Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 23:09:57 -0500 (EST)
From: V600A8E6-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Re: Question for Shawgi on "vile ideologies"




On Fri, 1 Dec 1995, David McInerney wrote:

> Wed, 29 Nov 1995, Shawgi Tell wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> >once classes are
> >abolished, there will no longer be a material basis for vile
> >ideologies.   Eventually, social consciousness will correspond to
> >this base shift.  Antagonistic contradictions will disappear.
> <snip>
> 
> Could you please clarify what you mean here Shawgi.  As you claim that
> *anatgonistic* contradictions will disappear in a classless society
> (leaving, I guess, Mao's 'non-antagonistic contradictions' or secondary
> contradictions as opposed to antagonistic, principal contradictions) are
> you claiming that ideology in general will cease to exist (as bourgeois
> intellectuals claimed in the 1950s and again now), or are you simply
> claiming that ideology will continue but in a 'non-vile' form?  Please
> explain, as some on this list would be tempted to take your postion for
> economism ala Kautsky et. al.
> 
> 
> Mr. David McInerney,
> Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences,
> The Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., AUSTRALIA  0200.
> e-mail: davidmci-AT-coombs.anu.edu.au; ph: (06) 249 2134; fax: (06) 249 3051

David, I presented a paper entitled "The Nature of Ideology" at the 1995 
American Sociological Association conference in Washington D.C.

When I deploy the term ideology I don't use it in its "descriptive" or 
"positive" meanings.  I use the truth-excluding notion of ideology as 
advanced by Marx and Engels to mean false consciousness, more 
specifically, a deluded form of SOCIAL consciousness.  I use the 
"pejorative" meaning.

So, when I say  vile ideologies will disappear in a classless 
society, I mean deluded forms of SOCIAL consciousness will disappear, 
especially as history begins.  Of course, people will continue to make 
false abstractions.  But this becomess more an expression of psycho-motor 
processes and the level of knowledge attained than anything else.  Most 
of the errors will be empirical.  They will be inevitable but surmountable.

All contradictions do not disappear in a classless society.  
Non-antagonistic contradictions will exist, but they will not necessarily 
have any particular propensity to intensify (the way antagonistic 
contradictions do).  These non-antagonistic contradictions are resolved 
mainly via re-education, persuasion, criticism and self-criticism on a 
wide scale.

Of course, I have not even discussed the nature of internal and external, 
basic and non-basic, essential and non-essential contradictions.  For 
example, essential, basic contradictions (e.g., between social production 
and private appropriation) play a decisive role in social develpment.  
The mental-manual division, the town-country division, on the other hand, 
are essential, non-basic contradictions.

Here's a good book on ideology
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

- Christopher L. Pines, "Ideology and False Consciousness. Marx and His 
    Historical Progenitors" (Albany, New York: State University of New York 
    Press, 1993).


Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
V600A8E6-AT-UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU


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