Where is ideology today?
Revolution without consciousness.
Since the rise of neoliberalism, culture, philosophy, and art are often reduced to sources of profit, not an intellectual challenge for thinkers, artists, and scholars. All of the creators are treated as workers— neither more, nor less.
In order to be precise it is important to keep in mind that by neoliberalism I mean the governing logic that promotes greater economic liberalization, lower taxes, privatization and depoliticization.
Under neoliberalism everything became a tool. The instrumentalization of science and education pushed the talent and the art itself to the side. Universities stopped being a place for discussions and idea exchange, market relevance, revenue and surplus value were put on a pedestal. Cultural worth became dependent on metrics, visibility and consumer demand. Such a tendency can be traced through American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ statistics. We need only two values to make an evaluation— in 1971 the awarded bachelor’s degrees in “Historical categories” were exactly 134 143 and only 13 years later, in 1984, the awarded bachelor’s degrees in the same field were 63 711— a decline of around 47.5%.
As a matter of fact after this decline the trend was going upwards for several decades, but it stayed far behind the peak of the early 1970s. Today the graph is almost at the same place where it was in 1984— the awarded bachelor’s degrees in the “Historical categories” are 69 254.
It is incumbent upon me to say the following so you don’t misunderstand me. The raw data is not necessarily an indicator for the quality of those who get awarded a degree, but it shows the interest of people around the USA for pursuing a degree in the particular area. The data shows us that more people are transitioning from the humanities to STEM.
This transition may sound like a cliché, but it is important, because it is in close relation to the fall of ideologies and the rise of a wild form of capitalism— on one hand, money became philosophy, and on the other hand, different people wanted to present philosophy as a boring old burden.
The profit-oriented and capitalist culture we are witnessing today is a sham, it is far from conceptual— it is trend-based.
Those problems give us only one chance to save the meaningful— the so-called cultural revolution.
But what is cultural revolution?
Before I give you my definition of this phrase, some preliminary remarks. Cultural revolution should not be understood as a form of control over culture, destruction of everything we know, or ideologization of art. The “revolutionary” element here hides in the will to reform the known into a better entity, including regional peculiarities with modern understanding and philosophy.
Cultural revolution is the process of creating a new conception for an applicable and organic system of philosophical tenets, concerning all fields of culture.
Probably such a definition brings up more questions, related to the possibility of such a paradigmatic change.
A transformation on a bigger scale might be decreed overnight, but will need more time to establish itself as a real alternative. It can emerge through institutions that prioritize reflection, instead of distraction. Schools will be able to come to the rescue if they start training judgment and not passive memorization, developing the strengths of each kid, not working with stencils. Public life and open dialogue will regain their places when disagreement can produce productivity, rather than primitive disputes.
I truly believe this is possible. By showing the problem with the ideology-loss and raging capitalism, we may be able to produce a real cultural revolution. That is why activism without theory is not virtuose. We have to move slower and more consistently, on a clear platform, rather than rapidly without a clear idea of what comes next.
There are many movements that have shown enormous courage and emotional charge, while lacking robust direction. Such initiatives, or even uprisings, soon collapse due to lack of political and ideological platform. They may capture your attention and then dissolve without making progress at all, that way they will show problems without proposing solutions.
It may be grotesque, however, Libya, after the Libyan Civil war, is a perfect example. The masses, participating in the protests against the regime, demanded justice, dignity and democratic governance. Nevertheless, after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the protesters lacked a unified vision for the “New Libya”. Rival militias, regional factions, ideological groups and competing claims to the so called legitimacy led to prolonged instability, armed conflict and collapse of the state. The wind of change evolved into a hurricane.
Our history shows contrary examples too— for movements that combine energy and vision of a final goal. Such a movement is the Indian Independence Movement— it managed to reject the colonial rule with consecutive steps. This has to show us that not every action accompanied by energy lacks ideology. The analysis on each case has to be as broad, as possible, otherwise we might miss an important perspective. In this case the ideas and messages were clear— the people of India demanded what was theirs— freedom.
We should not continue repeating the mistakes of the past. We cannot continue with this process of “revolting in order to revolt”, or in the hypothesis of the cultural revolution— “creation in order to create”, doing so is highly counterproductive. We have to do it for the sake of art and our own beliefs. Theory has to be the base visibility can step on. We have to choose between oversimplification, accompanied by performativeness, and real action.
And this gives me a great direction— in modern-day language, we are using the word “performative” more and more. If we trace the peak of this negatively connoted misuse of the word, we will find the roots in the contemporary misuse of theory and ideology. Theory shouldn’t be a shell we are hiding in, it has to be the substrate of our conceptualization.
Here, the most suitable example I can use to prove my point is populism. It is the political face of performativeness. Politicians show you what you want to see, tell you what you want to hear— every single action of theirs is self-centered, it is causa sui. If we are just unconscious and uncultured recipients, populism will always bloom. Populism and performativeness are twins, who are continuosly turning into one another, hourglass-like, to fight them we have to create filters— filters of information, filtering out people, filters of ideas.
Progress hardly ever came from populism in a historical perspective. I’m not optimistic that populism will produce positive outcomes now— in this complicated situation of polycrisis. It is mandatory to distinguish populism from democracy, because sometimes in the situation of multiple and overlapping crisis we are living in, they might be mixed up and lead to a false perspective or even worse— denial of democracy.
Democracy requires informed participation, responsibility, consciousness and institutions, while populism presents political life as an emotional theatre, so it needs only emotions and slogans. Ideologies can be created in democratic setting, populism doesn’t give us the right conditions.
Populism thrives in moments of humiliation, insecurity and distrust. The structural causes of this distrust in most cases remain untouched, the beam of the spotlight is directed towards smaller and less important problems, towards symbolic enemies. The adaptability of populism allows it to emerge in various contexts, whenever basic conditions are met— on the left and on the right. Even if it wears a different mask every single time— it is the same— promising immediate redemption, a new beginning and vitality.
At this point it looks like we are fighting a three-headed dog. Our current time places us in an unequal, at first glance, fight with populism, anti-cultural tendencies and decline in ideological thinking, which provokes the logical question— Where do the conception of cultural revolution and anti-populism converge?
The answer is pretty obvious, but I feel obliged to give it— in ideology. The system of beliefs we call ideology is important because it guides, shows, and brings us closer to the desired just world of principles.
In case anybody persists on the revival of ideologies, we can say they are most likely technocracy-oriented. Which brings up the importance of thinking about technocracy with caution. It is not necessarily bad. We need people with expertise, but we also need to know what those people believe in. Otherwise, we are talking about a false objectivity nobody is sticking to.
Expertise is necessary, but an expert’s point of view alone is not a solution. Solutions are usually political, even technocratic ones are also political— they are possible due to a politician’s blessing to bring them to life and are most likely a product of their idea to present “a different perspective”. The rule of experts without public ideology becomes merely concealed politics.
We have the same problem with the so-called algorithmic governance. Decisions are presented as neutral outputs, however they are the visible mold of a prioritized prompt. When the algorithm decides, who is responsible? Who is responsible for the implementation of the decision? The responsibility in those cases always stays as an unanswered question. Technology can be used to assist democratic decision-making, but cannot replace it.
All the questions, outlined above bring us back to the main question that appears in the title of this article— “Where is the ideology today?”.
Probably the best analogy I can make is with Schrödinger’s cat. Ideology is in a superposition— it is at the same time alive and dead, and this is true about culture as well.
We ought to uphold both ideology and culture. Otherwise, the future will not be as bright as elitist experts present it. Our nonideological and mathematized world will be there to explore and conquer, but we won’t be the ones exploring— we will be the objects of research, not the subjects, being in charge.
At the same time— yes, we have algorithms, we have technocrats, but who is responsible? When ideology is present, we can keep accountability under the radar easily. We know who acts, what they believe in, and last but not least— the price they are ready to pay in order to materialize their ideas in our objective reality.
Ideology presumes believing in ‘something’. Now people believe less and less, concerning themselves over money, utility, and oversimplicity. Those are the enemies we have to cope with.
Culture, on the other hand, means creating ‘something’, having the ability to influence and stay on a solid philosophical ground while producing.
Here I’m using the word ‘something’ twice, not by chance but voluntarily.
This is the shallowest intersection of culture and ideology— the ‘something’, given that some things never change. We evolve and adapt, but without beliefs we will totter towards what Gottsched called “Unkunst”, I will alternatively construct— “Unideologie”.
In order to modernize our life, society and world, we have to be conscious. To be conscious, we have to forge a new practical philosophy, which may sound pretentious and ambitious. The question is: now we have nothing to lose. We have to try and build such a contemporary philosophy. If we fail— maybe ideology died out and its time is over, but if we succeed, the common future will be at least a bit brighter. Without rethinking everything we are taking for granted, we won’t be able to conquer anything, we won’t even be able to be masters of our own fate.
For the sake of terminological clarity there is a note we have to keep in mind when talking about consciousness. It is not a mystical state, rarely showing itself to the ordinary person and reserved for intellectuals. Rather it is available for everybody— from the child to the elder and from the student to the worker.
The reconstruction of consciousness will not occur spontaneously. It requires patient efforts— reading more, educating others, creating new cultural spaces, journals, public lectures, attending events on various topics, bettering the quality of higher education, intercultural dialogue, forming artistic communities— those individual acts are all part of the change we want to see. They might seem small, or even miniature, but without them authoritarianism and technocracy are going to knock on our doors, sooner than expected.
So— once again— where is ideology today?
The clearest short answer is— wherever culture thrives. Even more precise— everywhere. Everything is political. Every ethical dilemma is more or less ideological. We cannot fall for the obvious trap of apolitical, populistic, and technocratic fairy tales. Ideology exists, we don’t have to bury it in advance.
We have to create, develop and philosophize. Every ideology can be useful. A new life for the idea of ideology will show us how we should continue the contemporary debate.
