Economic Crisis: The Double Fallacy

coberst · Post by **coberst** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 2:07 pm

Economic Crisis: The Double Fallacy

1) The ideologist “reduces the social relations to personal qualities, and then uses the latter to justify the former.

2) The ideologist “mistakes the appearance for reality. He so analyses the social relations that the rich and poor appear vastly unequal in their ‘endowments’, and on this flimsy basis he asserts that they are unequal.

A responder to my thread “Ideology: Humanity’s Weakest Link wrote the following:

“Capitalism is natural law. It should be the dominant ideology. Just like evolution is a dominant ideology, also because it's natural law. The free-market is to possessions as free-thought is to discussion. Would that we lived in a world where our minds were as free as our markets!

Ideology seems to be a domain of knowledge little discussed in today’s world. Anytime I place the word “ideology in the title of an OP the viewership seems to drop off rather dramatically.

What are the forms of thinking that are characteristic of ideologists? What are the most critical techniques and fallacies involved in the construction of an ideological, i.e. apologetic, body of thought?

I have turned to Bhikhu Parekh, a political theorist and Centennial Professor at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics for assistance in trying to answer these questions. Parekh has studied the work of Carl Marx and authored the book “Mark’s Theory of Ideology from which the quotes in this post are taken.

To understand ideology one need understand the sense of infallibility of apologetics. The apologist provides a systematic argumentative discourse in defense of doctrine; the apologist provides a systematic attempt to justify the certainty with which s/he holds the views of the particular set of ideas in question.

First, the ideologist removes from historical context the ideas and forms of thought of her ideology and seeks to universalize them. S/he generalizes a set of concepts thereby conferring universality on the underlying social relations and experiences. Such universalization is evident in the comment of the responder’s view that “capitalism is natural law. Such views are seen when we hear that capitalism and democracy are the most rational means for organizing society and thus represent “the end of history, i.e. the end of further critical thought in such matters.

Secondly, the ideologist seeks to equate these ideological concepts as “just doing what comes naturally. Such ideological views, practices, and social order are natural, or normal, or reasonable, or necessary and sufficient to human type creatures. All of which is intended to discourage any form of discussion or critical thinking.

Examples of such practices might be the effort to say that a woman’s place is in the home, scarcity is a natural human predicament, we shall always have the poor in our midst, overpopulation is an act of nature, aggression is a part of the natural order, inequalities among a population is the will of God, societies are naturally hierarchal, intellectual skills are more valuable than manual. As Marx frequently puts it “the ideologists ‘eternalizes’, or ‘deifies’ a given social practice or order, and eliminates history.

Thirdly, the ideologist “constantly conflates the distinction between form and content. In a production oriented society there are production relations and productive forces, the former representing the form of production while the latter represents the content. The ideologist’s primary concern is to legitimize the social form by presenting it in an appealing light whereas s/he attributes its evils to technology along with its evils.

“The social relations of capitalism create alienation, unemployment and acute division of labor dehumanizes the worker, cripples his personality, etc. The ideologist explains all these in terms of the machines, and deflates the attack on the capitalist social structure to its technology. While producing the social evils, technology also eliminates poverty and disease, conquers nature, creates material abundance, and so on. The ideologist ascribes these benefits to the capitalist social relations.

Fourth and finally, the ideologist constantly reduces a relation to a quality. Also the ideologist prefers “quality-signifying to a relation-signifying vocabulary. For example: the rich are rich because they are thrifty and disciplined, the poor are extravagant, undisciplined, and lazy.

Capitalism has met its enemy and it is ideological laissez-faire capitalism. Can capitalism throw off this heavy hand of laissez-faire ideology?

Quotes from “Marx’s Theory of Ideology by Bhikhu Parekh.

Devonin · Post by **Devonin** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 11:53 pm

A responder to my thread “Ideology: Humanity’s Weakest Link wrote the following:

I was the only responder to your thread "Ideology: Humanity's Weakest Link" and I didn't say this.

BTS · Post by **BTS** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:01 am

Quote coberst:

"A responder to my thread “Ideology: Humanity’s Weakest Link wrote the following:"

“Capitalism is natural law. It should be the dominant ideology. Just like evolution is a dominant ideology, also because it's natural law. The free-market is to possessions as free-thought is to discussion. Would that we lived in a world where our minds were as free as our markets!

Devonin;1010991 wrote: I was the only responder to your thread "Ideology: Humanity's Weakest Link" and I didn't say this.

You are SOOO right Devonin.... and this it exactly what you had to say:

10-03-2008, 01:04 PM #2Devonin

Member

Join Date: Sep 2007

Posts: 82

Re: Ideology: Humanity’s Weakest Link

You posted this exact thread twice already on this forum...are you running out of topics? If you wanted to restart a discussion on a topic you already made, you should have just bumped the old discussion with something new to add.

You posted this exact text as "Maximizing production and consumption" in august, and as "Dominate Ideology" way back in 2006.

Devonin,the post of yours got me to looking and I have not found this reply in any of the MANY other forums coberst spreads his seed to.

Maybe he (coberst) could show us a link to the thread he quotes?

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:33 am

You posted this in lots of places, coberst. Which one had that reply?

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=n ... akest+Link

Devonin · Post by **Devonin** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:00 pm

Adding 'Coberst' to the list of search terms included in your above google search still left me with 144 results.

Now, I ask you again Accountable, do you see why this sort of thing offends me?

Accountable · Post by **Accountable** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:36 pm

Devonin;1011959 wrote: Adding 'Coberst' to the list of search terms included in your above google search still left me with 144 results.

Now, I ask you again Accountable, do you see why this sort of thing offends me?
I never questioned the emotion, only the stalking.

Devonin · Post by **Devonin** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:04 pm

There wasn't stalking. There was a "That's the second extra place I've gone to and found him already here...I wonder if there are more? *sick sense of fascination as he's at like every forum I think to check*" Quite a different sort of emotive base there.