Meta Marx.

As impossible as it would seem to “find an Archimedean point outside the sphere of ideological discourse” (McLellan 1995, p. 1), as a group we have found four names- Murdoch, Mohn, Warner, Berlusconi- highly representative for the present state of affairs regarding the media. Marx’s theory pertaining to ruling material force as being the ruling intellectual force of society deciphers this situation most relevantly. For the governing, international media corporations advance concepts that are saturated with socio-ideological connotations, as Durham and Kellner (2006) show. Tabloids and magazines clearly illustrate how the populace in lower economical brackets is strongly influenced by a media matrix that is a powerful netting of hegemonic, political and ethnical representations which contour individuality.

Additionally, the Marxian theory of “labour division” illustrates class’s partition in active and passive factions (Durham and Kellner 2006) that is most significant regarding the media producers-consumers mode.

Moreover, the Marxian idea of the reduction of human world value growing in direct proportion to the world of things is to be considered with regard to the advertising system. Countless researches in the domain attest that a public with greater buying power is preferred. Therefore, people are seen in terms of what they posses and come to be conquered by capital. Commodities appear as bearers of perplexing attributes (Lee 2000, p. 10):

The radical rupture between production and consumption in capitalist societies…removes from consumers the possibility of knowing the true status of the social relations of the production of commodities.

To conclude, regardless of the fact that many have branded Marx as a “dead horse” (Abensour 2011, p. xlii), society persists in availing itself to his hypotheses as catalysts for its economic and political progression. The fact that history has manufactured a legendary name for Marx is common knowledge. But that we are subjects to an unremitting exposure to his legacy is a truth that we have just discovered.

http://www.deviantart.com/

References

Abensour, M. 2011. Democracy against the state. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Durham, M. G. and Kellner, D. M. 2006. Media and cultural studies: keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Lee, M. J. 2000. The consumer society reader. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

McLellan, D. 1995. Ideology. Buckingham: Open University Press.

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The I.deological and The H.egemonical

A set of theories can only gain cultural legitimacy by broad proliferation of ideas in certain socio-political epochs. Consequently, as a group we have considered Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci as two of the most relevant Marxist followers.

It has been argued (Durham and Kellner 2006) that Marx’s and Althusser’s critiques equally focused on the often indiscernible manner in which ideas perpetuate the governing hierarchical order to naturalize and propagate the governing concepts in cultural forms. Accordingly, our quality of subjects- linked to a precise operation Althusser named interpellation- appears to be a primary obviousness. Moreover, McLellan (1995, p. 28) argues that Althusser contributes to the Marxist concept of ideology through his view of people as carriers of social functions rather than self-governing entities. Like Gramsci, Althusser is against ideology as false perception, given that he sees it as a “quasi-material existence” (McLellan 1995, p.28) which is incorporated in our culture, in the form of “ideological state apparatuses” (Althusser 1969, p. 233) - church, school, the media.

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 Likewise, the Italian thinker Gramsci presents hegemony as being generated by the socio-political integration of subordinate factions to a “given sociopolitical constellation”, showing “the particular interest as general or the general interest as ruling” (Durham and Kellner 2006, p. XV). Accordingly, Žižek (1995, p. 155) defines Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of hegemonic articulation as: “taking hold of … «floating» signifiers-such as freedom, democracy, the people-and weaving them into a particular ideological context”.




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Moreover, Althusser (1969) supports Marx’s “theoretical anti-humanism”, derived from a definition of man as having a mainly biological character. Thus, he considers human nature as a societal stratum that is appended to the material dimension of the individual for, as Rorty (1989), cited in McLellan (1995, p. 74), said: “people are children of their time and place without any significant metaphysical or biological limits on their plasticity".

References

Althusser, L. 1969. For Marx. London: Allen Lane.

Durham, M. G. and Kellner, D. M. 2006. Media and cultural studies: keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

McLellan, D. 1995. Ideology. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Žižek, P. 1995. The invisible remainder. London: Verso.

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Contemporary Marx.

The Marxian spirit does not manifest itself in the structure of an incessant flow. However, it emerges jointly with society’s call for responses, continuing to “haunt capitalism like ghosts”, as Jacques Derrida (1994), cited in Fuchs (2009, p. 371) has asserted.  Consequently, we find ourselves in the position of discussing about capitalism in terms of falsification, for, as Christian Fuchs (2009, p. 371) stressed: “its neo-liberal mode of development” has made the whole mapping of socioeconomic issues more complex and destructive than ever through the amplification of global problems.

           

Moreover, and reported to present day facts, market economy has generated the “global restructuration”; which is prophetically described by Marx and Engels (1987, p. 8):

The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country… it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground in which it stood.

Economist Prabhat Patnaik, cited in Le Blanc (2006, p. 39) has defined economy in terms of volatility, seeing as it confers globalization a distinctly biased character:

So not only in the sense that finance flows everywhere, but also in the sense that it is sucked out of everywhere … national economies become the plaything of speculative forces with nation-states being reduced to the role of helpless spectators.

Additionally, as Le Blanc (2006, p. 18) observes, Marx and Engels anticipated the circumstances in which the Iron Curtain would be overpowered by capitalist civilization:

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization.

In consequence, we can find that one of the central features of modern society- the globalization of capitalism- is broadly cultivated in the works of Marx and Engels, along with the Marxian theme of international cohesion.

References                     

Fuchs, C. 2009. Some theoretical foundations of critical media studies: reflections on Karl Marx and the media. International Journal of Communication 3, pp. 369-402.

Le Blanc, P. 2006. Marx, Lenin, and the revolutionary experience: studies of communism and radicalism in the age of globalization. New York: Routledge.                  

Marx, K. and Engels, F. 1987. The communist manifesto. New York: Pathfinder Press.

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Manifesto.

Following the direction initiated by Roger Caillois (1974), when considering Marxism, we are not to comprehend the totality of Marx’s texts, but the sum of formulae and the sociological patterns which remain historically available.

Paul LeBlanc (2006, p. 15) brightly condenses the critique of important publications such as the New York Times and the London Times Literary Supplement of the Communist Manifesto:

…the vision of a working-class revolution that would usher in a shinning communist future has proved to be a colossal illusion, but that to understand the workings of the capitalist economy, Marx’s analysis continues to be remarkably relevant.

Consequently, the leading African-American labour leader A. Philip Randolph, cited in Le Blanc (2006 , p. 16) laid emphasis on the four focal rudiments that are to be found in Marx’s momentous Communist Manifesto: economic progress as the underpinning of human progress, the analogy between the economic element and socio-political as well as ideological realities, the evolution of humanity seen in terms of a sequence of economic systems, and, perhaps more important, the exploitation of a powerful minority of “haves” over the greater part of “have nots”; all those factors are analyzed in the context of common knowledge. For this daily form of human intelligence was attentively considered by Marx, in a structural and genetic sense, since it is in its function of semantic netting, the sine qua non condition of dynamic society. Concluding, human nature exists only in the direction of a variety of anthropological constants, for man fabricates his own nature, producing himself – “Homo sapiens is always and equally homo socius” (Berger and Luckmann 1986, p. 74).

Conversely, regardless of its significance as a broad outlook, critics have discovered a series of severe lacunae in the Manifesto. Recent developments (Le Blanc 2006) have led to a renewed interest in the centrality of non-class identities such as race, nationality, gender or ethnicity. Accordingly, the utopian socialist Charles Fourier cited in Le Blanc (2006, p. 21), states: “…the change in a historical epoch can always be determined by the progress of women towards freedom”.

References

Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, Th. 1984. The social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge.  Harmondsworth: Penguins Books.

Caillois, R. 1974. Approches de l’imaginaire. Paris: Gallimard.

Le Blanc, P. 2006. Marx, Lenin, and the revolutionary experience: studies of communism and radicalism in the age of globalization. New York: Routledge.                  

Word Count: 309

Karl Marx. A vision





      - as a group, we have created this video so as to better ilustrate the purpose of our blog: 
                                                  spreading information about Karl Marx-

128 years after his death, Marx is still present in the basis on which society is constructed and deconstructed, being in our collective imagination not just a person, but a perception. It has been argued (Elster 1986, p. 4) that many of Marx’s most treasured policies have been utterly rescinded by history, due to the fact that his project gave birth to an “abhorrent social system”. However, in the deepest defeat of the human being, there is something that did not depend on the aggressor: the consent of the victim. In consequence, we may find the question: “Is Marx our contemporary?” most relevant; thus, in order to find the right key of interpretation, “we must look at the wood, not just at the trees” (Elster 1986, p. 3). A hypothesis can remain vastly prolific in its whole representation, if one knows to decant and best utilize the core, for notions such as “alienation, exploitation, technical change, class struggle, and ideology” ( Elster 1986, p. 3) still remain feasible.

”True ideas are eternal, they are indestructible, they always return every time they are proclaimed dead” (Žižek 2008, p. 4).

Furthermore, the relevance of mass-media and technology in the info-sphere that is current society can be considered in parallel with the Marxian avant la lettre perception regarding technology, methods of communication and general level of understanding (Dyer-Witheford 1999; Hardt and Negri 2005; McChesney 2007; Fuchs 2008, 2010). Accordingly, Gerald Sussmann (1999), cited in Fuchs (2009, p. 373), referred to Marx as being “one of the first to recognize modern communications and transportation as pillars of the corporate industrial infrastructure”.

Although over the years the term Marxism has been given a negative connotation, through the generally accepted association with communism, we must step out of the convention. Together with my study group, I will endeavour to delineate the various patterns of societal identities and discover the conflicting effects of politics, ideology and human condition, in order to find and cultivate the liaisons between Marx and media. 

References

Dyer-Witheford, N. 1999. Cyber-Marx. Cycles and circuits of struggle in high-technology capitalism. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Elster, J. 1986. An introduction to Karl Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Fuchs, C. 2008. Internet and society: social theory in the information age. New York: Routledge.

Fuchs, C. 2009. Some theoretical foundations of critical media studies: reflections on Karl Marx and the media. International Journal of Communication 3, pp. 369- 402.

Fuchs, C. 2010. Class, Knowledge, and New Media. Media, Culture & Society 32.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

McChesney, R. W. 2007. Communication revolution. Critical junctures and the future of media. New York: The New Press.

Žižek, S. 2008. In defence of lost causes. London: Verso.

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