ABSTRACT
The concept of bourgeois ideology in Marxian thought seems to be inevitably tied up with the notions of ‘falsehood’ and ‘false consciousness’. While ‘ideology’ in general in Marxian usage (especially from Lenin onwards) has clearly a number of different senses, the adjective ‘bourgeois’ considerably reduces, if not totally eliminates, all ambiguity. Bourgeois ideology, so the doctrine runs, consists of ideas and beliefs that distort or ‘disguise’ reality, in particular social and political reality. The disguise is functional. Bourgeois society is based on the antagonism of social classes, one of which is the ruling class, the others being either the totally oppressed (the proletariat) or those on the borderline, such as the peasantry or the petit bourgeoisie. This antagonistic social reality can only be upheld if the antagonism contained in it is disguised, and the members of society, both the oppressed and the rulers, are fed on ideas and beliefs which give them a false identity or consciousness. In other words, bourgeois ideology represents a conflict-ridden, oppressive world as though it was something good, desirable, or at least inevitable, a world which it is one’s privilege or good fortune to live in, or one to which one has at least to reconcile oneself. To this world of false beliefs and ideas Marxian thought contrasts its own categories, which, ex hypothesi, represent the ‘true’ or a ‘higher consciousness’, one which makes the oppressed realize that the bourgeois world can, ought to, and will be overthrown, and the antagonism of classes replaced by the unity and harmony of classless society. Now this is a considerably simplified account of the Marxian doctrine, but certainly one which contains its crux—or, at any rate, one which puts into words its more widely known, more conspicuous form of appearance. The very least it tells us about the Marxian doctrine is that it appears to have an unredeemingly hostile view of bourgeois beliefs and ideas. The attitude it articulates is combative and highly militant: bourgeois ideology is not afforded any sympathy, any quarters, any possibility of its being able to change, improve, rise above its functional limitations; it is not afforded any value. To this attitude on the level of political confrontation corresponds, on the level of philosophical or theoretical analysis, a doctrine which could be variously described as positivist or metaphysical. Since these terms are used here in a technical sense, a brief word of explanation might be necessary. The Marxian view of bourgeois ideology could thus be characterized as ‘positivist’ or at least as one containing a large dose of positivism, in so far as it presupposes a sharp and unbridgeable dividing line between ideas and beliefs pertaining to a false consciousness and those comprising the true one. This view also appears ‘metaphysical’ inasmuch as it operates with abstract, unchanging entities, that is, in this case, ‘bourgeois ideology’ as such on the one hand and Marxian thought on the other. (This meaning of the term ‘metaphysical’ derives from Hegel and was adopted by Marx and Engels when dealing with adversaries.)
