Ideology and Society

Ideology is a form of social or political philosophy in which practical elements are as

prominent as theoretical ones. It is a system of ideas which aspire to explain the world and
change it. Ideology as a concept remains highly flexible to some, ideology is dogmatic while
others it carries political sophistication, to some it refers to dominated mode of thoughts and
to others it is the religious or revolutionary ideas.

Ideology has been, from its inception, a word with marked emotive content. The term though
coined in French as idéologie at the time of French revolution, it was widely used in 19 th
century, some historians of philosophy have even called the 19th century the age of ideology.
Ideology in itself is a diverse system and all these “-isms” belonging to the 19th or 20th
century may suggest that ideologies are no older than the word itself—that they belong
essentially to a period in which secular belief increasingly replaced traditional religious faith.
Socialism, communism, Anarchism, Fascism, Nationalism, Liberalism, Conservatism
contributes to be the major categories of Ideology.

Socialism - social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership
or control of property and natural resources. Socialism is a left-wing to far-left economic
philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the
dominance of social ownership of the means of production. Socialists believes that
everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who
contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole,
therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members. Some
socialists have thought that almost everything except personal items such as clothing should
be public property. The origins of socialism as a political movement lie in the Industrial
Revolution. Five main characteristics of Socialism are- public economy, planned ownership,
classless society, equal opportunity, non-existence of competition.

Capitalism – Capitalism is seen in stark opposition of Socialism, which is based on private

ownership of the means of production and allows individual choices in a free market to
determine how goods and services are distributed. Capitalism is an economic system based
on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central
characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system,
private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labour. In a
capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of
wealth, property, or ability to manoeuvre capital or production ability in capital and financial
markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by
competition in goods and services markets. Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily
leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the
relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their
wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because such people are rich, they
may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor. As
a result, terms such as individual freedom and equality of opportunity may be meaningful for
capitalists but can only ring hollow for working people, who must do the capitalists’ bidding
if they are to survive. As socialists see it, true freedom and true equality require social control
of the resources that provide the basis for prosperity in any society.

Communism- Communism is a form of socialism. It is a political and economic doctrine that

aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and
communal control of at least the major means of production and natural resources of a
society. Communism is a far-left socio political, philosophical, and economic ideology and
current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist
society, namely a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of
production, distribution, and exchange—allocating products to everyone in the society.

Since the 1840s, communism has usually been distinguished from socialism. n early
distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialize
production, whereas the former aimed to socialize both production and consumption (in the
form of common access to final goods). This distinction can be observed in Marx's
communism, where the distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each
according to his needs", in contrast to a socialist principle of "to each according to his
contribution". Socialism has been described as a philosophy seeking distributive justice, and
communism as a subset of socialism that prefers economic equality as its form of distributive
justice.

The main difference is that under communism, most property and economic resources are
owned and controlled by the state (rather than individual citizens); under socialism, all
citizens share equally in economic resources as allocated by a democratically-elected
government.
Anarchism - Derived from the Greek root anarchos meaning “without authority,” anarchism,
anarchist, and anarchy are used to express both approval and disapproval. It is a cluster of
doctrines and attitudes centred on the belief that government is both harmful and
unnecessary. Anarchist thought developed in the West and spread throughout the world,
principally in the early 20th century. As a historically left-wing movement, usually placed on
the farthest left of the political spectrum, it is a political philosophy and movement that is
sceptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions they claim
maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessarily
limited to, the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with
stateless societies or other forms of free associations.

The etymological origin of anarchism is from the Ancient Greek anarkhia, meaning "without
a ruler", composed of the prefix an- ("without") and the word arkhos ("leader" or "ruler").
The suffix -ism denotes the ideological current that favours anarchy.

Fascism - Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and

movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible
suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual
interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society
and the economy. It rose to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist
movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European
countries, such as Germany. Fascism also had adherents outside of Europe. Opposed to
anarchism, democracy, pluralism, liberalism, socialism and Marxism, fascism is placed on
the far-right wing within the traditional left–right spectrum.

Example – Hitler regime.

Nationalism - nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and
devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. According to Merriam
Webster dictionary a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and
placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of
other nations or supranational groups. According Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The
term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena: the attitude that the
members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and the actions that
the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.

There is a terminological and conceptual question of distinguishing nationalism from

patriotism. A popular proposal is the contrast between attachment to one’s country as
defining patriotism and attachment to one’s people and its traditions as defining nationalism
(Kleinig 2014: 228, and Primoratz 2017: Section 1.2).

Classical nationalism is the political program that sees the creation and maintenance of a fully
sovereign state owned by a given ethno-national group (“people” or “nation”) as a primary
duty of each member of the group. Starting from the assumption that the appropriate (or
“natural”) unit of culture is an ethno-nation, it claims that a primary duty of each member is
to abide by one’s recognizably ethno-national culture in all cultural matters.

Classical nationalists are usually vigilant about the kind of culture they protect and promote
and about the kind of attitude people have to their nation-state. This watchful attitude carries
some potential dangers: many elements of a given culture that are universal or simply not
recognizably national may fall prey to such nationalist enthusiasms. Classical nationalism in
everyday life puts various additional demands on individuals, from buying more expensive
home-produced goods in preference to cheaper imported ones to procreating as many future
members of the nation as one can manage (see Yuval-Davies 1997, and Yack 2012).

Liberal nationalists see liberal-democratic principles and pro-national attitudes as belonging

together. One of the main proponents of the view, Yael Tamir, started the debate in her 1993
book and in her recent book talks about the nation-state as “an ideal meeting point between
the two” (2019: 6). Of course, some things have to be sacrificed: we must acknowledge that
either the meaningfulness of a community or its openness must be sacrificed to some extent
as we cannot have them both. (2019: 57). How much of each is to give way is left open, and
of course, various liberal nationalists take different views of what precisely the right answer
is.

The variations of nationalism most relevant for philosophy are those that influence the moral
standing of claims and of recommended nationalist practices. The elaborate philosophical
views put forward in favor of nationalism will be referred to as “theoretical nationalism”, the
adjective serving to distinguish such views from less sophisticated and more practical
nationalist discourse. The central theoretical nationalist evaluative claims can be charted on
the map of possible positions within political theory in the following useful but somewhat
simplified and schematic way.

Liberalism - Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the
individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a
wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally
support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy,
secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the
press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy. liberalism, political
doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central
problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect
individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can
pose a threat to liberty.

Liberalism is derived from two related features of Western culture. The first is the West’s
preoccupation with individuality, as compared to the emphasis in other civilizations on status,
caste, and tradition. Throughout much of history, individuals have been submerged in and
subordinate to their clan, tribe, ethnic group, or kingdom. Liberalism is the culmination of
developments in Western society that produced a sense of the importance of human
individuality, a liberation of the individual from complete subservience to the group, and a
relaxation of the tight hold of custom, law, and authority. In this respect, liberalism stands for
the emancipation of the individual. Liberalism also derives from the practice of
adversariality, or adversariness, in European political and economic life, a process in which
institutionalized competition—such as the competition between different political parties in
electoral contests, between prosecution and defense in adversary procedure, or between
different producers in a market economy generates a dynamic social order. Adversarial
systems have always been precarious, however, and it took a long time for the belief in
adversariality to emerge from the more traditional view, traceable at least to Plato, that the
state should be an organic structure, like a beehive, in which the different social classes
cooperate by performing distinct yet complementary roles. The belief that competition is an
essential part of a political system and that good government requires a vigorous opposition
was still considered strange in most European countries in the early 19th century.

The objectives of liberal theorists and philosophers have differed across various times,
cultures and continents. The diversity of liberalism can be gleaned from the numerous
qualifiers that liberal thinkers and movements have attached to the very term "liberalism",
including classical, egalitarian, economic, social, welfare state, ethical, humanist,
deontological, perfectionist, democratic and institutional, to name a few. Despite these
variations, liberal thought does exhibit a few definite and fundamental conceptions.

Liberalism has a close but sometimes uneasy relationship with democracy. At the centre of
democratic doctrine is the belief that governments derive their authority from popular
election; liberalism, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the scope of governmental
activity. Liberals often have been wary of democracy, then, because of fears that it might
generate a tyranny by the majority. One might briskly say, therefore, that democracy looks
after majorities and liberalism after unpopular minorities.

Conservatism - political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and
practices. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the status quo of the
culture and civilization in which it appears. In Western culture, conservatives seek to
preserve a range of institutions such as organized religion, parliamentary government, and
property rights. Conservatives tend to favor institutions and practices that guarantee stability
and evolved gradually. Adherents of conservatism often oppose modernism and seek a return
to traditional values, though different groups of conservatives may choose different
traditional values to preserve. Conservatism has many forms such as Liberal, Libertarian,
Fiscal, National, Traditional, Cultural and social etc.

Psychology and Politics

Psychology is the science of mind and behaviour. The study of the experience, the behaviour
and the interaction of individual and groups. Psychology in politics deals with the study of
politics, politicians, political environment and behaviour from a psychological perspective.
The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with
psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens
for understanding psychology. Fundamentally, psychology is focused on better understanding
the human mind and human behavior. Political psychology seeks to apply the same principle
to the world of politics, examining the interplay between how people think, feel, and act —
and the impact that has on how they approach political considerations. Through political
psychology, individuals can gain deeper insight into different political ideologies,
personalities, and policies — both for the public and political figures.

The application of psychological principles to political study has elevated the understanding
of political affiliation and ideology. Studies show that people with strong partisan identity —
on both sides of the aisle — are more prone to cognitive rigidity, which is defined as the
inability to adapt or switch between modes of thinking.

This strong sense of partisan identity has also been linked to a cognitive and social
psychological concept known as motivated reasoning, which suggests that people generally
accept information that supports their beliefs but are more critical of information that
contradicts them. Motivated reasoning can help explain, for example, why people who are
struggling economically may vote for a candidate or party that wants to cut social welfare
programs.

Political psychology could lead to real-world benefits beyond simply greater insight into the
political mind or better ballots. Understanding people’s political motivations and actions
provides opportunities to bridge divides and create collaboration between groups on opposite
ends of the political spectrum.

Diplomacy professionals can apply their knowledge of political psychology to get a better
understanding of the leaders and authority figures they interact with. According to a study in
the British Journal of Political Science, a political leader’s prior attitudes and beliefs, just like
those of the average citizen, impact the perception and interpretation of information and,
therefore, may affect policy decisions. In fact, studies suggest that people who are more well-
informed on issues are more likely to be stubborn about them.

References

https://www.britannica.com/topic/ideology-society

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/
https://books.google.co.in/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=7UMyBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT11&dq=psychology+and+politics&ots=
EOo5KLzhXF&sig=W0VdRzI_b4E99yAW6XiiCXmEo9c&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=psy
chology%20and%20politics&f=false

https://online.maryville.edu/blog/the-role-of-political-psychology-in-diplomacy/

https://academic.oup.com/editedvolume/35474/chapterabstract/303820021?
redirectedFrom=fulltext
Aristotle is among the most important of philosophers in this world. He has written
extensively on topics like logic, metaphysics, art, drama etc. perhaps numbering as many as
two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive. His work has shaped
centuries of philosophy from late antiquity to renaissance. Even after the intellectual
revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, Aristotelian
concepts remained embedded in Western thinking.

One of the first and most influential philosopher to write about what constitutes drama was
Aristotle, who concluded that there were 6 elements to drama: plot, character, thought,
diction, spectacle and song.

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