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1
Marxism

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2
Essential Ideas

• Society is ruled by those who control the means
  of production the economic base
• Power is therefore held by the owning class
  (bourgeoisie) who dominate and exploit the
  working class (proletariat). These are the only 2
  classes in society you are either one or the
  other!
• Proletarian obedience in an unfair system is
  achieved both through force and through
  ideological power with the creation of false
  consciousness by the superstructure.

3
Base and Superstructure
4
Early Marxists

• Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote on the mid
  19th century a time of industrialisation poor
  working conditions, low pay, exploitation, shot
  miserable lives for workers
• In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
  (1844) Marx wrote about how labour is alienated
  from its true purpose of better the world better
  by capitalism. Instead of being creative and put
  to positive tasks labour is made to undertake
  boring, repetitive tasks for the profit of the
  capitalists
• Labour makes profits which are reinvested in new
  ways to exploit and degrade workers and their
  labour.
• money is the alienated essence of mans labour
  and life and that alienated essence dominates him
  as he worships it

5
Capitalism

• Marxists define capitalism as commodity
  production. A commodity being an item produced
  for sale in a market place.
• Marxists oppose capitalism because they see it as
  anti social workers get exploited via the wages
  system, and goods and services are only produced
  if they can be sold for profits
• The motivation for production is therefore
  greed rather than need
• There is an essential conflict in capitalist
  society between owners and workers
• Political Marxists suggest that eventually this
  conflict will lead to proletarian consciousness
  leading to communist revolution.
• Power in capitalist society (both force and
  ideological power) is therefore deployed by the
  bourgeoisie to make sure such revolution does NOT
  happen and that existing capitalist system is
  reproduced and perpetuated.
• Capitalism is seen by Marxists as the latest
  economic system in history earlier systems such
  as feudalism were brought down by class conflict
  as will capitalism eventually. The struggle
  between classes is seen as the motor which drives
  history forwards.

6
Criticisms of Marxism

• Determinism Marxism sees economics as the
  determinant of everything in society and
  everything in history
• Capitalism has not developed in the ways Marx
  predicted the class structure is more complex
  than the two class model offered the
  distribution of power in society could therefore
  also be more complex
• Contradictory? Revolutionary consciousness and
  false consciousness early Marxists suggested
  that the experience of capitalism (low wages,
  long hours and exploitation) would result in the
  working class becoming conscious and
  revolutionary. Later Marxists have emphasised the
  role of the superstructure creating false
  consciousness amongst the workers leading to the
  working class accepting and consenting to the
  capitalist system as natural and desirable.

7
Education

• Education is seen as part of the apparatus that
  legitimises and reproduces societies inequalities
  and divisions the Superstructure
• In Schooling in Capitalist society Bowles and
  Gintis claim that schools reward conformity over
  intelligence and achievement
• In their study of American high school students
  they found that the best grades were achieved by
  hard working obedient children rather than the
  creative, aggressive and independent ones
• They also noted that schooling corresponds with
  boring factory line production to prepare future
  workers for their lot in society

8
Education

• Louis Althusser sees the role of education as
  ideological.
• Capitalist values are promoted via the hidden
  curriculum (informal learning)
• Althusser argue working class children never come
  into contact with ways of thinking that challenge
  the status quo. Capitalism is thus portrayed as
  the only possible system
• Through rules, routines streaming and selection
  working class children learn their place in
  society and are conditioned to accept failure

9
Family

• Frederick Engels - The monogamous bourgeois
  nuclear family developed to help solve the
  problem of the inheritance of private property
  men needed to know who their children were in
  order to pass on their property to their heirs
• The family is therefore designed to control women
  and protect property

10
Family

• The bourgeois nuclear family emerged with
  capitalism
• It is patriachical it is designed to guarantee
  and perpetuate male power through the inheritance
  of property
• It socialises the next generation of workers to
  be obedient and compliant
• It serves as a safety valve for male aggression
  which is never directed at the system itself
• It therefore serves the interests of capitalism
• Modern studies Zaretsky (1976) emphasises the
  importance to capitalism of the unpaid labour of
  housewives
• Ansley (1972) safety valve family stabilises
  angry and frustrated male behaviour

11
Culture

• Culture is little more than Ruling class ideology
  working class culture is seen as false
  consciousness
• Althusser ideological power of education
• Gramsci bourgeois hegemony complete
  ideological domination of society via the
  Superstructure however elements of opposition
  to bourgeois culture still remain in working
  class culture e.g. Paul Willis the lads

12
The State and Power

• The State is but a committee for managing the
  affairs of the whole bourgeoisie (Communist
  Manifesto 1848)
• State means of oppression police, courts, army
  protect bourgeois property and power
• State always acts in the interests of the
  bourgeoisie
• Examples Miliband (instrumentalist), Poulantzas
  (struturalist), Gramsci (hegemonic)
• Power there is a fixed amount of Power in
  society and the bourgeoisie have it all (zero sum
  model)