POLITICAL

IDEOLOGIES
Activity 1. Guess What?

Directions: Identify what political

ideologies each symbol stands for.
Liberalism Feminism
Socialism Conservatism
Marxism
• Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) coined the
term Ideology during the French Revolution and
subsequently used in public in 1796. Ideologie “new
science of ideas” from the term idea-logy
(Heywood,2012).
• Ideology becomes a political weapon to condemn or
criticize opposing arrays of ideas or beliefs system.
• BELIEFS are people’s assessment of reality and what
they hold to be true whereas, VALUES are peoples
ideas about right and wrong. Putting together in
coherent system, they form an ideology.
What is Political Ideology?
• Political ideology shapes understanding of the society.
• It guides people on what they should think , how they
should respond to certain issues, concerns, or events
that happened in the country whether these issues
affect them directly.
• Political ideology shapes individual opinion about the
society.
• It dictates how an individual should act and respond
when certain issues, events or policies are implemented.
• Political ideology is a person’s political belief and
his/her belief about a society as a whole.
• Its influences an individual’s perception about a
government’s nature, role and function.
• It determines whether the individual participates
or not, and even his belief on the necessity of
having a government at all.
DISTINGUISHED IDEOLOGIES FROM
IDEAS
(Macridis in Ranney, 1995)
Comprehensiveness . An ideology that covers
ideas pertaining many great matters, such as
human beings place in the universal domain,
mans relationship to the Divine being, the
highest goals of society and government,
essential nature of people, and the best means
of achieving the highest social and political
objectives.
Pervasiveness- The set of ideas has not only been known for
long time but has shaped the political beliefs and actions of many
people. Before Christ, democracy, oligarchy, and autocracy are widely
talked about, and that great movement has fought those ideologies
for over 2,000 years.
Extensiveness- The set of ideas is held by a large number of
people and plays a vital role in nations and states political affairs.
Intensiveness- The set of ideas commands a strong commitment
from many of its adherents and significantly influences political beliefs
and action.
Characters of Ideology
Ideologies have their levels end in – ism.
Ideologies provide an explanation for problems
that confronts modern societies by providing
futuristic vision.
Ideology is action-oriented.
Ideologies mobilize a large number of people.
Features of Ideology ( Heywood, 2012)
 It offers an account of the existing order, usually in
the form of a “world view”.
It advances a model of the desired future, a vision of
the good society.
It explains how political change can and should be
brought about-how to get from the two other
features.
Intellectual Components of an Ideology
 Values.

The vision of Ideal Polity.

The conception of the Human Nature.
The strategy of Action.
Political Tactics.
Function of Ideologies
Ideology addresses a basic human psychological
needs such as, safety, freedom, and community.
Ideology provides its believers with a sense of
understanding history and with clues about what
kinds of things they should pay attention to or ignore.
Ideology is essential.
Ideology is powerful.
1. COMMUNISM
• Also known as “Revolutionary Proletarian Socialism”
or “Marxism,”
is both a political and economic policy. Communism is
enclosed into two primary writings.
a. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx
b. Principles of Communism, by Friedrich Engels.
According to them, a person’s world depends on its
class membership.
According to The Communist Manifesto,
Communism has Ten Essential Planks:
1. Abolition of Private Property
2. Heavy Progressive Income Tax
3. Abolition of Rights of Inheritance
4. Confiscation of Property Rights
5. Central Bank
6. Government Ownership of communication and Transportation
7. Government Ownership of Factories and Agriculture
8. Government Control Labor
9. Corporate Farms and Regional Planning
10. Government Control Education
2. Socialism
• Derived from the word ‘socialist’ in Latin social
meaning to combine or to share.
• Existed as a result of communism.
• Socialism emphasizes that the human beings are
social by nature, and individualism is fatal.
Society, not individuals, should own the
property.
• “ The supreme principle of socialism is the man takes precedence
over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that
the power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not
be governed by circumstances must be governed by man.”
_ Erich Fromm, On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means saying No to Power_
Distinctive Ways of Understanding
Socialism:
Socialism is seen as an economic model.
Socialism as an instrument of the labor movement.
Socialism as a political creed encompasses
community, cooperation, equality, class politics and
collective ownership.
• Socialization among people now determines the limit and
extent of a persons world view and members of each class
should act and think according to their class membership
(social construction of reality).,
Furthermore, according to Marx, material production or
economic relationships are basic to all life.
People must produce goods before they can do anything , they
must produce themselves. However they can do that unless
they are capable of feeding themselves.
Marx and Engels together authored The Communist
Manifesto. The main goal of The Communist Manifesto was to
focus on class struggle and motivate the common people to
riot.
• Even more so, it was designed to envision a model
government, whose economics would destroy the
upper class-freeing the lower class from tyranny.
3.LIBERALISM (The Left)
• Is traced in the English Revolutions of the 17th Century.
• Originated from the writings of John Locke (1632-
1704) who developed the arguments for consent,
majority rule, and rights, particularly property rights.
• Most recent liberals traces their roots to John Stuart
Mills’ (1806-1873) “One Liberty” (1859)that stressed
freedom of thought and speech.
• Liberalism derived from the Latin word “liber” which
means “free men” in short, men who were neither serfs
nor slave. A views that sees more need for change and
improvement in social relations requiring governmental
involvement (Schrems,2011) and that society must be
free, if it is possible, free from government intervention
(Moten and Islam,2011)
Central Theme of liberal ideology is a commitment to the
individual and the desire to construct a society in which
man can satisfy their interest and achieve fulfillment
(Heywood, 2012).
Set of Values and Beliefs of
Liberalism(Heywood,2012)
 Individualism- It is the belief in the supreme importance
of the individual over any social group or collective body.
Freedom. The ability to think or act as one wishes, a
capacity that can be associated with the individual, a social
group or nation. Belief in the supreme importance of
individual leads naturally to a commitment to individual
freedom. Individual liberty is the supreme political value and
the unifying principle of liberal ideology.
 Reason . The power of the reason gives human beings the
capacity to take charge of their own lives and fashion their
own destinies. Humankind was emancipated from the grip of
the past and the weight of custom and tradition.
Justice. It is a moral standard of fairness and impartiality. It
is as well denotes giving what is due to each person.
Toleration. It is forbearance. Willingness to accept views or
action with which one is in disagreement.
Classical Liberalism- as Heywood (2012) puts it, subscribed to
egotistical individualism; have a belief in negative freedom;
the state is regarded at best as a ‘necessary evil’; and have a
broadly positive view of civil society.
Neoliberalism- posits that states are constantly interacting
with each other and that they value cooperation as part of
their own interest. It further refers to the revival of economic
liberalism. It is equated with a belief in the market
fundamentalism- the absolute faith in the market, reflecting
the belief that the market mechanism offers solutions to all
economic and social problems.
4. Conservatism(The Right)
(Edmund Burke, 1729-1797).
The term conservatism derived from the term conservation.
It is a political philosophy that tends to support the status
quo and advocates change only in moderation upholding the
value of tradition and seeks to preserve all that is good about
the past (Dooley, 2013). A point of view that emphasizes
tradition and established institutions and give greater
attention to social entities than to individuals having the
inclination to oppose any change in political environment.
• Conservatism emphasizes that change is not good.
• Tradition is very important; no human reason can undo it.
According to Russell Kirk(1994)
• “ Freedom is necessary but too much freedom is bad for the
society”.
• “Genuinely freedom ordered freedom is the only sort of
liberty worth having: freedom made possible by order within
the soul and order within the state.” The government as a
whole, cannot improve human condition, and the people can
do better if they are left alone by the government.
5. Fascism.
• Benito Mussolini, an Itallian WWI veteran, founded the fascist party.
• According to him, “ The carrier of the culture of the spirit of the
nation are the past, present, and future. It represents the “immanent
conscience of the nation”; and that educates the citizens in all the
virtues.
• “ The keystone of the fascist doctrine is the conception of the state,
of its functions, its aims. For fascism the state is absolute, individuals
and groups are relative.” The state enforces fascist beliefs, to which
the people owe absolute obedience. The leader of the state is
expected to reflect the collective will of the people.
• According to Huber (1939), “his will is not the
subjective individual will of a single man, but the
collective national will.” Therefore, the leader’s
authority is absolute.
• Fascism has a strong anti-rational, anti-liberal, anti-
conservative, anti-bourgeois, anti-communist and so
on.
Salient Features of Fascism:
 Totalitarianism

Nationalism
Anti-liberalism
Militarism and Violence
Leadership
6. Feminism
Derive from Latin from Latin word Femina meaning women
or female, concerned with the attainment of gender equality
in the political, economic and social spheres of life.
The basic idea of feminism is:
 women experience a poor state in society as a
consequence of the patriarchy, male domination of women,
which has historically characterized all social relationships
and that women, which has historically characterized all
social relationships and that this disadvantage can and
should be overthrown.
7. Social Democracy
• An ideological stance that supports a full balance
between market capitalism, on the one hand , and
state invention on the other side.It is the mildest
form of socialism, stressing welfare measure but not
state ownership of industry.
8. Religious Fundamentalism
• Is an unusual political ideology . Taken from the word fundamental,
meaning base. It is associated with inflexibility, dogmatism,
authoritarianism or worst violence. It is characterized by a rejection of
the distinction between politics and religion (Heywood, 2011).
• The following are the themes of religious fundamentalism:
Religion as politics
The fundamentalist impulse
Anti-modernism
Militancy
9. Environmentalism

• Is an ideology focusing on the idea that environment

is endangered and must be preserved through
regulation and lifestyle changes.