REFRAMING “IDEOLOGY”

“PHILOSOPHY” AND “PRACTICE”IN MARX AND ENGELS` TEXTSBETWEEN 1844 AND 1846

Abstract

Some contemporary scholars of Marx and Engels’ works
have done well to draw attention to the peculiarity of their use of the concept
“ideology” as an “inversion of the relationship between thought process and
lived existence”. This use appears with crucial precision in Marx and Engels’
critiques of “post-Hegelianism” and “true socialism”. However, it is often
difficult to understand in any level of detail what this supposed “inversion”
means. I intend to provide a non-exhaustive, but nevertheless more assertive and
specific explanation of the supposed “inversion” in this text. This is merely a
reframing of “ideology” in order to situate and contextualize Marx and Engels’
use of the term against the backdrop of their discussions about the limits of
philosophical activity. For this reason, my explanation takes the relationship
between the terms “philosophy” and “practice” (sections 2, 3 and 4) as the
explanatory axis for the use of the concept “ideology”. I also try to distinguish
two moments in the appearance of the concept “ideology”: (i) two analytical
steps or typical notes that the expression “active conceptual ideologues”
contains; (ii) the philosophical, normative and irreflexively acritical nature of
the attempt to solve the “real problems of life” implied in “ideology” (sections 5
and 6). The text’s intended contribution is to show that the concept of “ideology”
aims to categorize and critique excessively philosophical approaches to both
explaining and critiquing social reality. This does not, however, invalidate the
use of the term by the Marxist and critical theory traditions.