The Spectrum of Non-Ideology [The Boundaries of Ideology and the Movements of Social Formation in Marxist Theory]

This essay examines the field of ideology and its theoretical context: the social formation, based on Louis Althusser’s and Karl Marx’s writings on the topics. By constructive readings of several works by the aforementioned authors’, resulting in the production of philosophical concepts (as defined by Deleuze), this essay aims to develop the science of social formations and the Marxist theory of the forms of transition between modes of production. The aim is achieved by examining three areas: the possibility of non-ideology, the relationships between the commodity and ideology and the base in the capitalist social formation, and the possible functions of ideology in a communist mode of production. The examination shows that Althussers concept of science can be understood as a relative, unlike an absolute, non-ideology. From a temporal point of view it is proposed that absolute non-ideology is the object in its absolute absence of any interpretation of it; the sensomaterial. This implies the possibility of two kinds of non-ideology; relative and absolute. Moving on, it is proposed that the capitalist social formation, from the commodity’s perspective, can be formulated as a chain (as opposed to an edifice) wherein the commodity constitutes a link which functions to reproduce its chain. Besides the commodity, it is argued that material fields such as organizations and businesses, including Althusser’s state apparatuses can also be understood as such links. Finally, this essay highlights that ideology’s function to reproduce relations of production stems from the need of a false universalization in particularistic (classproducing) modes of production, which implies that ideology in this sense will cease to exist in a mode of production that is universalistic regarding the unity of relations of production and productive forces (communism)