other' (p. vii). Indeed, ideologies actually operate 'in a state of disorder' (p. 77 ), so it is not surprising that ideological theory is itself disordered.

On the subject of class ideologies and alter-ideologies, which have mainly concerned Marxists and sociologists alike, Therborn has a number of comments. He suggests that class ideologies are typically core themes rather than elaborated forms of discourse; that they can only be derived theoretically, seemingly on the basis of the imputed functional requirements of a mode of production; that non-class ideologies are not reducible to class but are class patterned or overdetermined; and that class ideologies have to compete with and relate to non-class positional ideologies such as nationalism and religion. His brief analysis of nationalism and religion shows that the former is class patterned in different ways in different societies, while the latter seems scarcely patterned at all. The two-by-two matrix of the universe of ideological interpellations given above makes clear that class ideologies fall mainly into cell 4, with some dimensions in cell 2, and that they constitute a small part of the total population with which Therborn's theory is concerned.

Contemporary Marxist theories of ideology are faced by a number of dilemmas, two of which are especially important. There is firstly the question of the autonomy of ideology. Almost all Marxist theorists have argued that ideology cannot be seen as determined by the economy but is, instead, relatively autonomous. This autonomy has three consequences. Firstly, ideology has its own laws of motion. In his earlier book, Science, Class and Society, Therborn quotes Engels: 'In a modern state, law must not only correspond to the general economic condition and be its expression, but must also be an internally coherent experience which does not, owing to inner contradictions, reduce itself to nought. In order to achieve this, the faithful reflection of economic conditions suffers increasingly.' ³ Secondly, ideology may be effective in giving a particular form to the economy. For example, one might argue that the prevalence of individualism in English culture from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century may have given English capitalism its competitive form partly via the constitution of individuals as economic subjects. Thirdly, not all ideologies are reducible to class ideologies -- a proposition that follows from the first two on a particular assumption of the relation between class and economy. This question of ideological autonomy constitutes a dilemma because, if too much autonomy is given, one loses the distinctiveness of Marxism's emphasis

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