Althusser famously argued that “ideology has a material existence” in social structures and institutions, which allows it to disappear into our practices as a kind of constitutive common sense. What is most ideological is precisely what strikes us as most natural.

Pretending pragmatic policymaking is above ideology or can be nonideological leads to ineffectual politics and surrenders the public sphere to more dangerous demagogues, argues Steve Randy Waldman in this essay at Interfluidity. “If you have to choose one — smart policy and indifference to ideology or sloppy policy and careful ideological work — you are better off choosing the latter.”