Abstract

Ideology, prior to Marx’s German Ideology, has a major role in the formation of Marx’s materialist theory, with Hegel’s “absolute spirit” thought and Feuerbach’s religious criticism. The formation of the ideology theory extends to Hegel and Feuerbach’s idea themes from the religious criticism to the criticism of materialism, and thus reach to the arguments of their ideas. As Parekh (1982) points out, Marx is positioned against limited and systematic ideas by trying to show a dialectical relationship between material reality and idea. The concept of ideology in classical Marxist theory, its included in superstructure, is explained that attributed to religion, morality, or political institutions and by trying to establish equivalence relation with these structures. The main aim of this study is to object to relationship between metaphor of superstructure and ideology. Ideology, starting a psychological level, is used in such a way that the material reality from positive meaning to negative meaning with “illusion” or “false consciousness”. Larrain indicates that like this transition the ideology is evaluated to give reference of false consciousness, illusion or dominant class. But Marx, especially in the work of German Ideology in which the problematic of ideology is discussed in detail, cares of ideology with dialectical relation of ideology to institutions by avoiding from its formation in equivalence relation a different phenomenon. As Larrain said that, the concept of ideology in this study is distinguished into periods and how it differentiates over time is questioned. So, how did it change and transform in Marx? It is used about what meanings are in different periods? In this study, which is underlined the concept of ideology in Marx does not simply refer to false consciousness, illusion, or dominant power through periodization.