User:SantiagoGutierrezChlan/The Crisis of Ideology

Ideological crisis, from the point of view of historical materialism, is the conjuncture of changes in an ideological superstructure that is disphased in respect to the material conditions of the relations of production or economic and social structure.

If ideology is the lubricant that keeps social relations running smoothly, providing the minimum necessary social consensus by justifying the predominance of the ruling class and political power, its inadequacy to new conditions or the emergence of alternative ideologies that compete with it, produce an increase in social tension (class conflict) that contributes to the crisis of one mode of production and its transition to the next.

Besides crises of lesser scope, the greatest examples of ideological crises coincided with major secular crises:


 * The degradation of Roman religion, philosophy and classical art during the crisis of the 3rd Century, which eventually led to their replacement by Christianity, Neoplatonism, Augustinianism and medieval art.
 * The crisis of scholasticism from its maximum under Thomas Aquinas in the 13th Century.
 * The crisis of the 14th Century will see how in addition to the economy, society and political power, the whole feudal order is shaken: Duns Scotus and William of Occam anticipate the changes that the Renaissance will bring in the 15th Century, and in the 16th Century, the Reformation.
 * The crisis of the European conscience that, in Paul Hazard's expression, shook the intellectual environment coinciding with the end of the crisis of the 17th century, the establishment of modern science and the anticipation of the Enlightenment.

The concept should not be confused with the concept of Scientific Revolution, which has its own dynamics of relations between science, technology and society (STS), subjected by the influence of the economic-social structure and the political-ideological superstructure.