Conceptions of Ideology:The Non-Marxist Tradition

Abstract

The non-Marxist tradition of theorising about ideology is extensive and very diverse, even if it shares an opposition to the materialist and specifically economic analysis of Marxism. In my selection of some theorists from the tradition I concentrate on their treatment of the relationship of philosophy, science and ideology. Emile Durkheim starts with a standard opposition,of ideology and social science, but his restrictive and negative conception is more psychological than sociological. Durkheim may not be able to sustain both a psychological and a negative conception and he moves towards a positive (or neutral) and sociological conception of ideology in his later work, while claiming that his account of the social determination of knowledge is non-Marxist. A more consistently psychological conception of ideology is presented by Vilfredo Pareto. He seems to wish to make a sharp distinction between logical science and non-logical ideology, and yet may be unable to sustain the distinction. Karl Mannheim provides perhaps the most important and influential non-Marxist theory of ideology.