66 The Nature of Political TheoryPrimarily, political theory and ideology are reduced to the same category, although
bothdenote an illusion. The material conditions of economic life form the real basis
to social existence. Cultural and political structures can only be understood via these
material conditions and the ensuing class struggles. Since the material basis is primary,
all ideas have to be explained via their connection to the material base. They cannot be
explained in themselves. They constitute the ideology of a society. Marx, in one of his
synoptic semi-autobiographical pieces of writing, thePreface to the Critique of Political
Economy, called the above idea the ‘leading thread’ of his studies (Marx and Engels
1968: 182). It is understandable, in this reading, that Engels, and others, should thus
have referred to all ideology (including political theory) as the ‘false-consciousness’.
Its chief delusion is its inability to see its own class basis. The history of ideology is
therefore subsumable under a history of class interests. Political philosophers are quite
literally professional ideologists or professional purveyors of illusions. The social and
economic sciences therefore need to explain the eruptions of ideology and political
theory.
Ideology and political theory thus becomesocial objectsto be explained within a
broader empirical social theory. Much twentieth century sociology—both structur-
alism and functionalism—continued to view political ideas as aspects of a broader
science of society. Social science, in general, has often seen both political theories and
ideologies associal objectsfor study. In fact, for Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, soci-
ologyper se, contained a complete social epistemology, which provided clear answers
to all the older philosophical problems of knowledge. Humans (and their cognitive
existence) have no distinctive attributes outside of society. A science of society thus
explains political theory and ideology.
We have already encountered the above basic argument within empirical political
theory. With the rise of empirical theory in the mid-twentieth century, the ‘illusory’
dimension of normative political theory came to the fore. This view was encapsulated
in the perspective of behavioural political science. The general frame of the ‘end of
ideology’ perspective also caught the same drift of argument. Social science, in effect,
offered a science of society. The development of empirical theory demanded a value
free rigour and clear verification processes, unsullied by appeals to normative political
theory or ideology. As Edward Shils commented, ‘science is not and never has been
part of an ideological culture. Indeed the spirit in which science works is alien to
ideology’ (Shils 1968: 74). The only salvation for political theory or ideology was to
mutate into empirical political theory.
This was the general view of the behavioural movement. Classical normative the-
ory, the history of political theory and ideologies persisted with a use oftheory‘that
lingered from an earlier period in the discipline’s history’; and as James Farr noted
‘In being empirical and explanatory, however, theory in behavioural research was to
be value-free and objective. There was, it was argued, a logical gulf between fact and
value, between “is” and “ought”, which in no way could be spanned. Normative topics
like freedom, justice, or authority—the staples of a prescientific study of politics—
were best understood in terms of one’s subjective emotions or expressive states. They
were also laced with a “strong dose of metaphysical discourse” ’. Farr continues that,