The Marxist conception of ideology.

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The Marxist conception of ideology:

Introduction:

Ideology was a term 'coined by the French rationalist philosopher Destutt de Tracy, in the 1790s, to refer to the "science of ideas", as opposed to metaphysics' (Illinois State University 2001). Thus, when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept in the 1840s, in their work The German Ideology, they were discussing a relatively new concept. However, by the time the pair - who shared a life long collaboration - came to write about ideology, the term had already acquired 'pejorative connotations', and this can be seen in Marx and Engels conception of ideology (Illinois State University 2001). Marx and Engels regarded ideology as 'false consciousness'. It was not actually Marx himself - the more famous of the duo - that used this phrase, but Engels. Engels, attempting to define ideology 'in a generally applicable sense' stated that

Ideology is a process accomplished by the thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all (Engels cited in Seliger 1977: 30).

For a time, 'the negative sense of ideology as "false