Marx's
The German Ideology: Alienation and Ideology – summary and analysis
In The
German Ideology Marx argued that the division of labor turns a man's own action
to a foreign power (he sells his manual and intellectual capacities to someone
else) which enslaves him. Marx argues that certain social-economical
conditions, such as those brought about by capitalism; project this alienation to society itself. When the products of production are cut off from workers,
they sense that these products have a power over them which are not in their
control. In other words, alienation brings about fetishism of products and
production which are conceived as being both of independent and separate existence
and as of having power over the alienated worker. Alienation can be aborted,
Marx holds, when the proletariat take over the means of production.
One
of the key concepts in Marxist thought and in Marx's The German Ideology is ideology.
Marx says that ideology is a "camera obscura" which turns the image
on reality on its head. In other words, Marx holds that ideology reflects an
inverted image of social reality, which is distorted and false (see False Consciousness). Marx, plainly
speaking, says that the truth of reality and reality as it is conceived through
ideology are opposed.
Marx
ties the function of ideology to material reality and the course of human
material development (dialectics of historical class conflict over relations ofproduction and property which is driven by development in the means of
production). In other words, according to Marx, ideology is the product of
material reality and the distorted image of this reality portrayed by ideology
is due to social economical conditions.
According
to Marx in The German Ideology all thoughts and ideas are socially constructed
and depend on society's material conditions - existence determines
consciousness. But what distinguishes ideology from other cultural forms is its
function of distorting and inverting the image of reality as it is conceived in
society. Ideology presents itself as objective and universal, but when Marx
refuted Hegel conception of the idealist historical dialectics in favor of a
material one, he set the ground for rejecting any idea such as ideology as detached
for actual social and economical reality. Things like nationality and even
family values are all signed off by Marx as ideology which is designed to
conserve the existing social order and relations of production by presenting
the existing state as warranted, natural and justified.
For
Marx ideology is always the result of material class conflict and he therefore
argues in The German Ideology that the ideas of the ruling class have always been
the dominant ideas. For Marx ideology works at the service of the existing
social order and in beneficiaries. According to Marx, whoever controls the
means of material production also controls the means of ideological production
which sustains the existing relations of production. Ideology, in other words,
is the interests of the ruling class. Every revolution according to Marx has to
introduce a new ideology to support the new social order which is, once again,
presented as universal.
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