The Critique of Ideology

Abstract

In this chapter I shall briefly and schematically consider some issues in the Marxist theory of ideology. I shall suggest that there are three main theories that have been developed, but that each of them suffers from certain deficiencies. Thus, it is necessary to dispense with the concept of ideology per se and instead to analyse ideological effects, these being viewed in a non-functionalist manner. Much of what is conventionally viewed as ideology is properly to be conceptualised as civil society. I shall discuss various aspects of this notion, especially the analyses of classes, of popular-democratic struggles and of the sphere of reproduction.