Neo Marxism Flashcards
Overview
Key theorists
Gramsci
Althusser
Hegemony
the ruling class rely heavily on consent to maintain their rule. Gramsci agrees with Marx that they are able to do so because they control the institutions that produce and spread ideas, So long as the rest of society accepts ruling-class hegemony, there will not be a revolution,
However,
• The proletariat have a dual consciousness. Their ideas are influenced not only by bourgeois ideology, but also by their material conditions of life - the poverty and exploitation they experience. This means they can ‘see through’ the dominant ideology to some degree.
Therefore there is always the possibility of ruling-class hegemony being undermined
However, this will only lead to revolution if the proletariat are able to construct a counter-hegemonic bloc. In other words, they must be able to offer moral and ideological leadership to society.
In Gramsci’s view, the working class can only win this battle for ideas by producing their own ‘organic intellectuals’. a body of class conscious workers, organised into a revolutionary political party, who are able to formulate an alternative vision of how society could be run in the future.
This counter-hegemony would win ideological leadership from the ruling class by offering a new vision of how society should be organised, based on socialist rather than capitalist values.
Eval of gramsci
Gramsci is accused of over-emphasising the role of ideas and under-emphasising the role of both state coercion and economic factors.
For example, workers may see through ruling-class ideology and wish to overthrow capitalism, but be reluctant to try because they fear state repression or unemployment. They may tolerate capitalism simply because they feel they have no choice, not because they accept the moral leadership of the ruling class.
Althusser critic of base and superstructure
in Marx’s original base-superstructure model, society’s economic base determines its superstructure of institutions, ideologies and actions.
Althusser rejects this model in favour of a more complex one, which Crab calls ‘structural determinism’. In this model, capitalist society has three structures or levels:
• The economic level, comprising all those activities that involve producing something in order to satisfy a need.
• The political level, comprising all forms of organisation.
• The ideological level, involving the ways that people see themselves and their world.
Under capitalism, the economic level is the most dominant
• If we do not work we cannot eat/shelter
But the political and ideological levels are crucial to capitalisms survival
• The functions are performed by:
Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) - physical force (police, army
etc.)
• Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) - legitimises bourgeois ideas
(e.g. education, TV shows etc.)
ISA and RSA
In Althusser’s model, the state performs political and ideological functions that ensure the reproduction of capitalism. He divides the state into two ‘apparatuses’:
• The repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) These are the
‘armed bodies of men’ - the army, police, prisons and so on - that coerce the working class into complying with the will of the bourgeoisie. This is how Marxists have traditionally seen the state.
• The ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) These include the media, the education system, the family, reformist political parties, trade unions and other institutions. ISAS ideologically manipulate the working class into accepting capitalism as legitimate. This is a much wider definition of the state than the traditional Marxist view.
Althusser critic of humanism
Althusser argues that we are not the free agents that humanists think we are - our belief that we possess free will and choice is simply false consciousness produced by the ideological state apparatuses.
In reality, we are merely products of social structures that determine everything about us, preparing us to fit into pre-existing positions in the structure of capitalism.
Therefore, in Althusser’s view, socialism will not come about because of a change in consciousness - as humanistic Marxists argue - but will come about because of a crisis of capitalism resulting from what Aithusser calls over-determination: the contradictions in the three structures that occur relatively independently of each other, resulting in the collapse of the system as a whole.
Eval of Althusser
For humanistic Marxists such as Gouldner, this ‘scientific approach discourages political activism because it stresses the role of structural factors that individuals can do little to affect. Similarly, the Marxist historian, E.P. Thompson (1978), criticises Althusser for ignoring the fact that it is the active struggles of the working class that can change society.
Eval of Althusser
Eval of Althusser
