War and earlier in the Chartist period. In recent years, nationalism has informed the political programme of the Left, notably in policies concerning the EEC and the reimposition of restrictions on the movement of capital abroad designed to protect popular interests against monopoly capital. On the other hand, we have to account for the apparently unifying effect of nationalism as a response to external threats, notably war. The 'Falklands Crisis' is obviously a case in point. However, while the Falklands issue did mobilize a wide cross-section of society behind conservative, jingoist symbols, patriotism is unlikely to change the underlying popular mood of 'hopelessness, apathy and defeatism'. ⁹ Such episodic socio-dramas may have little consequence for the formation of ideologies that have long-run effects. In addition to Hobsbawm's example of the historical affinity between workingclass radicalism and patriotic nationalism in certain periods, we note that peripheral nationalism within peripheral regions -- for example, Wales and Scotland -- has divisive consequences for the nation-state and could not be regarded as a dominant ideology, certainly not a bourgeois one.

The point is that the fundamental ideological form of inclusive historical ideologies, even when specified more closely as nationalism, need have no explanatory power in predicting the outcome of ideological struggle. There is clearly something of a dilemma here between a general determinate analysis, which does not allow for the contingencies of ideology, and an indeterminate analysis which does not allow general claims. In our book we have tried to show the contingency of the relationship of ideology to capitalist economic activity.

Empirically it appears to be the case that a capitalist mode of production can coexist with a great variety of ideological superstructures. In religious ideologies, there is Catholicism in France, Catholicism and Protestantism in Holland, the 'civil religion' of America, and Islam in the Gulf States. In legal systems, there is the historical problem raised by Weber that 'judge-made law' in Britain and formal law in Germany were both compatible with capitalism. In politics, various political systems ranging from Fascism to liberal democracy appear to develop alongside capitalism. Social formations which share the same capitalist base thus display a variety of different ideological systems. From this perspective, while it may be possible to argue that ideology contributes under certain historical circumstances to the unity of classes or economic organization (such as family organization and Catholic teaching on sexuality in feudalism), it is difficult to draw any general conclusions from such particular observations. However, to conclude that, at the level of the social formation, ideology is always

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