Reformists mistake ideology’s ideal image for a reality to be realized

Evidence

What distinguishes these gentlemen [in other words, the Proudhonists, or as we might say today, the social democrats] from the bourgeois apologists is, on the one hand, their awareness of the contradictions inherent in the system, and, on the other, their utopianism, manifest in their failure to grasp the inevitable difference between the real and the ideal shape of bourgeois society, and the consequent desire to undertake the superfluous task of changing the ideal expression itself back into reality, whereas it is in fact merely the photographic image [Lichtbild ] of this reality. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 573

Categorization

• DEFINE: The ‘photographic image’ (Lichtbild) analogy defines how the ideal (freedom, equality) relates to bourgeois reality — as representation, not as unrealized blueprint.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core theme of style as appearance: the ideal image is the economy’s way of appearing to itself. — connects to: Conflating the ruling class’s portrait with the whole country is a social-imagination error. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 597; Ideology is real practice dislocated from, not fantasy opposed to, reality; Ideology expresses lived imaginary relations rather than actual conditions of existence. (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Conflating the ruling class’s portrait with the whole country is a social-imagination error. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 597; Ideology is real practice dislocated from, not fantasy opposed to, reality; Ideology expresses lived imaginary relations rather than actual conditions of existence. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Ideology is real practice dislocated from, not fantasy opposed to, reality #complicates (0.78)