‘natural’ institution that is necessary to keep ‘fallen’ men and women in order. This
makes conservatism ideological. It is true that where conservatism denotes an
attitude, as in the argument, for example, that Stalinist communists are conservative
in the sense that they idealise the past, it is not ideologically specific, but this is not
a politically informed use of the term.
What of socialism? Social democrats have long regarded themselves as pragmatic
and flexible and regarded their opponents – whether on the left or the right – as
being rigid and ideological. Giddens has written a work entitled Beyond Left and
Right(1994) in which he seeks to defend a non-ideological politics, and the New
Labour hostility to ideology is linked to a belief in a ‘third way’ that tries to avoid
the choice between traditional socialism and traditional capitalism. Whatever social
democracy is (and it is a divided movement), it is certainly ideological in the sense
that its policies and beliefs focus on the state. However, what are we to say of
Marxism? This is a strand within socialism that explicitly rejects what it calls
‘utopias’ – beliefs that do not arise from the historical movement going on before
our eyes – and sees its objective as the attainment of a society that is both classless
and stateless in character. Marxism raises an important point about ideologies.
Although it seeks to usher in a stateless society, it is ideological for two reasons.
First, because it seeks to organise its supporters around a set of ideas that are
concerned with the seizure of state power, and second, because although its long-
term objective is the disappearance of the state, it could be argued that it makes
assumptions that ensure that it will fail to achieve this end. It is therefore a statist
doctrine, and that makes it as ideological as any other political movement (see the
section Introducing Marxism in Chapter 10 on Socialism).
The one exception to this argument appears to be anarchism. After all, anarchists
argue that political movements as they conventionally operate concentrate power
in unaccountable leaderships, and seek either to control an old state or build a new
one. Anarchism seeks to do neither. Surely, therefore, it is not an ideology. Here
we must sharpen up a distinction that is implicit in our earlier analysis. Just as
conservatives (or socialists and liberals) may think that they are not being
ideological, but are, so is this true of anarchists as well. In practice, anarchists have
to organise, and if they were ever successful, they would, we think, have to establish
a state in the short term, and what we call government in the long term – contrary
to their own principles. A state tackles conflicts of interest through force;
government, as we define it, addresses conflicts through social pressures of a
negotiating and arbitrational kind. Both ideas are rejected by anarchists, but it is
impossible to envisage a society without conflicts of interest, and therefore it is
impossible to envisage any society without a government to resolve these. Whether
ideology will dissolve with the dissolution of the state, is a matter we will tackle
later, but it is clear that anarchism in practice would have to organise in relation
to the state, and that makes it (in the particular view of ideology we have adopted
here) ideological.
What about nationalism? Nationalism has the opposite problem to anarchism.
Nationalists are clearly ideological because they seek to organise ‘their’ people to
win or to maintain the power of the state, but they attach themselves to different
ideologies in doing so. Nationalists may be conservative or socialist, liberal and (in
practice) anarchist, so that to call someone a nationalist, is to leave open which
particular social, economic and state policies they advocate. Nationalism, in our166 Part 2 Classical ideologies