Ideology According To Marx And Althusser In Relation To Bartleby The Scrivener

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Ideology according to Karl Marx and Louis Althusser in relation to Herman Mellvile’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”

Ideology is defined as one’s certain beliefs or ones philosophy. Many theorists have interpreted and expanded upon this definition in a myriad of ways. In his essay, The German Ideology, Karl Marx sees ideology as a camera obscure, a distortion that hides the truth, that makes us believe one thing, but is inverted. He also sees ideology as being the product of an epoch. This means that an epoch’s dominant class is the deciding factor in that period’s dominant ideology. In the essay Ideology, and Ideological State Apparatuses, Louis Althusser defines Ideology as a “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”(2) This means that nobody believes in something purely and that all beliefs are shaded by ones experience. As concepts things do not function materially, but imaginary. Althusser also argues that ideology comes automatically to each individual as we are all pulled into some idea of selfhood from birth, and the very idea of selfhood is a product of ideology. Herman Melville’s story, Bartleby the Scrivener is exemplary of where these two ideologies can be analyzed and discussed.
Bartleby is a very quirky character according to what is seen as normal in society. His boss, a lawyer describes himself as someone who from “his youth upward, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.” (3) This is a classic example of typical ideological concepts. According to Marx, the dominant class of an epoch is the deciding factor of the dominant ideas of that epoch. Ideology involves developing the means of survival, or in Marx words, subsistence, what one needs to live. Subsistence is acquired by tools, and with out ideology and concepts, no culture would develop and no groups would form, and therefore one...