Politics and ideology in Marxist theory: capitalism-fascism-populism

Men who, since childhood, have had their backs to the en trance of a cave, cannot see the outside world. On the wall. inside the cave are projected the shadows of other men, and by linking the voices of these men to their shadows, the inhabi tants of the cave conclude that the first derive from the second. One of the prisoners, however, manages to escape and per ceives the true origin of the voices. Finally he emerges from the cave and sees the light of day. At first the sun blinds him, but then he becomes accustomed to it and the vision he gains en ables him to understand the falsehood in which he had been living.

Plato's allegory of the cave contains for the first time in history a theory of articulation. Common sense discourse, doxa, is presented as a system of misleading articulations in which concepts do not appear linked by inherent logical rela tions, but are bound together simply by connotative or evoca tive links which custom and opinion have established between them. It is precisely the systematic character of this ensemble of articulations which Plato's intervention tries to break: in the Dialogues the unity of common sense discourse (what we would call today ideological discourse) is dissolved by a critical process which leads to the 'purification' of each concept. The critique consists in the breaking of those links between con cepts which are the mere residue of opinion and custom. For beyond their connotative relationships, these concepts display an essential paradigmatic coherence to which the privileged vision of the philosopher leads.