We are now able to apply some of the results of the foregoing pages and describe in brief outline the main stages in the typical course of ideological development. In order to do this it will be convenient to choose the typical course of ontogenetic development, that is to say, the course of development pursued… read more »
“Identification,” we have seen, is involved in the process of assumption and arises, fundamentally, from the projection of one’s own independent identity, of one’s own inborn assumption of independence or self-determinism. But, although identification first appears in the primitive assumptive process, and has its origin therefore in the absolute assumption, it soon begins to differentiate… read more »
The process of assumption, we have just seen, is intimately connected with the means by which a living organism maintains its relations with its environment, the external world. Those means are patterns of nervous activity. And patterns of nervous activity naturally require a nervous structure or system. Some patterns, or rather, some types of pattern,… read more »
We are now in the position where we understand: (a) that all our beliefs, opinions, knowledge, understanding etc. are concerned with what is “real” – or has independent being – and what is not real; (b) that the “attribute” or “quality” of reality – or independent being – is always conferred by the process of… read more »
It will be obvious that the clarity of our conception of an ideology will largely depend upon the clarity of our conception of the leading terms we employ in its definition and description. We have said that cognitive assumptions and affective identifications are, respectively, the bricks and mortar of which an ideology is composed. Let… read more »
Before we go on to describe the typical course of ideological development and attempt to come to some understanding of its underlying mechanisms, it will be necessary to get some clearer idea of what we mean by the word “ideology.” This will demand a discussion of two important and leading concepts which are indispensable for… read more »
“The life of the contemporary spirit is a cycle of stages, which on the one hand still have a synchronous co-existence, and only from another view appear as a sequence in time that has passed. The experiences which the spirit seems to have behind it, exists also in the depths of its present being.” Hegel,… read more »
We have now reached the position (a), wherein we recognise that the qualitative-intellectual or ideological development of the individual from mental dependence on the group (politico-ideological collectivism) towards complete mental independence (politico-ideological individualism) necessarily – through the development of its economic content – involves the adoption of what we shall call “the mass-rationality assumption,” and… read more »
In contrast to the larger type of political group – which, as we have seen from our brief study, tends on the one hand to adhere to “economic individualism” and, on the other, to “political collectivism” – we now come to consider the smaller type of group: that is to say, to consider those groups… read more »
Paradoxically enough, it is to fascism that we have to turn in order to find the political movement and expression most exclusively representative of the real masses – to find, in other words, the mass movement par excellence, the supreme example of political collectivism. This curious paradox was well expressed by Goebbels when he declared… read more »