In a previous article I discussed the error of understanding ideology as a fixed system of categories that determine the perception of reality Today I deal with another common error when understanding the concept of political ideology: the fact that define it according to contingencies, arbitrariness, take the part for the whole
To do this, it is useful to first talk about the political spectrum, or rather political spectrums. The bipolar dimension of political axes such as left-right It’s a good example.
The conceptualization of political positions on the left and right builds a continuum between two poles with a central point. It is historically linked to the times of the French Revolution and served to distinguish physical and political positions: in the National Constituent Assembly, Republicans sat to the left of the president, while monarchists sat to the right. Thus, this polarity is linked to an assumption of the existence of progress. It’s more than anything about distinguishing between progressives and conservatives. Unfortunately, we cannot know what is the essence of two categories that are characterized by their temporary mobility: at each moment the conservative response is one, and the same thing happens with the progressive one: both are linked to the development of history.
Thus, when faced with certain political questions, the responses given from different ideologies They can be aligned from left to right, one extreme being a certain position and the other being its opposite position. It is a quantitative analysis and, as such, is quite more descriptive than explanatory And yet, it is currently very difficult to talk about politics in non-axial terms. Pau Comes, in his blog Independència és Llibertat, proposes the following to avoid this simplistic approach: “As many people have written lately – for example Xavier Mir, from his blog -, Catalan politics can be explained with more than one axis, not just the left-right.” He refers, in effect, to the inclusion of the Spanish-Catalan axis.
According to this vision, Catalan politics can be explained asn the more axles the better However, This is not a way to understand ideologies as something substantive, but limit ourselves to giving an account of the different manifestations that may have a place in each of them. The explicit manifestations carried out by a series of political agents stereotypically related to certain ideologies become the ideology itself, and therefore the ideology becomes something purely explicit. Political analysis uses axes while ideological positions become a degree of agreement regarding certain facts, something easily measurable. We have found a relationship between this and what explains Herbert Marcuse in The One-Dimensional Man:
Thus arises the one-dimensional model of thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations and objectives, which by their content transcend the established universe of discourse and action, are rejected or reduced to the terms of that universe. The rationality of the given system and its quantitative extension gives a new definition to these ideas, aspirations and objectives.
This trend can be related to the development of the scientific method: operationalism in physical sciences, behaviorism in social sciences. The common characteristic is a total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; its meaning is restricted to the representation of particular operations and behaviors (Marcuse, 2010, p. 50).
Marcuse, furthermore, cites Bridgman to explain the operational point of view and its implications for the way of thinking of the entire society:
Adopting the operational point of view implies much more than a mere restriction of the sense in which we understand the “concept”; It means a far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, because we will no longer allow ourselves to employ as instruments of our thinking concepts that we cannot describe in terms of operations (Bridgman, 1928, p. 31).
The game between quantitative and qualitative
The axis that goes from left to right comes to have significance pseudo-qualitative when really it only serves to establish quantitative differences In other words: what determines the political position of an entity is the type of response given to a given problem. Political ideology becomes simple convention, regardless of subtleties such as the philosophical source from which each position draws, its conception of demiocracy, etc. This given problem, of course, has been raised on the political agenda. Three things to highlight:
I assert that it is perniciously false to teach that all cultural forms are equally probable and that the sheer force of will of an inspired individual can at any moment alter the trajectory of an entire cultural system in a direction convenient to any philosophy. Convergent and parallel trajectories far outweigh divergent trajectories in cultural evolution. Most people are conformists. History repeats itself in countless acts of individual obedience to cultural norms and models, and individual desires rarely predominate in matters that require radical alterations of deeply conditioned beliefs and practices.
Stereotypes and common sites
The analysis of ideology based on these political axes has as its raw material stereotypical and really insignificant themes of what constitutes a worldview From the organization of positions on relatively treatable issues from the hegemonic ideology, it is creates a range with very specific categories of possible political ideologies The consideration of issues that cannot be raised (such as the possibility of the use of violence by the popular classes) can be cynically associated with “extreme” political positions. See the speech “the ends touch ” which serves to equate and discredit two or more alternative worldviews for transgressing the norms that govern the political axis by taking similar measures from different ideologies, an analysis that once again focuses on the measures taken and not on their truly ideological background.
It is worth remembering how useful this polarity is. It never hurts to give credit to the promoters of the “center” policy, because the order of things inherent to the state system requires a certain stability and, of course, the immobility of the majority of the civil body is convenient In a very graphic way, if alternative worldviews are cornered at the ends of the axis, they become marginalized, while at a given moment the center can be nourished by sympathizers from both one half of the continuum and the other.
Harris, M. (2011). Cannibals and Kings. The origins of cultures. Madrid: Editorial Alliance.
