In any economic system, those who control the modes of production will be the movers and shakers of the society; their thinking, values, and perspectives will be dominant. The maintenance of any system is dependent on the existence of ideology that functions to prevent the dispossessed of any economic system from seeing their real relationship to power structures. Ideology produces a false consciousness of oneself and one's relationship to history and works best when it is invisible (i.e., it looks like common sense or "truth"). So a capitalist system is dependent on ideologies like meritocracy ("anyone can grow up to be president") that mask the realities of exploitation and privilege and keep the proletariat (working class) subjugated to the bourgeoisie (middle class) who grow rich on the surplus value of lower class labor. It is this surplus value that creates capital--not simply money, but wealth that accrues to the class that controls the means of production. Through this process, the labor of the proletariat becomes alienated.

The most important modifications of these ideas have come from Louis Althusser (1918-1990) who expanded on Marx's understanding of ideology. For Althusser, ideology is not exactly a false system of ideas but rather the conceptual framework through which one interprets self, culture, and history. Ideology saturates everything, from language to cultural practices. Both the oppressors and the oppressed see the world through ideology. Human life as we understand it is dependent on a functioning ideology that makes sense of self and world. So ideology produces not only our culture (the superstructure) but our very consciousness of ourselves. Thus there is no essential individual human subject that pre-exists society; rather society creates subjectivities and teaches us how to be "subject." (As Marx had said, it is not consciouness that determines being; rather, social being determines consciousness.) Althusser contrasts ideological state apparatuses--the political system, religion, schools, advertising, the law, the media, sports--that evoke willing submission to dominant culture with repressive state apparatuses like prisons and the military that compel submission. For Althusser, there is very little hope for social change or betterment because of the pervasive and invisible dominance of ideology and ideological state apparatuses.

Althusser also developed the concept of interpellation or being hailed or called out--the way in which ideological state apparatuses call forth a particular identity that we then recognize in ourselves, e.g., the way in which an advertising campaign can create a desire to be or look in a certain way. We "see ourselves" or hear our name called (to maintain Althusser's metaphor) in the image and find our identity in buying the product. Are you a Halston woman?

Further modification of ideology came from Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) with his idea of hegemony, the notion that domination is not achieved through force but through complex negotiations among various interests. Dominance is never imposed from the top down nor is it articulated univocally through language or ideological apparatuses. Hegemony is achieved not primarily through compulsion, but rather, through continual negotiation and the winning of active or inactive consent from a majority of parties.
 

Written by Kari Boyd McBride for Feminist Theories, Women's Studies 305.