Category: Marx

Reading Marx’s theory this week, is actually a re-reading for me. In China, every single middle school and high school student is obligated to take a course that can be called “Political Science” where we learn Marxism and we have to memorize a lot of the concepts and the theory for the exams. And if […]

I read Marx years ago, probably like most students in the class, and it was refreshing to go over his ideas again. Although this time, it was different. I was reading Marx under a different angle. I was trying to figure out how to apply the marxist theory to literature. Yes, one can write about workers condition or economic and social challenges in societies driven by capitalism which would then constitute a marxist approach to literature? That would be too easy. Then I started to read Gramsci on hegemony and I started to see a light? Marx mentioned that «literature could only be understood within its full context that is by considering the historical, the economical, the social and the cultural contexts.» For Marx, «literature can reproduce the class structures of society and, therefore, is an active agent». Marx was writing in 1830-1840 and saw in literature, in consumerism and in certain societal institution some agents that participated in the «enslavement» of the worker or the individual by extension. How would Marx feel about the importance of media nowadays?? We live in an era where media «reach» you even when you do not want them to. You can hardly ignore information appearing on your screen when you read your emails or screen a blog, you can hardly ride a bus without seeing the free newspaper your neighbour is eagerly reading, you can hardly stay away from Facebook as on your way home there is always a student willing to play with his phone as if his life depended on it and not even caring to hide his Facebook page. If literature reproduces the class structure of society, we are in trouble! We are no longer the ones seeking literature but we are literally being stalked by it. Is that media invasion the ultimate manifestation of what Gramsci called hegemony? Why do we buy an Iphone? Is it truly for the technology or is it because we read the reviews and the frenzy around the product somewhere? Those of us who do not own an Iphone, who are we? Like my friends call me, we are the nannies of the cell phone industry. Literature dictated that owing an Iphone was necessary (for your image, for your reputation, for Apple’s sake). What are the consequences of these daily little articles that praise that apparently technological piece of jewelry? We consume! We buy it for $600-700 even though it cost 170$ to make. The value of labor was of nobody’s concern especially after Steve Jobs’s revolutionary book on how to be successful. This is probably a ridiculous comment and example for many of you, but it, somehow, helped me to see how I could be critical of literary objects from a marxist perspective.

In the fragment of The German Ideology that we have read, Marx says “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of material production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it” (656). I think he has reason, and in our times we can see this, for example, in the dominant industry of entertainment. The values of Capitalism are exalted all the time: consumption, success as accumulation of material goods, work hard to get rich, get rich to get a perfect family, etc., etc. In other words, false promises to keep people working hard in order to sustain the dominant system. (I remember here the acid critique to these false promises of the “american dream” that Arthur Miller made in 1948 in his brilliant play Death of a salesman).

Nevertheless, I was wondering if the quoted statement and the one that says emphatically “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (656) are still completely valid in our times. Certainly, we can assume that when Marx was writing his texts, he doesn’t consider his work as part of the “ruling class”. However, less than a Century later his ideas become ruling ideas of a ruling class in societies that based his economy in agronomy and not in the industry. But beyond this historical fact, I want to emphasize the question that if in our days is still possible to talk about one –and only one- dominant ideological discourse.

Of course, in Occident there is one –the Capitalist- and his discourse is reproduced through the mass media and other institutions everyday. This also happens with other dominant discourses in other parts of the world. But, I think that the era of the cyberspace allows the confluence of other mental productions and ideologies besides the one of the ruling class. A good example is how in the recent revolution of 2011 in Egypt the social networks played an important role to organize the protests and the subsequent fall of Mubarak. He, by the way, tried to shut down the communications or, in other words, the discourses that were threating the dominant one.

But not only the world of cyberspace allows the presence of important discourses that are not the dominant one and that goes against it. The academic world is another important space were other discourses emerge. Of course it do not have the power of the dominant, but in the recent times they also have an important presence. Again, it could be thank to the development of the tools of the cyberspace. So, I think it is a good idea to discuss if is still completely valid the idea of Marx that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”. Maybe we are in a moment where dominant ideas have less power and maybe are condemn to disappear.