Ideology and Ideologues

Today's money quote, most apt for the times, again from my favourite Italian philosopher:

One must therefore distinguish between historically organic ideologies, those, that is, which are necessary to a given structure and ideologies that are arbitrary, rationalistic, or ‘willed.’

To the extent that ideologies are historically necessary they have a validity which is ‘psychological’; they ‘organise’ human masses, and create the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc.

To the extent that they are arbitrary they only create individual ‘movements’, polemics and so on (though even these are not completely useless, since they function like an error which by contrasting with truth, demonstrates it).

EDSA is dead, long live EDSA.