Antonio Gramsci

Portrait of Antonio Gramsci around 30 in the early 20s via Wikipedia

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian Communist founder and party leader, imprisoned by Benito Mussolini‘s Fascists for 11 years. In jail he wrote his Prison Notebooks where he outlined his ideas about hegemony.

The concept of hegemony has ancient roots, but Gramsci was the first to use hegemony to describe the idea of a ruling class socially and economically dominating others within a given society.

The contemporary sociological meaning of the term hegemony points to an entire system of cultural values and practices existing within interconnected and (apparently) legitimate social institutions (e.g. markets, legal system, government, education, religion and media) which the powerful allegedly use to oppress the powerless.

Gramsci died in Rome shortly after gaining his freedom.

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Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Chinese poster with Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Caption reads, "Long live Marxism-Leninism and Maoism" via Wikipedia

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924) was a Russian politician and Marxist revolutionary who believed that, once communism was fully in place, existing bureaucratic structures would slowly disappear—hence his oft-quoted belief in the “withering away of the state.”

From observable history, however, it seems that communism has never been achieved as Marx envisioned it. And most, if not all, of the countries that have attempted communism arguably have exhibited authoritarianism, corruption and stagnant mediocrity, this often enforced by vulgar militarism.

Today, some writers suggest that Marx was right in saying that Capitalism “carries the seeds of its own destruction” by pointing to things like WikiLeaks as apparent proof of that position.¹

—

¹ See for instance, “The Destructive Role of WikiLeaks-o-phobia in World Politics” by Hasan A. Yahya: http://www.articlesbase.com/philosophy-articles/the-destructive-role-of-wikileaks-o-phobia-in-world-politics-3823109.html#ixzz180ozByLo

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Marxism

KarlMarx3 via Wikipedia

Marxism is a scary word for some who believe in capitalism. But it could be argued that no one knows just what Marxism really is because Karl Marx didn’t express his ideas in a coherent, systematic manner.

Countless writers on Marx have tried to provide the analytical rigor which many claim is lacking in his work. The result is an equally countless number of interpretations of Marx’s ideas.

On a theoretical level, Marxism has been adapted and expanded to account for political and economic phenomena that Marx didn’t adequately address, some of which were nonexistent in his time.

As for the implementation of his ideas into real social practice, parts of the so-called Third World have adapted his ideas to mostly agricultural forces of production, often combined with militaristic relations of production.

According to G. A. Cohen the relations of production refers to the uniquely social aspects of production in a given society, usually the legal or brute force mechanisms of exploiting labor, extracting surplus and maintaining a state of social dominance of the few over the many.

And Cohen says that the forces of production refers to the way a given society actually produces commodities. The forces of production include raw materials, tools, technology and knowledge of how to organize labor power and use available tools. While some writers use the term ‘economics’ to include the forces of production, Cohen and other theorists say that economics more properly refers to the relations of production.

In both the so-called Third World and the economically wealthy G8 countries, Marx’s analysis doesn’t adequately account for the possibility of various forms of corruption.

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Marx, Karl

Image via Wikipedia

Karl Marx (1818-83) was a German social thinker and the founder of international communism.

Marx held a dim view of religion, a point that upsets many religious people. Nevertheless, one could say that his ideas were well-intentioned and humane.

He advocated equal wages for equal work and decried the exploitation of workers by the owners of the means of commodity production.

His labor theory of value maintains that products contain a use value, an exchange value and a surplus value.

Use value is the practical utility of a commodity or service.

Exchange value is a commodity or service’s value as compared to other goods and services. Marx expresses this as a ratio. For instance, a chocolate bar at $1.50 would have an exchange value of 1:2 with a hamburger costing $3.00.

The surplus value is the amount over and above both the exchange and use values which the owners of the means of production procure for themselves (i.e. corporate profit).

The communism we see today has little to do with Marx’s original vision.

Marx believed that human history went through an inevitable sequence of four socioeconomic types:

1. Primitive Communism
2. Feudalism
3. Capitalism
4. Communism

For Marx, Capitalism inevitably passes into Communism. But this apparently ‘universal law‘ has clearly been refuted by China, which developed somewhat in the reverse. The People’s Republic turned to a form of Capitalism after a long spell of Communism. And China is fast becoming an economic leader, loosening rigid local laws and opening the door to international markets.

As for religion, Marx says it is the “opiate of the people” because he believes that false otherworldly beliefs sway public attention away from the real issues of social, political and economic oppression. In other words, fantasy obscures reality.

Marx was extremely popular in universities from the 1960′s to early 80′s but was supplanted by the likes of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, these thinkers representing the somewhat voguish development called postmodernism.

One could argue that some of the intricate, esoteric arguments of postmodernism, couched in specialized, elitist language, represented a new master paradigm for intellectuals in the late 20^th century. Its abstract intellectualism recalls the complex arguments of medieval schoolmen. But there’s one huge difference: God and God’s powers are either entirely ignored or obscured by the ambiguous language of much postmodernism.

Today, however, postmodernism is being applied within theology, as we find with ‘postmodern theology.’

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Relations of Production

Marx for Sale: malias / Gideon

Some interpreters of Karl Marx‘s theory of history, such as G. A. Cohen, suggest that a distinction may be made between the forces of production and the relations of production.

According to this schema, the relations of production refers to the uniquely social aspects of production in a given society, usually the legal or brute force mechanisms of exploiting labor, extracting surplus and maintaining social dominance of the few over the many.

By way of contrast, the forces of production refer to the way a given society actually produces commodities.

At Earthpages.org

• Revisiting Marx (essay in PDF)

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Advertising

Advertising Although the primary objective of commercial advertising is to sell goods and services, this is accomplished in a complex manner.

Social theorists directly or indirectly influenced by Karl Marx usually say that advertising creates a false or illusory relationship between the consumer and the producer.

Freudian-based sociological analyses suggest that when buying, the consumer enters into a fantasy relationship with a corporate producer. The producer substitutes for a lost or desired father figure (i.e. a trusted provider of material goods) or mother figure (i.e. a source of physiological and emotional security).

Other sociologists note that ads often link products, such as autos, to attractive women or men, as if to imply that buying ensures a glamorous, sexually satisfied life-style.

Neo-Marxist theorists maintain that media ads actually contain more meaningful information than media news because ads better depict the cultural biases of a particular era. News, they say, tends to obscure social realities.

This obfuscation of reality in the news is said to occur through:

1. Selectivity – stories that make the headlines are deemed good for ratings and therefore good for profits
2. Modes of reporting – editing and language styles tend to color a story while seeming not to
3. Placement of stories – stories deemed less important and less commercially viable appear at the back of newspapers or somewhere in the middle of the evening news

Meanwhile some say that ads not only reveal but also contribute to and reinforce prevailing cultural biases.

Postmodern thinkers argue that certain types of ads draw on – or conjure up – a mythic past when times apparently were rosy (i.e. the good old days of ‘Mom’s apple pie’ and well-defined ‘family values’). Warm and secure memories, even if based on a kind of fiction, are apparently recaptured by purchasing the advertised product.

Postmoderns also suggest that a new moral synthesis is created by combining real and imaginary images from the past with contemporary motifs. That is, ads help to define a new moral code. An example here might be found in the name of the product “Quick Quaker Oats,” where the positive connotations associated with the word Quaker (i.e. old-style integrity, reliability and intelligence) are combined with those of Quick (i.e. fast-paced modern society).

But rarely does advertising enter into areas still considered taboo or deviant by the so-called moral majority. Gay and lesbian couples are seldom portrayed in advertising (although more recently the idea of casual lesbian sex is being hinted at), just as couples of different color were at one time excluded from ads.

Meanwhile, an aesthetic view of advertising evaluates ads in terms of their artistic value–for instance, people pay at the box office to see films such as The Best Ads From Around The World. And perhaps some of the best new art today comes from graphic artists under contract by government or commercial bodies.

Jungians and spiritual innovators might evaluate ads partly in terms of their archetypal and even synchronistic connection to the psychological, social and spiritual world of the potential buyer.

But amidst all this theorizing we’d do well to keep in mind that business groups or government bodies, the actual driving forces behind the ad, respectively want to sell goods and services or promote some idea deemed important.

Indeed, it seems that the deeply ingrained cynicism of some sociologists seems to so quickly disappear when the critical lens turns on their own discipline. » Athleticism, Barthes (Roland), Baudrillard (Jean), Foucault (Michel)

Image Credit:

• “Am I the only one who is totally pissed off with advertising like this?” by codepo8 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/codepo8/1113640837/ Creative Commons License.

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