Distorted Communication II: Ideologies

Like many other things connected with the world of work, present day ideology too is a child of Enlightenment and industrialism. Ideology became a powerful tool when the traditional constructors and keepers of social relations — God, Church, monasteries, clerical structures, etc. — were increasingly replaced by the rationality that governs present day societies. Literally, the term ideology meant the study or knowledge of ideas, combining the science or bodies of knowledge as a -logy of ideas, idea-o-logy.147 Originally coined by French philosopher Destutt de Tracy,148 ideology was the philosophical science of ideas. Its task was to uncover the nature of ideas. Ideologies have always been part of Enlightenment. Originally, they sought to chart the human mind with some kind of intentional precision that could map out the motions of body and mind. The Enlightenment version of ideology was concerned with ideas of the social world, ideas that are socially constructed.149 Marx’ The German Ideology of 1846 for the first time comprehensively linked modern social existence to the formation of ideas in people’s minds. It stated that consciousness is never anything other than conscious existence. Humans’ conscious existence represents their actual lifeprocess. All ideologies include corresponding forms of consciousness; they are no longer to be seen as independent of social and economic existence.