Ideology: The pattern in the mind

Ideology begins with the seat cushions in Berlin’s buses and trains. After the Berliner Verkehrsgesellschaft was surprisingly sued by the developer of the proven “little worm” pattern for using the design, the management on the banks of the Spree decided without further ado to design a new look.

The result was the “pattern of diversity”: Instead of the black, blue and red sleet, the colorful silhouettes of passengers were now bustling about on the seats of Berlin’s public transport system. “We move all of Berlin – regardless of age, gender, origin, body shape, physical mobility, religion, sexual orientation or cultural background. And that’s why we’re now showing this diversity where nobody can overlook it: on our new seat pattern!” BVG explained the purpose of the new upholstery, as if it could work wonders.

Colorful in the collapse

Why all this? “Because we love you,” the transport company explains to its audience in the words of the company motto – and thus widens the gap that has long existed between aspiration and reality. While ticket prices have recently risen by around five percent, the daily commuter traffic in the German capital paints a catastrophic picture. The Ringbahn, which is particularly important for commuters, is canceled regularly, especially at peak times. Some neighborhoods can hardly be reached by public transport due to construction work. Nevertheless, the BVG never tires of advertising itself with a high-gloss finish.

“We are looking for people who are only looking for the yellow card”, for example, the Berlin public transport system posted an intentionally wrong spelling in order to recruit new employees. And with the poster “Dear masks, please put on a Berliner!” the transport company boldly pointed out to the public that masks are compulsory during the corona pandemic.

The fact that things are sometimes not very different elsewhere in Germany can be seen from the BVG sibling Deutsche Bahn, from corporations such as VW, Edeka and Adidas or from some politicians in the Bundestag. Sometimes a supermarket chain boasts that there is no space on the right side of the shelf, even though food prices have long since reached astronomical heights. Sometimes the Federal Chancellor swears that full employment is approaching, even though the Federal Republic is slipping into an unprecedented economic crisis.

BVG, SPD and Edeka share one and the same ideology

Surprisingly, the growing alienation of claim and reality does not lead to the BVG, Edeka or many a party being exposed as hypocritical or blinded. Rather, one’s own slogans are glorified as the preferred means of remedying grievances. The BVG wants to fight the ubiquitous crime in rail traffic with “colourful” and as inclusive as possible advertising campaigns, which the Berlin Senate flanks with posters explaining everyday racism.

For the perplexed outsider, this observation often gives the impression that the problem has obviously been confused with the solution, the means with the end and the cause with the effect. In fact, there is a method to this confusion. It must be sought in the ideological idealism of the ruling classes, which can be reduced to the philosophical common denominator that “consciousness determines being”. This idealism is currently booming.

All of the social crises and upheavals of the past few years have been linked by the German bourgeoisie to malignant delusions of consciousness. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), for example, never tired of denigrating the countless protests during the corona lockdown as the result of half medical knowledge and conspiracy theories. And the BVG, together with Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), is convinced that the idea of ​​an open society will soon dissuade the small dealer at Kreuzberg’s Gleisdreieck from its dodgy business model.

Unmask false consciousness with Marx and Engels

“This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret the existing differently, i. H. to recognize it by means of a different interpretation,” wrote Marx and Engels as early as 1845 about this ideological reflex. In their joint work “The German Ideology”, which was created over a beer and a lot of cigarettes, the two revolutionaries made fun of their intellectual contemporaries, whose articles and essays distorted German society to the point of the grotesque.

Both the anarchist Max Stirner and the liberal Bruno Bauer abstracted in their contributions to politics from the actual situation in Germany at that time in such a way that in the end only a ridiculous caricature of the real conditions came out. For Marx and Engels, however, these caricatures were not just for laughs. Rather, they saw it as a serious attempt by their colleagues to come to terms with the existing society and, as it were, to retrospectively give reason for their unreasonable activities. Thus the downside of idealism was discovered: namely, that it serves as a philosophical stirrup holder for those who are already powerful.

In response to this intellectual self-deception, Marx and Engels developed their infamous “historical materialism”. Although this was severely compromised by numerous vulgar Marxist interpretations in the course of the 20th century, it is one of the few theoretical currents that still insists on the necessity of a prosaic view of society, free of mysticism and ideology.

Conservatives face a right-left dialectic

Last but not least, the luxurious advertising campaigns of the BVG prove that this false consciousness has our coexistence in its grip just as firmly as it did in the pre-March era. With its own fashion collection, including photo shoots and a presentation on the red carpet, the Berlin transport company recently brought its “pattern of diversity” to men and women in a publicly effective manner.

Stars were able to have their picture taken at the boozy party in a specially prepared compartment of the subway, which looked very different from the real BVG carriages on the capital’s tracks – namely clean, safe and beautiful. At this point, the whole abyss, but also all the comedy of modern idealistic ideology becomes clear: A seat cushion in the subway can change the world as long as it comes with the “pattern of diversity”. As you sit, so you lie.

The conservative opposition to this real comedy will sooner or later have to include some materialistic motifs in the tradition of Marx and Engels in their work. The subject matter is rich and stretches from Lukacz to Gramsci to Althusser. If she refuses this historical dialectic – playing right from left, left from right – she ends up merely replacing one idealistic folly with another, the “pattern of diversity” with a “pattern of freedom” or a “Prussian pattern”. . All forms the same idealistic comedy.

JF 18/23