Material Conditions as Fundamental Reality
in the first place a set of doctrines, it is rather the way men live out their roles in class-society”, it comprised of the values, ideas, and images which bind them to
their social functions which simultaneously prevent them from a true understanding of society as a whole Eagleton, 1976: 16-17. Examples of
ideology as the way men understand their roles in a society are as ordinary as the role adopted by a mother through familial attributes in which she strives to make
the world a better place for her children, or the role adopted by a hardworking man in which he sees his daily struggles in life as necessities to achieve material
success, or a religion adherent who sees the world as a series of temptations to his faith. The ordinary struggles of both the priviledged and the commoners are
intertwined with ideologies, as the scope in which they attempt to make sense of their lives.
Tyson 2006: 56 further explains ideology in terms of their function as “the products of cultural conditioning”. She believes that since ideology is a belief
system, they are simultaneously products of cultural conditioning. She divides ideologies into two categories: 1 the repressive ideologies, and 2 nonrepressive
ideologies. The repressive ideologies are those ideologies that search to propagate repressive political agendas. In order to be accepted in the society, these
undesirable ideologies take the form of obvious truth, natural ways of seeing the world instead of openly acknowledge themselves as ideologies. Examples of these
ideologies are the sexist belief that men are superior than women which stemmed from patriarchal society, and the capitalist belief of the land and property
ownership as the result of Reaganism in 1980s Sultana, 2011: 1; Dreier, 2004: par.12.
Repressive ideologies refuse to acknowledge themselves as ideologies, and they pass themselves as natural or obvious facts among society. These
ideologies refuse the connection between society’s material conditions and the way the people perceive their world. Therefore, they hamper society from
understanding the materialhistorical conditions by posing as natural ways of seeing the world. Example of this ideology is the belief that some people were
born with innate superior quality than the others, thus they are justified to have a better quality of life or even have the right to subordinate people with different
characteristic, such as color, gender, or social class. This had been practiced in the past, with slavery and the domination towards the working class people. These
practices leave residue that is prolonged into the present. Another example of these ideologies are the inability to acknowledge the existence of classes in
advanced nations such as the United States of America, or refusal to admit the existence of discrimination or subordination towards minorities or the
underprivileged. The sharp class disparities represented by the slums in urban housing, the homeless in the streets, or the unfair social justice system are
repressed by the ideology that put the blames on individuals’ lack for determination, or for moral fibre, labelling the victims of the unjust
socioeconomic conditions as the undeserving poor, those who earn their own unfortunate conditions. This kind of world view support the status quo which
disadvantages the underprivileged classes both by the higher classes’ refusal to