Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 19:36:45 -0800 (PST)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] McQuinn: "What is Ideology?"


What is Ideology?

Jason McQuinn

The major problem displayed by John Filiss in his
Response to 'Why I Am Not a Primitivist' above is his
misunderstanding of the anarchist critique of
ideology. Since this is a highly important, yet often
widespread problem for both anarchists and
primitivists, let me explain again what ideology is
and how it applies to primitivism.

There certainly can be genuine confusions over the
meanings of ideology since the word has been used for
purposes entailing quite different meanings. However,
when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists)
criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically
critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the
skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max
Stirner (especially his master work, translated into
English as The Ego and Its Own) and the Marxist
conception of ideology, especially as it was developed
by members of the Frankfurt school (Max Horkheimer,
Theodor Adorno and others) in their version of
critical theory.

Although Stirner did not use the word "ideology," he
developed a fundamentally important critique of
alienation which crucially encompassed a critique of
alienated and alienating theory. For Stirner theory
can either be employed to express the subjective aims
of its creator or it can be allowed to subordinate and
control the person employing it. In the first instance
theory facilitates the fulfillment of one's most
important desires, assisting people in analyzing and
clarifying their aims, the relative importance of
particular aims and desires, and the best means for
achieving the overall configuration of projects that
is one's life in the world. The alternative (what has
now most often come to be called "ideological") use of
theory involves the adoption of theories constructed
around abstract, externally-conceived subjectivities
(god, state, capital, anarchism, primitivism, etc.) to
which one feels in some ways obliged to subordinate
her or his own aims, desires and life.

I won't go into the complexities of the development of
the critical Marxist conceptions of ideology. Suffice
it to say that they emphasize an important, but
incomplete conception of ideology in the service of
institutional social formations, which
programmatically forgets the central importance of
individual subjectivity to any unalienated theory. The
most important aspect of this critical theory of
ideology is that the ideas of an alienated populace
will tend to both explicitly and implicitly reflect in
theory their actual subordination to alienating
institutions-especially capital, state and religion-in
practice. In other words, when one is enslaved one is
forced to view the world to some degree from the
perspective of the slaveholder (whether the
slaveholder is a person or an institution or a set of
institutions) in order to avoid punishment and
accomplish any tasks demanded. And the more complex
and pervasive the slaveholder's demands, the more it
becomes necessary to look at one's world from the
slaveholder's perspective, until most people can and
have lost sight of the very possibility of maintaining
their own unalienated perspectives in opposition to
their enslavement.

It should already be clear from the outline of
Stirner's critique above that when I criticize
primitivism for its very real tendencies to be
employed in ideological ways, I am not singling out
primitivism for criticism while ignoring the
susceptibilities of anarchist theory. In fact, I have
often criticized the many ideological variants of
anarchist theory and as far as I'm concerned this
criticism has been a fundamental theme of this
magazine from its inception. Any and all general
theoretical positions will always remain susceptible
to ideological deformation. And the more explicitly
they are aimed at defining and encouraging particular
forms of social activity the more obvious their
susceptibility will be. The point I made in Why I Am
Not A Primitivist is that primitivism as a
socio-political theory (not conceived as an art
movement or lifestyle, neither of which has much
relevance to my critique except in evading it) by
definition will always tend to place some conception
of primitive society (or societies) as its fundamental
aim. This conception of a particular form (or a
particular range of forms) of society as the central
aim of and organizing principle of primitivist theory
means that the ideological tendencies of primitivism
will tend to produce theories demanding the
reconstruction of contemporary society in terms of
hypostatized ideas of the primitive. And,
unfortunately, in the actually-existing primitivist
milieu these ideological tendencies are pervasive.

It is certainly possible to develop non-ideological
primitivist theories. It's just less likely than
developing non-ideological anarchist theories because
the central principle of primitivism allows it to be
more easily transformed into an ideological
conception. This is primarily because anarchy is a
profoundly negative, critical concept (absence of
rule) that must be bent a lot further (than positive
concepts of the primitive) in order to be transformed
into an ideology. I did not claim that primitivism is
atavism, nor that primitivism is necessarily always
ideological, only that primitivism is too easily
turned into an ideology to be worthwhile as a defining
term for anarchist social revolutionaries. Implicit in
this judgment is the assumption that the anarchists I
am speaking to have an ultimate goal of abolishing
social alienation and domination, and that they are
already not completely under the thrall of ideological
influences which have left them so confused that they
want to subordinate their lives to abstract ideals of
the primitive, nature, wilderness, etc. at the expense
of developing a critical self-understanding of the
social and natural world.

It might have clarified things more if I had been able
to finish my essay as I originally intended with a
concluding section detailing the importance for
anarchists of adopting critiques of civilization and
technology. Unfortunately, there was no space for me
to do this in the last issue, though I will see if I
can make room in an upcoming issue to run a second
essay completing my thoughts. To be critical of
civilization and technology simply leaves less room
for ideology to develop in our theory than does too
close an identification with a positive concept like
the primitive. And in my opinion, this is an important
enough advantage to keep me from ever calling myself a
primitivist.


===="“Marx says, revolutions are the locomotives of world history.  But perhaps it is really totally different.  Perhaps revolutions are the grasp by the human race traveling in this train for the emergency brake.” 

- Walter Benjamin

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