Marxist Theory Of Ideology And Its Evolution

The development of the concept of ideology has been in a winding course since it was firstly put forward by Tracy, the sense of the concept waving between positiveness and negative. With the variation of the sense of the concept of ideology, its meaning varies too, which leads to such a result that the concept has been both deeply concerned and highly debated on. Facing this fact, we should pay much attention to two factors, that is, the fundamental significance of Marx's theory and the fusion of philosophy into the concept of ideology. Marx imposes for the first time the sharply critical significance on the concept, which has a long influence on the successors. It's Marx's deep philosophical thoughts and great comprehension of history that leads to such a huge influence. The criticalness has become the core spirit threading through the development of the concept since Marx's use of the concept. It's the fusion of philosophy into the concept of ideology that basically keeps the life of the concept always fresh. The outstanding use of philosophy, from Marx's critically absorbing the spirit of German Classical Philosophy to the introduction of those philosophical thoughts such as Phenomenology, Structuralism, and Freudianism into the meaning of the concept of ideology, makes the contents of the concept far richer.The thesis aims to clarify the essence of the concept of the Marxist ideology and further study the development of the concept of ideology, resting on the final purpose of questioning to some extent the traditional use of the concept of the Socialism ideology by the researchers in our country. To solve this problem, we have to resort to Marx who is the actual origin of the theory of ideology.There're five chapters in the thesis. The first chapter studies the theoretical premise of the birth of the concept of the Marxist ideology, that is, the French Enlightening Philosophy and the German Classical Philosophy. The French Enlightening Philosophy, based on sense, provides the motive for Tracy to create the new concept of ideology. The German Classical Philosophy, especially Hegel's philosophy, is the direct source of Marx's deep thinking. The second chapter studies the 3 stages of the development of the Marxist theory of ideology. Marx criticized Hegel's philosophy of law in the first stage when he came to the doorway of the creation of the Materialistic View of History. Marx criticized the German Ideology in the second stage when the Materialistic View of History was born. It's on the basis of the Materialistic View of History that the theory of the Marxist ideology was founded. Marx criticized the capitalistic production mode in the third stage when he revealed from the bottom the hypocrisy and evil of the capitalistic ideology through unveiling the dualism of the commodity, the surplus value, and the reification. The third chapter studies several core topics in the Marxist theory of ideology. The first one is the relation between ideology and the false consciousness. The thesis points out that the concept of ideology is different from the false consciousness, although the character of ideology is of illusion and inversion. The second topic is the relation between ideology and the superstructure. This topic includes two subordinate issues, among which the relation between ideology and the idealistic superstructure is the main one. The thesis asserts that the relation between ideology and the idealistic superstructure is dynamic, which means that there exists the possibility of their both equality and inequality, and that the point is to realize ideology is for Marx basically a negative concept. The third topic is the relation between ideology and science. The thesis proposes that they are basically different and should not be absolutely differentiated at the same time. The fourth chapter studies those post-Marx theories of ideology based on the dialectic movement of the modality of the concept between positiveness, negative, and neutrality. Thus the thesis separately gives an account of the theory of ideology by Lenin and Lukacs who use the concept in the positive sense, Marcuse's and Habermas's theories of ideology who use the concept in the negative sense, and Mannheim's theory of ideology who uses the concept in the neutral sense. We can get a general grasp of the development of the Marxism ideology through the description in this chapter. The fifth chapter studies the situation of the concept of ideology in contemporary China. This chapter describes Mao Zedong's theory of ideology at first, then introduces the traditional attitudes towards the concept of ideology in our research sphere, and finally clears up some misunderstanding of the concept of ideology based on the Marxism theory of ideology.