Ideology and Practice
This is another long-form piece that will be published in sections for ease of reading and writing both. I have already trailed some of the ideas in this essay in previous pieces such as Beyond left populism and Corbynism: A political postmortem.
Introduction: Ideology: why bother?
Ideology is a relatively new word that was coined in the throes of the French revolution and has refused to go away since, despite being persistently used with wildly contradictory meanings. Aside from the conflicting meanings associated with the word, about the one thing that most users agree on is that it has some intrinsic relation, no matter how poorly understood, with social change — although whether primarily as an obstacle or an enabler is hotly disputed. It is this combination of factors — association with social change, contradictory meanings yet persistent resistance to replacement by more unambiguous terms — which demands our attention. By “our” attention, I mean anybody interested in the pragmatics of social change driven by intentional practice. So an important part of our investigation must be to clarify the relation between ideology and practice and, of course, power.
Ideology: a history of confusion part 1: Origins
Destutt de Tracy, the Societé des Idéologues, Napoleon, the original doctrinaires and later intellectuals, the falling of “idéologie” into obscurity.
Beyond confusion: A dual process model, part 1
Kahneman and Tversky’s dual process model of cognition as model for a dual process model of ideology. Doctrine as “system 2” and doxa as “system 1”. Notions vs concepts. Against positivism, empiricism and the view of ideology as “unreason” and the fantasy of “non-ideological thought” and “false consciousness”.
A history of confusion part 2: Marxism and Ideology
Classical Marxism, Bernstein’s revisionism and it’s “orthodox” refutation in the absence of The German Ideology. Post WW1 revolution and fascism, from United Front to Third Period and extinction. Ideology-theory vs ideology-critique according to Rehman.
A dual process model of ideology, part 2
Beyond the “atoms” of notions and concepts to the flows of comment & opinion (journalism, media discourse) and theory & doctrine — and the difference between them. From flows to forms — narratives and tropes, scriptures, doctrines, formulas (credos). Deviant forms, the doctrine to dogma pipeline. Relating doctrine and doxa in the ideological cycle of idiomatization and recomposition. Hybrid forms, contrivances, slogans. Thompson’s “surplus value” as pre-Marxian contrivance.
Interlude: Narrowing the scope
The uselessness of theories of everything. Narrowing the scope of doctrine based on object, method and source. Newton and Boyle as chemists and alchemists both as examples of same minds, different methods. Science and ideology. Scientism and the “ideology of non-ideology”. Social science — the science of a peculiar, reflexive object. The role of the academy in transforming topics into disciplines. A second de-scoping — separating culture out from ideology.
Ideology and protagonism
Charles W. Mills’ excavation of the original meaning of “ideology” in Marx & Engels’ The German Ideology. It’s incompatibility with our contemporary meaning and the need for a different term — “protagonism” for their original sense. Protagonism and antagonism — turning the upside down view of the ideological classes the right way up again. Who abolished the Poll Tax — John Major or the Anti-Poll Tax movement? An analytical grid for differentiating protagonism and antagonism, considerations of salience and prevalence, validity and causality of same.
Liberalism and centrism
Liberalism, classical and vulgar. Centrism as a process and its contradictory aims. The shifting content of the political centre, from Keynesianism to neoliberalism. Centrism and doxa. The centrist horror of counterpower. The two poles of the “outside” of centrism — radicalism (ideology) and antagonism (practice) and their respective halfway houses of radlibs and populists.
Ideology and politics
The cameral model of politics, Táíwò’s “Being-in-the-room privilege”. Types of politics insider vs outsider and instrumental vs prefigurative. Observations — politics is neither despotism nor egalitarianism. Territorialism — projecting politics outside the room. Deviations — the parapolitics of cults and factions and loyalty. Factionalism is not sectarianism. Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” as political bludgeon misread as ideological doctrine.
Fascism and the three-way fight
“Creeping fascism” and other liberal delusions. Fascism in the era of ecological crisis, migration and white supremacist demographic paranoia — present concern rather than past matter. Militant anti-fascist theory — the Three-Way Fight concept. Discussion on Hamerquist, Sakai and Lyons. A multi-dimensional analysis along the dimensions of ideology, politics and culture, in the three-way fight perspective.
Standpoint and class
Mills on class and consciousness. György Lukács and the standpoint of the proletariat. Nancy Hartsock and the feminist standpoint. Domination and externality. Summing up in the framework of Mills’ four determinations model
An auxiliary piece relating the micropolitics of class and standpoint in the light of domination & externality, to the macropolitics of ideology and class forces or balances of power.
Another auxiliary piece relating to domination and externality, on how the differentiation of the proletariat into differently privileged (i.e. increasingly “externalised”) strata can be a capital-efficient management of risk/return premiums in the labour market.
A somewhat lengthy but necessary clarification on what Marx meant by the “ideological classes”, how and why that is still relevant for us today and its relation to the lumpenproletariat.
Ideology and oppression
The strategy of counterpower
A manifesto for the antagonist left
Inspiration
Anarchism is, for us, an ideology; this being a set of ideas, motivations, aspirations, values, a structure or system of concepts that has a direct connection with action — that which we call political practice. Ideology requires the formulation of final objectives (long term, future perspectives), the interpretation of the reality in which we live and a more or less approximate prognosis about the transformation of this reality. From this analysis ideology is not a set of abstract values and ideas, dissociated from practice with a purely reflective character, but rather a system of concepts that exist in the way in which it is conceived together with practice and returns to it. Thus, ideology requires voluntary and conscious action with the objective of imprinting the desire for social transformation on society.
“Social Anarchism and Organisation”, Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro — FARJ), Brazil, 2008.