Furthermore, ideologists are not simply neutral commentators on ideology; they are also developers and creators of it. Thus thinkers like Gramsci help explain why people may support regimes antagonistic to their own interests (Gramsci, 1971) or Foucault the relations between state, society and understandings of madness and ‘mental illness’ – although the latter tends to talk more of ‘discourse’ than ideology (Foucault, 1988). At the same time, there long seems to have been a search for an objective or ‘scientific’ understanding of ideology, as though the idea and its exponents are separable from norms and values and are merely demarcating an area rather than passing judgement on something – for or against. The contents of ideology and the views of their analysts may be a matter of opinion, but they tend not to be presented as such. On the other hand, there are more and less objective definitions of ideology, the former usually narrowly framed in terms of the political and cultural blueprint for a certain group or order.
When we make an initial check on the literature, for example, through Google Scholar and Researchgate, it seems to confirm that discussion exploring ideology and participation has been very limited. While, as we might expect, there is some focusing on the ideology of participation/involvement, there is much less examining participation in relation to ideology, particularly in relation to political ideology. One apparent exception is work by Douglas Ashford, although his focus is more specifically on the relationship of ideas to political behaviour (Ashford, 1972). He has also come in for criticism as more narrowly concerned with exploring major psychological approaches to the study of political behaviour (Cobb, 1973). Interestingly though, he seems to see people’s relationship with ideology primarily as ‘followers’, rather than initiators or co-creators, reinforcing conventional understandings of ideology as narrowly based.
Ideology’s non-participatory past
This book by contrast is primarily concerned with making the connections between participation and ideology. This seems to be a particularly timely project because of the widespread and growing interest in public and service user participation in all aspects of life, including politics and policy, and because of the complex inter-relations that connect these two key ideas – ideology and participation. Yet, when we come to investigate ideology, we encounter a very different history, with little apparent interest in participation. It is this we begin to examine next, as we embark on what seems like an unprecedented journey of discovery.
What is most striking is that ideology and its development rarely seems to have been understood as any kind of participatory process or project. This appears to be the case right from the start. As the Right of centre writer Ferdinand Mount reminds us, the creation of the idea of ideology was associated with a companion word ‘ideologues’, the intellectuals and theoreticians who advanced the discourse. Thus, in one sense, ideology has been private property from the start or at least a very narrowly based activity (Mount, 2012, p 112–3). As Mount said, Destutt de Tracy (who, as we have seen, coined the word ideology) conceived it as another science, one in which the young needed to be instructed. Thus the process of its development was a top-down one – with ideology a prescription ‘deduced from the principles of the Enlightenment [based on] the correct political ideas’ (Mount, 2012, p 113). Ideology was something people would be taught, rather than being actors in its formation.
But there’s another sense in which de Tracy seems to be laying the ground for preconceiving ideology as essentially an idea beyond being participatory. This is his emphasis on it as ‘scientific’. Again to quote Mount:
[de Tracy’s] primary epistemological claims – that ideology is a science, that from the principles of this science a uniquely valid social and political programme can be deduced, and that both the principles and the programme can and must be taught to the nation’s young and enforced by the state – these claims we shall meet again. (Mount, 2012, p 113)
Such claims occupy a particularly significant place in 20th century thought. Philosophers like Kant and Hegel reinforced notions of ideology as scientific. Following in their footsteps, Karl Marx also believed ideology to be a science, with its own scientists. Both Nazi and Soviet communist ideology were similarly conceived in such objective scientific terms. The rest of us are cast as the recipients rather than potential co-creators of political ideology, ultimately subject to its enforcement, rather than entitled to reinterpret or challenge it. It is invested with the authority attached to positivist scientific enquiry, as if it is based on the same kind of objective truths as natural science. Only its scientists are entitled to explore and experiment with it.
Keith Harrison and Tony Boyd extend this idea of the relationship most of us have with ideology as an essentially passive one, when they write about the transmission of ideology and people as merely empty vessels, or the ‘receptors’ for it, rather than actors with agency involved in any sense actively with it in a two-way process (Harrison and Boyd, 2003, p 143–5). As they discuss, this of course connects with those understandings of ideology simply as an instrument of power wielded by the dominant groups in society, even to the extent of ‘enslaving’ those who accept or believe in it. This is the very opposite of any kind of understanding of ideology as a collaboration between those who inspire it and those who support it, let alone any kind of co-production. An even more developed view of this, as these authors suggest, is where people’s influence on ideology is seen to be reduced by spin doctors and modern methods of communication (Harrison and Boyd, 2003, p 145).
An ultimate expression of this is propaganda, where people are essentially induced to believe in whatever misrepresentations, exaggerations or indeed lies, power holders choose to feed them.
Humphrey and Umbach (undated) develop the discussion about the relationship between political ideology and propaganda. Umbach, from her historical work, highlights how this can be a two-way process, but one where the individual is essentially subordinate to the dominant ideology, even though they may engage with it. As she also reports, while propaganda must engage with lived experience to carry conviction, it tends to manipulate and distort this (Humphrey and Umbach, undated). The ultimate objective of propaganda is to make people think and act as its proponents want, even if this means deceiving them, rather than supporting them to think for themselves.
However, going back to the early idea of ideology as science, we can also see an apparent contradiction almost built into it. As Ferdinand Mount reminds us, de Tracy, while committed to this notion, also regards our subjective or ‘sense experience (as) the only reliable knowledge that we can have of the world … The idea that our senses could delude us … is quite foreign to [him] … So the ambiguities of ideology were inbuilt from the start’ (Mount, 2012, p 114). We will return to this epistemological issue relating to ideology later, when we explore the possibilities of its participatory development.
The political and academic worlds of ideology, as this author has been discovering, are complex and dense. They can be difficult to understand. This also seems very much a private province, explored by few. That might not be by intention, but it is certainly likely to be true for many newcomers. No wonder the frequent suggestion that it is unfamiliar territory for many of us. This is our starting line for enquiry in Chapter 2, when the focus on the relations between political ideology and the people it can affect really starts.