INTRODUCTION

Marx's critique of ideology has been among the most influential of his ideas. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud are currently seen as the great debunkers, who taught us never to take words at their face value but always to look behind them for some psychological or social interest they express or some situation that unbeknownst to the agents shape their thoughts and desires. When we refer to a view as an instance of false consciousness – a frequently used term for ideological thinking – we do not simply label it as an error or misperception, a thought that is false to the facts. We suggest that it is falsified and distorted in a systematic way, by causal processes that impede the search for truth. Unlike an accidental mistake, which offers little resistance to correction (beyond the general reluctance to admit error), ideologies are shaped by deep-seated tendencies that help them survive criticism and refutation for a long time.

What are the forces that shape and maintain ideological thinking? The standard and, as it were, official Marxist answer is interest; more specifically, the interest of the ruling class. On this point Marxism deviates from the Freudian conception of false consciousness, according to which it is necessarily the interest of the person himself that distorts his thinking, not that of some other person or class. The central question, which is usually left unresolved by Marxist writers on ideology (including Marx), is how – by what mechanism – the interest of the ruling class is supposed to shape the views of other members of society.