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p Philosophy, as the self-consciousness of a historically determined epoch, is ideology. The analysis of the relationship between philosophy and ideology presents certain difficulties, because ideology has not yet been sufficiently studied in Marxist literature, despite the fact that the scientific understanding of ideology and particularly the development of the concept of scientific ideology are of paramount importance in the contemporary ideological and political struggle.

p The majority of Marxist scholars agree that philosophy is a specific form of ideology. Acknowledgement of this fact, however, is not enough to produce a solution to the problems that it raises. Is the concept of ideology (including scientific ideology) broad enough to cover the whole content of philosophical doctrines, which, as we have seen, cannot be reduced to reflection of only the social reality? Since there is a definite difference between social consciousness and science, does not ideology characterise only the social consciousness? Does the concept of the philosophical, and particularly the scientific– philosophical world view coincide with the concept of ideology? What does the concept of "scientific ideology" mean? Is it identical to the concept of the science of society? How does the scientific ideology differ from the non-scientific? Does this distinction apply only to its form or to its content as well? What constitutes the specific nature of 387 philosophy as ideology? Is the content and significance of philosophy limited to its ideological function?

p It need hardly be said that these questions, which have been keenly debated in Soviet and foreign Marxist literature in recent years, require a more thorough investigation than can be accomplished in the present monograph. Therefore we shall confine ourselves to a brief examination of the main features of the problem, in order to make the concept of philosophy more concrete.

p A number of Marxist studies of the question stress that the founders of Marxism used the term “ideology” in the negative sense that it had historically acquired in their time. There can be no doubt, however, that Marx and Engels did not confine themselves to this interpretation of ideology, as illusory consciousness and the speculative idealist mystification of objective reality. In fact, they built up a scientific interpretation of ideology.

p The concept of ideology as alienated social consciousness, which we find in the works of Marx and Engels, implies a positive as well as a negative meaning and this positive meaning was thoroughly developed by Lenin, who substantiated the concept of "scientific ideology" and included it in the system of the materialist conception of history.  [387•1 

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p “We set out,” Marx and Engels wrote, "from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this lifeprocess. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence."  [388•1  Thus, the methodological requirement formulated by the founders of Marxism runs as follows. When investigating social reality one must proceed not from ideology, not from consciousness in general, but from the actual living, historical process, analysis of which should explain also its reflection, including the ideological form of that reflection. This methodological principle, organically linked with the historico-materialist solution to the basic philosophical problem, is a categorical imperative of Marxist sociology: to return from conceptions, from ideas about things to the things themselves, so that through scientific analysis we may know their actual relationships, discover the mechanism of their false reflection in people’s consciousness, and replace these distorted images 389 of reality with a system of scientific concepts. This approach to the problem differed significantly from the notions of ideology as illusory consciousness devoid of objective content that were widespread in the time of Marx and Engels. By analysing not only the form but also the real content of ideology, the founders of Marxism proved the necessity for a positive appraisal of this social phenomenon. And this, undoubtedly, provides a highly important theoretical foundation for the scientific understanding of ideology. Criticising Young Hegelianism as a variety of the "German ideology”, Marx and Engels were not content to prove the scientific invalidity of its speculative-idealist constructions; they at the same time revealed its social content, of which the Young Hegelians themselves had not been aware: "German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois relations.”  [389•1  Marx and Engels reveal what is behind the alienated ideological form of the reflection of social reality—the social programme of a certain class.  [389•2  They 390 explain that the illusoriness of the ideological beliefs of this class springs not from the imagination of its spokesmen, but from its actual position. Only the form of ideology is illusory, whereas its content is the socio-historical process conditioning the position, interests and conduct of the given class and also the illusoriness of its ideological beliefs. At a certain stage of its development the bourgeoisie cannot avoid conceiving its interests as universal and reasonable, as belonging to the whole of mankind. And since in its struggle against feudalism it did indeed express the essential demands of social development and thus the interests of the great majority of society, its ideological illusions were substantial and historically justified. It is no accident, therefore, that bourgeois-democratic reforms were regarded by the bourgeois ideologist as the ultimate emancipation of the human personality.

p In Marx’s economic studies we find a brilliant scientific analysis of the ideological illusions of the classical English political economists, who regarded private property as the immediate economic precondition for all production, who identified the commodity with the product of labour in general, who absolutised the capitalist mode of production, and so on. Exposing these illusions, Marx nevertheless constantly emphasises 391 the scientific character of classical English political economy and contrasts it to the theories of the vulgar economists, who substituted their deliberate apology for real research into the economic relations of capitalism. Marx drew a fundamental distinction between the historically progressive ideology of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois apologetics, which reflected the transformation of the bourgeoisie into a conservative social force. Moreover, he explained that even vulgar political economy is by no means devoid of content, since it reflects objective reality—the appearance of capitalist production relations—but in an uncritical, unscientific form. In Capital Marx thoroughly investigates the origins of this appearance, thus showing that even this should be the subject of scientific inquiry. The inquiry, however, can be carried out only from positions of proletarian partisanship, because the proletariat is the necessary negation of the capitalist social system engendered by capitalism itself.

p The scientific analysis of religion is an extremely important element of Marxist teaching. Although religion expresses the interests of the exploiting classes, it is also a type of social consciousness inherent in both the exploiters and the exploited. Religion reflects not the special position of this or that class, but the antagonistic character of social relationships, the domination of the spontaneous forces of social development over all people. This, in the words of Marx, is both the sigh of the oppressed creature and the heart of a heartless world.  [391•1  Religion is modified in the process of social development, but in all 392 antagonistic societies it fulfils basically one and the same function. The fact that both the exploiters and the exploited profess, as a rule, the same religion is certainly no testimony to its aboveclass or above-party character. The exploiting classes find in religion a justification for their own position and a specific means of psychological enslavement of the working people. The exploited masses, since they have not yet found the road to social emancipation, profess religion because it strikes them as the apparent form of realisation of their actual needs.

p The religious ideology on the one hand consolidates social inequality, exploitation and oppression, while on the other it provides an inadequate form of protest against that which it sanctifies, as can be seen from the history of heresy, from the religious attire of the early bourgeois revolutions, and so on.

p Ideology, as can be seen from the example of religion, is by no means always a system of theoretical views. The same is true of the spontaneously formed everyday political consciousness of the masses, which should not be excluded from ideology, inasmuch as it is the mass consciousness, and not something that belongs only to the theoreticians of ideology. Marx drew a distinction between spontaneously formed and theoretically elaborated ideological beliefs. Vulgar political economy, as Marx pointed out, is based theoretically on the ideas of the everyday bourgeois consciousness.

p Characterising the petty-bourgeois ideologists, Marx emphasised: "Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their 393 individual position they may be as far apart as heaven from earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically.”  [393•1  Naturally this does not imply that every ideology may in the final analysis be reduced to the notions of the everyday class consciousness. English classical political economy, the ideology of the bourgeois Enlightenment, and other historically progressive bourgeois doctrines, limited though they were from the class standpoint, were undoubtedly in contradiction to the everyday bourgeois notions of their time. And inasmuch as they contained elements of a scientific understanding of reality, they were more progressive than the social practice of the bourgeoisie. The advance reflection of social reality, the anticipation of its tendencies, the urge to look ahead, the theoretical elaboration of new social criteria, ideals and historical tasks constitute the characteristic feature of historically progressive ideologies.

p Trade-unionism and reformism are spontaneously formed ideologies of the working class at the stage of its development when it is still not aware of the irreconcilable antithesis of interests between labour and capital. In their theoretical form these ideologies substantiate the everyday, spontaneously formed consciousness of the proletarian masses fighting for their immediate economic interests. Marxism as the scientific ideology 394 of the working class is built up by means of revolutionary critical generalisation of the experience of proletarian liberation movement, by research into the laws of capitalist development, and by the theoretical summing up and working over of the achievements of previous social thought— philosophical, economic and socio-political. The Marxist analysis of social consciousness and selfconsciousness indicates the need to draw a fundamental distinction between ideology, that adequately expresses the basic interests of a given class, and ideology that reflects the influence exercised upon it by other, hostile classes.

p Characterising the difference between the Communist Party and other working-class parties that existed in the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels emphasised: "The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.”  [394•1 

p The founders of Marxism do not call their system of scientific communist views the ideology of the proletariat, although they point out that it expresses the basic interests of the proletariat of all countries. By not calling their doctrine an ideology, Marx and Engels actually counterpose the scientific ideology of the proletariat to the 395 bourgeois consciousness and, in doing so, break away from the unscientific ideologists who at that time dominated the working-class movement. So the assertions of the critics of Marxism that Marx and Engels rejected all ideology on principle are utterly unfounded. On the same grounds one might, for instance, assert that they rejected all philosophy; but the fact is that Marxism is the negation of philosophy in the old sense of the term. Here we have an analogy that indicates the concrete dialectical nature of negation. This is the negation of negation, that is to say, the creation of a fundamentally new, scientific ideology.

p The fact that in Marx and Engels there is no such expression as "scientific ideology”, that they counterpose, for example, the "German ideology" and ideology in general to the social science they themselves created, will deceive only those who are ignorant of the complex and contradictory process of development of a new scientific theory that is fundamentally different from all preceding theories, or who seek to counterpose Marx to Lenin on the grounds that Lenin, in developing the doctrine of the founders of Marxism, formulated the concept of scientific ideology that was already implicit in that doctrine.

p Marxism-Leninism understands ideology not as the passive reflection of social reality, but as the substantiation of a definite social programme founded on investigation of the position and interests of a given class, its relationship to other classes, the peculiarities of social development and its motive forces. In this sense every ideology is a guide to social action, that is to say, to a system of regulative ideas, notions, ideals and imperatives expressing the positions, demands and 396 aspirations of a definite class, social group or the whole of society.

p Revolutionary ideology argues the necessity for radical social change in the basic direction of social development; in so far as such change is actually needed, a revolutionary ideology, no matter how illusory its form of expression, contains elements of scientific understanding of social reality. A conservative or reactionary ideology, on the contrary, gives grounds for the desire of certain classes to preserve social relations that are historically obsolete, and since such a desire contradicts the whole course of social development, such an ideology is hostile to the scientific understanding of social life. Consequently, social theory does not become ideology because it gives a distorted reflection of reality, but because it reflects, and appraises the given social reality and the whole socio-historical process from definite social positions.  [396•1 

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p So even the possibility of scientific ideology coincides historically with the ability of the given class actually to express and realise the historical necessity conditioned by the previous development of society. F. V. Konstantinov makes the point: "Only the class that is basically interested in objective truth, whose position and interests coincide with the objective course of history and the laws of development of society, only this class and its theoretical representatives are capable of carrying out fearless, objective, stop-at-nothing 398 research. For this reason the scientific ideology of this class does not and cannot contradict scientific sociology.”  [398•1 

p Of course, the possibility of creating a scientific ideology can be realised only in certain historical conditions and by means of all-round investigation of the life of society. The slave-owners, the feudais and the capitalists, all in their time expressed the interests of social development, the historical necessity of which they were the instruments. But they never created a scientific ideology. The progressive bourgeoisie through its most outstanding ideologists created economic, historical and legal science, and philosophical materialism. But to none of these scientific theories is the term " scientific ideology" applicable. A scientific ideology presupposes cognition of its own historical, class content, origin, significance, and relationship to other ideologies, classes and epochs. It is, consequently, free of idealist illusions and pretensions to eternal significance beyond history. In this sense it may be said that scientific ideology is the highest achievement of scientific inquiry into the socio-historical process, because it also comprises scientific understanding of its specific ideological form. Such is scientific socialist ideology.

p Marx and Engels created scientific philosophy, and the scientific world view which is broader in content than philosophy. Marxist-Leninist science and the scientific socialist ideology form a dialectical unity, which does not, however, eliminate the difference that exists between them.  [398•2  This 399 distinction will no doubt become more obvious when classless communist society is established throughout the world and the problems of the class struggle, the socialist revolution, the dictatorship of the working class, the state, and so on, are consigned to the historical past. But the MarxistLeninist scientific world view will undoubtedly retain all its significance; it will develop on the basis of the new historical experience and achievements of the sciences of nature and society, as the scientific theory of social creativity and the methodology of scientific research. The unity of science and ideology that is inherent in Marxism becomes more understandable in the light of this historical perspective.

p Marxism-Leninism is a science and at the same time a scientific ideology. The significance of Marxism-Leninism as the ideology of the working class is historically confined within the framework of the epoch of transition from capitalism to communism; its significance as a science that is constantly developing and enriching itself with new propositions is naturally not confined within the limits of any epoch.

p The significance of any ideology, including the scientific ideology, is conditioned by the historical 400 limits of its possible social application. In this sense any ideology is historically transient. The significance of a science is determined exclusively by the boundaries of the objective truth it contains and the possibilities of its further development. In this sense science, as such, has everlasting significance as the only adequate expression of "living, fertile, genuine, powerful, omnipotent, objective, absolute human knowledge".  [400•1 

p Every ideology, having fulfilled its historical mission, yields place to a new ideology, equipped to advocate new social demands, interests and tasks. Marxism-Leninism as the scientific world view, as the theoretical basis of the scientific ideology of the working class, will undoubtedly become the theoretical basis of the scientific ideology of communism when it is victorious on a world scale, since communism will naturally need a new, scientifically grounded system of social orientation and scientific logistics for the people’s social creativity.

p The distinction between science and scientific ideology within the framework of their dialectical unity that was first achieved in Marxism gives no grounds for opposing them to each other. There is a power of knowledge in the scientific socialist ideology. It provides a scientific methodological orientation towards the understanding of past history, the present age and mankind’s historical prospects. The methodological significance of the Marxist-Leninist ideological approach to the phenomena of social life is summed up in the concept of scientific Communist-Party spirit.

p Needless to say, there are not and cannot be in Marxist-Leninist teaching two components—- 401 scientific and scientific-ideological—that contradict each other. All Marxism as a science is the scientific ideology of the working class, the ideology of the communist transformation of society, and its inherent historical clarity of content retains its actual significance throughout the epoch of the building and establishing of communist society. Thus it is a matter only of delimiting the two functional meanings of Marxist-Leninist science, of defining the specific nature of scientific ideology-

p Thus, the essence of the Marxist-Leninist approach to the question cannot be expressed either by opposing science, the scientific world view, to the scientific socialist ideology, or by erasing the differences between them. The unity of cognition and the scientific ideological understanding of the world does not remove the difference between the two. Marxism-Leninism has put an end to the alienated ideological form of cognising the world, and it did so by creating Marxist-Leninist science, which is at the same time the ideology of the working class. It is from this standpoint that we must set about solving the question of the ideological function of philosophy.

p The philosophical doctrines of Heraclitus, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers of the ancient world were undoubtedly ideological in character. It is not particularly difficult to see the social limitations in Heraclitus and his interpretation of dialectics as eternal flux, in his conception of the struggle of contraries as everlasting war, and so on. The ideological content of Aristotle’s teaching on the nature of the state is even more easily perceived. And yet it would be a repetition of Shulyatikov’s mistakes (see above, pp. 381–82) to say that Heraclitus’s dialectics, the atomic theory of 402 Democritus, the teachings of Plato or Aristotle boil down to ideological interpretation of social or natural reality from the positions of the slaveowning class. Understanding the ideological function of the cognitive process has nothing to do with the pragmatic, un-Marxist attitude of equating the process of cognition with service in the interests of progressive or reactionary classes. This is not just because the subject-matter of cognition, and particularly philosophy, includes natural as well as social reality. The main thing to remember is that the ideological function of cognition, of knowledge, is an inseparable part (but only a part) of the all-embracing cognitive process that is unrestricted both in content and significance. Cognition expresses the needs of social production, both material and spiritual; it makes up the many-sided world of man’s spiritual life, which, like all human life, cannot be simply a means, but is the goal.

p The relationship that takes shape historically between the ideologies of various classes, particularly opposing classes, is a relationship of struggle: ideological compromises (between the bourgeois and the feudal ideologies, for instance) are only passing phases in the process of the assertion or degradation of this or that ideology.

p We do, of course, find in the history of the ideologies of the exploiting classes a historical continuity born of the antagonistic production relations that are common to the slave-owning, feudal and capitalist societies. But this does not explain why the doctrines of Heraclitus, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Sceptics and others outlived their age and were revived, re-interpreted, and developed by the philosophers of feudal and capitalist times. 403 Beyond the bounds of the socio-economic formation that engendered them they can no longer, of course, perform the ideological functions they previously possessed. The assimilation and use of these teachings by the ideologists of the new classes become possible only as a result of a process of ideological treatment, that modifies their original content. But it should be borne in mind that not only the ideologists of the feudal system but also the representatives of the anti-feudal opposition developed the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers of ancient times. Campanella, one of the first advocates of Utopian communism, was a neo-Platonist. Neo-Platonism had a considerable influence on the pantheist, anti-feudal world view of Giordano Bruno. In contrast to the schoolmen, who followed Thomas Aquinas, the Aristotelians of Padua represented the anti-feudal social movement. Early bourgeois scepticism, which revived the traditions of the ancient world, expressed qualitatively new ideological tendencies that were alien to the Greek scepticism of Pyrrho.

p The transition from the slave-owning to the feudal society, and the revived interest in ancient philosophy evoked by the development of feudalism, historically revealed a continuity in the development of philosophical knowledge that was relatively independent of the ideological function which this transition performed. This relative independence must not be exaggerated, of course: the philosophy of feudal society (at any rate, the dominant philosophy) drew mainly on the idealist doctrines of the ancient world, and the very mode of this assimilation was determined by the prevailing religious ideology.

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p There are various degrees in the relative independence of philosophical knowledge, which presumably explains the existence of different and even opposed philosophical doctrines within the framework of one and the same ideology at a given stage in history. German classical philosophy is basically united in respect of ideology. But how fundamental is the difference between Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach!

p The ideology of every class is characterised by its basic, historically developing content. The ideologically united bourgeois philosophy (only its unity makes the term “bourgeois” applicable) is at the same time characterised by an absence of conceptual unity: conflict between materialism and idealism, between rationalism and empiricism, between dialectics and metaphysics, conflict within the idealist camp, polemics between various trends in materialist philosophy, and so on. Concrete analysis of these philosophical disagreements clearly reveals the various trends that exist within the framework of bourgeois ideology. But it would be scarcely correct to regard the differences of opinion between the sensualists and the rationalists as ideological differences, although they are to a certain extent connected with the latter. The ideological function of philosophy is not what distinguishes philosophy from other forms of social consciousness; it is what it has in common with them. Marx called Locke a thinker who represented "the new bourgeoisie in every way—he took the side of the manufacturers against the working classes and the paupers, the merchants against the old-fashioned usurers, the financial aristocracy against governments that were in debt; he even demonstrated in a separate work that the bourgeois way of thinking is the 405 normal way of thinking. . .".  [405•1  This summing up of Locke’s ideological position enlightens us as to his economic, political and pedagogical views, his attitude to religion, his retreats from consistent materialism, and so on. But it cannot, of course, provide the basis for an explanation of the specific peculiarities of Locke’s sensualism, his doctrine of simple and complex ideas, of primary and secondary qualities, etc. To understand these particular features of Locke’s philosophy, one must study the empirical natural science of his day. Philosophy’s dependence on the level of development of the science of its day is not directly connected with its ideological function. It would be an oversimplification, for example, to assert that rationalist epistemology is an ideology.

p The dialectical unity of philosophy and ideology means that they cannot be metaphysically identified with one another. It thus helps us to understand the relative independence of philosophical knowledge beyond the bounds of its ideological application. From this point of view we are able to see the relationship of historical continuity between philosophical doctrines that differ radically in ideological content. Marxist philosophy, as the ideology of the working class, naturally has nothing in common with bourgeois ideology, and anyone who sees in Marxist philosophy nothing but ideology cannot, of course, understand its relationship to the preceding bourgeois philosophy.

p Marxism arises, acquires form and substance, and develops in implacable conflict with bourgeois ideology. And yet Marxism, as Lenin emphasises, is the direct and immediate continuation of the 406 most outstanding philosophical, sociological and economic doctrines created by the ideologists of the progressive bourgeoisie. This is a contradiction of actual historical reality, in which philosophical knowledge always performs an ideological function, while at the same time remaining knowledge that does not depend on this or any other function. The attitude of Marx and Engels to bourgeois doctrines was expressed primarily in criticism of class narrowness of these doctrines in selecting and developing what was of value in them, and in solving the questions posed by their bourgeois predecessors. It would have been impossible to create dialectical and historical materialism if the positive knowledge contained in pre-Marxist philosophy, despite its ideological form, which was alien to the working people, had not been liberated.

p Natural science, as well as philosophy and sociology, also has a certain degree of ideological function, inasmuch as its discoveries overthrow the religious and other ideological prejudices of the ruling classes. It disposes of racialist gibberish, the neo-Malthusian apology for capitalism and imperialist war, etc. This goes to show that in certain conditions even non-ideology may have an ideological function. There is no such thing as bourgeois (or proletarian, for that matter) physics, chemistry or the like, but there are various philosophical interpretations of scientific discoveries which have ideological significance. Because of this the opposition between various ideological approaches comes out even in the non-ideological, natural-scientific field of knowledge.

p Needless to say, scientists draw philosophical conclusions from scientific discoveries, that is to say, on the basis of scientific data they repudiate 407 some philosophical beliefs and find arguments for others. In this sense scientists take part in the ideological struggle in so far as they assess social as well as the specialist significance of scientific discoveries, the prospects of science and its role in solving social problems. Today, when natural science to an ever greater degree determines the peculiarities and growth rate of material production, the natural scientists, like the philosophers, sociologists and economists, are compelled to face up to the practical application of scientific discoveries, the social consequences of scientific and technical progress, which are predicated on the social system, the policy of the ruling classes, and so on. We thus find scientists taking up certain ideological positions outside their own particular field of research. For instance, many prominent scientists are actively campaigning for peace, against the military use of atomic energy, chemistry and bacteriology.

p The ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism embraces all fields of knowledge and activity, but primarily, of course, it is a struggle between the communist, the dialectical– materialist, atheist world view, and the bourgeois world view, which is idealist, metaphysical and religious. This indicates the vital role of philosophy in the contemporary ideological struggle of the opposing social systems which, as we have seen above, is becoming increasingly a struggle of mutually exclusive world views. The present-day bourgeois, predominantly anti-intellectual philosophy disparages cognition and the pursuit of knowledge and seeks to prove that science and scientific and technical progress only appear to liberate man from the power of the elemental forces of nature, while in reality alienating him 408 from himself and nature and making him the slave of his own inventions. The social pessimism preached by numerous contemporary bourgeois philosophers proclaims the thesis of the fatal disharmony of human life which, they maintain, cannot be attuned by any remoulding of society. This pessimism cultivates fear of the future and ridicules the idea of a rational reordering of social life as a secular version of the Biblical legend of paradise.

Marxist philosophy is a life-asserting world view, which gives grounds for historical optimism, because in the present epoch it has become not only possible but also most assuredly necessary to abolish the antagonistic production relations of capitalism. The idea of social progress and allround development of the human personality, proclaimed by the bourgeois Enlightenment, and today condemned by the majority of bourgeois thinkers as complacency and a dangerous delusion, has gained in Marxist teaching a fundamental substantiation and development. The scientific understanding of social progress evolved by Marxism is one of the most important propositions of the scientific socialist ideology. The Marxist-Leninist philosophy scientifically expresses the working people’s basic interests, the interests of social progress, takes an active part in the communist transformation of social relations and is, therefore, a powerful ideological force.