What a Political Ideology Is

The functions ideologies perform

They explain. They give people a way of making sense of events that would otherwise be a jumble.

They evaluate. They supply the standards by which arrangements are judged good or bad.

They orient. They tell a person where they stand and who is with them.

They mobilise. They give a movement something to demand and a reason to act together.

They legitimate. Which is Mosca's political formula at chapter 100 and Marx's ruling ideas at chapter 110, seen from a different side. Every ruling group has an account of why it should rule.

The six questions to ask of each ideology

This is the practical value of the chapter. Ask the same six questions of liberalism, utilitarianism, socialism and communism, and every comparison MU sets becomes a matter of lining up answers.

1. What is the basic unit? The individual, or the class, or the community, or the whole of sentient life?

2. What is human nature? Rational and self-interested, or cooperative and shaped by conditions?

3. What is the central value? Liberty, happiness, equality, community?

4. What is the role of the state? A necessary evil to be limited, an instrument of reform, an instrument of class rule to be captured and then dissolved?

5. What is the attitude to property? A natural right, a social institution to be regulated, or the root of the problem?

6. What is the method of change? Reform through law and election, or revolution?

Where the four MU sets fit

Liberalism. Unit: the individual. Value: liberty. State: limited, and later enabling. Property: a right. Method: reform.

Utilitarianism. Unit: the individual, but only as a site of pleasure and pain. Value: the greatest happiness. State: an instrument to be judged by results. Property: justified so far as it produces utility. Method: legislative reform, and Bentham's whole life was that.

Socialism. Unit: the community or the class. Value: equality and cooperation. State: an instrument of social reform. Property: to be socially owned or heavily regulated. Method: usually reform.

Communism. Unit: the class. Value: a classless society. State: an instrument of class rule, to be captured and then to wither. Property: the source of the problem, to be abolished as private ownership of the means of production. Method: revolution.

Two warnings a good answer includes. First, each of these is a family rather than a single doctrine: classical and modern liberalism differ profoundly, and Fabian socialism and revolutionary socialism have almost nothing in common in method. Second, the left and right labels are cruder than the six questions and often mislead, so use the questions.

Where Gandhi fits, and why MU keeps returning to him

MU sets Gandhi against utilitarianism at 3.2.1 and against communism at 3.4.3, so it is worth placing him here.

Unit: the individual, but understood as inseparable from the village community. Value: truth and non-violence, from which everything else follows, and Sarvodaya, the welfare of all. State: viewed with suspicion, as concentrated force; the ideal is the largest possible decentralisation. Property: neither a right nor to be abolished, but held on trusteeship for the community. Method: non-violent, and the means must be of the same kind as the end.

That entry is what makes the two comparisons MU marks (Specified) answerable, and it is worth memorising before either of them is reached.

A worked example

A government proposes a law guaranteeing every rural household a hundred days of paid work each year, funded by taxation.

A classical liberal objects: it takes property by taxation to give it to others, and the state's job is to protect rights rather than to redistribute. A modern liberal supports it: liberty is worth little to a person with no means, and the state should secure the conditions in which liberty can be used, which is Green's argument at chapter 400.

A utilitarian asks a purely empirical question: does the scheme produce more happiness than the same money spent otherwise, or left with the taxpayer? Nothing is settled in advance, and the answer depends on measurement.

A socialist supports it and calls it insufficient: it treats a symptom of an unequal distribution of land and capital without touching the distribution.

A communist makes the same point more sharply: the scheme stabilises the existing order by relieving its worst effects, and a wage guarantee leaves the wage relation exactly where it was.

A Gandhian asks a different question altogether: does it strengthen the village's ability to sustain itself, or does it make the village dependent on a distant government? If the work is on local assets decided locally, it fits Gram Swaraj; if it is a transfer administered from above, it does not.

Notice that six positions produce five different questions, and only two of them are about whether the scheme is a good idea. That is what an ideology does: it decides what the relevant question is.

Distinctions that carry marks

Quick revision

1. Three parts: a description of how things are, a prescription of how they ought to be, and a programme for getting there. The third is where socialism and communism part.
2. Not a philosophy, not a manifesto, not necessarily false, not a religion.
3. Five functions: explain, evaluate, orient, mobilise, legitimate. The last connects to Mosca's political formula and Marx's ruling ideas.
4. Six questions: basic unit; human nature; central value; role of the state; attitude to property; method of change.
5. Each ideology is a family, and classical against modern liberalism, and Fabian against revolutionary socialism, differ more than the labels suggest.
6. Gandhi's entry: unit the individual in the village; value truth, non-violence and Sarvodaya; state distrusted; property held on trusteeship; method non-violent, with means of the same kind as the end.

Test yourself

1. Define a political ideology and give its three parts. A more or less coherent set of ideas which accounts for the existing social and political order, offers a model of a desired future, and indicates how change can and should be brought about. Its three parts are the description, of how things are and what is wrong with them; the prescription, of how they ought to be, which is where the central value sits; and the programme, the route from one to the other, which is the part students most often omit and where ideologies sharing a goal can differ completely.

2. Distinguish an ideology from a political philosophy. A philosophy asks whether a proposition is true and is argued by individuals, its test being coherence and truth. An ideology is held by groups, is action oriented, and is tested by its capacity to explain events, to supply standards of evaluation, to orient people and to mobilise them. The two overlap, since Mill wrote philosophy that became liberal ideology and Marx wrote analysis that became communist ideology, but the questions they answer are different.

3. What six questions should be asked of every ideology, and why do they matter? What is the basic unit, the individual, the class or the community. What is human nature, rational and self-interested or cooperative and shaped by conditions. What is the central value, liberty, happiness, equality or community. What is the role of the state. What is the attitude to property. And what is the method of change, reform or revolution. They matter because every comparison the syllabus sets becomes a matter of lining up answers to the same six questions instead of comparing on whatever happens to occur to the candidate.

4. Why is calling an ideology false a confusion? Because the pejorative sense of the word belongs to a particular usage rather than to the concept. Napoleon used it as an insult, and Marx used it to mean the distorted consciousness produced by a society's material conditions, so that on his account the ruling ideas of an age are the ideas of its ruling class. In the sense used in this module an ideology is simply a systematic set of political beliefs, which may be well founded or badly founded, and describing an arrangement as ideological settles nothing about whether it is right.

5. Place Gandhi on the six questions. Basic unit, the individual understood as inseparable from the village community. Human nature, capable of being reached by truth and by suffering willingly borne. Central value, truth and non-violence, from which Sarvodaya, the welfare of all, follows. The state, viewed with suspicion as concentrated force, with the ideal being the greatest possible decentralisation. Property, neither a natural right nor to be abolished, but held on trusteeship for the community. Method, non-violent, with the means required to be of the same kind as the end. That entry is what makes the two comparisons MU marks as specified answerable.