Ideology and system-building

the experience under Lenin and Stalin

Graeme Gill

pp. 59-82

in: Stephen K. White, Alex Pravda (eds), Ideology and Soviet politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988

Abstract

Most scholars of ideology have distinguished between two different types of belief systems. These have been accorded various labels, including "pure" and "practical" ideology (theory and thought), "doctrine" and "ideology", and "fundamental" and "operative" ideology.¹ The distinction which these labels reflect is between a body of philosophical principles and assumptions about the nature of reality and of historical change on the one hand, and on the other a set of tenets which are designed to link these principles and assumptions with existing reality by constituting an "action program"² through which the adherents seek to realise those principles and assumptions in action. The more fundamental principles and assumptions combine together to constitute a social theory which has as its principal characteristic an explanatory orientation. The ideological tenets will be drawn from the body of social theory, but they will tend to be much less complex than the principles from which they spring. Indeed, one of their chief characteristics will be to rationalise or simplify the complex propositions of the social theory so as to enable them both to be understood and acted upon by those who may not have the philosophical training or insight to get to grips with the social theory as a whole.