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Our theory and theirs
A rising class 'thinkers cannot simply proclaim that they have the truth. They have to prove it. p> First, they have to show that they can take up and develop the insights which the thinkers of earlier rising classes made. So, for instance, Marx set out in his economic writings not simply to give his explanation of the workings of capitalism, but also to show how he could complete the work of classical political economy by solving problems it had set itself without success.
Second, it has to be able to show how the superficial social features which ideology deals with can be derived from the underlying social processes it describes. As Marx puts it, it has to be able to derive the 'Exoteric' from the 'esoteric'. So a scientific Marxist analysis of any society has to be able to provide an understanding of the various ideological currents of that society, showing how they arise out of the real world, expressing certain aspects of it, but in a distorted way.
Finally, at the end of the day, there is only one real test of any science: its ability to guide practice. And so arguments within Marxism itself can only be finally resolved in the course of revolutionary working class struggle.
A very important point underlies all this discussion. Not all ideas about society are 'ideological'. The scientific understanding which the thinkers of a rising class develop is not. Nor is the immediate awareness which people have of their actions. This only becomes 'ideological' when it is interpreted through a framework of general ideas provided by an established ruling class. By contrast, if it is interpreted through the theory of a rising class, it is on its way to becoming the true self-consciousness of a society.
'Ideology' is part of the superstructure in the sense that it is a passive element in the social process, helping to reproduce old relations of production. But revolutionary self-consciousness is not. It is an active element, arising out of people's material circumstances, but feeding back into them to change them.
In the real world there are all sorts of hybrid sets of ideas which lie somewhere in between science and ideology, between true and false consciousness. People's experience can be of partial challenges to the existing society. They gain partial insights into the real structure of society, but seek to interpret them through piecemeal adjustments to old ideological frameworks.
Even the output of the ideologies of the existing order cannot be dismissed out of hand. The worst of them cannot completely ignore those experiences of the mass of people which challenge the ruling class's view of the world: their ideological function means they have, somehow, to try to prove that those experiences are compatible with the ruling class's view. So the worst hack journalists or TV commentators have to recognise that there is opposition to the ruling class, reporting on strikes, demonstrations and so on, if only to condemn such struggles and to isolate those involved in them. The worst pulp novelists have to start from some image of ordinary people's lives, however distorted, if they are to find a mass audience. The most reactionary priests are only effective insofar as they can provide illusory relief to the real problems of their parishioners.
This leads to all sorts of contradictions within the ruling ideology. Some of its most prominent proponents can be those who make most efforts to relate to people's lived experiences. The ideology itself encourages 'social scientists', historians, writers, artists and even theologians to make enormous efforts to fit empirical observation and experience into their accounts of reality. But this inevitably leads to contradictory accounts, with some of the ideologues beginning to question some of the tenets of the established ideology. Marx recognised that a great writer or artist is able to reflect all the contradictory experiences that beset people who live in his or her society, and, in the process to begin to go beyond the limits set by his or her class position. In a few cases this even leads them to a break with their own class and to identify with the revolutionary opposition to it.
A scientific understanding of social development demands a complete break with the whole method of the pseudo-social sciences of those who defend the existing social order. But that does not mean that we can neglect the elements of truth that those who practise these disciplines stumble across. Still less can we ignore the often quite profound grasp of the social process to be found in certain non-Marxist historians or in great novelists like Balzac or Walter Scott. p> Marxism shows its superiority over bourgeois thought not by simply treating all bourgeois thinkers with contempt,...
