practices of various kinds. The difficulty with such arguments within Marxism, particularly acute given the centrality of the class struggle to Marxist theory, is that they leave no room for class struggles generated independently of the requirements of the mode of production.

Therborn does attempt to avoid some of the problems raised by his functionalist analysis by making the concept of ideology open-ended, by stressing the importance of ideological struggle and demonstrating the contradictions within ideological forms. He introduces an entirely welcome element of contingency into the debate which makes possible the analysis of ideology as a kind of functional circle in which subjects make ideology and ideology makes subjects. This contingency can be illustrated in a number of ways. For example, ideologies do not have uniform effects, operating in a single-minded fashion to create homogeneous subjectivities. At the level of the subject, who may be at the intersection of a number of conflicting ideologies, different subjectivities -- for example, worker, husband or Protestant -- may compete for dominance. Furthermore, contradictoriness may actually be inherent in the notion of ideology itself. Thus, for Therborn the creation of subjectivity actually involves two processes: of subjecting the subject to a particular definition of his role, and of qualifying him for his role. The reproduction of any social organization requires some basic correspondence between subjection and qualification. However, there is an inherent possibility of conflict between the two. For instance, 'new kinds of qualification may be required and provided, new skills that clash with the traditional forms of subjection' (p. 17 ).

Again, any smooth functioning of ideology may be interrupted by social struggles. In the case of subordinate classes, alter-ideologies provide the basis of ideological and, ultimately, class struggle. However, the difficulty with Therborn's account here is that he does not provide a convincing theoretical discussion of alter-ideologies. They are seen as logically an inevitable consequence of positional ideologies which produce differences, but there is no sociological account of how they are maintained and have effects in social struggles.

Further, Therborn quite rightly emphasizes the way in which ideologies are various and contradictory. It is not only the interpellated or interpellating subjects that have no fixed unity and consistency. Ideologies themselves are equally protean. For analytic purposes different ideologies may be identified according to their source, topic, content or interpellated subject. But as ongoing processes of interpellation, they have no natural boundaries, no natural criteria distinguishing one ideology from another or one element of an ideology from its totality. Particularly in today's open and complex

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