Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology

by Kenneth Minogue

The term “ideology” can cover almost any set of ideas, but its power to bewitch political activists results from its strange logic. It is part philosophy, part science, and part spiritual revelation, all tied together in leading to a remarkable paradox—that the modern Western world, beneath its liberal appearance, is actually the most systematically oppressive system of despotism the world has ever seen. In Alien Powers, Kenneth Minogue takes this complex intellectual construction apart, analyzing its logical, rhetorical, and psychological devices, and thus opening it up to critical analysis.

This new, ISI Books’ Background edition of Alien Powers includes a new introduction to the text by Martyn P. Thompson and critical essays on the text by political theorist Paul Gottfried and philosopher Stephen A. Erickson

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Political theorist who was Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Honorary Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Reviews

[Kevin K · Rating 4 out of 5]

First a note on terminology: In Alien Powers Minogue uses the term "pure ideology" (or "ideology" for short) as a technical term for theories of oppression. The nature of these theories will become clearer as we proceed, but—generally speaking—ideology claims that the "freedom" of modern society is a facade; in reality there is a hidden, oppressive social structure, and a divide between two classes: oppressors and oppressed. Ideology reveals the hard truth the sheeple aren't supposed to see, i.e., everything in the modern world is a form of domination: ordinary language, institutions, manners, ways of life. All practices benefit an alien other (the "alien powers" of the book's title). Minogue sees this as a dominant idiom of our time, a "creative art form" used by all sorts of activists to build their own theories/movements. The original template is Marx. As Minogue observes: "Whitehead exaggerated when he said that philosophy was but a series of footnotes to Plato; but there is hardly any exaggeration at all in saying that ideology is a footnote to Marx" (P. 38).

For Marx the oppressors were the bourgeoisie, and the oppressed were the proletariat. In retrospect, we know this old-fashioned strain of ideology suffered a long decline, but the underlying framework has flourished. Over time, it has evolved into an ever-growing array of imitators and new "proletariats." A classic example (often cited by Minogue) is feminism, and its claim that men oppress women through an all-pervasive system called the patriarchy. Other examples include: white people oppressing minorities, imperialists oppressing natives, humans oppressing animals, a hidden Jewish cabal oppressing non-Jews, attractive people oppressing the homely (lookism), religious people oppressing atheists, age-ism, able-ism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity etc. Ideology is so protean that today even religions (part of the regime of oppression according to Marx) make claims to being oppressed by a hostile "system." In part, Alien Powers is interesting because it looks at ideologies as a general type rather than individual doctrines, thereby offering a bird's eye view of this strange phenomenon. This helps one to see patterns, and get some much-needed objectivity.

As a system of thought, ideology has a strong emotional (even vituperative) component, and it may seem harsh to doubt the prima facie reality of oppression. (Indeed reflexive concern for the oppressed accounts for much of ideology's persuasive power.) Of course there's no doubt that some oppression is real. However ideology is a slippery and dangerous thing. Consider the well-known horrors of Communism. Gulags, show trials and mass killings have been driven by ideology, and justified (quite sincerely, I believe) by concern for the oppressed. Or consider an example that Minogue raises: the radical feminist doctrine that sexual intercourse is "occupation of the oppressed by the oppressor" (P. 47). Should that view be uncritically accepted (particularly since it is being expressed by a member of the oppressed class)? What about the ideology of anti-Semitism, according to which non-Jews are oppressed by a hidden structure of Jewish media and financial control? Surely that shouldn't be taken at face value. These issues obviously can't be sorted out here. My point is simply that a skeptical attitude is warranted toward ideologies (and claims of oppression).

One of the basic motifs of ideology is the idea of brainwashing (what Marxists call "false consciousness"). Ideology claims that, under the veneer, society is an ugly, all-pervasive system of oppression. It's oddly reminiscent of the ancient Gnostic idea that the material world is dominated by the Devil. But if that's the case, why don't the proles notice the oppression and spontaneously revolt? The answer is that people are brainwashed by the system to actually enjoy and assist in their own oppression. Suppose, for argument's sake, that 90% of the women in a certain country prefer being housewives. The ideological response would be that these women have been brainwashed by the patriarchy, and need to be educated. They aren't facing reality. Minogue raises some important points about such brainwashing claims. First, they show the conflict between ideology and democracy. Surely brainwashed fools should not be allowed to determine their own destiny or affect policy? A related principle is what Minogue calls Talmon's Fork: "Either a democratic vote elects the enlightened to power, or it does not. If so, it is unnecessary. If not it is pernicious" (P. 238). Second, the doctrine of mass-brainwashing is ironic: ideology, despite its pretense of egalitarianism, requires an elite to tell the deluded masses what is actually going on. Third, the brainwashing charge is convenient from a rhetorical standpoint. If a woman disagrees with feminism, that simply proves she's been brainwashed, and is a tool of the oppressors. Indeed, a housewife's stubborn claims of not being oppressed are damning evidence that she actually is oppressed.

Ideology has an unstable hybrid nature. On one hand, it aspires to be scientific, and enjoy the prestige of the academy. Marx himself made the grandiose (and obviously false) claim that he had discovered a science of history. (Vestiges of this strain of thought are still evident today, e.g., in talk about irreversible progress, and the "right side of history" or—to use Trotsky's phrase—the "dustbin of history.") On the other hand, ideology has an impatience for action which conflicts with the dispassionate standards of the academy. This is what gives ideology its melodramatic, Manichaean tone. You can't motivate people to revolt based on an objective picture of The Other. Even a trace of sympathy or positive understanding will sap the will to act. As the communist Rubashov puts it in Koestler's Darkness at Noon: "It is necessary to hammer every sentence into the head of the masses by repetition and simplification. What is presented as right must shine like gold; what is presented as wrong must be black as pitch." Or in the words of Minogue: "Politics is impossible between oppressor and oppressed. There can only be total war."

This highlights another feature of ideology: its rigid, didactic certainty. Minogue compares it to religious revelation. As he points out, the academy is generally a low-key place concerned with workaday facts, and scholars are unperturbed (or even thrilled) if their field gets turned upside-down by new findings or theories. Detached scientific thinking of this sort is anathema to ideology. Basic ideological "truths"—like the identification of the oppressor/oppressed, or the existence of the hidden oppressive system—are simply not on the table, and must never be subjected to dispassionate questioning. Skepticism about ideology insults the oppressed, and gives succor to the oppressor. Rejection of the imperative to cause change results in mere "fact-grubbing." Bourgeois science. This means ideology can only be criticized on its own terms. It does not allow for the existence of any "neutral" position, where facts might be objectively assessed. Critics are derisively labeled and forced into roles within the ideologist's melodrama. At the extreme, this ramifies into ideas like "the academy is a tool of the bourgeois" or "logic and science are the creation of white males, and part of the oppressive structure." In short, ideologists rule academics out of court. All thought reflects interests, and anyone not fully on board with ideological certainties (i.e., an oppressor) doesn't have standing to respond.

Here I've sketched a few of the most interesting themes of Alien Powers. It's a very stimulating book, but does have a number of problems. First it was written in 1985, during the Cold War, and is too focused on Marxism proper. Minogue wrote in the early phase of today's "ideology explosion," and though he was well ahead of the curve, he missed some of its most salient elements. For example, Marxism was concerned with eliminating individualism/egoism and strengthening community/solidarity; whereas today's ideologies encourage individualism. Gender-identity, for example, has fragmented into a kaleidoscopic variety of types. In a similar vein, Communist states tended to resist cosmopolitanism (e.g., the isolation of the USSR), whereas modern ideologies embrace it. This struck me as the biggest disconnect between Minogue's analysis and current conditions.

But it raises an interesting, indeed ideological, question: Is 21st century ideology focused on individualism/cosmopolitanism because those trends serve the interests of the era's dominant powers, e.g., large corporations and governments? One could make a good case along those lines. Classic Marxism was fixated on economic and political power; it was a genuine threat to wealth and the status quo. Today's ideologies, on the other hand, are focused on culture and lifestyle — "cultural Marxism" as the phrase goes. Isn't that exactly the sort of "revolution" that the status quo would prefer people channel their energies into? Could it be that ideology itself has been (paradoxically) turned into a tool of domination?

Minogue mentions an interesting political strategy: a central government may ally itself with ordinary citizens, and advocate for their rights, as a way to break the power of the mid-level nobility which stands in the way of greater central power. Consider the Solidarity trade union movement of the 1980s, and its fight against the communist party in Poland. The revolt was driven by mid-level organizations like trade unions and the Catholic church. Groups like unions, religions, nations and ethnicities have the size and inclination to resist centralized power, so it serves the interest of a central power to ally with individuals and fragment these blocks. If the strategy works, intermediate groups are dissolved leaving only two layers: powerful states/corporations, and easily-controlled atomized individuals. "Happiness" and "individuality" can be the bait/reward component of this strategy. Compare this with Classic Marxism, which flatly rejected happiness as a goal. It was the ultimate no-nonsense ideology, with a laser-like focus on seizing the levers of power.

Although Alien Powers is not a fully satisfying analysis, it's a good starting point for those interested in understanding the increasingly ideological tone of politics in the 21st century.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Ideology is the purest possible expression of European civilization’s capacity for self-loathing.“

A sentence like the crack of a whip, and yet in his impressive study Alien Powers. The Pure Theory of Ideology, which was first published in 1985, Kenneth Minogue does not stand indebted to his readers for a thoroughgoing explanation of how ideology works and in what way it is different from, say, politics, science, history, and philosophy, and, last not least, what the effects of ideology on society are. Near the end of the book, he summarizes his thoughts with a rather sharp edge:

”The promotion of such a movement clearly faces formidable problems. Rhetorically, these are problems of how to persuade a society of Western individualists to embark upon a course of action so evidently leading to self-destruction; logically, these are problems of contradiction between what ideology is, and what it seems to be. It advances the banner of change against a conserving establishment, yet its telos is a purely static condition. It is a political movement bent on the destruction of the very conditions of politics. It appeals to our moral responses, yet denies the reality of the moral life. The proletariats of ideological theory are first emptied of any real thought and feeling they might have, and then supplied with the propositions of the ideology. While affirming freedom, it envisages a community in which only the right type of act will be even conceivable. It attacks inequalities, yet aims at the destruction of the only entities – individuals – which could in any serious sense be taken as equal. It affirms real democracy, but envisages a unanimity, which would make democracy unnecessary. It claims the rubric of criticism only to declare its own truths incontestable.” (p.290)

Virtually everything he says here, at the conclusion of his analysis, has been skilfully developed by him in the preceding chapters, and I am going to try to put his ideas in a nutshell. Strictly speaking, the term “ideology” dates from the beginning of the 19th century, going back to the French philosopher Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, who understood it as a science qui traite des idées ou perceptions with the aim of preventing another regime of terror. Nevertheless, for Minogue, ideology in its purest sense is inextricably linked with the teachings of Karl Marx and can be defined as “a purportedly scientific doctrine which reveals the secret of the human condition” (p.15). A clear understanding of history, the discovery of its underlying mechanism – something that Marx claimed for himself – has endowed the ideologue with the key to the future, not only to foresee it but also to act as its trailblazer [1]. As it were, the discovery of the principle of history entitles the ideologue, in his own view, to pass off his ideas as science, but Minogue shows that unlike most scientists, the ideologue does not suffer his doctrine to be put to the test of falsification. According to him “human beings are the victims of an oppressive system, and […] the business of life is liberation.” (p.47) In order to back up this theory of oppressive structures, which are virtually everywhere, pervading even language and thought, the ideologue takes the view that the evils he identifies in everyday life are

”evidence of the real character of alltransactions of that type. Evils are non-moral, and they are universal; and the idea that moral reform can affect the issue is the very model of the mystifications by which an oppressive system strings its victims along by leaving hope alive. It is thus true of all ideologists what Eric Voegelin said of Voltaire: ‘He takes the abuse for the essence.’” (p.60)

To the ideologue it does not matter greatly that more often than not the oppressed – workers, women, black people, the poor in developing countries, to name but a few – do not feel themselves the victims of oppressive structures and are often willing to improve their situation within the system or by pressing for reform (if indeed, they feel oppressed and unhappy at all), because this is due to their “wrong consciousness”, and in a masterful sophistic mavoeuvre, the lack of the subjective feeling of oppression or the will to reform are declared to be further proof of how deeply-rooted the structural oppression has become: It has even succeeded in blinding the oppressed to the machinations of the oppressors [2]. Notwithstanding, the ideological elite does its best to make people become aware of their being the victims of oppressions by enforcing the right way of thinking and speaking about reality, thus actually trying to create the reality they feel called on to overcome:

”But like most industrial firms, ideologies only tolerate competition faute de mieux. What they really lust after is monopoly, and they invariably impose it when political circumstances permit, with a resultant decline in quality. […] In Western countries, the ideological drive to monopoly evidences itself, even in umpromising circumstances, whenever there is an attempt to use the power of authority to enforce right thinking about race, sex, class and other areas of virtuous truths cultivated in text books and public libraries.” (pp.123f.)

The ideologue is so sure about knowing the right answer to the problems of his and all other times [3] that he even knows what people should want:

”Here Marx is certainly throwing down a gauntlet to philosophers, who have always thought that happiness was a fine subjective flower which might be plucked from the stem of any real condition. It depended ultimately upon a lucky disposition or the vigor of a well-regulated mind. And, particularly among the Stoics, the fact that happiness, even in the most dreadful conditions, lies within ourselves was the great secret of hope which the philosopher could supply to the generality of mankind who, mistaking illusion for reality, made themselves miserable by the pursuit of wealth, honor, security, and pleasure. Marx’s ‘real happiness’ is not only a tall order: it points to one of the most striking claims of ideological thinking: that there can be a science, rather than just an art, of happiness.

It does not take a philosopher to start wondering whether even paradise would make everyone happy. And the reason is that happiness can never be entirely divorced from the way in which the person in question chooses to respond.” (p.111)

The unpredictability of any given individual’s response to a certain situation, his personal likes and dislikes pose a further problem to the ideologue, who often not only finds himself misunderstood or cold-shouldered by the proletariat, which, after all, is the motor of history, but who also sometimes fails to convince fellow-ideologues of the splendour of his own truth, and therefore images of the kind of society that is to be reached – Minogue uses the term “ideological terminus” – are always rather vague or naively pre-modernist. As Minogue points out, it is quite clear that the ideological terminus cannot be achieved with, nor could it be enjoyed by, individuals with their own interests:

”There can be no doubt that this stripping off of fetters will bring about a quite new kind of human being. We shall become droplets in the ocean of species-man, something which, in our present alienated condition, we might perhaps construe as nightmarish, a kind of living death.” (p.207)

In the second half of the book, Minogue makes it clear that ideology is not only hostile to the conception of human beings as individuals with their own private interests and public responsibilities but also to the idea of a state and to politics seen as constant reconciliation and balancing of interests, and to history as the record of open, non-teleological change. It is in this sense that his verdict of ideology as the purest expression of Western civilization’s self-loathing makes sense, and I would even subscribe to his more annihilating conclusion:

”In pronouncing the rottenness of a civilization, it is actually declaring a hatred of any possible human life. What it proposes is the cosmic equivalent of a suicide pact.” (p.291)

There are passages in which Minogue uses a very academic style, which makes Alien Powers sometimes quite difficult to read, but what the tenacious and patient reader gets is highly rewarding: a careful and convincing analysis of ideology from the point of view of an erudite and brilliant conservative thinker. The only thing to be regretted is that Minogue did not use the new edition as an opportunity to examine recent developments of feminist and other egalitarian ideologies. Nevertheless, given so much to start from, the reader can easily draw his own conclusions.

[1] There is some logical inconsistency here in that if history develops according to some underlying mechanism, following its rut, there would actually be no need for the hierophants of ideology, but this is not the only inconsistency ideologues try to gloss over.

[2] This is a further inconsistency of ideology: On the one hand, it is claimed that evils are non-moral and that oppression rests within the structures of society, and yet, on the other hand, there are always certain groups – preferably old white men –, who are identified as the source of all evil. Another source being revisionists and apologists, i.e. all those who fail to see or do not want to admit that the ideologue has a monopoly on the truth.

[3] In one of his other works, The Liberal Mind, Minogue deftly points out that ideology not only consists in the answers one gives to certain questions, but can also be part of the questions themselves.