; he happened to be writing about so-called developing countries or new nations.
(2)Another common meaning of the term “ideology” is defined in Webster’s Third New International as follows: “an extremist sociopolitical program or philosophy constructed wholly or in part on factitious or hypothetical ideational bases.” An ideology in this sense may be of the “left” or of the “right” (whatever these terms may mean in the specific sociopolitical context). An extremist ideology may be a comprehensive, closed system of ideas. It is this pretentious kind of ideology that Daniel Bell had in mind when he “defined an ideological writer as one who runs down the street crying ’ I’ ve got an answer, who’s got a question?’” (see Gilroy 1966).
(3) Karl Marx, who gave prominence to the term “ideology,” used it for distorted or selected ideas in defense of the status quo of a social system. Marxists today often use the term with this connotation, as when they speak of “capitalist ideology”; but the various communist parties have more or less official ideologists, and they of course are not officially defined as distorters. Their task is to provide justification and apparent continuity for party policy by trying to show that particular policies and decisions are in line with the values and ideas of Marx (or Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao Tse-tung, etc.). Karl Mannheim also used the term “ideology” to refer to conservative ideas. Like Marx, he tended to imply that conservative ideas are always distorted; but, again like Marx, he was not consistent on this point. He gradually and unevenly worked away from his early view, inconsistently expressed, that all ideas are determined by their holders’ position or positions in the social system and are necessarily distorted, to the more tenable view, previously expressed by Max Weber, among others, that although one’s ideas may to some extent be related in various possible ways to one’s social position, these ideas may or may not be distorted in the sense of being unscientific, and that the same criteria of truth and validity apply regardless of the social origin of ideas. The relevant works and aspects of Marx, Mannheim, and Weber are considered in the critical exposition and commentary by Merton ([1949] 1957, pp. 456-508).
(4) The definition of ideology adopted for the rest of this article is both broader and narrower than the foregoing definitions. Ideology consists of selected or distorted ideas about a social system or a class of social systems when these ideas purport to be factual, and also carry a more or less explicit evaluation of the “facts.” This definition is narrow in that ideology consists only of those parts or aspects of a system of social ideas which are distorted or unduly selective from a scientific point of view. An ideology is a more or less coherent system of ideas in which ideological distortion is important. (Strictly speaking, the expression “ideological distortion” is pleonastic, but I shall use it nevertheless, since this technical meaning of “ideology” is not universally established.) This fourth definition of ideology is broader than some of the previous ones in that it does not restrict ideology to the conservative type. I shall return to this point below.
Since social life is complex and most people are not careful students of it, distorted ideas about social systems are extremely common. By simplifying complex situations, these ideas help many diverse people to cooperate toward the same goals. They define the situation and justify a particular course of action. Depending upon one’s values and the particular circumstances, one can say, therefore, that ideology sometimes helps in achieving desirable social change, sometimes facilitates undesirable social change, and at other times facilitates desirable or undesirable resistance to social pressure for change.
Ideology and social values
Ideological distortion is either an exaggeration or an underrepresentation of the extent to which one or more social values are or can be institutionalized in the social systems in question (Parsons 1959). The precise meaning of “institutionalization” will be given below; but, briefly, the distortion in ideology has to do with the extent to which social values are actually realized or carried out in all the transactions of the system of social interaction. Social values are conceptions of what the social system would be like in its ideal form—conceptions, moreover, that people are committed to realizing. How many people, how deeply committed—these are variables.
This conception of ideology implies that we carefully distinguish between ideology, on the one hand, and, on the other, (1) social values themselves, (2) social science, (3) valid facts about particular social systems, and (4) nonempirical beliefs (e.g., religious ideas). The reasons for making these distinctions will appear below.
Social values. The reference to a social value system need not be direct. For example, racists in the United States (who are in a minority) believe that Negroes are biologically inferior to whites, that they are incapable of producing higher civilization, and that the attempt to integrate them with whites, or even to extend to them the right to vote (where they do not already have it), will, by encouraging eventual racial amalgamation, debase the biological conditions of civilization itself and thus destroy the American way of life. Thus, by denying, in effect, that Negroes are full human beings, these racists are denying that segregation and other forms of discrimination are really contrary to American social values. Since the racist belief is erroneous, it may be regarded as an ideology that exaggerates the extent to which certain social values are already realized in the social system of the United States. Strengthened by this ideology, these racists feel justified in resisting social reforms that the vast majority of the population favor to a varying extent.
Social science. Social science, of course, is abstract and general and consists of systematic statements about uniformities of process in social systems. Ideology, however, refers to particular social systems or classes of historical systems. Therefore, social science is not the direct criterion by which we judge whether or not particular ideas are ideological. The direct criterion is what Parsons (1959) calls a “value-science integrate.” The ideas to be judged purport to describe a particular social system or some of its aspects. The corresponding value-science integrate is an objective description of the same social system, a description made with reference to the conceptual schemes of social science but showing to what extent in fact the cultural value system of that particular social system is carried out or realized in the various levels of its structure. If the ideas to be judged depart from this value-science integrate, the departures are said to be ideological.
This test is no doubt difficult to apply in some cases, but to deny the possibility of such a test is in effect to deny the possibility of social science. Some writers come close to doing exactly this. In the present article, however, I shall assume that there are objective and applicable criteria of validity for social science and that social science, despite its imperfections, does in fact exist and is being extended.
Note that the social values involved in a value-science integrate are empirical data: they are not necessarily the values of the social scientist; they are the values of the social system in question. Thus, the concept of a value-science integrate depends upon the theory, well established since the work of Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons, that the structure of a social system is fundamentally cultural and fundamentally normative, even though that structure may, of course, be stabilized in part by vested interests and even by ideology. Values are the highest level of the normative structure of a social system.
From these statements, it follows that a value-science integrate is not, in principle, either a defense of or an attack upon the social system to which it refers. To be adequate, it must show, for example, the respects in which the value system is not carried out, as well as the respects in which it is. In its essential neutrality, the value-science integrate differs, of course, from ideology, the function of which in a social system is always essentially polemical.
Valid facts. We do not ordinarily regard the acceptance of valid ideas as a phenomenon that requires special explanation. Many ideas that people have about the social systems in which they participate are, of course, accurate enough even from a social science point of view. But a great many popular ideas are distorted or selective and loaded with strained evaluations; and these ideas might well be the object of special investigation. Thus, the distinction between social science and valid descriptive statements, on the one hand, and ideology, on the other, is a desirable one.
Nonempirical beliefs. By definition, the conception of cognitive distortion and selectivity requires that a distinction be made between ideology and “religious” ideas (more precisely, nonempirical existential ideas). These latter are also likely, however, to be connected with ultimate social values. As was noted in passing, the stability of a status quo may depend, in part, upon ideology; but a given value system may be compatible with more than one set of cognitive ideas, and these need not be ideological. Therefore, it is scientifically desirable, as noted above, to distinguish between a value system itself and ideology.
Needless to say, however, all these distinctions are analytical. A particular set of ideas may contain, as elements, social values, nonempirical references, various empirical facts, and some ideological distortions.
Concept of institutionalization
The concept of institutionalization involves distinguishing four levels of social structure: values, norms, collectivities with more or less specialized goals, and status-roles. These four levels are increasingly specific in the double sense that they provide increasingly specific guidance to units in the social system and have increasingly specific reference to the situations in which these units act. All the levels are normative in a broad sense of the term. Values, norms, goals, and task-oriented roles all imply directionality and an effort to realize something desirable (from the point of view of the actor, of course).
The four levels compose a hierarchy of normative control in the sense that the more general levels are sources of legitimation for the more specific levels, provide directional guidance for the content of the more specific levels, and are sources of corrective pressure if the more specific levels depart from them. A fully institutionalized value system would be carried out (“specified,” as Parsons puts it) through all the ramifications of the lower levels. This would mean that all aspects of social structure would be legitimate in the sociological sense, would be internalized in the personalities of the participants to whom they applied, would be the normative basis of operative complementary expectations in the entire interaction system, would be supported by positive and negative social sanctions, and would be the basis of legitimacy of vested interests in the system.
In fact, of course, no societal value system is fully institutionalized in this sense. Nevertheless, in any social system there is a “strain toward consistency,” in the sense that the hierarchy of normative control operates as a dynamic factor to maintain pattern consistency, to correct inconsistencies, or to extend the implications of the value pattern. A social system with conflicting hierarchies of normative control that are approximately equal in power is in extreme disequilibrium. It has a grave problem of social control; it may well undergo far-reaching structural change; and, especially if it is a subsocietal system, it may be in danger of dissolution. Short of this extreme state of affairs, most social systems, although integrated to a greater extent, still are imperfectly integrated. Any hierarchy of control in operation encounters situational obstacles; and more or less stabilized accommodations between the situation and the value system (or one or more of its specifications) are more or less common. Various kinds and amounts of alienation and deviant behavior also occur. The normative integration of a social system is a variable matter of degree. Since social malintegration tends to generate ideology, the latter may be regarded, in many cases, as a symptom of malintegration.
Sources of ideology
This section will distinguish five fairly general interrelated sources of ideological distortion and selectivity: (1) social strain, (2) vested interests and prospective gains, (3) bitterness about social change that has already occurred, (4) limited perspective due to social position, and (5) the persistence of outmoded traditions of thought.
Social strain. One of the most general sources of distortion is the presence of strain in the social system. Strain is dissatisfaction with some aspect of the functioning of the system—with, for example, the level of goal attainment or with the distribution of rewards, opportunities, authority, or facilities. Dissatisfaction with the functioning of the system is ultimately the dissatisfaction of persons in status-roles, but the extent of strain will depend upon how many status-roles are affected and how deep the dissatisfaction is. Dissatisfaction with the value system, for instance, would necessarily mean dissatisfaction with all the levels of social structure below the value level.
Even if a social system were in perfect equilibrium, with all levels of social structure securely institutionalized, strain might well arise from some change in the environment. This does not mean, of course, that the stability of social structure requires an unchanging environment; but changes in the environment do tend to pose problems and to lead to distorted views.
Probably the most important external source of strain is cultural change. Changes in religion, science, or technology may have a profound impact on people’s conceptions of what is possible and what is tolerable. Culture as an action system is, of course, interdependent with the social system, but analytically it is an independent system also, so that the impact of scientific change is technically an impact from outside the social system. The current controversy over the potential effects of automation (a result of scientific and technological change) illustrates both strain and ideological distortion. Even expert opinion ranges from the view that automation tends to increase employment opportunities to the view that, especially in the short run and in the very long run, automation threatens us with widespread unemployment and that our value system itself may have to change. It seems likely that the views being expressed cannot all be correct and that some of them express distorted conceptions even of the present society: in short, considerable ideology is involved in the discussion.
Another external source of strain and ideology is difficulty in the external relations of the social system. Frustration on a large scale is likely to be expressed, in part, in scapegoating, a particularly prominent kind of ideological distortion.
Large-scale immigration is a special case of strain arising from the environment. Persons socialized in a different social system, especially if they are numerous enough and concentrated enough to preserve a group identity and culture, may give rise to anxiety and distorted ideas. Anticipating this source of strain, an enlightened government will regulate the flow of immigration and will then take steps to forestall ideological distortion as much as possible.
Actually, of course, social systems always have some degree of malintegration, so that there are virtually always internal sources of strain. Of these, two are particularly important. First is perceived inconsistency at any level of social structure or between a higher level and a lower level or levels. An earlier section touched upon racist ideology in the United States. This ideology is in part a reaction to social pressure arising from the correction function of the hierarchy of control: Discriminatory patterns are manifestly inconsistent with the social values of equality of opportunity and equal protection of the laws, and many persons imbued with these values (whites as well as Negroes) are pressing to eliminate discrimination. This pressure and resistance to it are, of course, also connected with another source of ideology (or another aspect of the same source), vested interests and prospective gains. This point will be discussed again later.
The second internal source of strain is anomie: inadequacy of the cultural patterning of social interaction, as manifested in uncertainty and anxiety about rights and obligations and about the functioning of the social system as it affects particular social groups, categories, and persons-in-roles. In one sense of “inadequacy,” the other internal source of strain (inconsistency between levels of social structure) is similar to anomie: the program implicit in the value system has been inadequately carried out. As distinguished from anomie in a narrow sense, however, the inconsistent patterns of expectation at a lower level or levels may be definite enough but are unacceptable because they are not fully legitimate in the sociological sense. Anomie, on the other hand (in the narrow sense intended here), is connected with two possible states of affairs.
The first is an aspect of a source of strain already mentioned—the impact of the situation upon the social system. For example, a sudden rise in unemployment or a sudden threat from another social system may produce confusion about what should be done. There may be agreement that something should be done, but until the political processes have had a chance to produce binding decisions and effective measures, there is likely to be considerable confusion, manifested in distorted ideas about the causes of the situation, the extent of its seriousness, and the rights and obligations of various participants in the system.
The second general cause of anomie in the narrow sense is the fact that adjustments to social change take time. Since it is characteristic of a system that its parts are interdependent, a change in one part of the system will tend to produce a kind of transitional strain until other parts of the system have caught up with the first change. During this transitional period, which may last a long time, there will be a certain amount of anomie—that is, lack of clarity in expectations. This strain is likely to be expressed in ideology as well as in other ways.
Vested interests. Closely connected with some of the above kinds of strain is concern for vested interests or prospective gains. By “vested interests” are meant all kinds of advantages, tangible and intangible, that enjoy some measure of legitimacy and protection from the status quo at any given time. Since the value system is seldom or never perfectly institutionalized, some vested interests are more secure than others in that they are more consistent with the value system and therefore are less likely to be successfully attacked so long as the value system itself is dominant. Any proposal for social change at the second or third level of social structure will, if successful, affect some vested interests adversely and will also bring prospective gains. In other words, social change involves a new definition of legitimate interests. The greatest redefinition of legitimate interests will occur, of course, if the value system itself is overthrown and a new one is put in its place.
The likelihood that groups and individuals who have vested interests will defend them by means of distorted arguments is too well known to require extended comment. If anything, many people exaggerate the relative importance of concern for vested interests as a source of ideology.
Those who stand to gain from a proposed social change are also, of course, likely to be less than objective in their appraisal of the status quo and of the general merit of the proposed change.
Bitterness. Social change usually takes place only against opposition, and even if it is successful, those who have lost something as a result of it are, of course, likely to be embittered. Thus an important source of ideology is the bitter feeling of groups, social categories, or individuals who have lost social prestige, wealth, income, or authority. They may think they see a far-reaching conspiracy against them and perceive the value system as decaying when more objective observers may feel that it has been invigorated by the social changes in question. The loss or reduction of prestige and influence can be rather subtle. For example, cultural differentiation in recent times has meant, in part, the growing distinctiveness of the various social sciences vis-àvis the older humane disciplines, such as history and literature. The rise of sociology has meant the relative decline, in certain fields of judgment, of the influence of older literary experts. To some extent, the widespread, rather indiscriminate hostility to technical jargon expresses the status insecurity of the undifferentiated sage, who displaces his feelings by charging that dehumanization has occurred.
Limited social perspective. It may be presumed that a very general cause of distortion is the fact that everyone occupies a limited number of social positions and therefore does not have an opportunity to acquire firsthand knowledge of most of the system. Since whites in the United States have been segregated to a considerable extent from Negroes, they have also been insulated to some extent against detailed knowledge of the relative deprivation that many Negroes suffer. Consequently, many whites can innocently imagine that the value system is better realized than it actually is. This, of course, is ideology.
Outmoded science. The foregoing discussion has presented perhaps the main general sources of ideology. It is necessary to add another point. Ideology is often equated with rationalization in the psychological sense. This equation perhaps arises from the widespread and partly correct theory that ideology is essentially a defense of vested interests. Actually, however, people may have ideological ideas that are even contrary to their interests or that are related to their interests in so complex a way that experts would hesitate to attempt to calculate the net effect. Sutton and his associates (1956) pointed out this fact concerning widely held erroneous economic theories. Many people, for example, although fewer than formerly, believe that national bankruptcy is likely to occur if the national debt is allowed to get any bigger. This belief is due to misunderstanding of scientific theory or to the persistence, in popular thought, of outmoded theory. This particular belief must be regarded as ideological to the extent that it causes people to accept as inevitable problems that might be sharply reduced by appropriate government spending. In effect, these people are exaggerating the extent to which social values have been realized, by underestimating the extent to which they could be realized. Such ideology, however, is not necessarily a rationalization, for rationalization assumes that unconsciously the truth is known but cannot be faced at the conscious level.
Types of ideology
Ideologies fall fairly readily into four types: conservative, counter-, reform, and revolutionary (Parsons 1959). (We must keep in mind that the term “ideologies” means systems of doctrine that include a fairly large amount of ideology.) The four types strongly suggest the basic function of ideology, which is to define a particular program of social action as legitimate and worthy of support.
A conservative ideology cannot be identified by the content of the values it supports or advocates. It is conservative in that it is in effect an apology for the status quo in one or more of its aspects. A reform ideology favors reform; a revolutionary ideology favors change in the value system of the status quo (i.e., in the highest level of social structure); and a counterideology is an ideology that somehow by distortion or selection makes some kind of deviant behavior appear justified. A common form of counterideology is to exaggerate the extent of the deviant behavior in question and to claim that respectable people, if one only knew, practice the deviant behavior themselves but are hypocritical about it.
Perhaps it should be emphasized once more that not every conservative, reform, revolutionary, or counterdoctrine need contain a large amount of ideology. Ideology, properly speaking, is a variable element in such doctrines.
Focuses of ideology
Distorted or selective ideas tend to develop around focuses—that is, points that are crucial to the functioning of a social system. Of these, five can be usefully distinguished: (1) causes of strain, (2) extent of strain, (3) goals of social action, (4) other social systems (with which the system of reference is compared), and (5) the nature of the dominant value system and its implications.
Causes of strain. As has been noted, scapegoat-ing is probably the most common form of ideology focused on the causes of strain. Scapegoating is the displacement of blame for frustration from the true cause onto a person or persons, a group or groups, who have little or nothing to do with the frustration. For scapegoating to occur, some at least of the scapegoaters must be unaware of the irrationality and injustice of what they are thinking and doing. They, as well as the scapegoat, must be the victims of ideology. These victims—the scapegoaters themselves—may or may not also be the victims of propagandists who are deliberately deceiving them in order to mobilize or to divert their energies. Some writers focus attention mainly on the deliberate ideologists—manufacturers, as it were, of “big lies” —but in every case one should also seek to understand both the susceptibility of the audience to the distorted ideas and the vulnerability of the scapegoat. These are related. The selection of a scapegoat is not determined by its weakness alone; the scapegoat is always symbolically connected with the frustrations of the scapegoaters (Parsons 1942a; 1942b).
A separate question, worthy of analysis in each case, is the effects of an episode of scapegoating upon the social system in which it occurs. Aside from the suffering of the scapegoat, which is common, an episode of scapegoating has other consequences for the social system, including the scapegoaters themselves, and these consequences vary according to circumstances. Since each case is likely to be rather complex, the reader is referred to some cases that have been well analyzed. (See Parsons 1942a; 1942b; Bell 1955; Woodward [1955] 1966, pp. 31-109.)
The causes of strain may of course be the focus of ideology in which scapegoating is only one component. Outmoded scientific ideas and slanted ideas due to limited social perspective may or may not involve scapegoating.
Extent of strain. The second focus of ideology, the extent of strain, is tantamount to a focus on grievances or alleged grievances in the social system, although strain also occurs over goal attainment. Those who are opposed to change will tend to play down or underestimate the extent of legitimate grievance; those who favor change will tend to exaggerate grievances. This does not mean, of course, either that there are never any real grievances or that grievances are always exaggerated.
Goals of social action. Closely connected with ideas about the sources and extent of strain are ideas about how the strain might be removed. Thus, reform and revolutionary movements crystallize goals for social action. At this point also there is room for ideology. In particular, reform movements may have an exaggerated or unrealistic idea of the benefits to expect if the reforms they propose are carried through. As for revolutionary movements, their tendency to foster utopian hopes is well known.
Other social systems. An ideology often refers to other social systems. According to Myrdal (1966), many people in Europe, envying the prosperity and progress of Sweden, think that the Swedes are bored and unhappy; as evidence, these envious critics like to refer to the allegedly high suicide rate in Sweden. Myrdal suggests, however, that there is little objective evidence that the Swedes are less happy than other peoples; certainly they do not have to struggle to have enough to eat, a decent place to live in, adequate medical care, and both the time and the means for recreation. As for the suicide rate, that of Sweden is actually lower than the rates in several other countries and shows no sign of becoming higher as Sweden’s prosperity increases. Moreover, there are reasons for believing, even so, that the suicide rates in other countries may actually be higher than official statistics indicate, for in most countries suicide is a sin and a crime, and people cover up some suicides by reporting other causes of death; but in Sweden suicide is viewed as an individual right and a personal matter, and the ethical code of the country forbids newspapers to give publicity to suicides. Misrepresentation of Sweden in the United States is probably not due to envy, or not to envy alone. One aspect of American individualism is a playing down of problems of the nation as a whole, in the sense of playing down the need for coordinated cooperation of the whole nation toward attaining collective goals; there has even been a strong tradition of distrust of government, especially of the central government. One may speculate, therefore, that many Americans are disposed to think that the welfare state, as exemplified by Sweden, must destroy people’s moral fiber and individual initiative. Many foreigners are much impressed by the relative backwardness of the United States in social welfare, the more so since the United States is the richest country in the world but has enormous urban and rural slums. Speculating further, it is probable that many Americans are unaware that private enterprise in Sweden is both highly developed and highly valued.
Ideology is extremely common in international relations, probably because of relatively poor communication and mutual distrust, rivalry, or outright hostility. According to Chinese propagandists on the mainland, the so-called proletariat in the United States is waiting to be rescued from its capitalist, imperialist oppressors. Some Chinese in Taiwan, and a few people in the United States, imagine that the totalitarian government of mainland China has little or no popular support.
In a sense, the goals of a revolutionary movement are an example of focus upon another society —an imaginary society of the future. Conservative and anomic ideologies tend to romanticize the past —that is, to present a distorted favorable conception of a type of society alleged to have existed, in which people recognized truths and values now allegedly lost or being lost.
Value system. The fifth possible focus of ideology is the value system, the chief source of legitimation. Given the hierarchy of control that operates in social systems, the legitimation of social action, whether conservative or radical, is always a matter of concern. A value system is involved in the personalities of actors, and therefore in their motivation.
A radical ideology tends to exaggerate the failure of the social system to realize the dominant values. The dominant value system is declared to be a sham; those who profess the values are said to be hypocrites. The value system is pictured as a set of fake promises, issued to forestall needed social change. This negative picture of the value system of the status quo is the obverse of the utopianism involved in the picture of the ideal future society, to be realized under the guidance of a new or partly new value system. Revolutionary leaders claim legitimacy on the basis of the rightness of this new value system and their commitment to it.
Examples of conservative distortion of the value system of the status quo are likely to be more subtle. Thus, people who resist extending civil rights to Negroes in the United States have distorted the value system by ignoring its implications. A good example was the attempt, some years ago, to deny Negroes the right to vote in some southern states by claiming that the Democratic party was a private association and could make its own rules for participation in its primaries. (The Supreme Court ruled that the parties are so intimately involved in the electoral process that to exclude qualified voters from the primaries was in effect to disfranchise them, thus denying them equal rights.) Less subtle is the distortion by conservatives of the value system of the revolutionary movement or movements to which they are opposed. This distortion may be as great as the revolutionaries’ distortion of the value system of the status quo.
Importance of ideology
The fact that ideology is distorted or selective does not necessarily prevent it from having positive effects. Ideology may help a social system to achieve greater integration or greater adaptation or adaptive capacity. In this sense, it may be functional. For one thing, an ideology is likely to be a relatively simple definition of a complex situation—too simple, perhaps, by scientific standards, but for that very reason able to “explain” difficulties for a large number of people and able to activate them according to a common definition of the situation and a common plan. Even irrational hopes, if they are not so unrealistic as to cause grave disillusionment and greater strain, may help people to overcome their fear or their routine responses. The effects of earlier socialization, now inappropriate, may have to be neutralized. Participation in a movement for change may require loosening oneself to some extent from old loyalties and forming new ones. A certain kind of distortion connected with partisanship in general is usually considered to be an indicator of good morale, of identification with the group and loyalty to it. One would not wish one’s wife to be perfectly objective about the merits of her husband.
Ideology also, however, makes it easier, at times, for people to resist desirable change blindly. No judgment about functional consequences can be made without analysis of the system in which they occur and of its situation.
Since ideology is a symbol system, it may be viewed, to some extent, as if it were a work of art; and an analyst, equipped with the proper scientific perspective, might be able to infer from it a great deal about the total orientation of those who created it or to whom it appealed successfully. Like some works of art or other products of the creative imagination—dreams, for example—an ideology may reveal, to a qualified analyst, aspects of motivation that are latent or only dimly understood by the ideologist himself. Thus, the technical analysis of ideology can be a tool for the diagnosis, so to speak, of some aspects of the functioning (or malfunctioning) of the social system. The concept of ideology plays a part in the sociological theory of social stability and social change.
The analysis of ideology may also have practical value. No doubt the selection of this or that body of ideas for analysis may be determined, in part, by the social scientist’s own values. No matter : even if this is so, it does not necessarily mean that the analysis itself will be unscientific. In both domestic and international relations, rational action requires that each group expose, examine, and seek to understand dispassionately its own distortions and those of other groups. “Understanding” ideology is more than grasping the fact that distortion exists. It involves explaining why distortion exists, and why this particular distortion. For instance, in dealing with an adversary’s distortions, it is not enough to spread “the” correct facts; it is desirable (for greater effectiveness) to take into account the particular sources of the adversary’s ideology.
Control of ideology
Despite the fact that ideology may have positive functions for a social system, it is not necessary to emphasize that ignorance and error are not, generally speaking, a solid basis for the functioning of either a social system or a personality. If ideology builds up like an oyster’s secretion around strain, then anything that reduces strain will tend to limit the spread of ideology. Thus, all social mechanisms for the orderly expression and redress of grievances probably tend in the long run to reduce both strain and ideology.
Parsons believes that the professions can help to limit ideology, since they link the systematic sciences and studies, on the one hand, with the broad public, on the other. In limiting ideology, social science and law are perhaps especially important; but, since selection and distortion are the defining characteristics of ideology, probably the professionalizing of journalism, with higher educational requirements, more specialization, greater professional pride and independence, and higher standards of accuracy in analyzing, reporting, and anticipating the news, also operates to limit the spread of ideology.
Ideology, values, and evaluations
Popular thinkers, including ideologists, do not explicitly and habitually think in terms of a hierarchy of normative control comprising four levels of social structure. Therefore, the relevance of Parsons’ definition of ideology is not always evident at first glance. At the same time, careful analysis of popular ideas for their implicit ideological content in Parsons’sense, plus the attempt to explain distortion and selectivity in sociological terms, can make valuable contributions both to sociology and to practical life.
Geertz has suggested that it is hardly scientific to define ideology as distortion and selectivity. It is a fact, however, that distorted and selective ideas about social reality are extremely common, and there can be no valid objection to trying to explain why. Whether one wishes to call such ideas “ideological” is merely a matter of definition, but there is nothing unscientific about this usage. Geertz himself acknowledges that distortion does exist in social life when he attacks Edward Shils in the following way: “Shils’s tack of invoking the extreme pathologies of ideological thought—Nazism, Bolshevism, or whatever—as its paradigmatic forms is reminiscent of the tradition in which the Inquisition, the personal depravity of Renaissance popes, the savagery of Reformation wars, or the primitiveness of Bible-belt fundamentalism is offered as an archetype of religious belief and behavior” (Geertz 1964, p. 51). Neither Parsons nor Shils, however, has said that political doctrines and programs are composed entirely of ideology, or even that ideology is part of every political doctrine. In their sense, ideology is an element, present in highly variable degree, in popular ideas (and also in ideas that purport to be scientific).
Geertz also reminds us of the symbolic and often metaphorical character of polemical doctrines. They are not always intended or understood in a literal sense. Evaluative language does not necessarily involve cognitive distortion. (For an excellent analysis of the symbolic character of an ideology, see Parsons 1942a; 1942b.)
It remains scientifically and practically interesting, however, to know what Chairman Mao Tse-tung, for example, actually believes about the United States, and why, even when one makes due allowance for the fact that some of the things he and Marshal Lin Piao say contain purely rhetorical exaggerations.
It is extremely important to keep in mind Parsons’ distinction between values and cognitive conceptions. White, for example, is not to be taken as a defender of mass culture and mass-produced personalities because he showed that distortion is involved in some commentaries on contemporary American society (1961). What White and Parsons have questioned is the assumption, which many writers make, that individuality and individual initiative are less strong now in the United States than they have been in the past (Parsons & White 1961). They show that not a little ideological distortion is involved in much recent criticism of mass culture, the other-directed personality, the organization man, conformity, and the like. According to them, the progressive differentiation of contemporary society has produced more individuality, not less. This differentiation, however, with its accompanying variety of personalities, has intensified the problem of coordination and organizational integration; there is an intensified need for psychological sensitivity, and more sophistication is expected in interpersonal relations. As for the supposed disastrous decline in popular culture, Parsons and White are not out to praise comic strips and TV shows, but they do point out, as other social scientists have also done, that in times past a far larger proportion of the population could not even read, that the sources of information and entertainment were far more meager than those available today, and that far more people spent so much time in drudgery that they could hardly have cultivated their minds to any notable extent. (See, for instance, Bell 1960, chapter 1, and Bell’s footnote references.)
These are matters of fact, however difficult an exact determination of the facts may be. The work of Parsons and White in analyzing certain ideological distortions common among intellectuals of the “sage” type has added considerably to Durk-heim’s theoretical insights concerning the important processes of social differentiation and cultural differentiation.
Several writers have noted “the end of ideology” in relatively advanced societies, whose social institutions permit a constant process of orderly self-revision. Among the characteristics of what might be called a “self-revising” society are the following: a high degree of consensus with respect to societal values (the first level of social structure); a relatively clear-cut distinction between values and norms, so that attacking norms (i.e., institutions, at the societal level) does not necessarily mean attacking the values and thus proposing a new hierarchy of control (see Smelser [1962] 1963, pp. 280-281); relative absence of the cleavage causing segments of the population to be in conflict over several important issues and keeping them from being bound by compensating common interests; a stable institutional pattern for the legislative process; and effective institutionalized channels for the expression of grievance and for obtaining redress. Such writers as, for example, Shils (1955), Lipset (1960), and Bell (1960) are not only speaking for themselves; they are also reporting and commenting upon a broad trend among Western intellectuals generally. For example, there is no longer a widespread tendency to regard capitalism and socialism as necessarily radically different in social aims. “The end of ideology” certainly does not mean that ideology in the sense of this article is disappearing in the world at large, in democratic societies generally, or even in the work of professional social scientists. What is meant is that in certain advanced societies there is, or may be, a tendency for intellectuals to be less attracted to grandiose social doctrines, doctrines that contain a few simple principles purporting to explain any and all social events, doctrines that favor drastic revolution in pursuit of utopian goals. The “end of ideology” writers cannot by any means fairly be said to be opposed to social change in general or even to revolution in general.
There may well be some truth in their contention. That some such development is likely is suggested by two broad facts. First, some societies have indeed evolved social institutions that facilitate relatively orderly social change and make violent revolution less necessary and less attractive. Second, the development of social science in these same countries has revealed the intellectual inadequacy of extremist “explanations” of complex social phenomena and has also made social scientists more aware, perhaps, of the enormous social cost of revolution and of the presence, in most revolutionary thinking, of utopian elements. For these general reasons, there may be less inclination to romanticize the idea of revolution.
Among sociologists and others, however, there is not, of course, complete agreement on these points. Whatever may be said about the decline of extremist thinking among intellectuals in self-revising societies, we may certainly continue to expect a great deal of controversy over the interpretation of particular social phenomena. Ideology by its very nature does not readily yield to scientific criticism.
Harry M. Johnson
[Other relevant material may be found inAlienation; Intellectuals; Norms; Systems Analysis, article onSocial Systems; Values; and in the biographies ofMannheim; Marx; Weber, Max.]
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