ABSTRACT
The problem of ideology takes on a different form in the field of art from that in the sciences, the concept of truth in art being so strikingly different from that of theoretical truth. Nakedly tendentious art often repels where veiled ideology encounters no resistance. Historical materialism is not a psychological theory; it derives ideologies not from the motives of persons. The sociologist can only feel uneasy about any too radical separation of art and science. The concept of ideology can be sensibly employed only in relation to a certain social group; to speak of the ideology of a historical epoch, without an attempt to differentiate classes or groups, is sociologically meaningless. Only when we assign ideological phenomena to particular social units do we get beyond a mere registering of historical sequence; only then are we able to work out a concrete, sociologically useful concept of ideology.
