Why are they running scared of ideology?

Hasan Suroor The Hindu Saturday, Jan 07, 2006

Premature obituaries of competing ideologies are not uncommon. The tendency to write off inconvenient ideas and rival political or intellectual trends is old hat, but pronouncing the death of ideology itself is a uniquely post-modernist phenomenon as bizarre as theories about "ahistorical" past and "apolitical" history.

Increasingly, ideology is portrayed as something to be despaired of — a "hang-up," and a "hindrance" to progress in a world in search of quick fixes. Even ordinary people with strong political views prefer not to align themselves with particular ideologies — principally because of some of the things that have been done in the name of ideology both on the Right and the Left. In any case, the vast majority of people have never been overtly ideological. They want their problems solved and — in the words of a certain Chinese leader — are not interested in the colour of the cat so long as it catches the mice. But politicians are, no matter how much they might protest that they are colour-blind. So, why do they pretend that they have no ideology?

The end-of-ideology debate got a fillip after Francis Fukuyama published his The End of History thesis arguing that the political upheaval in the Communist world in the late 1980s signalled an end to the era of competing ideologies. Henceforth, he suggested there would be only one ideology: the western-style liberal democracy, something pitched between the Left and the Right. It was a time of loss of faith in ideological certainties and Mr. Fukuyama's thesis (a cleverly dressed-up hatchet job for the American Right) played on it. But the real harm that it did — and that was very pretty much its aim — was to lend academic legitimacy to the idea of a world essentially without ideology except of the kind practised by the only superpower left after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about an "ideology-free" politics even though conceptually the notion of politics not rooted in ideology, however misguided or phoney, is a contradictions in terms. Pragmatism became the buzzword and in many countries mainstream politics started gravitating towards the centre — or so it seemed at the time. Come to think of it, Mr. Fukuyama's theory did not really take off. Ideology was very much bubbling under the surface even as his book was topping the charts. Remember the resurgence of the ultra-right in Europe with Austria, Spain, and Italy turning to the Right and France just about managing to escape a close call? Since then, the pendulum has moved to the Left. Spain has already abandoned the Right, in Italy it is struggling. In Latin America, there is almost a Left-wing wave sweeping the continent.

So, who says ideology is dead? A certain amount of ideological confusion is understandable after the collapse of the East European communist model, but political beliefs remain and it is disingenuous to deny them. Yes, as a tactic, pragmatism might be preferable to overtly rigid dogmatism, but pragmatism not backed by a political vision seldom works in the long run. In any event, pragmatism and a belief in ideology need not necessarily be contradictory. You can be both, as the Left in many countries, including India, has shown without being apologetic either about its ideology or pragmatism.