Ideology: A Very Short Introduction
Michael Freeden
Language: English
Pages: 160
ISBN: 019280281X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Ideology is one of the most controversial terms in the political vocabulary, exciting both revulsion and inspiration. This book examines the reasons for those views, and explains why ideologies deserve respect as a major form of political thinking. It investigates the centrality of ideology both as a political phenomenon and as an organizing framework of political thought and action. It explores the changing understandings of ideology as a concept, and the arguments of the main ideologies. By employing the latest insights from a range of disciplines, the reader is introduced to the vitality and force of a crucial resource at the disposal of societies, through which sense and purpose is assigned to the political world.
money for welfare services? (b) which groups should receive priority in obtaining state help, given that budgets are always limited? These questions, however, clearly elicit a plethora of different ideological solutions. Direct taxation or indirect taxation involve divergent principles. The former may be graduated, making the rich pay proportionately more. The latter could impose a similar tax on rich and poor, thus becoming a regressive rather than a 37 Ideology at the crossroads of theory The
The struggle over political language The second proposition is that a political concept always contains more potential components than can be included in any actual definition or deployment of that concept. Consequently, one political concept will contain manifold conceptions. Take the concept of equality. If we think about it logically, in the abstract, it may refer to mathematical identity, to similarity, or to the moral equivalence of members of a specified group. It can be cashed out as
supporters. It has not required the great intellectual and imaginative effort that all progressive and reforming ideologies demand: to conjure up a world better than the existing one. Its technique has been largely reactive, and that in two ways. First, although its ideology is normally dormant, it awakens when confronted by the principles and policies of opposing ideologies. Confrontation is built into conservatism, whenever it is challenged by a project it regards both as humanly contrived and
a set of wholesome social practices that provided the empirical basis of true social consciousness. Before lining up to praise or blame the Marxist theory of ideology, we need to ask ourselves: what has to hold for those arguments to make sense? First, they depend on the crucial distinction between true consciousness and distorted or false beliefs. In order to claim that our understanding of the (political) world is based on an illusion, we must be confident that non-illusory knowledge is 7
disturbing. Anything but blandness will help to lure the attention of the onlooker. Think of the photograph of the little Vietnamese girl fleeing from the napalm bombs. Those who might complain that this is merely packaging rather than content miss the point. Because the mobilization of support is crucial to the function of ideologies, good packaging may break the ice, penetrating the literacy barrier that would deter many people from paying attention to a more detailed text. Finally, stark visual