Ideologies double as offensive weapons against class enemies, not just world views.

Evidence

Yet paradoxically, the most vigorous and suggestive model of a Marxist correlation between class and ideology is furnished by Paul Bénichou, who deliberately leaves aside the semiobligatory excursions into the economic and social history of the period and restricts his discussion to the level of the history of ideas. Indeed, he appeals as a precursor to none other than Sainte-Beuve himself, who had already formulated thus the thesis of a class origin of Jansenism: “Port Royal was the religious enterprise of the middle-class aristocracy in France.” Yet the contrast between this essentially sociological observation and Bénichou’s own practice is revealing and instructive: for Bénichou shows us in some detail that the philosophical, artistic, and religious practice of Port Royal is always to be understood in a double sense, not only as a coherent system or world view in its own right, but also as an offensive arm against its class enemies and particularly against the heroic feudal ethic as it is embodied, for example, in Corneille. Indeed, this second or offensive aim is the informing motive behind the construction of the system as such, which only comes down to us as a kind of metaphysical vision because we are no longer aware of the concrete context in which it was first and foremost an act. Thus the return in Jansenism to a renewed sense of sin and of self-loathing (“le moi est haïssable”) is at one with that strategic and aggressive operation which Bénichou calls the “demolition of the hero.” The Other—feudal grandee with all his ostentatious dramatization of a profound inner sense of caste and worth—is drawn into the annihilation of the Self and obliterated with it in its own ruin. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 737

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core method Jameson will carry into his Marxian reading of culture — connects to Adorno’s reading of philosophy as ideology-critique and to Lukács’s notion of class consciousness as being disguised. — connects to: Ideologies can shatter traditional ideas and empower new ones in a receptive class — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 339; Ideologies are crafted as political weapons, not theories — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 433; Ideological language precedes and enables state violence against target groups (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a metaphysical vision only appears as vision once its concrete offensive, class context is forgotten — that the systemic construction is itself an act of class war — is a dense, paradigm-shifting insight about how ideologies harden into ‘neutral’ world views.
• DEFINE: Illustrates what Jameson means by ideologeme and ideological analysis — the double sense in which belief-systems function simultaneously as worldview and as strategic arm.

Broader Connections

• Ideologies are crafted as political weapons, not theories #corroborates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 433
• Ideological language precedes and enables state violence against target groups #expands (0.80)
• Ideologies can shatter traditional ideas and empower new ones in a receptive class #expands (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 339
• Ideological signs carry opposing class accents and become sites of struggle #expands (0.75)