There is a sort of stigma around the word ‘ideology’. It is mostly perhaps because it is wrongly associated with past political dogmas which many believe have been outshone by something else. Not quite clear by what.
Preliminarily, ideology is understood here as a theoretical system of ideals that translates into a political narrative.
In Malta, as well, the age of ideology appears to have come to an end. Many want to be à la mode and, thus, decided to do away with this concept. However, a few bulwarks of ideology still remain on our beloved rock. Ironically, they are both called Mark.
We have a self-declared Marxist like Mark Camilleri and a self-declared conservative like Mark Sammut Sassi. Both these intellectuals are very outspoken. One has to respect their forthright unambiguous thinking.
Nevertheless, in various local political circles, politicians and academics alike do not want to hear the word ideology. Then we complain about how barren our political landscape is.
Francis Fukuyama, who draws on Hegel’s philosophy of historical cycles, states that technological progress and the cumulative resolution of conflict allowed humans to advance from tribal to feudal to industrial society. For Marx, the journey ended with communism. While, for Fukuyama, this was the announcement of a new destination. In his The End of History? Fukuyama declared that the great ideological conflicts between east and west were over and that western liberal democracy had prevailed.
Fukuyama also states that the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination and idealism will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns and the satisfaction of refined consumer demands.
However, in Identity, Fukuyama points out that the ability to theorise is an important factor in the evolutionary success of the human species. He laments that many practical people scorn theories but then act all the time upon unarticulated theories that they simply fail to acknowledge.
Harari, in Sapiens, somehow agrees with him, in that he states that humanity’s success is based on the ability to create a narrative and spread it. Furthermore, Jeffrey Goldfarb states that today there are less extreme versions of ideology, a kind of everyday ideology.
It might be true that ideological positions have become blurred. Nonetheless, ideology may not be redundant as of yet.
In any case, creating a narrative wherein ideology is dead, is itself, willy-nilly, an ideology. It is, as Fukuyama says, merely unarticulated.
So, those having such antipathy towards ideology may have (un)willingly created a tutti-frutti ideology of non-ideology; a mélange of everything to please the many; redolent of the neoliberal and Third Way variants, often posited as post-ideological. The aim of this oxymoronic non-ideology is presumably that of gaining votes from the politically disengaged; however, possibly, losing as many from within the ideological core.
In Malta, as well, the age of ideology appears to have come to an end- Alan Xuereb
Tutti-frutti thinking leads to the conclusion that unless a party becomes a pragmatic opportunist it will not survive.
Yet, what if we are looking at it the wrong way? What if ideology is not a reference to some conscious series of discourses that push false ideas on people, as Marx would put it, but instead it is a subconscious process?
This is exactly what Slavoj Žižek does. While, for Marx, ideology is a conscious exercise, Žižek suggests that ideology is also a subconscious phenomenon that helps to shape the world we live in.
Žižek builds his theory around Althusser’s and Lacan’s conception that we do not interact with the world as it is but, rather, as we represent it through language. Because of this divide, ideology moves down from being about the world as it is, to being about how we view the world to begin with. By way of example, drawing on Žižek, whenever Maltese ask for tea, they expect it to include milk and sugar.
Hendricks says that crucial for Žižek is his argument that we are all influenced by the prevailing ideology even if we think we are not. While some political thinkers, like Tony Blair, have proposed that we are in a post-ideological age, Žižek argues that the appearance of such a claim is evidence that the dominant ideologies have finally “come into their own”. That is, they are so imbedded that many of us are no longer able to see them.
The Labour Party has understood this too well. Conceivably, now the Nationalist Party is starting to comprehend this concept as well.
Undoubtedly, ideology needs a well-oiled and solid political apparatus to translate it into tangible applications communicated to the grassroots.
Finally, confidence in ideology should never be blind. The tenets of ideology should be akin to navigational stars – there to offer direction for, without them, the ship still somehow cruises but it might get lost!
Alan Xuereb, lawyer, linguist and political philosophy author