Ideological Guidance Theory

Ideology refers to the superstructure of concepts based on a certain economic basis,serving the consolidation of the state power and having a strict logical system.Ideological guidance is the behavior of the ruling party to use a series of means to lead the thoughts and actions of all members of society to consolidate the state power.Ideology has a wide range of social functions.Ideological guidance function is one aspect of ideological function,which is manifested as directional interpretation of the world,providing value and norms,supplying systems and policies.The realization of ideological guidance needs internal and external conditions.From the perspective of internal conditions,the realization of ideological guidance function requires not only clear subject and object,clear objectives and content,but also sustained motivation and media.From the perspective of external conditions,economic production is the decisive force affecting ideological guidance.The change of social structure is an important factor affecting the function of ideological guidance.The adjustment of political superstructure is an important means of ideological guidance.Social ideological trend is the main object of ideological guidance.David Easton's political system theory provides a set of analytical methods for understanding the whole process of ideological guidance.According to this method,we can regard ideological guidance as a system,and its good operation depends on sufficient internal and external conditions.The theory of political system provides a series of interlocking links that put internal and external conditions into the ideological guidance system for analysis.These links constitute the operational mechanism of ideological guidance.This mechanism is a perspective to analyze the whole process of ideological guidance.It divides the guiding process into four parts:input of demand,input of support,response of support under pressure,feedback loop and output of specific support.In the input link of demand,demand refers to the economic,social,political and cultural needs that can influence the thoughts and behaviors of social members.The extensive demand of social members makes demand overload a difficult problem of ideological guidance.Therefore,it is very important to regulate and transform desire,the form of expression before the emergence of demand,that is,to establish the mechanism of desire transformation and regulation.When those legitimate desires arenecessarily transformed into demand,it becomes another difficult problem to regulate and control demand flow.Therefore,it is necessary to establish a demand flow regulation mechanism.When the demand input,the ruling party must respond to these needs,which is the input of support.Whether explicit support or implicit support,the main undertakers of support are the ruling party.However,in the process of support input,the ruling party is inevitably affected by the interference of the complex economic and social environment and its own limitations or errors,and the result of support loss is inevitable.Because of this,the support input will inevitably be under the pressure of some members of society whose needs are still not met.At this point,the ruling party must respond.The most effective way is to provide diffuse support.Specifically,the leaders of the ruling party should adopt a friendly attitude and persistent goodwill,and guide the social members' ideas and behaviors in the form of "moistening things in silence",so that they can recognize or tolerate the hard,and maintain confidence in the ruling prospects of the ruling party and the ruling programme,and adopt positive measures.Action is supportive.Although diffuse support can largely solve the needs of social members in the ideological guidance operation mechanism.However,there are still some social members whose needs have changed due to changes in the economic and social environment and other factors,and the input of support can not fully meet the changed needs.At this time,the ruling party must provide specific support,that is,to provide targeted methods,values and policies to meet these needs.The specific supporting output process is the feedback loop,which is divided into four steps: feedback stimulus,feedback response,feedback information and specific output.Previous policy output,changes in the environment,and cognitive feedback from members of society can all be regarded as feedback stimuli.The various manifestations of these stimuli constitute feedback responses.Positive feedback is the result that the support input by the ruling party meets the needs of some members of society.Negative feedback is the result of the expansion of the needs of social members brought about by various complex factors that have not been met.In the face of negative reactions,the most effective way is for the ruling party to give priority to meeting some of the most influential members in the least costly and most effective way.However,this is not enough.The ruling party must also study theinformation in the negative feedback response,and specifically study the distortion and delay of these information,so as to obtain timely and accurate dynamic thinking and behavior information of social members.However,the ruling party has only information and no ability to output,and still can not provide targeted and high-quality output.Therefore,the ruling party should be good at utilizing its own internal and external resources to export specific values and policies with the greatest efforts and sincerity.Generally speaking,this particular output will largely meet those specific needs.However,if we want to smoothly guide ideology,we must combine this output with diffuse support to provide continuous support in the changing complex environment.In contemporary China,with the rapid economic and social development,the internal and external environment facing ideological guidance is extremely complex.It faces not only many positive factors,but also many challenges.The positive factors are as follows: the theoretical basis of ideological guidance is constantly consolidated,the ways of ideological guidance are constantly improved,and the institutions of ideological guidance are constantly improved.Challenges mainly include: the impact of social ideological trends on dominant ideology,the frequent occurrence of major ideological security risks,the hidden dangers brought by the members of the subject and object,etc.There are two main reasons for the challenges: on the one hand,the internal and external conditions for the realization of ideological guidance function are insufficient.The complexity of external conditions interferes with ideological guidance,and the difficulty of meeting internal conditions hinders ideological guidance.On the other hand,the operation of ideological guidance mechanism is not smooth.It is manifested in the following aspects: the low ability of the CPC to transform and adjust the people's needs leads to the phenomenon of overload of demand;the phenomenon of insufficient input and deviation of the CPC support occurs from time to time;the problems of responders and reaction time when the ideological guidance is under pressure;and the pressure exists in some links of feedback loop in the process of specific support output.In order to stay in power for a long time in the era of drastic changes,the CPC should tackle the difficult problems faced by ideological guidance from two aspects.First,in the long run,we should recognize the internal and external conditions for the realization of ideological guidance function.In order to understand the external conditions,economic development is the fundamental prerequisite for the sustained and effective ideological guidance,the change of social structure is an important factor affecting the ideological guidance,the adjustment of political superstructure is an important means of ideological guidance,the Party's ideology and social trend of thought must form a long-term pattern of unified dominance and pluralistic coexistence,and the internal conditions,subject and guest,should be recognized.The difficulty and long-term nature of improvement in physical,objective,motivation and media aspects.Secondly,in the short term,the CPC can meet and adjust the urgent needs of the people in the near future by optimizing the operation mechanism of ideological guidance.Specifically,we need to improve desire transformation mechanism and demand flow regulation mechanism;provide strong and accurate support input;maintain the appropriate response to pressure;and smooth the feedback loop of specific support.