DOCSLIB.ORG

Theory of History in Which the Proletariat Inevitably End up the Dominant Order; This Has Proven Historically to Be False

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Theory of History in Which the Proletariat Inevitably End up the Dominant Order; This Has Proven Historically to Be False 9/24/07 Marxism • Marxism is many different kinds of theories at once: • theory of history in which the proletariat inevitably end up the dominant order; this has proven historically to be false. • a critique of capitalism. This body of theory can be relevant to literature, but we’re not going to get into it explicitly. Barry and Richter give some sense of this; for the midterm, I’ll have you learn some terms so that you’ll be at least somewhat conversant with this kind of thinking if you run into it again. • a sort-of-literary theory. I say “sort of” because what Marx and others theorize is larger than literature: “consciousness and its expressions,” which would include not only literature but all of the arts, religion, politics, law, and so on. This is the part of Marxist theory we’re going to center on, because it raises a really huge problem for post-NC Theory in general, or least for all political theories (and we know that, as Barry says, “politics is pervasive” in post-NC theory, so ALL Theory is political according to this view). • Starting point: 410: “In the social production…determines their consciousness.” Some things to point out: • base/superstructure. “Relations of production”--economic system, more or less. At the most fundamental level, people have to survive, and the way we do that as a species is to produce stuff. But we don’t do that on our own; we do it as part of some kind of economic system that we are born into. There have been various stages of these systems, which he describes in this essay and the other one we read: tribal, ancient city-state, feudal, bourgeois. On top of this, “forms of social consciousness”--as I said before, all the arts, religion, politics, law, etc. • relation between them: mode of production determines social, political and intellectual life processes. More about this in a moment. • “independent of their will”--you don’t get to choose what relations of production you’re born into. And if those relations of production determine consciousness, i.e. what you can think, then what you think is not under individual control. By implication, individual selves are not autonomous, but are determined by larger political forces. So Marx, writing in 1845, long before New Criticism and still longer before post-NC theory, has already gotten us something very much like what Barry describes in post-NC theory. This is one reason why Marxism is very important to study in a theory class, despite the fact that there are relatively few American Marxists (there are a lot more British ones). • Within Marxist theory, there has been a lot of discussion of—and disagreement about—what it means for superstructure to be determined by base. Main disagreements are on two issues: • degree of determinism: degree to which economic base determines thought: strict determinism vs., e.g., Althusserian relative autonomy. Engels, letter to Bloch: “economic situation is the basis, but various elements of the superstructure also exercise their influence on the course of events” • means of determination: determine how? Lots of versions: superstructure reflects base (which can mean simply that art has a mimetic relation to the base); there are correspondences between superstructure and base (so, for example, the dissonant and atonal music of the early twentieth C can be taken to correspond to the crises of capitalism in that era); ideology mediates between base and superstructure, etc. I’m not going to try to cover all the different versions, or expect you to know them for an exam; we’ll look at an example in a moment. • An especially important concept in Marxist theory is the concept of ideology. There has been a lot of disagreement over that issue too; let me point to a few different definitions. • false consciousness: a convenient lie that covers up the truth of what’s really going on. Example from Barry: Browning’s “foggy verbalism” covers up class conflicts (Caudwell, about whom Terry Eagleton said that he was too vague even to be wrong). • Few practicing Marxists will ascribe to such a crude definition of ideology. But the connotations of “false consciousness” are never far away from more sophisticated understandings of the term. • Richter’s version of Marx: “the culture’s collective consciousness of its own being.” This is a more accurate statement of how ideologies actually work--if ideologies were just lies they wouldn’t be very effective–but it misses the element of power that the cruder definition centers on. • put them together: “a culture’s collective consciousness of its own being; a set of beliefs to which we freely subscribe because they have come to see natural, but which tend to support or conceal the existing relations of power.” • Not that these beliefs may not in fact be wholly false. • Ideology in this sense has power because it leads to HEGEMONY—a power structure in which one group dominates over another, which is upheld by people voluntarily acting in ways that tend to support that structure. Althusser: ideological structures as opposed to repressive structures. • IMO, ideology is the single most important concept Marxism developed--and as I’ll try to show later, it opens up huge theoretical problems. • How Marxists conceive of the relationship between ideology and the base/superstructure model varies. For some theorists, ideology is just a subset of superstructure; for others, it is all of superstructure; for still others, ideology is what mediates between base and superstructure. • Let’s dig into an example. • 411 “it is a well known fact…forces of nature….In no event…mythology.” What’s the base, and what’s the superstructure? In what way does base determine superstructure? • next ¶: why is there a difficulty in understanding why we still enjoy Greek art? • passim, and requiring some inference: ancient Greece was a slave state. In what way would Greek art as described here be ideological?.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Base, Superstructure, and Dialectical Totality 43 Seán Mitchell
    Base, superstructure, and dialectical totality 43 Seán Mitchell n recent years it became something of a custom to a prognosis that capitalism no longer faced a viable sys- begin any contemporary discussion of historical temic alternative. materialism with a nod to the briefly dominant ax- Much of this pessimism was in fact shared by Fuku- iom that humanity had reached its veritable termi- yama himself, who was ambivalent if not altogether Inus. Capitalism had triumphed over socialism, Francis gloomy about the new world order he heralded, warn- Fukuyama insisted, and the ‘end of history’ was upon ing that ‘the end of history will be a very sad time’ when us. Fukuyama’s bold declaration of historical finality ‘worldwide ideological struggle…will be replaced by could be read in hindsight as little more than neoliberal economic calculation, the endless solving of technical triumphalism, proffered in 1989 as philosophical sus- problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfac- tenance to a U.S. elite then looking forward to carving tion of sophisticated consumer demands.’4 Few on the out a ‘new American century’ in the years ahead. The left were moved by this morose vision of the future, but political trajectory of the author of The End of History too many adopted a kind of inverted pessimism from and the Last Man would arguably confirm that apprais- Fukuyama: if the ‘history of all hitherto existing society al, with Fukuyama collaborating for much of the 1990s is the history of class struggle’, and the working class with an assortment of neo-cons who rose to prominence had been definitively defeated in that epic battle, then around the presidency of George W.
    [Show full text]
  • The Discontents of Marxism
    Munich Personal RePEc Archive The discontents of Marxism Freeman, Alan London Metropolitan University 30 December 2007 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48635/ MPRA Paper No. 48635, posted 27 Jul 2013 14:16 UTC The discontents of Marxism Alan Freeman London Metropolitan University Abstract This is a pre-publication version of a full-length review of Kuhn, R. (2007) Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism. Urbana and U of Illinois. Please cite as Freeman, A. 2008. ‘The Discontents of Marxism’. Debatte, 16 (1), April 2008 pp. 122-131 Keywords: Economics, Marxism, Value Theory, Marxist political economy, Marxist Economics, Kondratieff, Grossman JEL Codes: B14, B31, B51 2008j Grossman Review for MPRA.doc Page 1 of 9 Alan Freeman The discontents of Marxism Review of Kuhn, R. (2007) Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of Marxism By Alan Freeman, London Metropolitan University In 1977, volumes 2 and 3 of Capital and Class, journal of the seven-year old Conference of Socialist Economists, carried Pete Burgess’s translation of Henryk Grossman’s 1941 review article Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics. Of this Kuhn (p190) justly remarks ‘It was and remains one of the most impressive critiques of the methodological underpinnings of the body of ideas known as economics in most universities and the media’. The second part of this article offers a devastating dissection of the approach known as ‘general equilibrium’, which now dominates not only orthodox but ‘Marxist’ economics. Had the participants in the next thirty years of debate around Marx’s economic theories treated this article with even normal professional diligence, most of what passes for ‘theory’ in this field would probably never have been written.
    [Show full text]
  • Marx, Historical Materialism and the Asiatic Wde Of
    MARX, HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND THE ASIATIC WDE OF PRODUCTION BY Joseph Bensdict Huang Tan B.A. (Honors) Simon Fraser University 1994 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE SCHOOL OF COMMUN ICATION @Joseph B. Tan 2000 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY July 2000 Al1 rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. uisitions and Acguiiiet raphii Senrices senrices bibiiihiques The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Li'brary of Canada to BibIiothèque nationale du Canada de reproduceYloan, distriiute or sel1 reproduireyprêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microh, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous papa or electronic formats. la fome de micro fi ch el^ de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author tetains ownership of the L'auîeur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis*Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts iÏom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT Historical materialism (HM), the theory of history originally developed by Marx and Engels is most comrnonly interpreted as a unilinear model, which dictates that al1 societies must pass through definite and universally similar stages on the route to communism. This simplistic interpretation existed long before Stalin and has persisted long after the process of de-Stalinization and into the present.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Pillars of Consensual Domination: Ideological Leadership
    EXPLAINING CONSENSUAL DOMINATION: MOVING BEYOND THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY (Word count, including references and notes, is 8,262.) Written by Christopher J. Kollmeyer Forthcoming in Beyond Resistance: The Future of Freedom (Nova Science Publishers, 2005) Global and International Studies University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA Email: [email protected] Fax: (805) 893-8003 Tel: (805) 893-7899 EXPLAINING CONSENSUAL DOMINATION: MOVING BEYOND THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY By Christopher J. Kollmeyer “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you have to concentrate on.” —George W. Bush, Gridiron Club Dinner, Washington, D.C., March 31, 2001 INTRODUCTION Why do large numbers of people willingly accept, and in some cases even actively promote, political projects that clearly place them in disadvantaged social positions? Consider the following example from American society. A peculiar political movement is sweeping across the heart land of America, the writer Thomas Frank (2004) tells us, one in which the lower strata are enthusiastically mobilizing to advance a political agenda that clearly favors the rich. For example, in the 2000 presidential election, the pro-business Republican candidate, George W. Bush, won 75 percent of the vote in the poorest county in the United States—Loup County, Nebraska, which has an average per capita income of less than $7,000 per year.1 And four years later, after presiding over one of the most pro-business administrations in U.S. history, Bush won here by an even larger margin, taking 81 percent of the votes.2 Yet, as Frank explains, these are not isolated incidents.
    [Show full text]
  • False Consciousness: a Relevant Concept?
    FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS: A RELEVANT CONCEPT? Nika Deslauriers-Paquette A Thesis in The Department of Political Science Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Public Policy and Public Administration) at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada April 2011 © Nika Deslauriers-Paquette, 2011 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Nika Deslauriers-Paquette Entitled: False Consciousness: A Relevant Concept? and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Public Policy and Public Administration) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to the originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: ___________________________Chair Dr. Marlene Sokolon ___________________________Examiner Dr. Stephanie Paterson ___________________________Examiner ___________________________Supervisor Dr. Edward King Approved by _______________________________________________ Chair of the Department or Graduate Program Director ___________20__ _______________________________________________ Dean of Faculty ABSTRACT False Consciousness: A Relevant Concept? Nika Deslauriers-Paquette False consciousness was a concept originally developed by Marx and Engels in the 19th century, to explain the actions and behaviors of the bourgeoisie. In the 20th century, various political thinkers such as Lukács, Marcuse and Jost broadened its definition to explain the actions
    [Show full text]
  • False Consciousness" Steven Lukes
    University of Chicago Legal Forum Volume 2011 Article 3 2011 In Defense of "False Consciousness" Steven Lukes Follow this and additional works at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf Recommended Citation Lukes, Steven (2011) "In Defense of "False Consciousness"," University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 2011, Article 3. Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2011/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Chicago Legal Forum by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. In Defense of "False Consciousness" Steven Lukest I want to defend the answer to a question. The answer is "false consciousness." I will turn to the question in a moment, but first I want to comment on why attributing false conscious- ness to people, a practice I seek here to defend as sometimes le- gitimate and appropriate, can seem highly objectionable. The concept of false consciousness is closely associated with others, notably that of "real" or "true" or "objective" interests, that is, of interests that false consciousness supposedly conceals from those whose interests they are. Those who object to this answer gener- ally do so on two distinct, even opposite, grounds. The first, more traditional objection is that these concepts suggest an arrogant assumption of superior knowledge, an assumption notably em- bedded in the Marxist tradition-a claim to privileged access to what is "correct," a claim theorized by Georg Lukacs and well exemplified by Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, and Communist Party apparatchiks across the decades of the twentieth century- and a corresponding disposition to treat people as cultural dupes.
    [Show full text]
  • Enlightened False Consciousness
    TALISIK: An Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy Nihilism Today: Enlightened False Consciousness Anton Heinrich L. Rennesland, MA University of Santo Tomas [email protected] riedrich Nietzsche defines nihilism as the moment we have become weary of being human, when the highest values devalue themselves.1 Nihilism is affective since it stems from a deep F unhomeliness with our very selves, and it causes us to be estranged from our activities and from others. For Nietzsche, this is not a passive experience that we blame fate and the gods. Nihilism is due to a lack of willing to be human. Ultimately, it is what hinders people to will that life returns eternally. This eternal return is Nietzsche’s epistemic-ethical challenge that dawns as a personal test for us to evaluate if we have been condoning nihilism: if life is to return eternally and in the exact same manner, how are we to respond to this? When we fret in face of the eternal return, we see our reactivity to life. Nihilism pushes us into comfort in the frivolous, distress and anxiety in disrupting the status quo, and, ultimately, discontent with ourselves. Parenthetically, this notion accentuates Heidegger’s attribution of angst as a way of being’s disclosure. As we take Nietzsche’s message as a personal challenge to overcome our frailty and indecisiveness, we must progress towards realizing our contemporaneous decadent conditions that hamper us from willing life’s return. What I seek to draw attention to is a contemporary face of nihilism prevalent in society. This is what Peter Sloterdijk characterizes as the enlightened false consciousness which, is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has labored both successfully and in vain.
    [Show full text]
  • Keywords—Marxism 101 Session 1 Bourgeoisie
    Keywords—Marxism 101 Session 1 Bourgeoisie: the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. Capital: an asset (including money) owned by an individual as wealth used to realize a fnancial proft, and to create additional wealth. Capital exists within the process of economic exchange and grows out of the process of circulation. Capital is the basis of the economic system of capitalism. Capitalism: a mode of production in which capital in its various forms is the principal means of production. Capital can take the form of money or credit for the purchase of labour power and materials of production; of physical machinery; or of stocks of fnished goods or work in progress. Whatever the form, it is the private ownership of capital in the hands of the class of capitalists to the exclusion of the mass of the population. Class: social stratifcation defned by a person's relationship to the means of production. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png Class struggle: an antagonism that exists within a society, catalyzed by competing socioeconomic interests and central to revolutionary change. Communism: 1) a political movement of the working class in capitalist society, committed to the abolition of capitalism 2) a form of society which the working class, through its struggle, would bring into existence through abolition of classes and of the capitalist division of labor. Dictatorship of the Proletariat: the idea that the proletariat (the working class) has control over political power in the process of changing the ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership as part of a socialist transition to communism.
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Marx's Conception of International Relations
    Knrl Marx's Conception of International nelations Karl Marx's Conception of International Relations Regina Buecker Even though Marx was not widely read during his own time and Marxism, as a political system may be outdated, at least from the present perspective, Karl Marx remains an iconic figure of the 19th century. One of its most influential and controversial philosophers, his thinking has influenced not only the ideology of former and present communist countries, but also the international system as a whole. His theories have had a deep impact on academic studies, and while he did not address the field of international relations directly, much may be derived from his writings on certain phenomena, such as colonialism and nationalism, which are crucial in international relations. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of Marx's notions of international society. In the following essay, a short overview of Marx's world, concept of man, the state, class and international relations will be given. Finally, the relevance and contributions of Marx's thought to the theory and practice of international relations is analyzed. Historical Context Europe, during Marx's life, was a place "of tremendous social, political and economic change".1 Until Bismark declared on "18th January 187l...the foundation of the German Empire ... " Germany was divided into 38 states of different size and power, and was economically underdeveloped. Almost within one generation, Germany overtook Britain, with respect to 'dynamic development'. The Prussian government, the major political and military unit in Germany, in Marx's time, was conservative and opposed to most reforms.2 Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, a Prussian city near the French border.
    [Show full text]
  • Mode of Production and Mode of Exploitation: the Mechanical and the Dialectical'
    DjalectiCalAflthropologY 1(1975) 7 — 2 3 © Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam — Printed in The Netherlands MODE OF PRODUCTION AND MODE OF EXPLOITATION: THE MECHANICAL AND THE DIALECTICAL' Eugene E. Ruyle In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material produc- tive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstruc- ture and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that deter- mines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.2 The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers, determines the relation of rulers and ruled, as it grows immediately out of production itself and in turn reacts upon it as a determining agent. .. It is always the direct relation of the owners of the means of production to the direct producers which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social structure.3 In the first of these two passages, Marx in crypto-Marxist bourgeois social science, and appears to be arguing for the sort of techno- then by exploring the possibilities of supple- economic determinism which has become menting the "mode of production" approach increasingly fashionable in bourgeois social with a "mode of exploitation" analysis.
    [Show full text]
  • Production Modes, Marx's Method and the Feasible Revolution
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by European Scientific Journal (European Scientific Institute) European Scientific Journal November 2016 edition vol.12, No.31 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431 Production Modes, Marx’s Method and the Feasible Revolution Bruno Jossa retired full professor of political economy, University ”Federico II”, Naples doi: 10.19044/esj.2016.v12n31p20 URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2016.v12n31p20 Abstract In Marx, the production mode is defined as a social organisation mode which is typified by one dominant production model which confers significance on the system at large. The prominence of production modes in his overall approach provides clues to the identification of the correct scientific method of Marxism and, probably, of Marx himself. The main aim of this paper is to define this method and to discuss a type of socialist revolution which appears feasible in this day and age. Keywords: Marx’s method, producer cooperatives, production modes, socialism Introduction It is not from scientific advancements – Gramsci argued – that we are to expect solutions to the issues on the traditional agenda of philosophical research. Fresh inputs for philosophical speculation have rather come from notions such as ‘social production relations’ and ‘modes of production’, which are therefore Marx's paramount contributions to science.1 In a well-known 1935 essay weighing the merits and 1 For quite a long time, Marxists used to look upon the value theory as Marx’s most important contribution to science. Only when the newly-published second and third books of Capital revealed that Marx had tried to reconcile his value theory with the doctrine of prices as determined by the interplay of demand and supply did they gain a correct appreciation of the importance of the materialist conception of history.
    [Show full text]
  • Critical Realist Arguments in Marx's Capital
    Critical Realist Arguments in Marx’s Capital Hans G. Ehrbar Published 2002 Contents Note iii 3 Critical Realist Arguments in Marx’s Capital 1 3.1 From Hegel to Bhaskar ............................ 1 3.2 Marx’s opening moves ............................ 4 3.3 Surface and core of the economy ....................... 6 3.4 From surface to core ............................. 13 3.5 The double character of labour ........................ 14 3.6 From core to surface ............................. 16 3.7 The fetish-like character of commodities ................... 19 i Contents 3.8 The exchange process ............................. 22 3.9 The curse of money .............................. 24 3.10 Does critical realism make a difference? ................... 28 ii Note This essay was published as chapter 3 in [BFR02]. This collection was published by Routledge; c 2002 selection and editorial matter, An- drew Brown, Steve Fleetwood and John Michael Roberts; individual chapters, the contribu- tors. The print edition of the book says: All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now knows or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 0-415-25012-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-25013-7 (pbk) iii Note iv 3 Critical Realist Arguments in Marx’s Capital 3.1 From Hegel to Bhaskar <43> In Capital, Marx uses Hegelian concepts and terminology extensively. For instance, shortly after the beginning of the first chapter, Marx concludes that the exchange value of commodities must be the ‘form of appearance’ of some ‘substance’, called ‘value’, which is different from exchange value itself.
    [Show full text]