Ideologues, intellectuals and theorists

 (From Ercan Gündoğan, 2011, A Theory of Capitalist Society and Social Dialectics, Lap Lambert, p: 364-69)

Simultaneity of living, acting and thinking for a human existence and becoming becomes a social division of labour for the whole of social relations.  This is the division of labour among workers-capitalists, politicians-bureaucrats and intellectuals-ideologues-theorists. Each social group is specialized and this fact allows us to divide social relations into economic, political and ideological spheres or alternatively, into the base and superstructure. Actually at the social level, we have just division of labour or the specializations of certain groups and sections which live, act and think in certain levels.

A capitalist live as a capitalist but does not act as a politician and think as an ideologue. A politician does not live as a capitalist, but acts as a politician and does not think as an ideologue. An ideologue does not live as a capitalist and does not act as a politician but does think as an ideologue.

A worker is not a capitalist, and generally not a politician and an ideologue. Workers are not capitalists, politicians and ideologues. For a worker, social relations are unequal and asymmetrical although for capitalists, politicians and ideologues there are opportunities to acquire their respective identities and positions. It is a fact that politicians can become ideologue and even capitalists and ideologues are always close to politics and can become politicians. For a worker, trade unions, local consuls, neighbourhood organizations, cooperatives, ethnical and religious organizations can provide a social mobility and political opportunity. They can get the opportunity of being a part of the lower echelons of the political organizations.  As for intellectuality and ideology, they have less opportunity due to their weak educational background and social connections. As for capitalist position, similarly only the lower echelons of market is open to them and this means that workers can become only a lower part of the petty-bourgeoisie.

Intellectuals, ideologues, theorists form a special class which is specialised on systematic thinking on the social whole. Therefore, they differ from other professionals such as university professors, educated people, enlightened people and clergy. They show what the question is and what is to be done to solve it. They provide a mode of thinking with key concepts, approaches and solutions. Social-democrat and liberal states use the concepts of welfare, democracy, rule of law, state of law, freedom of speech and association, which have been produced by their intellectuals and ideologues. Socialist states used the concepts inherited from Marx and Lenin, for instance. Concepts, definition and solution of problem are given and circulate through all society from the top political-bureaucratic groups to ordinary professionals and local administrators. Ideologues theorize all economic and political problems and solutions to them with their concepts and mode of thinking.

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s governments circulated all neo-liberal concepts and mode of thinking such as privatization, management, productivity as Churchill and his period introduced the concepts of iron curtain, totalitarianism, etc. “Open society” becomes the slogan of capitalist democracies against all socialist countries rather than against fascist dictatorships and military dictatorships and Arab monarchies supported by the capitalist democracies.

Ideologues produce a mode of thinking with all concepts, questions and answers for all societies. For this they first play a political function to support rulers and eliminate opposition. Deception of masses and distortion of real facts are not creating “a false consciousness”, but showing the self-consciousness of capitalists, politicians and ideologues. Actually they impose their own consciousness by circulating it through all mediums they own or control. For the workers and all masses, false-consciousness is nothing but their dominated consciousness, which is not appreciated, educated, taught and circulated and hence remains just popular, partial, dispersed.

Workers can create their “popular” intellectuals, ideologues and theorists as well as scientists from within and attract the intellectuals from the petty-bourgeois circles.

Ideological sphere is not composed of the contradictory unity of bourgeois and socialist ideologies, but of the contradictory unity of bourgeois mode of thinking and practical, partial thinking of the workers and masses. Just as the worker-capitalist relation of the economic sphere emerges as ruler-ruled relation, the sphere of ideology is based on the main contradictory relation between ideologue-intellectual-theorist of the bourgeoisie and practical thought of the masses. I as a human can think of everything but I cannot be a capitalist or politician. Thinking is open to all humans. Becoming an ideologue is also possible for all humans. However, in the ideological sphere, the question is whether you support, believe in and adopt the current social system. As capitalist economy requires capitalist-worker relation and as capitalist politics needs ruler-ruled relation, capitalist sphere of ideology needs bourgeois thought-worker thought as a dialectical relation.

Bourgeois thinking and worker thinking can be differentiated according to whether the knowledge of domination and dominated position can be conceived, evaluated and then theorised. Even an ordinary capitalist has a self-consciousness of its economic, political and ideological spheres that he/she dominates due to his/her political and ideological sections. However, the workers can achieve their own self-consciousness only when the spheres of economy, politics and ideology begin to dissolve into opposite sides. Such dissolution has to occur simultaneously in each sphere so that opposite sides can achieve the consciousness of the social whole. It means that capitalists, rulers and ideologues lose their roles within the social whole. Ideology as the bourgeois mode of thinking should confront the socialist one. Ruling mode should face the rulers’ mode of ruling. Similarly, production mode of the capitalists should contradict the production mode of workers.

Nevertheless, we have shown something new until now. Ideology is not simply divided into bourgeois and socialist thoughts. Rather, it has two opposites such as the knowledge of the system and practical and experienced based knowledge. Ideologues have the former type of knowledge and the mass of the workers has the latter one. Socialist intellectuals try to first close the gap and then reformulate all dominant ideologies for the interests of the mass of workers.

Bourgeois ideology is the ideology of the existing, dominant social relations and is diffused into the every possible cells of society. Even the most theoretical socialist ideology can create only a powerful opposition to it. For this reason, it always remains partial, local and even temporary. That bourgeois ideology is systematic and theoretical does not mean that capitalists, rulers and holders of the dominant ideologies are systematic, theoretical and holistic. Rather, they have the key concepts, beliefs and the mode of thinking imposed on all humans. Their systematic and theoretical and holistic ideologies mean that they diffuse and circulate into every cell of social relations. Therefore, such characteristics are valid only for social whole rather than individual level. Dominant bourgeois ideologies are actually full of inconsistent, partial, unrelated theories which are produced by unconnected specialists. Nevertheless, their internal inconsistencies and separation produce more confusion and inconsistency and separation among the intellectuals and theorists.

Typical characteristic of the dominant ideology, which is partial and separate for individuals and systematic and holistic for the social whole, is that it offers a mode of thinking, of defining and solving problems for all individuals from capitalist and workers to rulers and ruled ones to even ideologues themselves.

Therefore, mode of production, mode of government and mode of thinking are valid for both individuals and social whole in the form of social division of labour. The mode of thinking is systematic and holistic in that it is diffused, circulated and taught through all individuals. However, for a socialist intellectual, it is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. 

Economy, politics and ideology

(From Ercan Gündoğan, 2011, A Theory of Capitalist Society and Social Dialectics, Lap Lambert, p: 148-50)

A worker as a wage or salary owner has a contradictory relation with his/her boss, director, banker and rentier. He/she also confronts his/her rivals in terms of sexual, ethnical and national identities, parties and ideologies as well as unemployed workers. Dividing forces are more than uniting ones for their common cause. However, dividing forces of the class emerge as a result of market penetrations into different territories with different historical levels. Working class is ever-being divided with the changing labour markets. Poor workers always threat relatively better lived ones. If the workers worked in the same sectors with same wage levels, capitalists would divide them in terms of culture, religion, age, sex or other forms of identities and positions. Capitalism tends to create a common market with differentiated workers and consumers. Capitalist market has to be common but heterogeneous and differentiated for labour and consumer markets. Similarly, workers achieve a common market, but only in their differentiated sub-markets.

In addition to their internal divisions, the workers confront with the all sections of capitalists and ruling classes which appropriates and control different shares of the total social capital. State and the political-bureaucratic community shares and control the public form and share of total capital. Bankers, industrial capitalists and rentiers confront it in the different spheres of life for different purposes. Actually, wage or salary goes to interest, rent or profit when it is consumed. Surplus value the worker produces is not only shared by profit, interest and rent but also consumed for those relative capitals. For this reason, his/her labour is first divided into wage-salary and profit-interest-rent and then consumed for profit-interest and rent. Surplus value must equal wages and salaries. Now we can suggest a new law of capital: Total wages and salaries must equal the totality of profits, interests and rents as the latter totality can be obtained only by the consumption of wages and salaries. The consumptions made by profit, interest and rent owners are the same as the wage and salary owners’ consumption. A commodity which may be a goods, house, land or money can be bought only by a wage or salary. A capitalist, who may be an industrialist, banker or landowner, buys something using his/her personal wage or salary as if he/she is an employee of his/her capital. However, because of this employee wage and salary implies, there is a surplus-value, which cannot be or is wanted to be consumed by the capitalists. As Marx formulates, capitalist production cannot be only “simple reproduction”, but must be extended. For this reason, necessary labour in the form of wage and salary cannot be equal with surplus value. The latter one increase more than the former can.

It is the ever-rising amount of surplus value, which gives the capitalist society its unique characteristic. Surpluses need not be reinvested for more commodity production but can be used for any purposes such as public, political and ideological means. State, media, culture, civil society, art, propaganda, secret services, provocation, prestige projects are financed by a part of total surplus. Otherwise, surpluses are seen as open manifestation of economic power.

Industrialists, bankers and rentiers do not form such a conscious division of labour for the maintenance of their systems. They just know where their money has to go for additional money. Hence, an industrialist cannot be so forever as a rentier cannot be only so as different parts of surplus value is ever-changed. 

Marx’s and Lenin’s modes of thinking

(From Ercan Gündoğan, 2011, A Theory of Capitalist Society and Social Dialectics, Lap Lambert, p: 42-4)

In the definition of ideology and its sphere within the social whole, we argued that it is a mode of thinking and discourse, which are shared and used spontaneously by the largest section of individuals in society. It circulates through minds and is adopted to understand and interpret social relations as well as to react to them. Systematic production of ideology is realized within a social division of labour in which there develops specializations or special fields of thinking. Science, art, philosophy are divided into countless number of sub-specializations. Social relations under capitalism do not allow the development of holistic and dialectical thinking and provide only the conditions of specialization, and the compartmentalization of knowledge. Knowledge of the whole of the social relations is produced only by few of intellectuals. For this reason, it is rather rare to face with holistic thoughts and theories. Masses follows suit and develop partial, local, temporary, practice and experience based, and divided mode of thinking. Bourgeois ideologues seem to be just professionally equipped individuals, who are specialized over certain problems of the social relations. Exceptions are seen only in the theorists who are connected with the great thinkers of the past such as Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber or Sigmund Freud. They are followed not only due to their founder positions, but also their holistic mode of thinking.

A holistic mode of thinking requires the knowledge of the social whole, its history and geography connections between individual and social spheres. It produces knowledge by connecting the individual and local spheres into a whole or dividing the whole into its components.

Marx’s and Lenin’s mode of thinking is not only holistic but also dialectical, which puts class relations to the center of social analysis and sees classes in all social struggles, conflicts and fights as well as in social change. This is not a reductionism of all social phenomena to class relations, but is the attempt to reveal class contents of the social relations and interpret them for a scientific revolutionary program. Classes already exist so do their struggles. Class domination exists so does the struggle of other classes against it. Class phenomena are recognized by other theorists and scientists, but only in different contexts and conceptualizations. Smith sees only the owners of factors of production; Hegel gives priority to the state; for Weber, classes are nothing but different income groups. To understand the strategic meaning of classes in Marxian theory, the passage below should be examined; he stated in his letter to J. Weydemeyer in 1852:

“And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society .

“Ignorant louts like Heinzen, who deny not merely the class struggle but even the existence of classes, only prove that, despite all their blood-curdling yelps and the humanitarian airs they give themselves, they regard the social conditions under which the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the non plus ultra [highest point attainable] of history, and that they are only the servants of the bourgeoisie. And the less these louts realize the greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself the more disgusting is their servitude...”[1]

Before Marx, bourgeois historians and economists already recognize and examine the classes. The question is not whether they exist or not. Class struggle is not also a fact discovered or suggested by Marx. However he reveals and formulates the relation of classes with the historical phases of economic development and inevitability of the proletarian dictatorship as a result of class struggle and then the abolishment of class relations. Logically, he sees the bourgeois regime as a transient necessity. Marx’s all critical political economy and political analyses deal with class conflicts and struggles which take place between the transitory bourgeois social relations and socialist system towards which class struggle is oriented.

Inevitability of the proletarian dictatorship is based on the ultimate result of class struggle between capitalists and workers.

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[1] http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05-ab.htm