The first part of this review article summarizes Manfredo Tafuri's Architecture and Utopia, focusing on the failure story of modern architecture and avant-garde ideology which was excluded from the reality of production and turned into useless formalistic play in the process of capitalist development. Fredric Jameson's critique of Tafuri's arguments is summarized in the second part. Jameson identifies the pessimistic consequences of Tafuri's dialectical history and argues for Gramsci's concepts of 'war of position' and 'counter-hegemony' as an alternative approach. Finally, the author raises some disagreements with Jameson, then argues that there were some important elements missing in Tafuri's analysis: cultural consumption and commodification, the roles played by nation-states, and a more sophisticate view of ideology based on the poststructurists' critique of the dichotomy between reality and discursive construction.