One of the themes you’ll have noticed running through this — through Lukács’ work and this text in particular — is a common philosophical theme of becoming versus being; the idea that ideology reifies. Ideology turns what is always a process of becoming — which is open-ended and therefore changeable — into something that is fixed and permanent. That’s what reification is. And, of course, that’s crucial. That’s the very purpose of ideology. The very purpose of ideology is to close off the possibility that anything could be different. That’s the A–Z of ideology, in fact. But, of course, the second step of ideology is to make itself disappear. Ideology doesn’t arrive and say, “I am ideology”. Ideology says: “I am nature, and this is how things are”. It probably doesn’t speak, but even in my metaphor it doesn’t really have to say anything. It’s we who must think in response to it. This is how things are. They can’t be any different.