Analysis On Elster’s Reconstruction Of Marx’s Theory Of Ideology

Jon Elster is one of the important scholars and founders of modern Analytical Marxism thoughts, as well as a professor of politics at the Columbia University now. Elster wrote several works, particularly "Making Sense of Marx" in which he has his own original views on capitalist economy, politics and country, ideology etc, so it is known as an encyclopedic work of analysis on Marxism. Based on Marx’s classic text study, he rethought and reconstructed Marx’s ideology theory by methodological individualism and rational choice paradigm, and opened up a new ground of Marx’s ideology theory.In the second half of the 20th century, capitalist society prospered, while socialist system countries were chaotic, and the conservatives even declared the slogan of "the end of ideology", Marx’s ideology met unprecedented shock and challenges. In this context, Elster adhering to "back to Marx, making sense of Marx ", tried to dig out the essence of Marx’s theory and devote himself in the re-establishment of the scientific nature of Marx’s ideology theory and guidance of the development of socialism. Marx didn’t give a clear definition of ideology, Elster regarded it as a starting point, using the methods of modern economics and psychology for reference in a creative way. Binding the analysis method, he gave a clear and rigorous definition of ideology for the first time, and clarified some basic problems of ideology. Secondly, he renewed the methodological principles and the way to interpret ideology study, which became the brightest spot in his reconstruction process. The construction of ideology permeability model is the most important content of the reconstruction of Marx’s ideology theory. In addition, Elster considered that the fatal weakness of Marx’s ideology theory was the lack of micro-foundation, so he built the micro-foundation of ideology theory through analyzing the mechanism, which is the soul of the whole reconstruction process. From the clarification of ideology basic concept and the renewal of methodology and the construction of study model to the establishment of ideology micro-foundation, his analysis and reconstruction of Marx’s ideology theory has formed an integrated and systematic theoretical system. Although his theory has some limits, it cannot be denied that Elster has greatly prospered and advanced the Marx’s ideology theory, and opened up a new page of ideology study.