Marxism and its application

MarxismZIA UR REHMAN, JAFFAR SHAH, ARIF ULLAH AND ASAD KHAN

Introduction to MarxismZia ur Rehman

Human Geography

• 10,000 years ago, Nomadic life

• They were Hunter and gatherers.

• Population:5-8 Millions

1st Agricultural revolution

8000 B.C

People started agriculture near big rivers

i.e. Indus, Ganges, Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Tigris, Euphrates and

others.

Population start growing.

1 A.D: 300 Millions

1750: 800 Millions

Industrial Revolution

1750

Start of Class difference and Class conflicts

Entry of Karl Marx :

5 may 1818

1900 A.D: 1700 Millions



Current: 7.47 Billion

(Worldometers 18 Dec 2016)

Karl Marx brief History

He was a German Philosopher, Economist, sociologist, Journalist, and revolutionary Socialist

Born 05 May, 1818, in German City of Trier to a Middle Class Jewish family

Studied early Political Economy and Hegelian Philosophy

Lived and worked in Berlin (1836-1843), Paris (1843-1845), Meet Friedrich Engels in 1844, Brussels (1845–1848), London (1850–1883),

Died in London on 14 March 1883 (age 64)

Karl Marx…

Karl Marx's studies have provided a basis for much in socialist theory and research. Marxism aims to revolutionize the concept of workthrough creating a classless society built on control and ownership of the means of production. Marx believed that Economic Determinism, Dialectical Materialism and Class Struggle were the three principles that explained his theories.

What is Marxism

Dialectics, Class Conflict, Class Struggle, Alienation, Value, Commodity Fetishism, Surplus Value, Historical Materialism, Theory of Base and Superstructure, Communism, Socialism, Idealism, False Consciousness, Economic Determination and etc.

A Set of Theories, or system of thought and analysis developed by Karl Marx in the 19th

Century in response to Western Industrial

revolution and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism

as the predominant Economic Mode

But wait…

All Marxist theories are not Written solely by Karl Marx

Life long friend and Supporter Friedrich Engelstoo.

Friedrich Engels was a German philosopher, social scientist, journalist, and businessman. He founded Marxist theory together with Karl Marx. In 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in Manchester.

Publications

All Marxist theories are published in

The Communist Manifesto (1948)

It Argues that “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle”. As Class

struggle is the engine room of history, to understand the course of history.

By analyzing the class relations that typify different historical epochs, the antagonisms and forms of class

struggle embodied in such class relations.

The development of class consciousness and challenges the dominant classes through revolutionary moments.

Producing new modes of productions and forms of social organization.

Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of political Economy (1859)

Focus on the unfolding logic of a system, rather than class struggle.

It argues that Society’s Economic organization consists of a distinctive pattern

of forces and relations of productions.

A foundation arises a complex political and ideological superstructure, where economic

development impacts upon societal progress

Das Kapital (1867)

It more concern with the genesis and dynamic of capitalism.

It less concern with the forecasting how capitalism would be overthrown, than considering how it had developed and how it functioned.

The key to understand this logic is the ‘COMMODITY’ form of social relations- a form that is most fully developed only in Capitalism.

Mclellan (1971) states about Das Kapital, “It refers to class struggle mainly in the context of the struggle between capital and labour, within capitalism, rather than over it suppression.”

Origin of Marxism

Marxism has its main intellectual origins in German philosophy, English political economy, and French utopian socialism

It is from the German philosopher, Hegel, that Marx learned a way of thinking about the world, in all its fluid complexity, which is called "dialectics"

The British political economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, provided Marx with a first approximation of his labor theory of value

From the French utopians, especially Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon, Marx caught a glimpse of a happier future that lay beyond capitalism

Along with the paradox of an Industrial Revolution which produced as much poverty as it did wealth

These are the main ingredients that went into the formation of Marxism

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investment is determined by the owners of the factors of production in financial and capital markets, and prices and the distribution of goods are mainly determined by competition in the market.

Some themes we need to know

Dialectical Materialism: Analyzing materialism’s form only but to see its essence and figures out contradictions such as social strifes and conflicts

It also analyze political and historical events result from the conflicts of social forces and are seen in terms of contradictions and their solutions.

All Conflicts are due to material needs

Historical Materialism: Marxist interpretation of history in terms of the class struggle.

The basic philosophy is that everything is material and that change takes place through the struggle of opposites

Conflict of Interest: According to Marxism Social life is based upon “conflict of interest”.

The most fundamental and important of these conflicts is that between “Bourgeoisie” and

the “Proletariat”.

We need to know…

Concept of Social Class: Its more than a descriptive category; Social class is used to explain HOW and WHY societies change. Class Conflict represents a process whereby change comes about through the opposition of social classes as they pursue what they see to be their (different and opposed) collective interests in society.

Political theory: Two fold theory

To expose the political and economic contradictions inherent in Capitalism.

To establish a future communist society

Means of Production: Marx characterized human history in terms of the way in which ownership of he means of production was the most important single variable involved in the characterization of each distinct period (or Epoch) in history.

Marxists tend to divide Capitalist society into two related “Spheres on influence”

The Economic base (or infrastructure)

The political and ideological superstructure.

We need to know…

Individuals are not the focal point of Marxist theories but “Social Structures” because individual are only significant when they act together as a class. That is, when people develop a consciousness of themselves as belonging to a particular social class and act upon awareness to produce social change (a “class for itself”)

False Consciousness: Marxist use the concept of false consciousness to explain how the Proletariat is co-opted by a ruling class into the values of Capitalist society.

According to Marxist approach the mass media and popular culture are centrally important in the spread of false consciousness, in leading people to believe that “Whatever is, is right”.

False Consciousness

We need to know

Alienation (Cut off): How do the ways n which people earn their living affect their bodies, minds and daily lives?

Workers in Capitalist society do not own the means, machines, raw materials, factories, which they use in their work. These are owned by the capitalists to whom the workers must sell their “labour power” or abilities to do work, in return for a wage.

Alienation’s two aspects

Labour who produces surplus value is alienated labour. The capitalist benefits from the labour and this labor no longer belongs to the laborer.

Capitalism also forces the worker to become alienated from himself. Labour become a commodity, when he has to sell his labour power (a commodity worker is not a fully human).

Marxist Sociology

Study of Sociology from Marxist perspective

Marxist Sociology is “a form of conflict theory associated with… Marxism’s objective of developing a positive (empirical) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilization of a revolutionary working class.”

American Sociological Association has dedicated a section to Marxist sociology who are, “Interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help in explaining the complex dynamics of modern society.”

Marxist Sociology cont…

Key Concepts and issue are…

Historical Materialism: : Marxist interpretation of history in terms of the class struggle.

The basic philosophy is that everything is material and that change takes place through the struggle of opposites.

Modes of Productions: How people relate to each other, and to their society as a whole, through their productive activity, and the forces of production.

The relation between capital and labour

Bourgeoisie (Have) :Those who won and control the means of production in society

Proletariat (Have not) :Those who simply sell their labour power in the market place of Capitalism

Key Question by Marxist Sociology

How does capital control workers?

How does a mode of production influence the social class?

What is the relation between worker, capital, the state and culture?

How do economic factors influence inequalities such as those relating to gender and race?

Marxism as an Economic theory

It looks specifically at the capitalist economic system

To analyze “how the forces and relations of production work with in the capitalist mode of production”

Surplus value: A worker in factory work on raw material to make a object. The objet (raw material + labor) is worth more than the original raw material. Now what the labor adds in is called Surplus value in Marxist theory. Laborer is paid for the work, that payment is figured in terms of reproduction of what the laborer will need in order to comeback the next day (i.e. food, rest, shelter, cloths etc), and not in term of what value the laborer added to the taw material.

Marxist as a Economic Theory

The goal of Capitalist production: Sell the object made with its surplus value and the reproduction of laborer, by giving payment to the laborer in the for of wages.

Thus the capitalist/factory owner get the benefit of the value added by the laborer and the laborer gets the cost of his reproduction in the wages.

The Idea of Alienation: Workers in Capitalist society do not own the means, machines, raw materials, factories, which they use in their work. These are owned by the capitalists to whom the workers must sell their “labour power” or abilities to do work, in return for a wage.

Alienation’s two aspects

Labour who produces surplus value is alienated labour. The capitalist benefits from the labour and this labor no longer belongs to the laborer.

Capitalism also forces the worker t become alienated from himself. Labour become a commodity, when he has to sell his labour power (a commodity worker is not a fully human).

Share of Production

Marxism as Economic Theory

Now the laborer can not exercise his free will to determine his actions. Worker who is commodity in the labor market is Alienated from humanness.

Alienation of humanness is called double Alienation of laborer/proletariat.

This double Alienation, exploitation by the Capitalist lead to basic contradictions of capitalism that produce the Dialectic (the struggle between owners and workers, labor vs capital) which produces social change or history and this leads to SOCIALISM.

Dialectical Materialism: Analyzing materialism’s form only but to see its essence and figures out contradictions such as social strips and conflicts

It also analyze political and historical events result from the conflicts of social forces and are seen in terms of contradictions and their solutions.

All Conflicts are due to material needs

Historical Materialism: Marxist interpretation of history in terms of the class struggle.

The basic philosophy is that everything is material and that change takes place through the struggle of opposites.

Bourgeois vs. Proletariat/Employer vs. Employee

Marxism as an Economic Theory

Superstructure: The superstructure of a society includes Culture, Institutions, Political Power structures, Roles, Rituals, and norms.

Base: The basic way a society organizes the production of good e.g. Employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labor and property relations, which people enter into for the necessities and facilities of life.

SUPERSTUCTURE AND BASE

Marxist Literary Criticism

Marxist literary Criticism based on Socialist and dialectic theories

According to Marxists, even literature itself is a social institution and has a specific ideological function based on the background and ideology of the author.

The Simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism can include an assessment of the political ‘tendency’ of a literary work, determining whether its social content or its literary form are ‘progressive’

To analyzing the class constructs demonstrated in the literature.

The English literary critic and cultural theorist, Terry Eagleton, defines Marxist criticism this way:

“Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and, meanings. But it also means grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the product of a particular history.”

MARXIST THEORY IN LITERATURE

Jaffar Shah

GENERAL QUESTIONS OF MARXIST THEORY

How economic base determines the superstructure?

(Superstructure of a society includes its culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals and norms. Superstructure means all social activities or systems such as politics, religion, philosophy, morality, art and science.)

Marxist theory is aimed to look at the relations between economic base and a particular aspect of superstructure called ideology or ideologies such as religious ideologies, political ideologies and aesthetic ideologies.

Ideology is how a society thinks about itself; the forms of social consciousness.

GENERAL QUESTIONS OF MARXIST THEORY

Ideologies supply all the things that people believe in, and then act on.

For Marx, ideology as part of the superstructure, generated by economic base, works to justify the base; the ideologies present in the capitalist society will explain, justify and support the capitalist mode of production.

In the nineteenth century, the southern US culture was slave labor as the economic base. All the Superstructures, such as organized religion, local and national politics and literature worked to uphold slavery as a good economic system.

MARXIST VIEW OF LITERATURE

Literature is part of the culture’s superstructure.

Thus, literature is determined, in both form and content, by the economic base.

Literature also participates in the articulation of forms of cultural ideology. For instance, novels and poems might justify or attack religious beliefs, political beliefs, or aesthetic ideas.

Marxist view of literature is meant to highlight gross injustices, inequalities being the result of class struggle. Marxist theorists aim their writings at social change.

Literature is a reflection of culture.

Culture can be influenced by literature.

Literature can instigate revolution.

FOUR MAIN AREAS OF STUDY

(A) Economic power

Forces of production shape society. Those who own the means of production dictate the formation of society. Bourgeoisie class can manipulate politics, government, education, art and media.

Capitalism creates commodification (a desire for social value__ not for innate usefulness).

(B) Materialism versus Spirituality

Social values reflect material goals, not abstract ideals.

The quality of person’s life is not destroyed by spiritual failure but by material failure.

(C) Class Conflict

In a Capitalist society, there is conflict between social classes.

The owners and workers will have different ideas about the division of the wealth, and the owners will eventually make decision.

This constant conflict called dialectical materialism instigates change.

The Proletariat are prevented from wanting to overthrow the oppressors.

The real social division is class. Divisions of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion are artificial and distract the proletariat from unity and rebellion.

(D) Art, literature and ideologies

These are the vehicles by which the Bourgeoisie impose their value system on the Proletariat.

Bourgeoisie materially support the writers and painters. They do not allow offensive things get published. Bourgeois are also primary consumers.

• FREDERICH ENGELS AND IDEOLOGY

Ideologies function as an illusion.

These ideas disguise or mask what is really going on.

Ideologies signify the way people live out their lives in class society, tie people to their social functions, and thus prevent them from a true understanding of the real forces and relations of production.

Illusions created by ideology create false consciousness in people. Workers are deluded into thinking that they are not exploited by the capitalist system.

In this view, literature is also a kind of illusion, a kind of ideology that prevents people from seeing the real relations of production at work.

There are also other views such that literature works on existing ideologies and transforms them, giving these ideologies new shape and structure.

MARXIST LITERARY THEORISTS AND CRITICS ASK

How the economic base of any culture, and particularly of capitalist cultures, influences or determines the form and/or content of literature?

How literature functions in relations to other aspects of the superstructure, particularly ideology?

Does literature reflect the economic base?

Does literature reflect other ideologies?

Do literary works create their own ideologies?

How literature can work as a force for social change?

Can literature be part of dialectical struggle to eradicate capitalism and bring socialism?

MARXIST LITERARY THEORISTS AND CRITICS ASK

Is literature part of the Bourgeois justification of capitalism?

Who are powerful and powerless people in the text?

Is there any class conflict/struggle?

Is there fair distribution of wealth?

What are the values of society?

Do you notice any system of oppression? Have you rejected or accepted that system?

What is author’s opinion about class relations?

Does the work serve as propaganda for, or against the status quo?

A WRITER UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MARXIST THEORY EXAMINES:

History as Historical materialism

The writer hopes to show that all human relations are at root a struggle between oppressor and the oppressed for control of the means of production.

Writing as means of controlling ideology

If ideology is the means of hegemony, the oppressed must gain control of their own ideology.

READER AND CRITICS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF MARXIST THEORY EXAMINE:

The Work as ideology

Marxist theory argues that any work of art functions either consciously or unconsciously as ideology.

These ideologies serve to oppress or rebel against the oppression.

The work as a record of historical relations

A Marxist influence reading of a text would be interested in the examining of characters as the oppressed.

FAMOUS LITERARY WORKS THROUGH THE LENS OF MARXISM

UTOPIA 1515 (Sir Thomas Moore)

ADAM SMITH

He is known as the father of economics.

He developed a labor theory of value.

His famous work are

The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments

THE MOTHER (Maxim Gorky)

HEART OF DARKNESS (Joseph Conrad)

THINGS FALL APART (Chinua Achebe)


THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS (Arundhati Roy )

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN (Virginia Woolf)

EMMA (Jane Austen)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (Jane Austen)

JANE EYRE (Charlotte Bronte)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (Charles Dickens)

OLIVER TWIST (Charles Dickens)


TESS OF THE DU’RBERVILLES (Thomas Hardy)

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

JUDE THE OBSCURE

VANITY FAIR (William Makepeace Thackeray)

ADAM BEDE (GEORGE ELIOT)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Can Subaltern Speak)


FABIAN SOCIETY (Intellectuals who advocated reforms to avoid revolution)

OSCAR WILDE (The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest)

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (Pygmalion, Man and Superman, Arms and the Man)

H.G.WELLS (The Time Machine, The History of Mr. Polly)

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK (Alexander Pope)

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION(1789-1799) AND J.J. ROUSSEAU

His philosophy was put into practice in the French Revolution. His idea of the social contract got fame.

PRELUDE (William Wordsworth)

ODE TO THE WEST WIND (P.B. Shelley)

KATHERINE MANSFIELD

The Doll’s House

The Garden Party

FRANTZ FANON

Was a Martinique born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist , philosopher, revolutionary, and writer.

His works addressed the problems of developing national consciousness in the oppressed people.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

In Praise of Idleness

MICHEL FOUCAULT: Discourse, Power/Knowledge, and The Author Function

Arif Ullah

MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984)

French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic.

He is a founder of school of thought, a way of thinking about how the world( and literary texts which are part of the world) operates.

Foucault is interested in examining how discourse creates relationship of power/knowledge which then ultimately drives human thoughts and actions.

For him ideology is always expressed in discourse, in texts produced as knowledge about a certain topic or area. These discourses make us think about a topic and also create methods to deal with it.

DISCOURSE

A discourse is the mixture of all kinds of writing, talking, thinking, andacting about a certain topic or idea. Take the example of ‘blindness’.

The ‘discourse’ on blindness consist of all the texts written about heidea of blindness from every possible perspective.

Writings suggest that blind people have an increased sense of hearing,therefore must be more musically inclined than sighted people.

Blindness= musicality

DISCOURSE

Discourse shapes the relations between power and knowledge. Foucault sees power/knowledge as inseparable, but not as binary opposites.

He argues that all operations of power are based on these discursive forms of knowledge. The best example of this is the frequently-heard phrase ‘Studies have shown that.....’, which produces a discursive form of knowledge which then becomes the basis for action.

FOUCAULT’S IDEA OF POWER

Power is usually conceived of as a form of repression, like Althusser’s RSAs. But for Foucault, power operates much more like Althusser’s ISAs which creates situations, relationships and subjects, rather than just punishing them.

The goal of power is, thus, to create subjects who act properly and don’t need the police or other enforcement agencies to use physical punishment to get them to behave.

Foucault is interested in the creation of ‘good subjects’ who obey the rules because they’ve internalized a belief in the truth of those rules.

He says that discourse, like ideology and like a literary text, produces subject positions which then govern any individual’s choice, actions and beliefs.

How do discourses create subjects that behave well and follow the rules?

Foucault talks about a society based on surveillance—a kind of power/knowledge—which he says is typified by the ‘Panopticon’.

In eighteenth century circular prisons were made with hundreds of cells and a central tower, called Panopticon, from which guards watched the prisoners. The prisoners could not see into the Panopticon.

Panopticon

How do discourses create subjects that behave well and follow the rules?

The prisoners' behavior was thus regulated not by guards with guns, but by prisoner’s own awareness that he is always being watched.

Western contemporary culture is regulated by the same panoptical mechanisms. There are surveillance devices everywhere including fake cameras that make u think they are real so that you don’t do anything bad.

One of these mechanisms is ‘photoradar ’: if you speed or fail to stop for a red light, you might not get caught by a cop but rather receive a ticket in the mail a week later.

FUNCTION OF ‘AUTHOR’

In his essay What is an author, Michel Foucault says that while studying a particular concept, people give more importance to the solid and fundamental role of the author, rather than the concept.

However, this traditional notion of individualization of the author has shifted, owing to two major themes that emerged:

Writing freed itself from the necessity of expression. The meaning of the text was no longer confined within the writing of the text. Thus the essential basis of writing was not the emotions under which it was composed or the subject inserted, but the creation of an opening where the writing subject disappears.

The relationship between writing and death. In past, like in Greek narratives, the work had the duty of creating immortality, it now has the right to kill its author. The author becomes a victim of his own writing, and through his absence, his presence is guaranteed.

FUNCTION OF ‘AUTHOR’

If we consider that an individual is not an author, what do we make of the things written, said or communicated by an individual? Also, will an author’s work include every thing that he has ever written or said?

He says an author’s name is not just a proper name, but functional. His name is functional in relation to his or her works, and characterizes a particular manner of existence, circulation and operations of a discourse.

Two types of positions of an author:

Trans-discursive position

Initiators of discursive practices

The author as a center was constructed to establish unified meaning from the text, but now, text itself becomes meaning. Author or the unified subject is displaced from the center, but not removed entirely.

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Marxism and its application