Ideology exists for Lukács (1986b) only where there are social struggles, i.e. in societies with antagonistic interests (398). They are ‘theoretical or practical vehicles for fighting out societal conflicts’12 (400). Ideology presupposes ‘societal structures, in which diferent groups and conflicting interests act and strive to impose their interest onto the totality of society as its general interest. To put it concisely: The emergence and difusion of ideologies appears as the general characteristic of class societies’13 (Lukács, 1986b, 405).
One should note that Lukács’ engagement with ideology in the Ontology shows that he did not discard History and Class Consciousness, but that he sublated the latter into a more general critical theory of society.
2.3.3. Ideology, Advertising and the Religion of Consumption
Lukács (1986b, 581) points out that commodity fetishism contains elements of religious ideology/alienation: money and commodities appear as quasi-Gods. Religion is sublated in capitalist ideology. Religion is for Lukács the archetype of all ideological alienation (605). Lukács argues that ideologies that the ontology of everyday life is the ‘all-sided medium of immediacy’14 (556) that connects ideologies to the objective world of phenomena. In everyday life communication, humans get in touch with culture and ideologies.
Lukács says that ideology has, in capitalism since the rise of mass consumption in the twentieth century, taken on a transition from the power of nothaving to the power of having:
In workers’ everyday life, the power of having does not appear as simple privation, the fact that they are not-having the most important means necessary for the everyday satisfaction of needs influences regular life. This power in contrast appears as direct having, as the race with other humans and groups in the attempt to raise personal prestige by the quantity and quality of having15 (Lukács, 1986b, 699).
Advertising plays a crucial role in this process:
The efect on humans is primarily oriented on the belief that the purchase of particular hair tonics, ties, cigarettes, cars, etc., the visit to specific holiday resorts etc. results in one’s personality being truly acknowledged in one’s environment. The promotion of commodities as originally in ad promotion is not primary here, but rather the consumer’s personal prestige that shall be attained by purchasing. Underlying is a double tendency: on the one hand the intention to influence humans into a specific direction and to form them, on the other hand the intention to breed the particularity of humans, to enforce their perception that this superficial diferentiation of particularity that has been purchased on the world market is the sole way of how humans become personalities, i.e. how they can achieve personal recognition16 (701).
Georg Lukács as a Communications Scholar
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