Neetha Prasad Roll No.

After Marx..

Changing social conditions in the West 1880s to 1930s

1) Appearance of mass media (esp. cheap newspapers) and

mass leisure
- Cinema (beginnings of celebrity culture; beginnings of Americanization) - Radio (possibilities for propaganda: Mussolini)

Rising working class standards of living Development of welfare state Beginnings of mass consumerism (e.g. USA: mass car ownership by 1930s)

3) Crises in capitalism
Wall Street Crash, 1929 - Large number of businesses go bust - Many capitalists ruined - Mass unemployment - Hyper-inflation 4) Challenges to capitalism - Communist revolution in Russia, 1917 - Increased popularity of Fascism: Hitler wins power in Germany, 1933

EASTERN MARXISM
Marxism in the Soviet Union (USSR) Soviet Marxism

Western Marxism
In the 1920s Challenged Soviet Marxism The term "Western Marxism" is usually applied to Marxist theorists who downplay the primacy of economic analysis, concerning themselves instead with abstract and philosophical areas of Marxism Western Marxism-initially a disparaging term used by the Soviet Communists, to indicate a turn to more Hegelian and critical forms of Marxism in W.Europe

Term later adopted by thinkers like Lukacs and Korsch to describe a more independent Marxism from the party and scientific Marxism of the First and Second Internationals Western Marxism rejected the stand of the Soviet Marxists who outlined Marxism as a materialist theory

Western Marxism assumed a philosophical shape. Yet politics laced the philosophizing

 Principles of political organizations were debated

The WMs gravitated less toward the party than towards

councils and other forms of self-management.

WM ,was in a sense, a philosophical meditation on the uniform

defeat of the West European revolutions in the 20th century

Those who paved the way

Pioneered by KORSCH and LUKACS in the early 1920s

Continued in a rich diversity of forms by GRAMSCI in Italy

In France.
SARTRE

MERLEAU PONTY GOLDMANN

The Frankfurt School

Western Marxism- Chracteristics

Soviet Marxism championed Marxism as a universal science of history and nature To the Western Marxists , these definitions were close to positivismThe reduction of a social theory to a natural science. For them, it was not a general science but a theory of society

To rescue Marxism from positivism and crude materialism the WMs argued that Marx did not simply offer an improved theory of political economy. Marxism was primarily a critique.

Eg:-Both Lukacs and Gramsci criticized Bukharins Historical Materialism for similar reasons, namely ,that it reduced Marxism to scientific sociology

In his critique, Lukcs charges that Bukharins theory, with its concepts of the primacy of the development of the forces of production and the seamless application of the methods of natural science to the study of society, is fetishistic and obliterates the qualitative difference between the two subject areas of natural and social sciences, thus acquiring the accent of a false objectivity and mistaking the core idea of Marxs method, namely the ascription of all economic phenomena to the social relationships of human beings to one another

The WMs reread Marx with particular attention to the categories of culture, class consciousness and subjectivity In Marxs writings they were drawn to the analysis of more subjective structures-commodity fetishism, alienation and ideology All WMs agree that Marxism required a theory of culture and consciousness To accentuate these dimensions they confined Marxism to social and historical reality

The role of Philosophy

According to Western Marxists, Marxism preserved the truths of philosophy until their revolutionary transformation into reality

Marx , they say, outlined the essential role of philosophy in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right : Philosophy cannot realize itself without the transcendence of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot transcend itself without the realization of philosophy Marx early writings on Hegel, the Young Hegelians and Feuerbach- revealed the philosophical core of Marxism In this sense, WM is a return to the early Marx These Texts offered a correction to the presentation of Marxism as an antiphilosophical materialism

Western Marxism and Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1771-1831

The concepts of WM were resonant with Hegel, and all its adherents were schooled in German idealism Lukacss The Young Hegel, Kojevs Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Marcuses Reason and Revolution

In fact, WM emerged only in places where an Hegelian tradition remained alive or had been established
In C.Europe Wilhelm Dilthey; in Italy Bertrando Spaventa, Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce; in France Kojeve, Jean Hyppolite and Jean Wahl revived Hegelian studies.

In C.Europe Wilhelm Dilthey; in Italy Bertrando Spaventa, Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce; in France Kojeve, Jean Hyppolite and Jean Wahl revived Hegelian studies.

Its distinct Hegelian influence set off WM from other forms of West European Marxism such as Austro-Marxism (neoKantianism), and the Structural Marxism of Althusser (antiHegelian)

On Dialectics
Soviet Marxism committed itself to a dialectic of nature following Engels arguments on dialectics WM discarded it, and WMs like Lukacs (History and Class Consciousness) criticized Engles for distorting Marx
According to WM, the dialectic of nature shifted the focus away from the proper terrain of Marxism-the cultural and historical structure of society

On Culture
An engagement with the intellectual and material forces of bourgeois culture defined the project of WM Culture possessed a life and reality that cannot be dismissed as simple mystification The more conventional Marxist schemes of material base and ideological superstructure had to be given up, since they failed to do justice to the truth of the dominant culture To explain and undo bourgeois culture WM rediscovered/invented the concepts of false consciousness, reification and cultural hegemony

Georg (Gyorgy) Lukacs

Need to develop non-mechanistic Marxism - Rejects base and superstructure model Goes back to Hegel

 Written between 1919 and 1922 and first published in 1923,

History and Class Consciousness initiated the current of thought that came to be known as Western Marxism. Lukcs's work elaborates and expands upon Marxist theories such as ideology, false consciousness, reification and class consciousness

Lukcs defined orthodoxy as the fidelity to the "Marxist

method", and not to the "dogmas":

"Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the

uncritical acceptance of the results of Marxs investigations. It is not the belief in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a sacred book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders."

According to him, "The premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: 'It is not mens consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.'... Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious product, of human activity." In line with Marx's thought, he thus criticised the individualist bourgeois philosophy of the subject, which founds itself on the voluntary and conscious subject.

Against this ideology, he asserts the primacy of social relations. Existence and thus the world is the product of human activity; but this can be seen only if the primacy of social process on individual consciousness, which is but the effect of ideological mystification, is accepted

For Lukcs, "ideology" is really a projection of the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie, which functions to prevent the proletariat from attaining a real consciousness of its revolutionary position. Ideology determines the "form of objectivity", thus the structure of knowledge itself Lukcs presents the category of reification whereby, due to the commodity nature of capitalist society, social relations become objectified, precluding the ability for a spontaneous emergence of class consciousness

Aim of Marxism: to break through reification; to identify social change, and encourage it

Social Totality
1) Must look at the whole society

2) Look at how all parts relate to and effect each other

3) Changes in one part have effects in all other parts 4) The economy INDIRECTLY shapes other parts of the society 5) Other parts of the society can impact on the economy too

Antonio Gramsci
Imprisoned by Mussolini regime Prison Notebooks Hegelian Marxism: Emphasis on thoughtful and active human agency (praxis)
Why has the Revolution not happened? 1) Physical Force 2) Dominant ideologies

CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY
Hegemony is the way in which those in power

maintain their control

"It was Gramsci who, in the late twenties and thirties,

with the rise of fascism and the failure of the Western European working-class movements, began to consider why the working class was not necessarily revolutionary, why it could, in fact, yield to fascism." (Gitlin)

 Gramsci was concerned to eradicate economic

determinism from Marxism and to develop its explanatory power with respect to superstructural institutions. So, he held that:
Class struggle must always involve ideas and

ideologies, ideas that would make the revolution and also that would prevent it;

The meaning of "hegemony"

"...Dominant groups in society, including

fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups."(Strinati, 1995: 165)

The notions of culture and ideology

Culture: a whole social process, in which men and

women define and shape their lives.

Ideology: a system of meanings and values, it is the

expression or projection of a particular class interest.

 A class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values; The concept assumes a plain consent given by the majority of a population to a certain direction suggested by those in power;

However, this consent is not always peaceful, and may combine physical force or coercion with intellectual, moral and cultural inducement;

The Frankfurt School - Members

Institute for Social Research

University of Frankfurt, 1923

Multi-disciplinary membership:

Max Horkheimer (philosophy) Theodor Adorno (philosophy and musicology) Walter Benjamin (philosophy and literature) Herbert Marcuse (Freudian psychology)

Critical Theory
Sources: 1) Marx; 2) Max Weber; 3) Sigmund Freud Following Marx: Most sorts of social science see only the surface of society Must find the hidden workings of society Frankfurt: against positivism - scientific sociology / Durkheim - can only see surface-level things

Mass Media Adorno and Horkheimer The Culture Industry Mass Culture: standardised culture for the masses 1. Propagates dominant ideologies - audiences influenced - conformist thinking and behaviour 2. Pacifies the populace - superficial pleasures - a break from unfulfilling jobs 3. Outcome: capitalist system reproduced over time

Consequences:
1. Western Marxists, from Gramsci to Marcuse, elevated

intellectuals to a pivotal role; Marxism required an intellectual credibility and the support of intellectuals
2 . The WMs undertook a wide variety of cultural

studies, which ranged over literature, music and art

3. they subjected to scrutiny popular, mass and commercial culture; since in their view mass culture constituted bourgeois society as much as did the labour process-perhaps, more so

4 . Some of them, especially the Frankfurt School turned to psychoanalytic theory for similar reasons; to understand how the individual imbibed culture

Political formulations
The philosophical and theoretical formulations of WM merged into political formulations that challenged Leninism The concepts of subjectivity, consciousness and selfactivity could be translated into such political organizations such as workers or factory councils WM also intersected with left communism (Dutch School, Luxemburg)on certain political terrains

Criticisms
WM constitutes an abandonment of classical Marxism by

its neglect of political economy and its departure from materialism; they discover in the text of WMs idealism and a remoteness from the prosaic realities of party life. WM produced a compelling literature, often in fields ignored by others.

Works Cited

Curtis, Michael. ed. Marxism: The Inner Dialogues. 2nd ed. Web. DAmato, Paul. The Meaning of Marxism. Chicago: Haymarket bo Rockmore, Tom Gottileb, Roger S. ed.An anthology of Western Marxism: from Luka`cs and Gramsci to Socilaist Feminism. New York: OUP, 1989.print.

Marx after Marxism: The Philosophy of Karl Marx. UK: Blackwell, 2002. Web oks, 2006. Web.