The Concept of Ideology in Critical Theory

Abstract

The successive theories of ideology advanced by representatives of critical theory must be seen in relation to their interpretation of Marx and their assessment of the applicability of Marx’s categories to the understanding of advanced industrial societies. As has already been remarked, the members of the early Frankfurt School accepted Marx’s critique of political economy as essentially correct, and interpreted it in ideology-critical terms. They therefore took the emphasis away from the base-superstructure metaphor, which in Engels and in the Marxism of the Second International tended to generate the ontological thesis that all thought is dependent on its material substratum, for in this version, as Wellmer puts it,

the concept of ideology loses the unique strategic significance which it had in Marx’s theory, namely, that of a concept signifying a false consciousness which in its falseness adequately expresses and reflects a ‘false’ social reality (1977, p. 236).

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