HISTORICALLY, the term ‘ideology’ was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy in the late 18th Century to define a ‘science of ideas’ which aims, principally, to change society or social organisation through a normative thought process.
Though coined fairly recently, as a principle, ‘ideology’ can be applied to describe practices that far precede its coinage, without violating logic.
To date, ‘ideology’ has evolved to encompass a systematic body of concepts about human life or content of thinking which is characteristic of an individual, group or culture, constituting a socio-political programme. (Ibid:10 April 2007)
This is the dominant sense in which it applies in this argument.
Of course, there are many related perceptions invoked by the term ‘ideology’.
According to John Lye (1997), ideology is a term developed by the Marxist tradition to refer to how cultures are structured in such ways that enable the power wielding groups to have maximum control over the subject class(es).
Karl Marx says: “Ideology is an instrument of social reproduction.” (Marx: 1959:33)
This means that it is an instrument of legitimising the status quo through widespread teaching and social adoption of ruling class ideas by controlling the consciousness of the people in such a way that the subjects accept the way things are as ‘natural’.
Antonio Gramsci (1978:22) calls this socialisation process, this shaping of people’s cognitive and affective interpretation of their world and existence, ‘hegemony’.
Gramscian ‘hegemony’ was derived from the Greek word ‘hegeisthai’ meaning ‘to lead’.
It refers to the ‘dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force’. (Ibid: 22)
According to Gramsci, this way of thinking and feeling is created and maintained by power structures such as the school, state, church and cultural bodies such as the mass media.
These institutions programme how, and even what, the oppressed think even though the impact may not always be complete owing to various historical and cultural configurations of the oppressed.
Nonetheless, hegemony results in the empowerment of the cultural beliefs, values and practices of the dominant class, while those of the subject class are systematically submerged or completely excluded.
As such, hegemony influences the dominant perspective of mainstream history.
Although Gramsci’s analysis is an extension of Marx’s concept of class in early capitalist Europe, its logic can be applied to the colonial-capitalist politics of slavery and colonialism in Africa.
It projects capitalism as the fundamental imperialist ethos propped by a set of ideological ideas, doctrines, myths and institutions which proclaim how society should work.
As such, both as an ideology and a system, capitalism offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.
To date, the continued domination of Africa by the West in the social, political and the economic and cultural spheres has been maintained through a composite system of ideological mechanisms and prescriptive theoretical formulations.
Walt Rostow’s Modernisation Theory illustrates the hegemonic tendencies of such theorisations.
I shall dwell on it briefly to illustrate the point.
In the opening chapter of his book, The Stages of Economic Growth, Rostow writes: “All societies, in their economic dimension, (lie) within one of the five categories: the traditional society, the pre-conditions for take-off into self-sustaining growth, the take-off, the drive to maturity and the age of high mass consumption.
These stages … constitute in the end, both a theory about economic growth and a more general … theory about modern history as a whole.” (Cited in Todaro and Smith: 2006:104)
This obviously sounds like a Marshal Plan prescribed for ‘developing countries’.
In fact, his modernisation theory assumes, in a very patronising way indeed, that the conceptualisation of ‘development’ by the US is universal.
Basing on this mistaken assumption, the theory proceeds to claim that to realise development (which is deemed to be essentially economic), all developing countries would have no choice but to follow in the footsteps of the so-called ‘developed countries’.
This would entail ‘mobilisation of domestic and foreign savings in order to generate sufficient investment to accelerate economic growth’. (Ibid.105)
The false assumption of these constructions are obvious: That societies located differently in space share the same nature and are essentially the same; and that the organisation of international markets ‘has no structural asymmetries that could affect the chances of development for nations in the periphery’. (Baron: 2005:38)
It may also be argued such theorisation may betray more than just lack of scholastic complexity.
Rostow was too learned to sink to such reductiveness without an ulterior motive.
In fact, a brief analysis of the man’s life exposes the imperialist intentions in the so-called paradigm of development.
According to Walt Whitman, Rostow was a grandson of Jewish immigrants.
He was born on October 7 1916 in New York.
Before his death in 2003, he was a holder of a PhD from Yale University.
He taught Economics at many universities; but this is only a pale visible part of his life.
During the Second World War, he worked as a major in the Office of Strategic Services under William Donovan where he was responsible for espionage.
Then he joined the State Department as the assistant chief of the German Austrian division in 1945.
Later, he was involved in the development of the Marshal Plan.
In 1958, he became a speech writer for President Dwight Eisenhower before he published the ‘famous book’, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto in 1960, ostensibly as a direct rebuttal of The Communist Manifesto.
In short, his book is a vindication of the capitalist ethos.
No wonder the book impressed John F. Kennedy, a presidential aspirant then who, on accession to power in 1961, appointed Rostow deputy of his national security.
After the assassination of Kennedy, Rostow worked for President Lyndon Johnson as national security advisor during which he was the main architect of the development of Government policy on Vietnam.
Given this background, would one need second persuasion to understand the modernisation theory as a sponsored grand plan to bring the ‘satellite’ and ‘periphery’ into the economic design of the ‘metropole’ to perpetuate the dependency of the dominated societies.
Globalisation glares at us today as an extension of the Modernisation Theory.
Massive developments in communications and technology alongside the restructuring of global capital and the dominant role of such international financial institutions as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the proliferation of transnational corporations and the resonating presence of their agents, money and ideas, have compressed time and space, widening the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots.
Globalisation is the new monster in the scheme of capital.
It entails transformation of relations between states, institutions and individuals; universalisation of certain practices, identities and structures; and global restructuring of modern capitalist relations — cultural imperialism.
If globalisation can deceive people, this is because it seems to retain nothing of the old theories tainted by their overt racial content.
It is dressed up in all the signs of modernity.
However, it is far from being a homogenising process as its proponents purport.
On the contrary, it is the extension of the hold of a small number of dominant nations over the whole set of national financial markets. (Bourdieu: 1998:38)
It is merely a disguised return to ‘an unrestrained – but rationalised – and cynical capitalism’. (ibid:36)