It is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
It is not exactly an aphorism, but it is a neat segment of Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy with an important implication. Ideology is reasonably defined as a collection of ideas based around a distinct point of view. The argument here suggests ideology is the medium of class consciousness.
In the clash between forces and relations of production, the basis of class struggle, people can achieve things which are contrary to the ideas they hold. This was something Antonio Gramsci dwelt upon in his Prison Notebooks repeatedly. The achievements of the Biennio Rosso were not capitalised upon because there was not sufficient critical renovation of ideas; long story short, the workers rebellion was not translated into a workers state.
Ideology is the medium of class consciousness and, as we know, the medium is the message. The key benefit of Marshall McLuhan’s media studies was the spotlight he shone on the media themselves, media as physical objects, and the effects they have. For example, (in this case David Sarnoff, pioneer American broadcaster) people often advise that the “products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way that they are used that determines their value”.
Suppose we were to say, “Apple Pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way that it is used that determines its value”. Or “the Smallpox Virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way that it is used that determines its value”. Again, “Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way that they are used that determines their value”.
A useful point for consideration, the ideology of Protestantism helped found capitalism. Not because of some supposed work-ethic, plenty of harsh toil had been carried before anyone pondered the nature of a personal god, but because its dispute with Catholicism over humanity’s relationship to the divine was in effect an argument over the individual’s relationship to authority. “No King But Jesus” is a roundabout call for a republic.
But why does this matter? One of the crucial points about ideology, specific ideologies, is why do they arise when they do. As Frederick Engels pointed out, early socialism was utopian because:
What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chains of historical development, but a mere happy accident. He might just as well have been born 500 years earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years of error, strife, and suffering.
So, Protestantism didn’t just happen to rise up during the feudal era to attack it, it arose out of the feudal era, part of it but against it (and eventually to be supplanted by more advanced articulations of bourgeois ideology). There is no debate about a personal versus an impersonal god without print technology and the beginnings of mass literacy. There are no ideas apart from the means of articulating them.
We exist in a state of media saturation, to the point where we do not regard the effects such media have upon us. We live in the medium of Earth’s atmosphere. We do not notice it because our bodies are evolved to live at around sea-level pressure; we live at the very bottom of an ocean of air. You can only get a handle on this when you climb a large mountain, get into a submarine or a spacecraft.
We tend not to notice the dominant ideology, the collection of ideas based around the point of view of the dominant class in our society. It is only when we are outside that medium that we see it for what it is. The recent public sector general strike in Britain, baby step thought it might have been, was amongst other things an important blow struck against the prevailing ideology, a temporary exodus transporting millions of people (not just the strikers) out of neo-liberalism, austerity and atomisation.
McLuhan’s strength is that he looks at the effect of technology on consciousness. It is easy to accept that electronic media creates almost instant global communication, and thereby bridges the gap between cause and effect, core and perhipery in the public mind. You can extrapolate from this. We have lived through a period of growing gated bourgeois communities, increasingly militarised policing, the enclosure of more and more public space, and so forth. The mass media batters away, the poor are dangerous, deracinated and, look, they're living among us. It’s all very logical.
But there is one clear problem with techno-determinism. Take something like the Canary Wharf Complex in East London. To the bourgeois Londoner it is a sleek monument to their power. The working class Londoner would be forgiven if they found it a cold, bewildering and unwelcome place (built upon the ruins of a former trade union stronghold let’s not forget). Technology, mass media live inside the greater medium of class society; that is the message they carry to us, everywhere, all the time.