Ideology

by David McLellan

In this introductory textbook, Professor McLellan looks at the origins of the concept of ideology, analyzes its use in the Marxist and non-Marxist traditions and assesses the various uses to which it has been put in recent social and political theory, particularly the connection between ideology and the end of history debate.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Political Science

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1986

About the author

David McLellan (born 10 February 1940) is an English scholar of Karl Marx and Marxism. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford University.

McLellan is currently visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He was previously Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.

McLellan has also been Visiting Professor at the State University of New York, Guest Fellow in Politics at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, and has lectured widely in North America and Europe.

Reviews

[Viator Fleischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Riddled with spelling-erros (a few of which were outright frustrating to decipher), but it does the job of giving a brief review on some of the key thinkers and intellectual historical "plot twists" of ideology as a concept.

The author gives a couple of arguments for and against pretty much each of the mentioned theoreticians' conceptions of ideology, but these are - for obvious reasons - kept at a minimum, and no person should expect to gain an in-depth understanding of all that is fitted under the term 'ideology'.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably the most irredeemably dreadful academic book I've read. Imagine a half-arsed, incoherently structured literature review which somehow manages to be both overly obtuse and remarkably superficial at the same time. Now imagine that the author makes some attempt to sprinkle that review with a bit of critical engagement, but is unable or unwilling to consistently put forward coherent arguments, instead frequently accusing books of being 'bourgeois', 'conservative', or 'dangerous', as if this somehow invalidated their points. Imagine, also, that the author is quite clearly unfamiliar with some of the authors he mentions (I'd put money on him never having read a word of Foucault, for example) but decides to completely wing it anyway.

Imagine that, tasked with writing a book about the concept of ideology (a pretty silly idea in itself), the author decides to almost entirely ignore influential contributions by the likes of Hegel and Hobbes, instead spending far too much time rehearsing Marxist arguments before grudgingly straying into other areas. Imagine a final chapter about postmodernism which is largely a fact-free rant rather than a conventional piece of academic writing (ironically, in that sense it resembles a second-rate postmodernist work), and might just have scraped a 2:2 if one of my students had written it.

It gets a star for only being 80 pages long, and because typing out this rant/review has cheered me up.

[Titus Hjelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the first edition, so can't comment on improvements, but in any case this is possibly the best brief introduction I've seen. Being a Marx-specialist, McLellan obviously gives plenty of space to the Marxist tradition and rightly so. There's one funny slip, though: 'In general, then, for Marx, only those elements in the superstructure of ideas were ideological which served to perpetuate relations of denomination'. Oo-er, Marx as an ecumenical thinker?

[Kenneth Tong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarks: Chinese translation read.

[Utopian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kavram tarihçesi anlatan çok temel bir giriş kitabı. Tüm bakış açılarına ve tartışma konularına kısaca ve üstünkörü bir şekilde değiniyor. Bana yetersiz geldi. Fazla kafa açmadı.