Customer Reviews

Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology

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This is not a book for the general reader--it requires some interest in and aptitude for philosophical writing. But I actually found it great fun to read--I especially liked the witty asides and turns of phrases that peppered this quite serious analysis of the relationship between ideology and modernity. By ideology, Minogue includes not only Marxism, but also contemporary political theories such as feminism and other movements that posit the modern world as essentially a system of oppressive structures of domination. His point is that much ideological thinking is not only toxic, but that it is ultimately a form of magical or mystical thinking that seems at bottom to constitute a protracted curse on modernity. Minogue notes that ideology became a substitution faith in the twentieth century, but I would have liked to see a little more examination of the way in which the spiritual void that seemed to accompany modernity made this possible.

This is not a book for the general reader--it requires some interest in and aptitude for philosophical writing. But I actually found it great fun to read--I especially liked the witty asides and turns of phrases that peppered this quite serious analysis of the relationship between ideology and modernity. By ideology, Minogue includes not only Marxism, but also contemporary political theories such as feminism and other movements that posit the modern world as essentially a system of oppressive structures of domination. His point is that much ideological thinking is not only toxic, but that it is ultimately a form of magical or mystical thinking that seems at bottom to constitute a protracted curse on modernity. Minogue notes that ideology became a substitution faith in the twentieth century, but I would have liked to see a little more examination of the way in which the spiritual void that seemed to accompany modernity made this possible.

"Alien Powers" is a concise and first rate dissection of the patterns of thought, or rather un-thought, that underlie contemporary ideological movements of all stripes. As such it is indispensible for anyone who would be informed as to the real psychological roots of such apparently inexplicable phenomena as the persistence of Marxism and it's loathsome offspring in intellectual life. I would also add that this book makes a useful suppliment to the work of Eric Voegelin. Voegelin analyzed ideology from a philosphical and theological perspective, but many of his conclusiond dovetail nicely with Minouge's, and comparative study can only lead to profit.