The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, 11 th Thesis on Feuerbach)

Transcription

1 Week 6: 27 October Marxist approaches to Culture Reading: Storey, Chapter 4: Marxisms The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. (Karl Marx, 11 th Thesis on Feuerbach) People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted form the past. (Karl Marx) Ideology exists precisely in order to efface all trace of contradiction. (Pierre Machery, A Theory of Literary Production) Opening remarks Marxism, like culture, has many definitions and interpretations a theory and a practice There is a commonality to all definitions: the works of Karl Marx Some forms focus almost exclusively on the works of Marx while others take it only as a starting point Thus some are dogmatic (focused on proving the literal truth of Marx) while others have much more open interpretations (following some aspects while rejecting others) There are myriad Marxist approaches to culture stretched across this continuum By no means do they all even fundamentally agree with one another (i.e. Thompson vs. Althusser) Another broad commonality is that there is more to the world around us than meets the eye Namely, that there are fundamental inequalities which are not always accurately reflected in cultural texts and practices Hence many Marxists work with concepts like ideology Also, a Marxist analysis of culture attempts to demonstrate how culture can facilitate to the reproduction of those unequal r/ns Thus a Marxist analysis of culture is always a critical analysis

2 Key Concepts and Themes 1) What is Marxism? 2) E.P. Thompson: culture and class (agency) 3) Althusser: Structural Marxism 1) What is Marxism? Karl Marx was born in Prussia (later a part of Germany) in 1818 and died in London in 1883 He came from a prosperous family his father was a lawyer who had been forced to convert from Judaism to Protestantism (Jews were not allowed to practice law in Prussia) He was a journalist, a philosopher, a political economist, and a revolutionary He wrote Capital (three volumes) and The Communist Manifesto Communism, as an actual state form (i.e. the Soviet Union) did not come about until nearly 40 years after his death Thus it is a mistake to equate communism with Marx or Marxism Marxism is both a theory and a practice a way of interpreting the world and changing it A basic element of Marxism is a critique of capitalism (hence the three volume Capital)

3 He identifies the following key elements of capitalism: i) mode of production the way in which a society is economically organized under capitalism, it is private ownership (i.e. corporations) ii) wage labour this describes the process by which we work we sell our labour power for a particular price our labour is sold to the capitalists, or owners of the mode of production this process of selling your labour power is often called the commodification of labour iii) surplus value capitalists always strive to buy our labour power for a price below that which it will produce in value in other words, the real value of our labour power is always below the wages we receive Marx calls this difference surplus value ; capitalist call it profit Thus Marx was focused primarily on the r/nship b/n wage labour and capital For Marx, the drive for surplus value is the primary motive for all capitalists and corporation something that no self-respecting capitalist would ever deny (although they would use terms like shareholder value ) But for Marx, there is a fundamental structural inequity to the wage labourcapital r/nship The logic of capital (the rive or surplus value or profit) means that there were always negative pressures on workers, leading to poorer working conditions He wrote Capital amidst 19 th c. capitalist industrialization, a time of widespread poverty It is here we should remember that Marx was focused on both theory and practice The structure of capitalism is immiserating for workers (tending toward worse conditions) But workers themselves possessed agency they could organize themselves to fight for better conditions

4 For Marx, the culmination of the agency of workers was revolution what he called communism Marxism and culture There is a fundamental assumption with Marxism that everything is political including culture Thus a Marxist approach to culture insists that texts and practices must be analyzed in r/n to their historical conditions of production (as well as consumption and reception) base/superstructure The concept of base/superstructure is a hallmark of Classical Marxism and key for their analysis of culture There are few Marxists who retain this position yet it has come to caricature Marxist analyses of culture 1) the base a) the forces of production raw materials, tools, technology, workers, their skills, etc. b) relations of production (the class r/ns) master/slave under slavery lord/master under feudalism bourgeois/proletariat (or capitalist/worker) under capitalism In short, the relations of production differ with different modes of production 2) the superstructure a) institutions political, legal, educational, cultural i.e. parliament, courts, schools, theatres, etc. b) definite forms of social consciousness political, religious, philosophical, aesthetic, cultural, etc. understanding the base/superstructure in r/n to culture b) is where we find cultural content and our frames for understanding that content But the difficult question for a Marxist analysis is how does 2b) relate to both 2a) and to 1a) and b)? This question takes us to the heart of the debate b/n structure and agency key element of your recent assignment

5 For example, do the structures of the base and the institutional superstructure determine social and cultural practices i.e. the definite forms of social consciousness? Remember Marx here: we make history but not under conditions of our own making emphasis on make or the conditions? If we consult the actual work of Marx, he does not suggest a simple causal r/nship b/n the base and superstructure That is, he does not claim that the economic base determines social and cultural practices (thus ideas themselves) But, Marx does make the following claim: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force in society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. In short, dominant material forces have a structural advantage in controlling the means of intellectual/cultural production And here is where ideology comes in The ideas of the ruling class are presented as if they are universal ideas Hence, for a Marxist analysis, culture is always a site of contestation and struggle Because there is one thing we can be reasonably sure of not everyone shares with the ruling class their ideas or interpretation of the world Thus a Marxist analysis wants to examine culture within its historical moment of production 2) E.P. Thompson: culture and class (agency) The working class made itself as much as it was made A historian famous for his social history (or history from below ) The Making of the English Working Class Thompson is a Marxist historian who examines the r/nship b/n class and culture

6 class and culture Thompson s work showed how class is a social and cultural formation not just an economic r/n Thus class is an historical phenomenon which entails common experiences These common experiences are, in part, expressed in cultural practices and texts Class, thus, is a relationship, not a thing And those common experience result in a shared consciousness If this is so, then we cannot understand class merely by your r/nship to the mode of production (your job) To understand class more fully, we also need to examine cultural texts and practices Thompson s book was groundbreaking in that it was a history of the dvlpmt of the cultural texts and practices which arose with the emergence of an industrial working class It examined the lives of ordinary people So he looked at what people did, how they lived, how they celebrated, and how they understood the new world around them, as they adjusted form the peasant s life on the manor to the worker s life in the city I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the obsolete hand loom weaver, the utopian artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott form the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to new industrialism may have been backward looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain condemned in their own lives as casualties. culture and history from below Thus Thompson practices a newer kind of history: social history; genealogy (Foucault); history form below ; Subaltern Studies

7 Thompson was also against the Arnoldian-Leavisite tradition the working class are conscious agents of their own making, not a rabble or mob that was a problem to be managed agency and structure Culture is produced in an interplay b/n agency and structure Class is one of the structures which conditions agency Thompson stresses human agency, human values, and human experience But Thompson is strongly opposed to Althusserian structuralism because he felt t left people devoid of any meaningful agency 3) Althusser: Structural Marxism Louis Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher ( ) who influenced several generations of thinkers (Foucault, Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens, Slavoj Zizek) He is best known for applying tenets of the broad methodology of structuralism to Marxism Althusser had an enormous influence on critical theory and the study of popular culture in the 1970s For the purposes of your cognitive map of Cultural Studies, the three most influential forms of marxist analysis of culture are as follows: i) Gramsci (hegemony) ii) The Frankfurt School (the culture industry) iii) Althusser (symptomatic reading/interpellation) structure and agency Althusser rejects the base/superstructure model as overly simplistic Instead, he thinks in terms of social formation Social formation: i) the economic ii) the political iii) the ideological He did this to stress the relative autonomy of the superstructure

8 In short, he wanted to stress the possibility of agency ironic, given the virulent attacks on Althusser from Thompson for the exact opposite reason In a rather complicated and bewildering formulation, Althusser insists that there is still economic determination but it only comes in the last instance and the lonely hour of the last instance never comes What you should take away here is that Althusser is stressing the need to analyze culture in r/n to its historical mode of production That is because the economic is not always dominant For example: in Ancient Rome, politics was dominant in the Middle Ages, religion (Catholicism) was dominant in Europe But in both instances, those were dominant only because the economic (mode of production) enabled them to be dominant Althusserian ideology Relevant to the study of culture are two definitions proposed by Althusser: i) a system of representation (images, myths, ideas, concepts) ii) a practice thru. which people live their lives (in r/n to real conditions of existence What Althusser is suggesting is that ideology functions in a manner similar to the mode of production The mode of production (the economic) transforms raw materials in determinate r/ns Ideological practice shapes an individual s lived r/ns to his/her historically situated social formation Ideology offers false but seemingly true resolutions to real problems But this process if ideological resolution is profoundly unconscious So ideology is how we live our r/nship to real conditions of existence on the level of representation (images, myths, ideas, concepts) culture In short, ideology expresses how the real (i.e. economic r/ns) are negotiated thru. imaginary r/ns (the false but seemingly true resolutions to the structural contradictions therein)

9 N.B. For Althusser, all is ideological, so this process occurs for both the dominant and subordinate classes For a glossary of Althusserian concepts: