Critique of classical ideologies
We have already suggested that the new ideologies emerged, in part, as a response
to the failure of Marxism, and we have also argued that rising prosperity changed
the expectations and outlook of certain groups – women, the post-war generation
and ‘ethnic’ (cultural) minorities. The combination of a recognition of the crisis of
Marxism and the underlying socio-economic conditions which have given rise to
these new ideologies means that there is a need to reconsider liberalism. With the
collapse of state socialism it may be argued that liberalism lacks any competitor.
This is the claim Francis Fukuyama made in his 1992 book The End of History;
his thesis is contentious but were we, for the sake of argument, to accept that
liberalism is the last (effective) ideology, it is still possible to see three of the new
ideologies – feminism, multiculturalism and ecologism – as critical responses to the
liberal tradition (fundamentalism stands opposed to liberalism, but there are few
societies that can be described as effectivelyorganised around fundamentalist ideas).
These three ideologies are engaged in a critiqueof liberalism. It is important to use
that word carefully: to engage in a critique of liberalism does not entail rejecting it
but, rather, drawing out its truth. In particular, the central ideas of freedom and
equality are taken up from the liberal tradition and turned against it. It might also
be argued that the new ideologies employ the fragments of competing classical
ideologies – socialism, anarchism, and even conservatism and nationalism – and
seek to revitalise them through integration into a new kind of liberal ideology. How
this is achieved will become clearer in our discussion of the particular ideologies,
but it is useful to identify a couple of examples of critical engagement with the
classical ideologies.
First, feminists and multiculturalism in particular have sought to challenge the
liberal claims to freedom and equality. The dual claim to freedom and equality is
subjected to an analysis of how informalpower relations operate in society, and
how formal legal and political relations, despite the appearance of impartiality,
actually serve to reinforce informal inequalities. Of course, this line of attack is not
new: Marxists have argued that material inequality restricts the effectiveness of the
economic freedoms guaranteed by the liberal–capitalist state, but Marx still operated
with a universalist model of liberation, whereby the abolition of capitalist relations
of production would ensure equal treatment. The model of a classless society –
which, admittedly, Marx did not outline in any detail – did not adequately account
for ‘difference’, that is, the apparently paradoxical idea that equal treatment of men
and women, or of cultural groups, requires recognition of the differences between
them. Ecologists are even more radical in their adoption of the ideals of freedom
and equality, in that they extend the ‘moral community’ to include non-human
animals and even plant life.
Second, drawing on socialism (in particular, Marxism), the new ideologies
take up the idea of collective oppression and collective action. Just as Marx
argued that there was a revolutionary process of ‘consciousness raising’ whereby
workers achieve, first of all, workplace consciousness, and then trade union
consciousness, followed by national, and international, class consciousness, so
feminists, multiculturalists, ecologists and fundamentalists argue for a process
whereby the oppressed – women, cultural minorities, non-humans, co-religionistsWhat is a new social movement? 309