What a Capital Ideology! Framing Ideological Choice as a Capitalist Consumer Process

Abstract

In the opening scene of Angels in America: Perestroika, Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, “the world’s oldest living Bolshevik,” delivers a speech to the Kremlin shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Empire (Kushner, 1996). His speech glorifies the Bolshevik cause and voices disappointment with the Perestroika reformers. At first glance, Prelapsarianov seems like the very caricature of the irrational ideologue; his middle name (“before the Flood”) and last name (“before the Fall”) highlight how he is stubbornly clinging to the founding ideology of a dying system. Yet when we listen to his monologue we can see past the surface appearance of irrationality to find a compelling account of the human need for ideology. Surprisingly for a Marxist-Leninist, the character does not emphasize the value of ideology for advancing class-based material interests; rather, he focuses on how ideology can satisfy deeper cravings for things like meaning, structure, and purpose: “You can’t imagine, when we first read the Classic Texts, when in the dark vexed night of our ignorance and terror the seedwords sprouted and shoved incomprehension aside, when the incredible bloody vegetable struggle up and through into Red Blooming gave us Praxis, True Praxis, True Theory married to Actual Life” (Kushner, 1996, p. 14). He even gives a vivid analogy to suggest how lost we would be without an ideology to shield us from a threatening world: “If the snake sheds his skin before a new skin is ready, naked he will be in the world, prey to the forces of chaos” (p. 14). Prelapsarianov indicates that he is open to changing his mind if only the Perestroika reformers were able to offer a better ideological product to satisfy his needs: “[O]nly show me the Theory, and I will be at the barricades, show me the book of the next Beautiful Theory, and I promise you these blind eyes will see again, just to read it, to devour that text. Show me the words that will reorder the world, or else keep silent” (Kushner, 1996, p. 14). It is just that he is not very impressed by the ideological options that the reformers are offering: “What have you to offer in its place? Market Incentives? American Cheeseburgers? Watered-down Bukharinite stopgap makeshift Capitalism! NEPmen!” (p. 14). So, what on the surface may look like a stubborn, irrational rigidity may actually reflect commitment to the only ideological option that the individual finds reasonably satisfying. Although it is certainly ironic to depict a Bolshevik talking as if he is a customer shopping for the best available ideological product, this scenario has an intriguing resemblance to the rational choice model of ideological selection that Gries, M€ uller, and Jost (this issue) present in the target article. Their model takes seriously the familiar metaphor of a “marketplace of ideas” and combines the tools of rational choice modeling from economics with insights from theory and research on motivated social cognition to provide a formal account of how individuals select an ideological position from whatever options are available to them.