Talk:Ideology/Archive 1

Political ideologies
There is a problem with the way ideologies are described in this article. It uses a model of the political spectrum presented by Moral Politics, but it is a model open to questions as to its accuracy, and several others have been proposed- see Political spectrum. As a matter of fact, that article doesn't even mention this article.

I left a note on this at Political spectrum- we should probably keep discussion on the topic there so as to not have parallel discussions. Essentially, I think we should move the current descriptions of political ideologies on this page to an article about that political spectrum model, while rpelacing the content here with a description of political ideologies that is not dependent on any particular political spectrum model. Juan Ponderas


 * I agree. I have removed the Moral Politics-based descriptions of ideologies and added the classification from ideologies of parties. The classification advocated by the Moral Politics website could be moved to its own article, but it certainly doesn't belong here. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 16:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Definition (alternative)
"An ideology is a collection of ideas" looks a poor definition to me. I see an Ideology as "a coherent system of ideas" organized in accordance to the thought of a group of humans. Maybe "an ideology is a system of ideas, often (preferably) organized in a coeherent way" could be a good base. Please verify.--Truman Burbank 15:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd add that a secondaty meaning of ideology is 'belief system'. It's included in various dictionaries anyway. --161.76.99.106 20:46, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Roderick Hindery
Who is he? Why is he mentioned in the article? Lewispb 18:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Split List of political ideologies?
It seems to me that the List of political ideologies belongs in a seperate article...it interrupts the flow of the page greatly.Runningonbrains 22:20, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Quite right. This should be an article, not a list. Lucidish 16:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * agree, ibid. Argyriou 19:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I've created the list article, but will wait before deleting the list in this article to see if there's any opposition to deleting the list in this article. Argyriou 19:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

lists
It's not very good form to have lists in the main body of an article, especially not when they're so extensive. If anyone gets the chance, that should be made into text and sentences. Lucidish 23:21, 29 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Often enough, lists are the main body of the article. In this case, the list serves its purpose well; to quickly show readers all ideologies. Text and sentences would obscure this. Juan Ponderas
 * That's poor form: "Bulleted lists should not be overused in the main text, but are typical in the reference and reading sections at the bottom." If this occurs often, it is wrong. Lucidish 16:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * If its poor form, then why does it work so well? Wikipedia guides are generalizations, not categorical imperatives. Juan Ponderas
 * It doesn't work. There is no information here, no explanation, nothing that would be informative besides a semantic heading and some tags. Lucidish 23:20, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Ideology as a belief system
I have no much experience in wikipedia editing, so I'd like to strongly suggest a section about 'Ideology as a belief system". It is in most dictionaries secondarily described as a set of doctrines or beliefs. - anonymous


 * I added links to the fascinating psychological concept of System justification and Marxian concepts: False consciousness, Cultural Hegemony, Dominant Ideology. Whilst it is true that the concept predated Marx it is inextricably linked with such Marxian analyses today. Mattjs 10:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

New Template: Lib
I just created a new template Template:Lib. (It's my first template). It takes one parameter, declaring whether the use on the page is "liberal", "libertarian", or "both". My idea was to use it to head articles such as Liberal International and Libertarian perspectives on gay rights where it might not be clear at first glance which meaning is intended. This would hopefully ensure consistent usage within an article, and prevent overly verbose unclear repetition from article to article. Feel free to discuss on the talk page Template_talk:Lib. samwaltz 20:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Poor introductory sentence
What does this sentence from the intro mean?


 * Ideologies tend to be abstract thoughts applied to reality and, thus, make this concept unique to politics.

What does the "this concept" refer to? The concept of ideology? If I wrote "Ideologies make this concept unique to politics" that would at least be bad grammar. Perhaps the sentence is supposed to mean:


 * Ideologies tend to be abstract thoughts applied to reality and, thus, the concept of ideology is unique to politics.

But that sounds a bit extreme. Political ideologies are the only kind there are? What about religious ideology or scientific ideology? Etc. Neoprote 07:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This entry stinks!
This is a lopsided and very bad account of the concept. Just terrible and it needs to be rewritten. The bibliography & links are even worse. The link to the Tamil web site does not belong here, while other links do. I'm going to tear into this when I get a chance.


 * Granted. It isn't a great article.  Perhaps reflecting the vaugueness of the concept pre-marx indeed outside of Marxian analysis.  If one wanted to be contemporary one would mention Jihadi-ism and Neo-Conservatism as contemporary ideologies and perpetuators of false consciousness or the Noble lie which is what anaylsis of ideology is really all about. Mattjs 10:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know how much the article has changed since the two comments here above, but I would just like to add that one potential general problem with Wikipedia is that the author of the initial draft of an article may feel free to be careless, thinking that others will clean up after them. Unfortunately, once an article (or a paragraph, or a sentence) gets off on the wrong foot, it may not be possible to "fix" it--that is, the best solution would just be to start in a different way.  But then the very existence of the poor version inhibits people from writing a new version--the "Wiki-ideology" we all buy into here (by the very structure of Wikipedia) is that we should try to improve what is already here.  But surely sometimes it is better to just take the article out by the roots and plant a new one in its place.  (I wonder what sort of Wiki-structure would accommodate that!) Neoprote 07:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Are Ideologies About "Offering Change"?
Ideologies are widely (especially within Marxist and critical theory circles) understood to support or uphold the status quo. It is far from universal that they "offer change in society through a normative thought process (what the world ought to be)."

Someone should revise the intro paragraph with this in mind.

Jimwilce 21:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)jimwilce

I'm a passer-by. I think the sentence should be looked at with the previous sentence - " a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society." -05 May 2007

Cites, please
Added the "Unreferenced" tag: '' "This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed." '' Obviously, everything in politics, sociology, and philosophy (such as the topic of "ideology") is very controversial. If we don't have good cites (WP:CITE, WP:Verifiability) for our assertions, then they're basically just the opinions of some Wikipedia editor or other and don't belong in the Wikipedia. Please add good cites for all assertions in this article. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 15:09, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

"dominant class" is not defined
the term "dominant class" is not defined ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.8.5.30 (talk) 07:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC) -- (I moved this post to the correct location on the page and added a title.-- Writtenonsand (talk) 15:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC) )

Etymology
is etymology of the word something desired here? http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ideology&searchmode=nl CuteHappyBrute (talk) 20:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Foucault
I removed this:

The philosopher Michel Foucault wrote about the concept of apparent ideological neutrality.

IMHO, it is a misunderstanding. I think it would be very interesting to see a reference proving the truth of the assertion. There is nothing about it on the Wikipedia page about Michel Foucault. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.225.217.154 (talk) 10:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Psychological Research
just moved an small paragraph from the conservatism article about phsychology research on human ideology. Think it belongs here rather than there --200.16.1.242 (talk) 20:40, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

-- False Consciousness

The article should make a note of the fact that the term 'false consciousness' is foreign to Marx; he does not mention the idea. And it was only mentioned once by Engels, late in life and in an unpublished letter.

On that, see here:

http://marxmyths.org/joseph-mccarney/article.htm

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 12:43, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Bias - psychological research
As the article itself says, "ideologies reflect motivational processes, as opposed to the view that political convictions always reflect independent and unbiased thinking", thus providing a psychological basis for an ideology implies that it is subjective and biased. Since an example of this was provided for conservatism the article shows bias against conservative ideologies which is inflamed all the more so by the potential of someone of an opposing ideology attempting to prove that conservatism is subjective and biased. I don't believe we should censor the psychological basis for conservatism since it is relevant and interesting, instead the article should be expanded to include examples of the psychological basis for other well known ideologies such as liberalism, libertarianism, socialism and fascism.85.210.98.109 (talk) 07:11, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Marxism
Hello Roan, I saw your contribution to ideology and wonderered whether it would be fair to add that while the word may have been neutral when used in the eighteenth century, it acquired pejorative connotations with the advent of marxism. -- Alan Peakall 13:23 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)


 * yes, we can work something out. Be sure to note that it was not due to marxism that it acquired a pejorative connotation, but due to the rejection of marxism in the west, and also the rejection of the Nazi / fascist ideology. I have just added a link to the cold war... roan


 * I was referring more to the idea of critique of ideology in Marx's writings than to the conflict of specific ideologies. Try google on the string |ideology in marx|.  Admittedly the current Wikipedia article on marxism is weak in this area too. -- Alan Peakall 12:14 Dec 10, 2002 (UTC)


 * Well, go ahead and add it if you like. I've only just started to read Marx, so I'm not quite an expert about this yet. I'll try the google search, thanks. roan 08:30 Dec 11, 2002 (UTC)

Hello, all. I think that the "Ideology as an instrument of social reproduction" section is very slanted, mostly towards an Althusserian viewpoint. I have a problem representing this as the "Marxist" definition of ideology. Quite a while back, someone edited the section to be less biased, but I believe the slant is still there. Any thoughts? --Dialecticas 17:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)00:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

--- I have a problem with the section on Marx. If you read Capital, or read about the book, you'll find that Marx rarely talks in terms of 'This Determines that' or 'This causes that'.

For Marx it was always The social relations that mattered. He almost never speaks about causes or determination. So it's fine to point out that at least a vast group of Marxists believed that the base always determines the superstructure, but not that Marx himself believed it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.248.185.50 (talk) 17:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

-- Anonymous, 7 May 2009

Governing Political Ideology World Map
I think many choices may be misleading for the uninformed. Maybe all that is needed is a warning that these categorizations fail to capture important differences in politics and governance across countries. --RedHouse18 16:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by RedHouse18 (talk • contribs)
 * I feel its misleading on a few countries as well.. not to mention the lack of sources... As far as I'm aware the Democratic party in the United States is not a Social democratic party, but rather a centre party? chandler ··· 16:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. In what sense are the ruling parties of European countries, such as Germany and France, more conservative than that of the States? For example France and Germany have a much more comprehensive welfare and healthcare system than the U.S. - while according to the map the U.S. is being lead by a social democratic party? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.168.28.14 (talk) 15:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The map should show the ideologies of the leading parties, as they describe them selves. The Communistic party in China isn't really communistic, China hasn't got planned economy any more. The Democratic Party describes themselves as left-liberalism, so it's adequate to put them to "social democratic". And the CDU in Germany is conservative in comparison with other German parties. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.193.173.142 (talk) 13:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll post the map now and I hope you can help me to improve it^^



Negative ideology
It might be a good thigng if there coudl be an entry on the concept of negative ideology, which is notably mentioned in the Marxism article. ADM (talk) 13:09, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

About Ideology, not your personal Ideology
Jeez this article has gone liberal. Wikipedia about what the subject of what is ideology, and not a platform for expressing personal opinions. this article has gone whacko. --71.245.164.83 (talk) 23:43, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Ideology is a form of dogma such as religion
And this must be mirrored in this article; the fact that this hasn't been to the conscience of the average Joe is not an excuse. Ideology in its strict form is nothing but another dogma; hence we must do our best an express this reality by using respectable sources. This isn't a crusade, a crusade is to hide the obvious. --AaThinker (talk) 23:45, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * this is per Dogma's introductory sentence anyway. --AaThinker (talk) 23:47, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

If "ideology in its strict form is nothing but another dogma" - what would this "dogma" minimally assert or concern, exactly? The simplest comprehensible co-implications of logic and ideas? How can such a position regarding ideology be reconciled in any way to its insistently secular and rigorously analytic origins as a concept, save for as an implicit assertion that 'dogma' itself is a form or format necessarily and universally taken by any logically comprehensible expression of ideas, and thus must itself be an irreducible condition of human understanding? Any definition of ideology that emphasizes its pluralization misunderstands the meaning that it pretends to offer. To concentrate more upon the differences between "ideologies" rather than upon ideology itself as a provocative and forgotten alternative to phenomenology is as nonsensical as concentrating upon comparative "biologies" without any regard for biology itself as an always provisionally unified field of scientific concern. Even the scarcest return to the most truly respectable sources on the subject matter of "ideology" readily confirms all of this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.113.75.104 (talk) 11:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Section Neutrality dispute - Ideology in Everyday Society
This section is so POV I feel slightly queasy. Just about every sentence is steeped in Marxism. It is a perfect example of text pushing a POV while masquerading as NPOV.

If it were up to me, I would A) Rename the section to "Philosophy of Ideology" or something less wishy-washy than "Ideology in Everyday Society" (I mean, if we're going to talk about doublespeak, the content of this section has zilch to do with everyday society) B) salvage the wikilinks, and C) dump the rest. Probably a good thing it isn't up to me ;) Editors --- if you do nothing else, at least please please axe the weasel words and other linguistic contortions.

Alternate names for the section could be "Ideology in Cognitive Science, Linguistics, and Philosophy", etc...

66.117.135.137 (talk) 08:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't quite see the POV problem. It is a problem that the section is unreferenced, but as such it does not jump out, since so is the rest of the article. The alternative title does not make sense to me. When biologists examine the mating behaviour of butterflies in nature, a presentation of their findings could be titled "Butterfly mating in nature"; it should not be titled "Butterfly mating in Biology". --Lambiam 10:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's just complete nonsense, and should be deleted --82.1.248.197 (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)03:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)--82.1.248.197 (talk) 03:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The section is unreferenced and it's purpose unclear. As far as I can tell, it does not belong in this article. Unless there is an editor willing to justify its existence, it should be removed. Mmyotis  (^^o^^)  18:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, the section has been removed. Mmyotis   (^^o^^)  18:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Very basic
This article is terrible. Anyone studying the concept of ideology at university level or above must realize this. Ideology is certainly not only a political concept.


 * In response to that rather non-constructive comment, my answer would be that ideology is both (a) a political, normative concept (a 'world view', conscious and selected), and (b) a sociological concept (a 'received consciousness', usually Marxist but not exclusively) i.e. an issue of inherited socialization. Whereas the former context is more popular in general discourse, the latter context is usually meant in academia, and is indeed far more interesting. --Tomsega (talk) 23:39, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi everyone! I am writing a paper and was trying to tie two concepts together: Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front", and some form of ideaology. I was thinking maybe Existentialism, but many themes are too contrasting to call the book Existential-influenced. The main themes I was using from the book to link it to an ideaology were: no romanticism in battle, no glory, just meaninglessness, death, fighting to survive, animal instinct, etc. Can anyone help me with this complex question? Please, and Thank you! 137.48.50.43 22:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)Eugene

Yes. As it stands the definition is rather off base from the fundamental definition. A look at the Oxford English Dictionary would help. It begins " 1. a. The science of ideas; that department of philosophy or psychology which deals with the origin and nature of ideas." The term originated in the English language here: 1796 W. TAYLOR in Monthly Rev. XX. 569 Tracy read a paper [at the National Institute of France]..and proposed to call the philosophy of mind, ideology. 1797 Monthly Mag. III. 285 Tracy..proposes, that the science which results from this analysis, be named ideology, or the science of ideas, in order to distinguish it from the ancient metaphysics. 129.67.116.186 (talk) 18:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * And the O.E.D. 1.a. definition is the most etymologically natural (though apparently less used) meaning - the study of ideas. lifeform (talk) 06:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Serious Omissions
1. The article has nothing on ideology before the French Revolution.

2. There needs to be serious discussion of the view that religions are ideolgies, even if some people find the notion shocking. Norvo (talk) 04:43, 23 December 2013 (UTC)