This essay explores ideology's role during the Industrial Revolution and post-WWII political economy, suggesting key influences on contemporary critiques.
In this essay, I focus on ideology, defined as representation in the service of sectional interests, often-times contrary to the evidence, and its social significance, in a series of sketches, informed by an historical materialist philosophy. Including the Industrial Revolution, in the UK, the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, and slavery in the Americas, the Paris Commune, of 1871, Russia post-1917, Spain post-WWI and 1936-39, Germany post-WWI, and on the Eastern Front during WWII. And contemporarily, post-WWII political economy, the onset of neo-liberalism, in the early 1980’s, the re-emergence of China as a global economic player, and aspects of mainstream economics, and contemporary social ‘critiques’.
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Eugene Flanagan (2025) studied this question.
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