The Ideology of Those Who Have None
Ideology is the operation converting constraint into consent, most powerfully when it erases its own traces and presents itself as innocent fact. Unlike explicit projects, it dissolves into "common sense" that appears as unassailable reality, not an opinion to be challenged.
An ideology is something other than a project or an opinion. It is the operation by which power converts its constraint into consent, and its most accomplished form is not the grand narrative that flaunts itself, but the naked fact that believes itself innocent. It is this form we must examine, because it has erased its own traces, and one never distrusts what does not resemble an idea.
Let us start from the beginning. In the first sense, ideology founds a social project. It orders values, sets a goal, gathers forces around a vision. Socialism and liberalism have never been pure beliefs; they claim to command collective life and to found the institutions that sustain it. They are enunciated, programmed, defended in public. One can fight them because one can name them.
In the second sense, ideology dissolves into common sense. It becomes spontaneous evidence, the "everyone knows that…" that manufactures the certainties of the day. Saying that "the market regulates itself" or that "the state is inherently inefficient" is to inhabit this register: dominant opinions that guide conduct without ever constituting a program. This one is fought differently, because it does not present itself as an adversary. It presents itself as reality.