1 Though some would object to this strategy of conceptual analysis and, especially, to the p-rocedure of attempting to elicit the defining characteristics of and X on methodological or epistemological grounds, I can only say that whatever it is that philosophers do when they engage in conceptual analysis - whether it really is discovering the defining characteristics of an X or merely recommending certain changes in our belief system (à Ia Quine)- it does help to refine and systematize our theories and world-view and is, thus, a legitimate and valuable enterprise. Such questions as whether concepts really exist and whether one can really ascertain the defining characteristics of an X are beyond the purview of this essay.

2 Briefly, I take moral claims or propositions to be those claims or propositions which primarily function to evaluate and prescribe rather than describe or explain, which are universalizable in the sense that they must be taken to apply to all persons and all situations which are substantially similar, and which are based on considerations of human ill and well-being (in the broadest sense of these terms).

3 Tucker, Robert, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (New York: Cambridge U.P. 1961) 12.Google Scholar

4 Plamenatz, John, Man and Society, Volume II, (London: Longman 1963) 323.Google Scholar

5 To make matters even worse, a third concept of ideology can be found in the literature, a concept on which ideology is defined as normative or practical discourse, claims, or theories. On this concept of ideology, ideology cannot be part of a causal theory but can be and, indeed, of necessity is part of an adequate over-all world-view. This concept is the basis for Louis Althusser's claim in 'Marxism and Humanism’ that humanism (as a system of values) is ideology and, thus, must be expunged from historical materialism though it can be accepted as the ‘ideology’ of the worker's movement.

6 Kai Nielsen in his essay ‘Marxism, Ideology, and Moral Philosophy’ Social Theory and Practice 6 (1980) tentatively endorses position 2 - morality is ideology but need not be repudiated - by (apparently) holding that ‘X is ideology’ establishes only a prima facie case in favor of eliminating X from one's theory or world-view, a case which may be overridden by other considerations. Though I readily admit this way of construing the concept of ideology is not totally implausible, it is not, I think, the best way to go … especially since I am not convinced that all moral ‘ ideologies’ (in the global sense of the term) are 'touched by the distortion’ that reflecting class interests (supposedly) involves. At any rate, Professor Nielsen has since given up this tentative defense of position 2 in favor of position 3. His new position is recorded in his essay ‘justice and Ideology: Justice as Ideology’ Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice (1981 ).

7 See Feuer, Lewis, ‘Ethical Theories and Historical Materialism’ Science and Society, 6 (1942);Google ScholarHodges, Donald Clark ‘Historical Materialism and Ethics’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23 (1962);Google ScholarCollier, Andrew, ‘Truth and Practice' Radical Philosophy 5 (1973),Google Scholar and ‘The Production of Moral Ideology’ Radical Philosophy 9 (1974); and Skillen, Anthony, ‘Marxism and Morality’ Radical Philosophy 8 (1974),Google Scholar and Ruling Illusions: Philosophy and the Social Order (Sussex: Harvester P. 1977).

8 Feuer, op. cit., 242. This quote is from ‘Letter to Franz Mehring: July 14, 1893,' which can be found in Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1963) 434.

9 Ibid., 243.

10 By ‘sympathetic classes and social groups,’ I have in mind classes and groups which are relatively privileged in a society and whose privileges are more or less tied up with the social status quo and, thus, the interests of the ruling class. In feudal society, the clergy are an example of such a sympatehtic social group. In contemporary capitalist societies, the better-off segments of the petit bourgeois (i.e., the small businessmen), the power elite and, generally, the professional 'classes', are examples.

11 On the labor theory of value it is not the amount of labor (i.e., number of workhours) that go into the production of a commodity that determines its exchangevalue but the average amount of labor (i.e., average number of work-hours) that it presently takes to produce such a commodity. Thus, if a steel girder of a certain size can be produced today in, say, 100 work-hours, a steel girder produced twenty years ago in, say, 200 work-hours does not presently have an exchangevalue equivalent to 200 work-hours but an exchange-value equivalent to 100 work-hours. Furthermore, if it is also the case - as G.A. Cohen argues - that even the correctly stated labor theory of value is false then we may have an even better example of a theory or view which is false but not ideological. (See Cohen, G.A., 'The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation‘ Philosophy and Public Affairs 8 (1979)Google Scholar).

12 See Marx's chapter on the fetishism of money and commodities in Capital, Volume I, and his chapter on the trinity formula in Capital, Volume Ill. See also Geras, Norman, ‘Essence and Appearance: Aspects of Fetishism in Marx's Capital 'New Left Review 65 (1971);Google ScholarMepham, John, ‘The Theory of Ideology in Capital' Radical Philosophy 2 (1972);Google ScholarMaguire, John ‘Marx on Ideology, Power and Force' Theory and Decision 7 (1976);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Cohen, G.A., Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton N.J.: Princeton, U.P. 1978)Google Scholar especially chapter 5.

13 By ‘Rawls’ core moral theory,’ I mean to include his basic moral assumptions and his principles of social Justice.

14 The idea (or metaphor) that that which is ideological is an ‘inverted representation of reality’ is generated by such comments on the part of Marx and Engels as’ … in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura'. (The German Ideology, op. cit., 14.) And ‘Our ideologist … is in fact only making an image … an image which is distorted because it has been torn away from its own basis and, like a reflection in a concave mirror, is standing on its head'. (Anti-Dühring International Publishers (New York: 1939) 107). This idea or metaphor-which is primarily employed by Marx and Engels to describe Hegelian or quasi-Hegelian world-views which take material reality to be a product of consciousness (the Welt-Geist) or which take history to be a product of the development of ‘the Idea’ or of men's consciousness is simply a way of saying that a theory or conception is illusory in some sense. Therefore, characteristic 4 can be considered a subcategory of characteristic 3 and, for this reason, the conclusions we reach concerning the latter can be taken to apply equally to the former.

15 The German Ideology, op.cit. 30

16 Ibid. 5-6

17 Capital, Volume Ill (New York: International Publishers 1967) 830

18 Marx did not, however, always think this sort of ideology was the most troublesome. That such a pernicious sort of bourgeois ideology would organically arise within and be accepted by the proletariat and other oppressed classes simply did not occur to Marx in his earlier writings. In The German Ideology, for example, Marx apparently thinks that the various forms of bourgeois ideology (and other sorts of ideology, for that matter) will have a minimal impact on the proletarian masses and that they will readily attain ‘communist consciousness.' He asserts, on the one hand, that ‘ … if this mass ever had any theoretical notions, e.g., religion, etc., these have now long been dissolved by circumstances' (30). And, on the other, that’ … a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class’ (68-69). (Emphasis added.) The failure of the proletarian and peasant oriented revolutions which swept Europe from 1848 to 1850 apparently dissuaded Marx of the notion that the proletariat and plebian masses were by and large uninfluenced by religion and other forms of ideology and of the notion that ‘communist consciousness’ would be easily attained by these masses. Part of Marx's theoretical concerns after these events was to explain why the socialist revolutions he and Engels predicted had not occurred and part of the answer he gave to this question consists of his theory of the fetishism of capital (and of money and commodities) as a form of ideology which every class in capitalist society - including the proletariat- come to more or less organically and spontaneously accept.

19 The German Ideology, op. cit. 40-41

20 See Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974);Google ScholarHospers, John, Human Conduct (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World 1961);Google ScholarFriedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press 1962);Google ScholarRand, Ayn, et al., Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library 1966);Google ScholarHayek, F.A. Von, The Road to Serfdom Chicago: U. of Chicago Press 1962).Google Scholar

21 Notice, however, that not all ideology that functions to maintain bourgeois society is bourgeois ideology. Though religious ideology functions to maintain the status quo in bourgeois societies, religious ideology is not bourgeois ideology. It seems as though the criteria of individuation for kinds of ideologyfeudal, bourgeois, petit bourgeois, etc. - has to do with the conditions of their historical genesis or with their content or both. But here I have no firm suggestions to offer.

22 A more adequate rendering of the concept of ideology would quite probably apply to ruling social castes as well as to ruling classes. This would allow us to properly label the theory and views which function to defend the interests of the ruling bureaucratic castes in state-socialist societies ‘ideology’ even though it is arguable that such social castes are not classes on Marx's structural criteria of class and class membership.

23 See, for example, Chapter 10 ('The Working Day’) and Chapter 32 ('Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation’) of Capital, Volume I.

24 Though I am here presupposing a noncognivitist metaethics, I don't think this affects the conclusions drawn because contemporary cognitivist and descriptivist metaethical theories would, so far as I can see, reach the same conclusion, viz., that Marx was mistaken in thinking that moral Judgments of the form ‘X is good' commit one to recognizing ‘eternal verities’ or transcendent or immanent moral principles. That is to say, cognitivist-descriptive metaethical theories no more commit one to a non-naturalistic ontology than do non-cognitivist-prescriptive metaethical theories.

25 ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme', Marx-Engels Selected Works, Volume Ill. (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1969) 15.

26 Ibid., 19