Ideology

An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.
The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob. In political science, the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political belief systems.

Etymology

The term ideology originates from French, itself coined from combining and -logíā.
An ideologue is someone who strongly believes in an ideology. The term carries negative connotations, often referring to someone who is blindly partisan, zealous, or fanatical in their beliefs.

History

The term "ideology" and the system of ideas associated with it were developed in 1796 by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, who crystallised his ideas while in prison pending trial during the Reign of Terror of to July 1794. While imprisoned he read the works of Locke and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac.
Hoping to form a secure foundation for the moral and political sciences, Tracy devised the term for a "science of ideas", basing such upon two things: the sensations that people experience as they interact with the material world; and the ideas that form in their minds due to those sensations. Tracy conceived of ideology as a liberal philosophy that would defend individual liberty, property, free markets, and constitutional limits on state power. He argues that, among these aspects, ideology is the most generic term because the 'science of ideas' also contains the study of their expression and deduction. The coup d'état that overthrew Maximilien Robespierre in July 1794 allowed Tracy to pursue his work. Tracy reacted to the terroristic phase of the revolution by trying to work out a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational mob-impulses that had nearly destroyed him.
A subsequent early source for the near-original meaning of ideology is Hippolyte Taine's work on the Ancien Régime, Origins of Contemporary France volume I. He describes ideology as rather like teaching philosophy via the Socratic method, though without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. Taine identifies it not just with Tracy but also with his milieu, and includes Condillac as one of its precursors.
Napoleon Bonaparte came to view ideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy's Institut national. According to Karl Mannheim's historical reconstruction of the shifts in the meaning of ideology, the modern meaning of the word was born when Napoleon used it to describe his opponents as "the ideologues". Tracy's major book, The Elements of Ideology, was soon translated into major European languages.
In the century following Tracy's formulations, the term ideology moved back and forth between positive and negative connotations. When post-Napoleonic governments adopted a reactionary stance, the concept influenced the Italian, Spanish and Russian thinkers who had begun to describe themselves as liberals and who attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in the early 1820s, including the Carbonari societies in France and Italy and the Decembrists in Russia. Karl Marx adopted Napoleon's negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once described Tracy as a . The term has since dropped some of its pejorative sting, and has become a neutral term in the analysis of differing political opinions and views of social groups. While Marx situated the term within class struggle and domination, others believed it was a necessary part of institutional functioning and social integration.
In parallel with post-Soviet Russian ideas about the mono-ideologies of monotheism, Walter Brueggemann has examined "ideological extension" in historical religious/political contexts.

Definitions and analysis

There are many different kinds of ideologies, including political, social, epistemological, and ethical. Recent analysis tends to posit that ideology is a 'coherent system of ideas' that rely on a few basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis. Through this system, ideas become coherent, repeated patterns through the subjective ongoing choices that people make. These ideas serve as the seed around which further thought grows. The belief in an ideology can range from passive acceptance up to fervent advocacy. Definitions, such as by Manfred Steger and Paul James, emphasize both the issue of patterning and contingent claims to truth. They wrote: "Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth."
Studies of the concept of ideology itself have been carried out under the name of systematic ideology in the works of George Walford and Harold Walsby, who attempt to explore the relationships between ideology and social systems. David W. Minar describes six different ways the word ideology has been used:

As a collection of certain ideas with certain kinds of content, usually normative;
As the form or internal logical structure that ideas have within a set;
By the role ideas play in human-social interaction;
By the role ideas play in the structure of an organization;
As meaning, whose purpose is persuasion; and
As the locus of social interaction.

For Willard A. Mullins, an ideology should be contrasted with the related issues of utopia and historical myth. An ideology is composed of four basic characteristics:

it must have power over cognition;
it must be capable of guiding one's evaluations;
it must provide guidance towards action; and
it must be logically coherent.

Terry Eagleton outlines some definitions of ideology:

The process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life
A body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class
Ideas that help legitimate a dominant political power
False ideas that help legitimate a dominant political power
Systematically distorted communication
Ideas that offer a position for a subject
Forms of thought motivated by social interests
Identity thinking
Socially necessary illusion
The conjuncture of discourse and power
The medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world
Action-oriented sets of beliefs
The confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality
Semiotic closure
The indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure
The process that converts social life to a natural reality

German philosopher Christian Duncker called for a "critical reflection of the ideology concept". In his work, he strove to bring the concept of ideology into the foreground, as well as the closely connected concerns of epistemology and history, defining ideology in terms of a system of presentations that explicitly or implicitly lay claim to absolute truth.

Marxist interpretation

Marx's analysis sees ideology as a system of consciousness that arises from economic relationships, reflecting and perpetuating the interests of the dominant class.
In the Marxist base and superstructure model of society, base denotes the relations of production and modes of production, and superstructure denotes the dominant ideology. The economic base of production determines the political superstructure of a society. Ruling class-interests determine the superstructure and the nature of the justifying ideology—actions feasible because the ruling class control the means of production. For example, in a feudal mode of production, religious ideology is the most prominent aspect of the superstructure, while in capitalist formations, ideologies such as liberalism and social democracy dominate. Hence the great importance of ideology justifies a society and politically confuses the alienated groups of society via false consciousness. Some explanations have been presented. Antonio Gramsci uses cultural hegemony to explain why the working-class have a false ideological conception of what their best interests are. Marx argued: "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production."
The Marxist formulation of "ideology as an instrument of social reproduction" is conceptually important to the sociology of knowledge, viz. Karl Mannheim, Daniel Bell, and Jürgen Habermas et al. Moreover, Mannheim has developed and progressed from the "total" but "special" Marxist conception of ideology to a "general" and "total" ideological conception acknowledging that all ideology resulted from social life, an idea developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Slavoj Žižek and the earlier Frankfurt School added to the "general theory" of ideology a psychoanalytic insight that ideologies do not include only conscious but also unconscious ideas.

Ideology and the commodity (Debord)

The French Marxist theorist Guy Debord, founding member of the Situationist International, argued that when the commodity becomes the "essential category" of society, i.e. when the process of commodification has been consummated to its fullest extent, the image of society propagated by the commodity, colonizes all of life and reduces society to a mere representation, The Society of the Spectacle.