George Walford: Ideology Beyond Politics

People engaged in trades, and in professions outside party politics do not normally think of their activities as influenced by ideology, but governments sometimes take a different view. In Russia after 1917, in Germany after 1933, in China after 1948 and elsewhere at other times, the attempt was made to reduce the workings of a complex society into agreement with the assumptions of a single party (not always the same one), and in each case suppression of competing political movements was found to be not enough. If the society was to function as required the practice of religion, science, education, medicine, manufacturing, art, literature, police, commerce, the military, in fact social activities generally, had to be brought into conformity with the ideology of the ruling party. It was largely the endeavour to achieve this condition that earned these states the epithet ‘totalitarian,’ and it was here they met some of their worst internal difficulties, for neither peasants nor workers nor most of the professionals could function effectively without using ideas and practices condemned as non-Aryan or counter-revolutionary. Attempts to enforce compliance weakened the economic structure; the outcome was a deathroll comparable with that of a major war and an eventual return towards acceptance of something close to the old methods. In Russia this appeared first as a temporary shift with the New Economic Policy of 1921 and later as Gorbachev’s reforms, in China as a relaxation after each drive towards communism. In Germany intervention from outside broke off any course of development the process might have followed.

The indication, that ideology affects these extra-political activities, loses any power to surprise when we consider the conditions governing purposeful action. It requires an object, and whether this be a banana to reach, a solution to find or a social system to establish we never have full information about it in advance. The banana may prove to be a wax model, the problem insoluble and the social system non-viable. We can find out only by reaching for it, trying to work it out, attempting to set it up, and in order to do any of these things we have to assume it to be in some sense real. Ascription of reality to the object aimed at is a necessary condition for purposeful action. Even when, as with a proposed social system, the object is known to be not yet in existence we still, by aiming at it, show ourselves to be assuming it a real possibility. Purposeful activity is, by definition, activity directed towards an end and therefore governed by it, and that end remains always in some respects unknown. Even if it be re-establishment of a previous condition there will have been changes in the circumstances making it impossible to predict, with full detail and complete certainty, what the outcome will be. The desirability and feasibility of the end being aimed at, as well as its reality, are always to some extent assumed.

We have seen the particular assumptions finding expression in the overt activity of each political movement to be derived from a small number of broad general ones, much as the branches, twigs and leaves of a tree derive from the main trunk. This effect is not limited to politics. The assumptions governing purposeful action can be formulated as propositions and every general proposition, whatever the subject, implies an indefinite number of more particular ones; the proposition that bricks are hard solid objects, for example, implies one about each type of brick and each individual brick. The tree-like structure which results, with successively more particular propositions branching off from the more general ones, affects the assumptions which constitute it (e.g. by endowing them with increased stability) as well as being affected by them; it affects, among others, those involved in the selection of an object to aim at. It is because our ideology is as it is that we pursue the ends we do, in non-political matters as in political. Only our non-purposive behaviour, such as reflexes, emotions and physiological changes, is free of determination by an object, and only that is non-ideological.

Going on to pin down these very general remarks we turn first to the theory of physical science. Here Baconian induction, the view that science advances by way of unrestricted accumulation of evidence, laws and principles emerging in some unspecified way from the accumulation, no longer holds the place it once did. Taken strictly it meant that all evidence, on whatever subject, had to be accepted, and of course no science does or ever did accept all evidence indifferently. With increasing recognition of this Bacon’s view has been largely discarded; it has come to be generally accepted (among those who think about such things) that science advances by formulating hypotheses and testing them against the results of experiment and observation, the hypothesis deciding which evidence shall be considered relevant. When the question arises as to what governs the formation of these hypotheses only one answer makes sense. They derive from the pre-existing structure of ideas, beliefs, opinions, assumptions and so on, from the ideology, of the investigator.

In the orthodox view ideology appears as a distortion which shrivels under the hard light of science, yet differences between the various approaches to the study of science arise from the assumptions with which they begin, and this is an ideological feature. Euclidean geometry, for example, sets out to elucidate the implications of a few axioms and these, being propositions accepted without demonstration, clearly rank as assumptions. Systematic ideology considers assumptions worthy of study because when they change behaviour changes, and this applies even in this most scientific of sciences, for when geometers start by making assumptions (adopting axioms) other than those of Euclid they come up with non-Euclidean geometries.

In their professional activities scientists are affected not only by axioms, adopted with intent, but also by assumptions which for the most part have been accepted unawares. Those characteristic of each science direct its attention in a particular direction so much so that even when two sciences study what appears to be the same object they credit it with two different sets of properties. Physics does not normally study living creatures but it can do so, predicting the volume of water a given man will displace if submerged and the impact when he falls from a known height. A physiological report will not mention these attributes, dealing instead with the functioning of his internal organs and the difference finds its origin in different starting assumptions. Physics treats the man as (assumes him to be) a material body, something known to occupy a specific volume of space and move in a straight line at constant speed unless affected by outside influences. Physiology, on the other hand, regarding him as (assuming him to be) a complex system, directs its attention towards his internal functioning rather than his interactions, as a solid mass, with the environment. The approach taken by each study results from the assumptions with which it begins, but few practitioners pay much attention to this; here as in other fields the influence of ideology remains for the most part unrecognised by those affected. Science stands as the stronghold of clear-headed rationality; when the influence of ideology shows up within this fortress there can be small reason for surprise at its appearance elsewhere.

In tracing the influence of ideology beyond politics to social affairs generally we shall still not have reached its limits, for much of our personal behaviour is governed in the same way. Every step we take depends upon the assumption that the ground will bear our weight; every time we reach for something we show ourselves to be assuming it to be where it appears to be. We usually remain unaware of having made these assumptions, but without them we would not behave as we do. We shall see later how people and groups come to make these assumptions rather than those; for the moment, the point is that in order to understand why they act as they do we need to study the assumptions made unawares, their tendency to occur in sets, and relations between these sets, as well as the ideas, beliefs and so on which are present to consciousness.

Occupations can be arranged into groups, each of them operating in accordance with a particular set of broad assumptions, and these sets correspond in their main features with the ideologies we found to underlie the main-sequence parties and movements. These form a series running from the non-political to anarchism or, as we can now say, from Expediency to Repudiation. The nearer to the anarchism / Repudiation end of the range a political movement stands the smaller it tends to be and, consequently, the slighter its influence. The same holds good for the occupations, with the result that once the link has been established between an occupation and ‘its’ major ideology we can predict (at least in relative terms) the maximum degree of effect it is capable of producing upon the social structure.

In discussing this, let us begin with science. Its prestige, although not what it used to be, still stands high enough to tempt one into equating it with reliable knowledge; science right, non-science wrong. A little thought does away with any such tendency, for science advances, and every advance shows the view previously held to have been if not wrong then at least not completely right; some of Newton’ s work is now accepted only with reservations but nobody, so far as I know, has suggested that it was not fully scientific.

To say that science was not concerned with truth would be absurd; its practitioners strive to accumulate evidence and to formulate propositions in agreement with it. But so do historians, and so do many of us in daily life, without claiming to be scientists. Science could hardly have become what it is without using microscopes, telescopes, balances and other more sophisticated devices, and these all have one purpose: they enable the scientist to perceive, and to measure, distinctions invisible to the unaided senses. Einstein’s work was not accepted into the corpus of scientific knowledge until it had been confirmed by observation and the crucial distinction between the results predicted by his theories and those derived from Newton’s, could only be measured by the finest of instruments. Number has been called the language of science and the typical activity of scientists, especially of those engaged in the ‘hard’ sciences which provide a model for the rest, consists of counting and measuring. These are of course familiar activities in everyday life, but there we seldom use units smaller than millimetres, grams and seconds, often only inches, ounces and minutes, and science works to finer limits. In astronomy margins of error may he measured in lightyears, but even this carries accuracy beyond the abilities of the layman, who can say only that the stars are far away. A major distinguishing feature of science is the effort to achieve accuracy.

In their professional activity scientists are governed in the short term by the more transient and limited constituents of their ideology (the observations and reasoning of which they are actively aware) but, in a wider view, also by its more general features, prominent among them a high valuation of accuracy, and here we have the link being sought. The practice of science shows it to be an expression of the ideology of precision. This receives confirmation when we recall that Sir Karl Popper finds widespread support among scientists for his view that in order to rank as scientific propositions must be falsifiable; the more precise they become the more readily they satisfy this requirement.

Precision stands near the middle of the range, it is an ideology in which theorising plays a considerable part, and we therefore expect the activities expressing it to exercise a relatively limited effect. This may seem to be contradicted by the prominence of science in modern industrial (or post- industrial) society but the apparent discrepancy, like the political ones encountered earlier, largely disappears on examination. Science produces laws, principles, knowledge, understanding, and although these do exercise an influence upon society it remains limited and largely indirect. The direct and overwhelming influence is exercised rather by technology, and although this now uses results produced by science it does not itself rank as a scientific activity. Technology existed long before science, starting perhaps when the first digging-stick was shaped and certainly as flint-knapping developed. Unlike science, technology is judged less by the degree of precision attained than by the extent to which it enables us to do what we want, and this links it with the ideology of expediency. In manipulating the material world, as in political affairs, it is the activities expressing this ideology that exercise the greatest influence.

Having arrived at this point, let us follow through the earlier part of the series, glancing at the relative amount of influence exercised by some of the principal activities linked with the first three of the major ideologies.

In everyday life we approach the physical world without any principled set of guidelines to limit our actions. So far as social factors or other people are able to affect us we take them into account, but within these limits (set by Expediency) we do whatever seems best calculated to satisfy our wants. This usually means taking care to preserve some items (such as clothing) and destroying others (such as pests), but only because this is usually the easiest method; we sometimes reverse ourselves, throwing away out-of-date clothes and keeping a rat as a pet. We replace accustomed foods and hobbies by new ones without feeling any need to justify our actions, and in person-to-person relationships also we follow our inclination from day to day, spending time with this or that person as our feelings, convenience or preference may indicate.

Over the range occupied by purposeful behaviour in our private and personal affairs we act for the most part by the Expedient ideology.

We all eat, drink, sleep and breathe, and by doing these things readily we show ourselves to be assuming that there is no serious danger to be avoided by staying awake, that the food before us is not explosive or the air around poisonous, and so on. These assumptions sometimes turn out to have been false, but we have to take that risk in order to have even a chance of continuing to live. We make them not because they are true (though when the question arises we usually believe them to be so) but because the balance of advantage lies that way.

Unless we have seriously considered the issue we do not think of ourselves as assuming the presence of the physical world. To the uncritical mind this world is simply there; we can see it and feel it. But although we may seem to be in direct contact with the world this is not in fact so; if we can be said to experience any event directly it is the physiological changes in our bodily organs, and the existence of the physical world is an inference drawn from this evidence. An element of choice enters into it. We can, and sometimes do, assume the indications of our senses to be misleading. When thinking at all closely we say the sun does not really rise, even though we have repeatedly seen this happen. We choose to believe that a stick does not bend as it enters clear water, even though our eyes show it doing so.

Children who have suffered pain together with an impression of glowing red usually connect the two thereafter and are well advised to do so, but the assumption of a linkage is not compulsory and, if made, will sometimes prove false; in later life the child will encounter red glows that do not burn and pain that comes without any visual warning. It is less the truth of the assumption ‘red glows burn’ that leads to its acceptance, than the benefits it offers. Anybody with an interest in science knows that apparently solid objects have been shown to consist mainly of emptiness, fundamental particles doubtfully material, ‘holes in space’ and the like, but we still expect a chair to support our weight. All of us, even philosophers working to disprove the existence of matter, manage our daily lives on the assumption that there really is a physical world ‘out there’; whether it be true or false, anybody who failed or refused to make it is no longer around to argue their case. The assumption is adopted not because it is true, or because we have no alternative, but because we have found this to be the expedient course. Assumptions adopted for this reason form the base of the expedient ideology; they enable us better to maintain our individual existence, and with it (although this is not the reason for adopting them) the possibility of going on to develop more sophisticated ways of behaving.

The presence of a substantial body of people whose ideology is restricted to the expedient assumptions, people without interest in anything much except as it affects them or their personal group, hardly needs demonstrating. The Old Testament prophets were already complaining of the way the people ignored divine command, the priests and ministers succeeding them continue to elaborate the theme, and in each General Election speakers of every party complain of widespread apathy. This ideology does not exclude consideration for others, since pleasant relations with those around tend to increase one’s own comfort. Neither does it exclude charity, even towards distant objects, for the knowledge of having helped to relieve suffering in Africa does something to increase personal well-being in London and New York. It does, however, exclude action guided by impersonal considerations, such as commitment to any set of religious or political principles, or concern for the exploitation of a class or the freedom of a nation.

The Expedient ideology does not bar its adherents from active participation in social activities, even sophisticated ones. By adapting themselves to particular aspects of the social environment they are enabled to run businesses, follow professions, make investments, take part as shareholders, directors, managers or workers in trades, industries professions and organisations which, taken as wholes, function in accordance with more sophisticated ideologies. They follow, as we say, the letter rather than the spirit.

The term ‘expedient’ carries more than a hint of disapproval and later we shall see the reason for this; for the moment the point is that, be it right or wrong, admirable or contemptible, this ideology accounts for the greater part of intentional human behaviour and plays a part in all of it, even in complex and sophisticated undertakings; in working out their theories Marx, Newton and Einstein used the most convenient formulations of the results achieved by their predecessors. Every time we do something in a certain way because that seems to be the quickest, pleasantest, cheapest, easiest, most advantageous way, we are acting by the Expedient ideology.

Although many people act wholly by this ideology and (as we shall see in the next chapter) there was a time when everybody did so, it does not now account for all purposeful behaviour. Martyrs have chosen to die by fire rather than recant, and many people regularly follow the course they believe to be right rather than the convenient or advantageous one. They do not abandon Expediency – they cannot, for over large areas of behaviour no other criterion offers – but in affairs they think important they subject it to other considerations, and by doing this they show themselves to have adopted the ideology of Principle.

Expediency finds its function mainly in private life; its appearance in public affairs usually meets with condemnation. The ideology of Principle, on the other hand, appears mainly in public activities, and particularly those going to establish and secure the existence of organised society. Among these may be named production and distribution, education, medicine, police, administration, authoritarian religion, law and the military. Each of these has its hierarchical organisation and its rules which have to be given precedence over the convenience of the individual people concerned. Each of them tends to support authority and accepted wisdom. Each of them, that is to say, exhibits major features of the ideology of Principle, indicating the presence of the total configuration. This does not mean that for the occupation to serve its social function everybody engaged in it has to be committed to this ideology, only that enough of them have to be strongly enough identified with it to ensure that its tendencies predominate.

Teachers are sometimes misleading, police untrustworthy, soldiers cowardly, workers idle and employers rapacious; in every occupation people may be found who follow their own convenience or advantage rather than the accepted principles. Larger numbers offer only external compliance, doing what is required of them because they find that the expedient course rather than from any commitment to honesty, reliability, punctuality, respect for superiors, consideration for inferiors and so on. But although some, and even many, people within each occupational group may act by Expediency the group cannot perform its social function in this way. Only by adhering to the established practices and standards, even when it is inexpedient to do so, can it maintain the consistency which permits its integration with the other activities going to constitute a functioning society.

Social production and government stand as the distinctive marks of organised society, and they come together. Without them the prevailing tendency continues to be adaptation to the natural environment, while the community that develops them, although still dependent upon the natural world, sets itself to remould that world into conformity with its beliefs, accepting willy nilly the risks entailed. Principle functions by dominating tendencies towards Expediency; a structure of two levels, the upper dominating the lower, characterises appearances of this ideology, and while this is particularly true of government, social production displays the feature with almost equal clarity. It dominates the raw materials it works with, and although we can easily imagine a condition in which all engaged in production shall stand level with each other, in every society known to history operation of the productive system has entailed the domination of some over others. Every civilised society has developed authoritarian religion and this stresses the value not only of (what religious people regard as) due subjection in worldly affairs but also the need to regulate behaviour in accordance with established standards both moral and intellectual. Expedient people who have been born into a religious community tend to accept the faith unquestioningly without allowing it greatly to affect their actions or their thinking, but with the transition to the ideology of principle this easy outward compliance comes to be replaced by a more serious concern. This is how John Henry (later Cardinal) Newman treated the change in his novel Loss and Gain. First, the expedient condition:

When, then, men for the first time look upon the world of politics or religion… they have no consistency in their arguments; that is, they argue one way to-day, and not exactly the other way to-morrow, but indirectly the other way, at random. Their lines of argument diverge; nothing comes to a point; there is no one centre in which their mind sits, on which their judgment of men and things proceeds. This is the state of many men all through life; and miserable politicians or Churchmen they make, unless by good luck they are in sage hands, and ruled by others, or are pledged to a course. Else they are at the mercy of the winds and waves; and, without being Radical, Whig, Tory or Conservative, High Church or Low Church, they do Whig acts, Tory acts, Catholic acts, and heretical acts, as the fit takes them, or as events or parties drive them.

In the next passage Newman’s hero, a likeable, easy-going young student of divinity, is moving towards the religious form of the ideology of principle, in which systematic thinking begins and responsibility becomes an issue. He finds it:

more or less antagonistic to his own favourite maxim that it was a duty to be pleased with everyone. Contradictions could not both be real; when an affirmative was true, a negative was false. All doctrines could not be equally sound; there was a right and a wrong. The theory of dogmatic truth as opposed to latitudinarianism (he did not know their names or their history, or suspect what was going on within him) had… gradually begun to energise in his mind. [1]

Sir Thomas Browne brings out the satisfaction found by religious people in a submission to established order and routine abhorrent to the reformers and revolutionaries: ‘Yet at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat and my hand.’ [2] Literature often does illuminate ideology; as an example of expediency directly facing principle I offer Falstaff confronted with Prince Hal living up to his new dignity of kingship.

Those who accept a share of responsibility for the establishment and maintenance of the polity (in whatever capacity and on whatever social or economic level) cannot simply extend their former concern with a number of individual people; it is not possible for them to acquaint themselves personally with the millions who make up a modern nation (to speak of no greater unit). What they can and do undertake is to subordinate their own advantage and convenience to the practices, rules, traditions, conventions and so on, in a word to the principles, which experience has shown to he effective guides to the maintenance of a viable society.

The undertakings which operate by principle never quite fulfill their promise. No matter how hard the producers work production does not satisfy demand; the army defeats one enemy only to be challenged by another, education never finally conquers ignorance or religion sin. Medicine does not eliminate illness, or the police crime and disorder, and the state never manages to provide complete security for all citizens. Each of these activities, although successful in principle, leaves something still to be achieved, and the next group of work-activities takes up at this point, seeking to perfect what has been partly accomplished.

This third group embodies the ideology of precision. It comprises (among other things) formal logic, exact accountancy and non-conformist religion – seeking to correct the defects respectively of principled thinking, of commerce and of worship – but science stands out as its most prestigious member. It is mainly the quantitative precision achieved by physics that has established it as the model science, and this feature even goes far towards transforming into science activities that without it would not deserve the title, Newton’s biographer remarking that the accuracy and careful explicitness of his work came close to doing this with alchemy. [3]

Unlike religion, education, production and the other activities common to all organised societies, science aims beyond getting things right in principle. The scientists who most fully satisfy the requirements of their profession value themselves by the accuracy of their results and take for granted the consistency, honesty, responsibility and so on whose importance is stressed by the preceding group. Where religion, education, police, medicine and the military find their political equivalent in conservatism, science correlates rather with liberalism, with its concern to establish precise quantitative democracy and exact embodiment of Principle.

Precision in its turn proves unable to overcome all difficulties. The consequences of science are not uniformly desirable, the most careful accountancy provides no guarantee against business failure, and rigorous logic remains largely confined to the classroom and the textbook. The effort to render these activities more effective continues, but another response to their restricted success is the adoption of more radical methods. From this point on the further activities appearing, those expressing the ideologies of Reform, Revolution and Repudiation become increasingly linked with political criticism of society, and since our object here is to show that the influence of ideology is not limited to politics but affects also other social activities enough has perhaps been said to make the point.

In extra-political activities, as in political, some analysis often has to be carried out before the regularity of the relationship, between position in the range and degree of influence exercised, becomes clear. It will probably have been accepted that the occupations embodying the ideology of Precision, whatever their intellectual value, exercise less social influence than those working to establish principles. Non-conformism, logic, accountancy and science function as secondary adjuncts of, respectively, institutional religion, principled thinking, commerce, and the military-industrial complex. To the suggestion that the ideology of Expediency exercises greater influence even than that of principle some resistance has to be expected, for the belief that commerce, industry and government together wield the supreme influence over our society has become one of the unexamined cliches of current thinking. Yet these, and the military too, all operate within limits set by the great body of Expedient people. What these, or the majority of them or, sometimes, even a substantial minority of them, are not willing to tolerate, is thereby excluded from the range of available options. The politicians have a phrase for it: ‘politically impossible.’

Paradoxical as it may sound, consumption came before production, the first people living on what grew naturally, and consumption belongs to Expediency. Action in accordance with the more sophisticated ideologies may facilitate, restrain or modify consumption, but people eat and drink, use transportation, clothing and shelter, not on moral or scientific grounds but because they find it more convenient to do so than not. Production began as a way of enabling a pre-existing tendency to be pursued more effectively and it remains in this secondary position, being able to operate only within the limits of what people are willing to consume. The capitalist cannot continue in business if his goods do not sell and the ‘creation’ of demand is more accurately described as either the recognition of a potential demand hitherto unrecognised or the provision of a new and more effective satisfaction; many successful businesses demonstrate their appreciation of this by the amount they spend on market research. I am not suggesting that humanity came into existence complete with a longing for fitted kitchens and Ferraris, but that greater comfort and increased mobility have always been welcome. Anybody producing a device to make cooking more laborious, or to force the user to remain stationary for long periods, is going to find a more limited market, and the size of their advertising budget won’t make much difference. As the Precision-activities serve those of principle so the Principle-activities serve the Expedient.

In addition to all this, Expediency controls the unconsidered part of our intentional behaviour. Every time we do simply what we wish, or what is convenient, without bringing principles to bear or making any effort to achieve precision, we act under the influence of the Expedient ideology. And even when we do follow a principled or precise course of conduct the small items which make it up, the words used and the movements made, are still governed by Expediency, for in these details no other guide appears. The influence of the Expedient ideology upon actions performed incidentally, in the pursuit of some larger object, remains for the most part below the threshold of awareness, but it is no less effective for that. Expediency stands as the most common of all modes of behaviour, being usually what we mean when we describe an action as ‘only natural.’

Expediency inclines us towards taking what we want, without offering any value in return. Most people rarely do this, but the presence and strength of the inclination show up in the size, expense and complexity of the social arrangements designed to repress it. Legal systems, police and punishment make up much of the substance of any industrial society and, beyond these, all the vast apparatus of commercial record-keeping finds its chief function in discouraging people from following this tendency. When this is added to what has been said above then, I suggest, we are bound to recognise that neither precision nor principle but Expediency exerts the broadest and deepest influence on our society and accounts for the greater part of its structure.

Expediency undergoes increasing repression as first Principle and then Precision appear (and more yet from the other major ideologies we have still to consider). The forms of its public expression are largely controlled by them, but control is a reciprocal relationship, controllers having to adapt their behaviour to the characteristics of that which they seek to master. The horse imposes requirements upon the rider, and Expediency does the same with Principle and Precision. Just because it is what they dominate and render precise, it controls them as well as them controlling it; in order to achieve their object they are obliged to adapt themselves to its characteristics. Society may well be seen as an organisation for the control of Expediency; an organisation, therefore, whose structure is largely determined by this feature.

An abiding temptation would have us think of an ideology as adapted for performance of an activity, but the phrase suggests that the activity can be performed, if less competently, without recourse to the ideology, when in fact the two are inseparable. The performance of activities (including of course speech-activities) implying that those engaged in them hold the assumptions constituting the ideology provides the sole evidence of its presence. Equally, the performance of such activities indicates the presence of the ideology; performance cannot take place beforehand, the ideology coming along later to help. The activities are the ideology, externalised in particular actions; the ideology is the activities, internalised as a set of general assumptions.

Minor, transient assumptions set our minor, short-term objectives, but these imply the presence of broad, long-term ones. We handle fire cautiously, take care crossing the road, avoid precipices and dangerous animals; in each particular situation our behaviour is immediately governed by particular assumptions concerning this fire or that tiger, but it all falls under the general head of self-preservation and implies the general assumption that it is better to maintain our individual existence than not to do so. Sometimes this assumption changes, one of us coming to assume it better to put an end to life; then behaviour changes in one or more particular connections.

Our next task must be to trace the historical emergence of the ideologies of Expediency, Principle and Precision, and the results of the efforts of their adherents to realise them in social practice.

George Walford International Essay Prize

George Walford: Ideology Beyond Politics

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