Marxism and Hegemony An Introduction - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Marxism and Hegemony

An IntroductionSlide2
Slide3

The Political Spectrum

Just what are the Left and Right Anyway?Slide4

Left

Right

more economic interventionism

more laissez-faire

the

extent to which the government should

or

should

not

intervene in the economy in order to affect desired social outcomes.

workers' control

control by management

Most left-wing ideologies prioritize workers interests

,

while right-wing ideologies prioritize corporate interests.

equality of outcome

equality of opportunity

Left-wingers

and right-wingers alike tend to speak in

favor

of both equality and liberty, but the Left claims that real freedom requires the availability of education, jobs, and health care, while the Right claims that real freedom requires economic freedom, small government, and low taxes.

social liberalism

conservatism

In a broad sense, the term "left-wing" is used to signify social

liberalism (

yay

gay marriage, abortion is ok, death penalty

bad

)

and "right-wing" to signify

conservatism (straights only, abortion bad, death penalty good).

secular government

religious government

The left believes

church and state should be separate, the right does not

Yay

Science!

Boo Science!

The left believes if

we can do it, we should, so long as it isn’t bad for the planet (Stem cell research and such). The right would rather we didn’t, but is indifferent to the state of the planet. Yay drilling and fossil fuels, nay renewable resources, global warming is fake! Evolution is silly!Slide5
Slide6

(biased?)Slide7

Marxism

Pure Marxism had three main characteristics.

no government, no central controlling body allocating resources. If something needed doing then some person or group of people would just do it for the good of all.

no private ownership of anything. All things were to be held in common. If you needed something you would just take it. ("From each according to his abilities; to each according to his need.")

no religion. Religion was created by the rich and the powerful to keep the lower classes down by pacifying them with the promise of a better existence in the fictional next life if they accepted their lot in this life. ("Religion is the opiate of the masses.“)

Marxism appeals to an innate sense of fairness in people. Nobody has more than anyone else. Everyone works for the good of everyone else.

The problem was that Marx could not describe a mechanism by which we get to his utopian society beyond the masses violently overthrowing their oppressors nor did he really understand human nature.Slide8

Socialism

Socialism = Marxism + Government

People aren't psychologically ready to live Marxism, so they need a government to take everything away from them and train them to work for the good of all.

The government owns everything and directs the allocation of all resources.

Since the people own nothing they theoretically should learn to do everything for the good of the whole.

Eventually, when the people have been properly trained, the government is disbanded and the Marxist utopia is achieved.

The problem

Human nature

The people in power grow to like having the power.

So, they start do things to ensure that they stay in power.

laziness - people only do as much work as they have to in order to survive. If the government is going to take from Joe and give it to me, then why should I work for a living?Slide9

Communism

Communism states the distribution of goods and services takes place according to the individuals needs

Socialism states the distribution of goods and services takes place according to the individuals effortsSlide10

Marxism & Hegemony

Why the Proletariat Never WinsSlide11

Wealth Distribution

Where would you like to live?Slide12
Slide13

Explaining the Charts

In the United States wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands.

As of 2007

the top 1% of households (the uppermost upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth

Our Haut Bourgeoisie

the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5

Our Petit Bourgeoisie

just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%

This leaves only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% of the population to compete for (wage and salary workers).

Our ProletariatSlide14

Marxism

Where Socialism Comes FromSlide15

What is Marxist theory?

Let’s answer that with another question.

what

would Marxist critics say about

psychoanalytic criticism?

They would say that, by focusing our attention on

the individual

psyche and its roots in the family complex, psychoanalysis

distracts our

attention from the real forces that create human experience: the

economic systems

that structure human societies.

They say that about everything

For Marxists, if

a theory does not foreground the economic realities of human culture,

then it

misunderstands human culture.

With

Marxism, getting and keeping

economic power

is the motive behind all social and political

activity,

including education

, philosophy

, religion, government, the arts, science, technology, the media,

and so

on. Slide16

Economic Power

A society is shaped by its forces of production

Those who own the means of production dictate the kind of society it is

Society has two main classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie control the means of production and wealth

Proletariat operate the means of production

If the bourgeoisie own the means of production and control the money, they also control politics, government, education art and media

Capitalism is flawed because it makes people want things, they shop due to

commodification

(wanting things not for their innate usefulness, but for their social value). When one has money, one shows it by buying things.

A person is exploited if they perform more labor than necessary to produce the goods that they use

a person is an exploiter if he or she performs less labor than is necessary to produce the goods that he consumes

Commodification

helps to keep the proletariat oppressed. When the proletariat manage to obtain some sort of status symbol, the bourgeoisie buy something newer and better, thus making the proletariat struggle more.Slide17
Slide18

Materialism vs. Spirituality

Society is not based on ideals or abstractions, but on things

The material world shows us reality. The material world is the only non-subjective element in a society.

People are not destroyed by spiritual failure, only material failure.Slide19

Class Conflict

A capitalist society will inevitably experience conflict between its social classes.

The

bourgeosie

make their system seem like the only logical one, so the proletariat are trapped. They are led to have pride in their station, thus preventing them from wanting to overthrow their oppressors (who are actually a smaller and less powerful group).

“working class values” ensure that the working class will never be wealthy.

The only real division is society is class based. Divisions of race, ethnicity, gender and religion are all diversions which keep the proletariat from unifying against their oppressors.Slide20

Art, Literature, and Ideologies

Art and literature are vehicles by which the bourgeoisie impose their ideals on the proletariat. They idealize the current system and lull the workers into complacency.

Ideal Marxist texts are tricky to define.

Should it honor the proletariat?

But this makes it seem as if it’s good to be a

prole

Should it point out the pettiness of the bourgeoisie

This also makes people comfortable with their poverty

Since works of art and literature are enjoyable to experience, the audience is unaware that they are being manipulated

The bourgeoisie control artistic output because they are the ones that fund it. They buy that which does not offend them, that which does will not be published or soldSlide21

Historical Development

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883)

Friedrich

Engles

(1820-1895)

German Writers, Philosophers, Social Critics

Coauthored

The Communist Manifesto

Declared that the capitalists, or the

bourgeoisie

, had successfully enslaved the working class, or the

proletariat

, through economic policies and control of the production of goodsSlide22

Who was Karl Marx?

Born in Trier, Germany in 1818

German

philosopher

Criticized the injustice inherent in the European class/capitalist system of economics operating in the 19

th

Century.

Believed that capitalism allowed the bourgeoisie to benefit at the expense of the workers.

The Communist Manifesto

.

Das

Kapital

, analyzes the capitalist form of wealth production and its consequences for culture. Slide23
Slide24

Hegemony

How The Man Keeps You DownSlide25

The way we’re defining hegemony (

the process by which a small ruling party convinces everyone their best interests are everyone’s best interests

) comes from the Italian Communist, Antonio

Gramsci

(1891-1937)

Gramsci

was put in prison by Mussolini and the Italian Fascists from 1926 until his death.

In Prison he developed theories that made a lasting contribution not only to Marxism but also to political, historical and social theory and practice.

Gramsci

addressed a fundamental problem in Marxist thought: why does the working class support the bourgeoisie when their class-interests are directly antagonistic?

What he observed, was that any major historical change, with the emergence of a new élite, was accompanied by a change in consciousness.

Any politically dominant class is also ideologically dominant

It keeps its position because the dominated classes accept its moral and intellectual leadership. Slide26

Gramsci

was interested in the slow, subtle, almost invisible penetration of the moral and intellectual beliefs of the upper class into the minds of the classes below and their acceptance of those ideas, often against their own interests.

He saw the idea largely in terms of the Marxist struggle against capitalism, but the notion has much wider implications

Anyone who is concerned with politics, history or social theory finds, sooner or later, the relevance of hegemony.

The role of the media in contemporary politics helps to maintain

cultural homeostasis.

Dictatorships also go to great lengths to instill their ideas into the populace.

Hegemony

– How a majority comes to be dominated by a minority due to its own complicity.Slide27

So why don’t the lower classes rise up and take control? Why don’t the

proles

revolt?

Hegemony

hegemony

refers to the way that a culturally-diverse society can be ruled (dominated), by one of its social classes (often a minority).

They make their best interests seem like everyone’s best interests

For

Marxists

and contemporary political thinkers, the term has been applied to define how the ruling class maintains power.

Marxism

- For Karl Marx, the unfair economic results of capitalism should provoke the working class to revolution in deposing it — and then to rebuild the existing institutions (economic, political, social) per rational, based on equality and socialist models; thus, beginning the transition to a communist society.

Hegemony

is why they don’tSlide28

The ruling class keeps its grip on society either by

social hegemony

- the use of force to maintain order in society

cultural hegemony

- producing ways of thinking and seeing, especially by subtly eliminating alternative views to reinforce the status quo.

The ideas of the ruling class come to be seen as the norm; they are seen as universal ideologies, perceived to benefit everyone whilst only really benefiting the ruling class.

So, when we talk about

hegemony

   it refers to the representation of the

interests

of the ruling-class as

universal interests

.

The world of

1984,

at present, is a

social hegemony

If the party succeeds with newspeak, eliminates the orgasm, disintegrates the family, and so on, it will have achieved

cultural hegemonySlide29

The major vehicle for

bourgeois

hegemony is “

civil society”

.

It corresponds to the ‘myth of natural superiority’

The people in charge deserve to be in charge

It is the manufacturing of consent.

Cultural hegemony

involves the production of ways of thinking and seeing, and of excluding alternative visions and

discourses

.

For that same reason it is difficult to identify what are non-hegemonic modes of reasoning, especially since hegemony permeates all of the levels of society, from the basic items of

labor-power

and

capital

, through the connections of

commodity fetishism

, into the fractions of classes and politics.

I am an instrument of Hegemony.

I’m trying to teach you about class conflict and hegemony, this should be potentially liberating, this should work against hegemony

Because I am a teacher, and you are students, and varying class situations have made certain portions of your population resistant to learning, my message is shut out

Hegemony prevailsSlide30

Hegemony ensures that ideas of the ruling class come to seem

Natural

Inevitable

Unquestionable

The main agents in this process of hegemony are the intellectuals, pundits and presenters who staff the educational apparatus, the cultural institutions and the entertainment and news media.

These agencies take over or push to the side new ideas (though not necessarily consciously) that are not in the best interest of the ruling class

Hegemony is not necessarily a conscious phenomena, there aren’t evil people rubbing their hands together and saying “I’m going to do something hegemonic today”

It happens naturally. People look after their own best interests. People in power tend to want to stay in power.Slide31

Hegemony

Testing Your UnderstandingSlide32

These are profoundly biased

Examples from a liberal perspective

You don’t have to believe them or agree, you just need to follow the argumentSlide33

A liberal might argue that the working-class man who votes conservative offers an example of hegemony.

Why?

Conservative fiscal policy hurts the middle class

So why do they still vote that way?

They might not understand the fiscal policy, or have been misled about it

2004 Estate Tax (Death Tax Ads)

They do understand (the spoken) conservative policy towards moral values. No gay marriage, anti-abortion, anti-stem-cell research is more important to them than money stuff.

But does the right really believe what they say about gay marriage, abortion, and religion? Or is it just a way to keep the vote of the working class?

Conservative voters in the heartland have persuaded themselves to vote against their own economic and social well-being because they consider “moral” issues more important than their incomes, economic chances, educations and the welfare of society at large.

they accept hardship as the will of God when (from a liberal perspective) it seems more clearly to be the working of a top-loaded economy.Slide34
Slide35

From the same liberal perspective, backlash from the working classes about socialized healthcare is also hegemonic. Backlash from Health Insurance giants themselves is not.

Why?

The right makes the argument about socialism. Working class Americans assume socialism is bad in every case. It’s natural for them to feel that way, we were at war with Soviet Russia for a long time. With the cold war came the assumption that socialist things were fundamentally evil.

But, socialized medicine

is

probably in peoples best interests. If you’re guaranteed care, if your coverage can’t be dropped because you get sick, isn’t that the point of healthcare? So by hating on it, the working classes are going against their own best interest, that’s hegemony.

Why was there no real backlash from the Healthcare industry about the Healthcare bill?Slide36

Conservatives can tune back in now

Non liberally biased examplesSlide37

Hegemony doesn’t just have to be a political left vs. political right, rich vs. poor thing

For most of human history, society has been patriarchal due to Hegemony

What is a patriarch?

What is patriarchy?

How might “patriarchs” have convinced those they dominated that this domination was natural?

In real life, or in the movies (Mean Girls for example)

Is there a way that the popular cliques maintain control over the

uncool

kids? Why don’t the

uncool

kids rise up and revolt? Don’t they have the cool kids outnumbered?

How does this extend to American Culture in General? (The way the rest of the world sees us)

What do we Americans get out of that?

How does Hegemony keep the

Proles

of

1984

in place? How does it control the outer party members?Slide38

How are schools instruments of Hegemony?

How do they insure that the bourgeois and proletariat stay much the same?

This isn’t intentional, Hegemony has a way of maintaining itself

How do teachers maintain control? You clearly outnumber us, why aren’t you all on your cell phones right now?

Explanation via

social hegemony

: We’ll punish you.

Explanation via

cultural hegemony

: We have convinced you that our values are your values. That what we have to tell you is important, that you need to know it too.

Maybe we’re just babysitters, maybe you’re here so your parents can go to work.

What’s up with those bells?

The thought of punishment gives us control over some of you, the idea that you need to know what we know gives us control over the rest

Hegemony isn’t a conscious plan, none of us wakes up and thinks, I’m going to be a

hegemon

today. Hegemony just happens. It’s the unconscious force that maintains the status quo. It’s to the social sciences what gravity is to physics.Slide39

How can fashion and consumerism be an instrument of Hegemony?

Who do you identify with on TV, who do you want to be like? Why do you want to be like them

When we export American TV and movies to other countries it has a similar effect

Again, not necessarily intentional, hegemony maintains itself

How is the American perception of race hegemonic?

Who do poor racists feel superior to?

Who do they identify with?

Are they really more like the people they identify with than the people they hate?Slide40

bSlide41

Idealogy

The role ofSlide42

To review

From a Marxist perspective, differences in socioeconomic class divide people

not differences

in religion, race, ethnicity

, or

gender.

These other things are all distractions

T

he

real battle lines are

drawn between the

“haves” and the “

have-nots”

the

bourgeoisie—

those who

control the

world’s natural, economic, and human

resources

the

proletariat,

the

majority

of the global population who live in substandard conditions and

who have

always performed the manual

labor, the

mining, the factory work,

the ditch digging. Slide43

Unfortunately, those in the proletariat are often the last to recognize this fact; they usually permit differences in religion, race, ethnicity, or gender to separate them into warring factions that accomplish little or no social change.

Few Marxists today believe, as Marx did, that the proletariat will one day spontaneously develop the class consciousness needed to rise up in violent revolution against their oppressors and create a classless society

.

When I’m sitting on my couch, I still think a Marxist utopia might be possible

When I’m at Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon trying to make my way through isles glutted by morbidly obese people on drivable carts, I’m slightly less optimisticSlide44

The Role of Ideology

For Marxism, an

ideology

is a belief system, and all belief systems are

products of

cultural conditioning.

capitalism

, communism, Marxism, patriotism

, religion

, ethical systems, humanism, environmentalism, astrology,

and karate

are all ideologies.

The

critical theories

we‘ve studied are all ideologies

.

Our

assumption that nature behaves according to the laws

of science

is an

ideologySlide45

From the Marxist perspective…

most any experience or field of study has an ideological component

not all ideologies are equally “productive” or “desirable”

Undesirable ideologies promote repressive political agendas and, in order to ensure their acceptance among the citizenry, pass themselves off as natural ways of seeing the world

“It’s natural for men to hold leadership positions because their biological superiority renders them more physically, intellectually, and emotionally capable than women”

“Every family wants to own its own home on its own land”Slide46

By posing as

natural,

repressive ideologies prevent

us from

understanding the material/historical conditions in which we live

because they

refuse to acknowledge that those conditions have any bearing on the

way we

see the world.

the

most

successful ideologies

are not recognized as ideologies but are thought to be natural ways

of seeing

the world by the people who subscribe to them.

Exnomination

We talk about gay culture, do we talk about straight culture?

What, we don’t talk about straight culture?

This is

exnomination

, “straight culture” is so “natural” that we don’t have a name for it.

It, then, is the norm. Everything named is an aberration

.

Try to think of other things that are so “natural” they go nameless

HegemonySlide47

Examples

Patriotism

keeps

poor people fighting wars against poor

people from

other countries

while

the rich on both sides rake in the profits of war-time economy

.

Who’s most likely to get out of going to war?

Patriotism

leads the poor to see themselves as members of a nation

, separate

from other nations, rather than as members of a worldwide

oppressed class

opposed to all privileged classes including those from their own country,

it prevents

the poor from banding together to improve their condition globally

. Slide48

Religion

helps to keep the faithful poor satisfied, like a tranquilizer. While many Christian religious groups work to feed, clothe, house, and even educate the world’s poor, the beliefs disseminated with the food and clothing include the conviction that the poor, if they remain nonviolent, will find their reward in the afterlife.

The meek shall inherit the earth

The 10 percent (or less) of the world’s population who own 90 percent (or more) of the world’s wealth have a vested interest in promoting this aspect of Christian belief among the poor.

The Bible has been used successfully to justify and promote the enslavement of Africans in America and the subordination of women.

By making your life miserable, we’re helping you get to heaven! So, like, don’t revolt? KAY!Slide49

Marxist critical theory

Marx and LiteratureSlide50

Marxist Literary Theory

Marxist literary theory focuses

on the representation of class distinctions and class conflict in

literature

What forces keep

Begbie

in his place?

Why does

Begbie

hate Elspeth’s boyfriend?

Marxist literary theory focuses

more on social and political elements than artistic and visual (aesthetic)

elements

Iambic Pentameter is just another tool the man is using to keep you

down

To some extent, accessibility is the hallmark of a good Marxist text

At the same time, Marxism (in contemporary society) is essentially an academic discourse. Academic discourses have to be at least a little bit fancy pants to be taken seriously by other academics.Slide51

The fact that literature grows out of and reflects real material/historical conditions creates at least two possibilities of interest to Marxist critics:

(1) the literary work might tend to reinforce in the reader the ideologies it embodies

(2) it might invite the reader to criticize the ideologies it represents.

Many texts do both.

It is not merely the content of a literary work—the “action” or the theme—that carries ideology, but the form as well or, as most Marxists would argue, the form primarily.

Realism, naturalism, surrealism, symbolism, romanticism, modernism, postmodernism, tragedy, comedy, satire, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, and other genres and literary devices are the means by which form is constituted.

If content is the “what” of literature, then form is the “how

.”

What modes are most accessible to the proletariat?Slide52

Marxist Critics Ask…

Does

the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist,

or classist

values? If so, then the work may be said to have a capitalist, imperialist

, or

classist agenda, and it is the

(Marxist) critic’s

job to expose and

condemn this

aspect of the work.

How

might the work be seen as a critique of capitalism, imperialism,

or classism

? That is, in what ways does the text reveal, and invite us to condemn

, oppressive

socioeconomic forces (including repressive ideologies)?

If a

work criticizes or invites us to criticize oppressive socioeconomic forces

, then

it may be said to have a Marxist agenda

.

Peter Pan?Slide53

Does the work in some ways support a Marxist agenda but in other ways (perhaps unintentionally) support a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda? In other words, is the work ideologically conflicted

?

Peter Pan?

How does the literary work reflect (intentionally or not) the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written and/or the time in which it is set, and what do those conditions reveal about the history of class struggle

?

Peter Pan?

How might the work be seen as a critique of organized religion or other instruments of hegemony? That is, how do these things function in the text to keep a character or characters from realizing and resisting socioeconomic oppression?

Peter Pan?Slide54

Two readings of

Death of a Salesman

Psychoanalysis

Willy’s abandonment at

a very young age by his father and older

brother

Willy’s

insecurity and

the massive denial of reality that

results

Willy’s projection of his

personal needs

onto his son Biff;

Happy’s

sibling rivalry with

Biff

the

oedipal

dimension at

work in the family

dynamic

L

inda’s

avoidance and displacement of

her problems

with Willy.

The

central scene for such an interpretation would

be

Biff’s

confrontation with Willy in the hotel, where he discovers his father

with another

woman.

These

aspects of the play would be of interest to

psychoanalytic critics

because they focus on the individual psyche as the product of the family.

Marxism would

focus on the ways in which the

psychological problems are

produced by

material/historical realities

the

American dream

tells

Willy his

self-worth is earned only by economic

success

the

rampant consumerism that keeps the

Lomans

buying

on credit what they can’t

afford

the competitiveness of the

business world

that puts Willy back on straight commission work after thirty years

of employment

with the same

firm

the exploitative potential of a

socioeconomic system

that doesn’t require all companies to provide adequate pension

coverage for

their

employees

the

ideology of “survival-of-the-fittest” capitalism

that allows

Howard to fire Willy with no concern for the latter’s deteriorating

mental condition.

The

central scene for such an interpretation would be that in

which Howard

(after displaying signs of his own economic success) fires Willy,

telling him

to turn to his sons for financial help.Slide55

Marxism and The Great Gatsby

Written at the height of the economic boom of the 1920’s, when capitalisms promise of economic opportunity seemed to be at the peak of it’s fulfillment.

Yet the novel reveals the dark underbelly of capitalism

How does it portray the very wealthy?

Commodification

Tom’s marriage to

Daisy is

an exchange of her youth, beauty, and social standing for his money, power, and the image of his strength and stability

How does the American Dream not live up to it’s promise?

How does it contribute to the decay of moral values?Slide56

Marxism and TEWWG

How do Janie’s three husbands represent three different class positions?

With which husband does she find happiness?

What does this suggest about the value of bourgeois living?

In reaffirming the simple life, and disparaging self made men, is TEWWG working to keep the poor in their place by idealizing their lifestyle?

How are relationships in the novel motivated by the pursuit of economic power?

Why is Janie married off to Logan?

What does Logan get out of Janie?

What does association with Janie benefit Joe in his pursuit of power?Slide57

Marxism and Peter Pan

How are the concerns of

Peter Pan

bourgeois concerns?

What socioeconomic groups are given or denied voice in

Peter Pan

?

How is the text representative of the capitalist and imperialist power structure that produced it?

How does the text work to reproduce the capitalist and imperialist power structure that produced it?