ABSTRACT
Ideologies, like Marxism are not theories competitive with those found in the academic departments of universities. They constitute an alternative culture which from its own higher point of view can explain the errors of the traditional disciplines of science and philosophy. Karl Marx presents two exemplifications of science correcting common observation. The first is that the air we breathe appears to be elementary, but science reveals that it is actually a compound. The second is that the sun appears to move across the sky, but science reveals that it is actually the earth which moves. Marx himself thought he had superseded philosophy, and identified his work with science. One way of stating the dialectical asymmetry between ideological and academic intellectuality would be to say that ideologies like Marxism are combinations of a scientific research program with a political action program. Hymns to complexity are inseparable from the rhetoric of the dialectic, but complexity is not the problem.
