A comprehensive and systematic account of the ways in which Marx and Engels and their immediate followers made use of the conception of ideology.
Contents
A prefatory note and acknowledgments; Introduction; Part I. The Sin of Overstatement: 1. The problem and the basic contradiction; 2. The facets of orthodox Marxist doctrine; 3. Distorted and adequate thought; 4. The pressure of facts; Part II. The Redemption of Ideology: 5. Unacknowledged and acknowledged modification; 6. An interim balance; 7. Ideology beyond economic causation; 8. The way out of the vicious circle: Mannheim; Part III. Perspectives, Changing and Persisting: 9. Class and ideology; 10. Ideology pluralism; 11. The range and depth of analogy; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
Reviews
‘The author’s scholarship is immense. He has included an amazing range of writings in the scope of a short book and taken the reader on a guided tour de force through the murky forests of the literature about ideology and Marxism, both original and critical. One emerges from the experience with a heightened sense of the ingenuities of Marxists, but depressed by how little progress they have made towards a comprehensive and consistent theory of ideology. As a bonus Seliger gives one innumerable insights into the problems of the relationship of thought to social conditions and that of truth to social thought, which ideology as a concept tries to span.’ Z. A. Pelczynski, The Times
‘The story Seliger has to tell is of a steady refinement of the idea of ideology from the time of Marx and Engels onwards. He himself contributes to this development by pointing out many of the inadequacies of the theory of ideology as commonly conceived …’ The Times Literary Supplement
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