Power, Ideology and Economic Change: An Examination of Ideological Perdition within Western capitalism

Abstract

<p>The extent of social inequality and its connection with public policy is increasingly a central topic for examination within the literature on the political economy of the Western world. Inequality has become rooted in society, justified by ideology that both disguises loss of widespread wellbeing and diminishes the power of a nation’s peoples to democratically seek change. This is not a new phenomenon.</p> <p>I describe how elites shape public policy by creation of a dominant ideology that legitimises <b>the degradation of social wellbeing</b>. When an ideology is widely accepted through the false belief that it reflects not just a necessary reality but the only possible reality, I suggest that this is a society travelling the road to Ideological Perdition</p> <p>Whilst travelling the road to Ideological Perdition is not predetermined, Western history is dominated by circumstances that have steered nations’ peoples in that direction. Ideological Perdition evolves as an elite establishes its power through the subtle and hidden removal of society’s power to limit its own exploitation. I describe the conditions in the political-economy that lead to ideological shift, to the actions of elites that maintain a perditious ideology despite its exploitation in society and I describe chaos and devastation in social wellbeing as the end of road to Ideological Perdition is approached.</p> <p>The theory of Ideological Perdition is deployed as follows: <ul><li>Part I, in which a theoretical locus of power, perdition and ideology is described; and</li> <li>Parts II – IV, in which I reflect on three periods of Western political-economic history. I relate the theory to the rise of a perditious ideology in interwar Germany; to post-Second World War American Cold War geostrategic policy; and to the rise of a perditious social construct represented by neoliberalism after the late 1980s.</li> <li>This trajectory has been seen in the past as it is, I believe, is being playedout, today.</li></ul></p>