In contrast to other countries, Americans have shown essentially no interest in political ideologies either on the extreme left communism or the extreme right fascism. American politics functions largely in the middle of the political spectrum as a contest between liberals and conservatives.
Classic liberalism held to the doctrine of laissez-faire, which holds that the government should be small and keep out of most areas of American life such as the economy, community life, and personal morality. What is called liberalism today is quite different. Liberals believe government has an important place both as a regulator in the public interest and to assist those with lower incomes.
On the other hand, they still oppose government intervention in matters of personal autonomy. Only libertarians still espouse classical liberalism, but Americans holding this political ideology are scattered across various political parties, including the Republicans, the Democrats, and various third parties such as the Libertarian, Reform, and Green parties. But it also implies that the EU would be a state-like entity, despite policy decentralisation.
For the UK government it was a challenge to the notion of the EU as a union of states. Prime Minister Tony Blair made this clear at the EU summit set up to finalise the new constitution when he said:. Of particular importance to us is the recognition — expressly — that what we want is a Europe of nations, not a federal superstate…. Taxation, foreign policy, defence policy and our own British borders will remain the prerogative of our national government and national Parliament.
That is immensely important. To the Palestinians, for example, the trappings of statehood are vital from a quite different angle. Here we have a desire on the part of Palestinians and the other sponsors of the peace process to name and operate institutions and offices which look and sound state-like.
Nationalism is about land or territory and what it means to people. Nationalists make claims to the centrality of certain tracts of land to them, to their people, to their collective history, traditions, cultures and sufferings:.
They are talking about a whole relation between a people and a territory and the future. Emotional attachment to land takes on various shades in debates about nationality and community. As we have seen, it is material, economic and symbolic, all at once. Naming is a critical part of this, a fact that is clear in the example of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:.
Indeed, more generally, attachment to land, and imbuing of land with loaded symbolic meanings, is a core aspect of this conflict. To nurture their historic claim to Zion throughout the centuries, Jews have had to call up historical narratives and national symbols to strengthen the imagined link between the people and the land.
Jews have historically sung folk songs about returning to Zion, and the Jewish liturgy contains references to the sanctity of Jerusalem and the land.
Note too that borders and boundaries do not have to be understood as they normally are: fixed entities with clear meanings and consequences. One can argue that boundaries do not persist by virtue of their being drawn on agreed maps, but primarily through daily practices which enact and reinforce them; from checkpoint controls to signs, for example.
In this section we have explored the different dimensions of nationalism as an ideology. Green politics, environmentalism, feminism, gay politics and animal rights, as well as religious politics, do not fit very easily into such a conceptual framework. Yet several writers have argued this, most notably Daniel Bell and Francis Fukuyama. Daniel Bell, in The End of Ideology and later in an article in Government and Opposition , argued that ideological debate was in decline as a means of understanding society.
Modern societies are concerned with non-ideological problem solving. They have become more moral, more liberal and only distantly connected with a class analysis of society. Francis Fukuyama, in The End of History and the Last Man , elaborated ideas he had previously published to argue that the end of the Cold War had shown the triumph of liberalism and liberal democracy to be the ideologies of modern scientific and technological societies. Liberal democracy was of universal application and represented the ultimate objective of mankind.
Ideological conflicts arising out of feminism, nationalism, environmentalism and anti-racism are merely representations of the fundamental worth of liberal-democratic values. Indeed, they take place within a framework of liberal-democratic ideological assumptions. But they have been attacked for being propagandists for American economic and political domination of the planet. They have also been attacked for having ideas that are in fact highly ideological in themselves and for systematically ignoring evidence that challenges their thesis.
We have observed that ideologies arise out of particular social circumstances and reflect the structures of power in society. An ideology, however, is customarily presented as a natural and rational analysis of society. It will carry with it the assumption, overt or covert, that opposing ideologies are somehow unnatural and irrational.
Ideologies claim they are universally applicable to all peoples in all societies and are not the product of a particular time and place. They create a particular language of meaning and explanation to encourage the individual to develop a sense of being a full member of a major movement for social reform.
As part of this, criticism of the ideology will be associated with negativity and can be dismissed as such by its supporters. These points may give the impression that one is talking about the restrictive ideological forms of ideology, but they also apply to the relaxed forms of ideology in society.
Ideological assumptions thus affect all aspects of society: family, political parties and pressure groups, local and national politics, and international politics.
One must not, however, think that ideologies emerge as part of a conspiracy by a Machiavellian elite to brainwash the public. This would be far too simplistic a view of how ideology develops. Members of the elite in any society rise from that society and generally share the ideological and cultural values of most of its members. There is an ideological element to most aspects of culture. The elite themselves may not realise they are acting selfishly. They may genuinely believe that their views are in the interests of all in society.
There are many vehicles by which ideological values are transmitted to society: they include family, work, friends, the mass media, political parties and other political and social institutions.
The family plays a crucial role in the socialisation of new citizens into the ideological values of their society. There are power relations between men and women, parents and children, all of whom are influenced by ideological concepts, often unthinkingly acted upon by the members of that family. Families have an enormous effect on the life chances of their members. Especially important are their occupational and social-class positions, which will play a major role in influencing the educational level of the children, their future occupations, their religious and moral values and their choice of friends.
All of these factors will have ideological messages that influence the political values of the individuals concerned. Most such ideological values will be of the relaxed kind, but some people will seek a more restrictive ideological expression of their political views and will join a political party. Political parties are clearly ideological vehicles, designed to fight elections by appealing to the electorate with a manifesto containing policy proposals that are shaped by ideological values.
By now the importance of ideologies in political discourse should be clear. But if there are any lingering doubts, the importance of ideology can be observed in the shaping of world history. The musings of thinkers have ideological content which, in a myriad of direct and indirect ways, influences the thoughts, policies and actions of politicians and people alike.
We can only understand the world by reference to ideological points of view, while at the same time being aware of the limitations and distortions of our own deeply held ideological beliefs. One can, therefore, gain some idea of the importance of this key link between ideology, thinkers, power and society by studying examples from history.
Ideological debate was an important feature of political life before the twentieth century, but it has influenced politics during the twentieth century in ways that are different from previous times.
To begin with, governments and politicians seek clear ideological justifications for their actions and consciously attempt to carry out policies in line with an ideological agenda. Next, modern communications technology ensures that ideological debate and competition is now global in scope.
Furthermore, modern states buttress their power by manipulating public opinion along ideological lines by appealing to ideological principles shared by voters and rulers alike.
Finally, sections of the intellectual classes in liberal societies adopt the ideological views and positions of extreme political parties and provide political and economic elites with powerful ideological tools for manipulation of the citizenry. Political ideology now, more than ever before, is very closely linked to state power whatever the political system. The twentieth century, and one sees little hope that this will change in the twenty-first, was one in which ideological falsification, exaggeration and simplification held sway.
It seems as if this form of ideological politics is a natural product of the mobilisation of millions of voters in a mass democracy. Societies shaped by liberalism dominated the international system at the start of the twentieth century, although a strain of pessimism seemed to be in the ideological and intellectual air, despite a previous century of great economic, social, political, technological and cultural progress.
A belief that the onward march of liberal civilisation would not last was a theme among many thinkers as dawned. The First World War was a greater shock than people could possibly have imagined.
It badly disrupted the global economic system that had been created by Britain in the nineteenth century and wrecked the liberal assumption of inevitable progress.
During the two decades after pessimism deepened as liberalism appeared discredited and out-dated to millions of Europeans. Many therefore turned to fascism and communism, which they envisaged as offering youthful, optimistic and more effective ideologies of renewal and progress. One could hardly say that ideology does not matter when one considers its impact on the domestic politics of Italy, Germany and the USSR under Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, respectively.
Fascism and communism contained the most extreme elements of ideology found among the many forms of twentieth-century ideological thought. Complex realities were simplified into one fundamental truth of a struggle of good and evil, right and wrong, with a chosen group based on class, race or belief leading the way to a better world. Common also to both fascist and communist movements was the hatred and contempt for liberal values and parliamentary democracy, which supposedly betrayed the nation or the class.
The consequences for the international balance of power were very great. Nazi foreign policy was formed by an aggressive ideology of expansion. Western liberal democratic suspicions of communist Russia suspicions that were reciprocated by Stalin dogged attempts to create a united diplomatic front in the face of the Nazi threat and contributed to the slide into war in the late s.
The Nazi—Soviet Pact of August was shocking not only in terms of its strategic implications, but also in the breathtaking implausibility of two ideological enemies making a non-aggression treaty. Equally implausible was the alliance between liberal democracy and communism that arose during the war that followed. The Second World War was an ideological struggle with several military dimensions. Nazism fought another war against Soviet communism in the East, a war in which there could be no ideological compromise, no end other than the total defeat of side or the other, a war of incredible levels of ferocity and brutality.
A third ideological conflict, that between the liberal West and Soviet communism, was suspended while Nazi Germany still posed a threat. But even before fighting in Europe had ended, the conflict that was to lead to the Cold War was well under way, with growing suspicion and hostility between the Anglo-Americans on one side of a divided Europe and the Soviets on the other.
The Cold War was the second great ideological struggle of the century. The planet divided into a bi-polar world of liberal-democratic nations under the leadership of the USA and a communist world under Soviet leadership. Only the possession of massive conventional forces and nuclear weapons by both the USA and the USSR prevented the deep ideological animosity between the two superpowers from erupting into war during the many crises that punctuated their struggle.
By the mids the Cold War was coming to an end and the ideological conflict was winding down. However, nothing prepared the world for the dramatic end of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes in Eastern Europe between and The post-Cold War world seemed to be one in which the ideological struggles of the previous seventy years had come to an end. Liberal democracy appeared triumphant, with the last of its totalitarian enemies gone.
However, the end of communism did not mean the end of ideology. Virulent nationalism erupted in Yugoslavia, tearing the state apart, and again in Chechnya, Georgia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
Fascism began to march again in many of the previously communist nations of the East and gained new supporters in the West. Finally, as the new century dawned, virulent Islamic fundamentalism offered a massive challenge to the smug ideological assumptions of the West of a decade earlier.
Ideology was not dead. It had never been absent even in the supremely pragmatic politics of Britain. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations , and David Ricardo, in Principles of Political Economy , have had great influence on the development of free-market economics in Britain during the last two hundred years.
Liberal ideas about the minimal state and free trade as the best means towards economic growth and the generation of wealth owe much to their works. Indeed, it is impossible to follow an economic debate today without hearing people, often unconsciously, using the ideas of these long-dead liberal economists. John Locke, writing almost a century before Smith, expressed key liberal elements of the importance of property and individual conscience in economic and political discourse in his Two Treatises of Government John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty , drew together widespread liberal beliefs of his day to create a powerful statement on behalf of individual freedom.
Late nineteenth-century New Liberals reinterpreted liberalism to encourage a greater role for the state in society so as to enhance individual potential in ways that the minimal state would not do. These thinkers and their ideas have had a considerable influence on the development of the post-war consensus , and will no doubt continue to influence twenty-first century politics and economics. The modern British political debate over the welfare state, the NHS, education, employment and taxation levels makes reference to ideological values.
Modern Neo-Liberals who make a strong case for a return to nineteenth-century classical liberalism face an uphill battle against the dominance of social-democratic ideology in the debate. So strong is the ideological consensus, so deeply entrenched in the social and political values of modern Britain, that it is almost impossible for us to imagine life in a society without these values and the institutions created to bring them into existence.
This may be true in the case of the restrictive view of ideology. There is, apart from the political extremes, very little reference to liberalism, socialism, conservatism, and so on, in the debates that occur in British politics. Even at election time, so it is argued, there is little that might be called ideological, only a pragmatic reference to, for example, what level of taxes to pay for public services.
However, that is not the case with relaxed ideologies. Even if the arguments of Beer and Jenkins are not completely accepted there are grounds for claiming that British politics has been very ideological in the relaxed sense of the term, even if not in the restricted sense. From the wartime coalition government until the early s all the major parties, both in and out of government, largely agreed on the basics of government policy.
These included the following:. There was often little difference between Labour and Conservative governments. Their pragmatism was based on the acceptance of similar policy goals in order to win elections. Yet this is clearly an example of ideology. It assumes a significant role for the state in the economy and society. However, even during the high point of this consensus, from, say, to the early s, there were those in both major parties who were opposed to the consensus policies of their respective leaderships.
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