Marx’s Concept of Ideology as Apology

Abstract

Marx’s theory of man and society is sometimes called historical materialism. As the name indicates, Marx was deeply impressed by the importance of history. Every event, every action had to be understood in the context of the age in which it happened. There are no transhistorical truths. An action appropriate to one age would be inappropriate to another. There were no events — or theories — which would be appropriate to more than one age. The labour theory of value, for instance, arose necessarily in the time of capitalism. It could not have arisen before capitalism, because previous economic systems were not (or at any rate, not obviously) dependent on labour. It had to arise in the capitalist era because labour was the basis of value in such a society and the rulers of the society needed to know how to manipulate this source of value.