Marxism

Marxism

NET question: Marxism and Structuralism in Althusser

Marxism is a sociological approach to literature that views works of literature or art as the products of historical forces that can be analyzed by looking at the material conditions in which they were formed. In Marxism, the base of a society, that is, the way in which its economy is organized determines its superstructure, which is everything related to culture, law, religion philosophy, art, literature etc.

In Marxist ideology, what we often classify as a world view (such as the Victorian age) is actually the articulations of the dominant class. Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the dominant and repressed classes in any given age. Major figures include Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukacs and Theordor Adorno, etc.

Althusser’s Ideology

The view that the base determines the cultural superstructure is not seen by all because there are forces at work that prevent us from seeing that, for instance the liberal humanist view that we are essentially free. It is here that ideology works and makes us experience life in a certain way and also at the same time makes us believe that that way of seeing the world is natural. The French Marxist philosopher says that ideology works through ideological state apparatuses, which although they may have their own sub-ideology are all subjected to the ruling ideology. Althusser’s ideological state apparatuses include organized religion, the law, the political system, the educational system, in short all the institutions through which we are socialized. So, everything is pervaded by ideology. And while we believe we are acting out of our free will, we are in reality ‘acted by the system’. Drawing on French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Althusser says that the processes we go through when we grow up leave us forever incomplete. Aware of that deep lack and yearning for completion, we turn to ideology because it constantly ‘interpellates’ or addresses us as concrete subjects. It convinces us that we are whole and real and so we see what ideology makes us see, as belonging to the natural, harmonious order of things. Ideology makes us believe we are free agents and in that way makes us complicit in our own delusion.

Gramsci’s Hegemony

In Althusser, there is no room for autonomous or non ideological thought or action. However, with Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, a modified concept came into being, that of hegemony. Hegemony is the domination of a set of beliefs and values through ‘consent’ rather than through coercive force. Under hegemonic conditions the majority of a nation’s citizens has so effectively internalized what the rulers want them to believe that they genuinely think that they are voicing their own opinion. However, there is always room for dissent. American Marxist critic Raymond Williams emphasized this aspect and expressed his view that the base completely determines the superstructure is too simple. From William’s perspective, ideology, hegemony and counter-hegemonic tendencies struggle with each other in literature and culture that are constantly in motion. Cultural Materialists follow Raymond.

Marxist Literary Studies

Marxists differ on the extent to which the cultural superstructure is determined by the economic base. The so called ‘vulgar Marxists’ of the pre war period saw a direct cause effect relationship between the socio economic base and literature,  and saw the writer directly conditioned by his/her social class. Marxists are of the view that writers can never escape ideology and their social background so that the social reality of the writer will always be a part of the text.

Later in their readings of literary texts, they tried to see the text as independent of the author’s political views, however not separate the text from its social reality. This gave them a better picture of the real world of class conflicts and political tensions. This allowed Marxist critics to read the works of even the most reactionary writers against the grain of their political views, so that the bourgeois writers can also be appreciated from Marxist point of view. George Lukacs holds Balzac and Tolstoy in high regard, because it is only in their panoramic novels that the reader is confronted with the historical truth. The characters in their novels are to some extent independent of the author’s ideological convictions, and accurately reflect the historical reality.  These novels offer a total overview of all the social forces involved. For Marxists, such an approach which takes all parties and positions and their dynamic relationships into account and thereby allows a fuller understanding of the whole is dialectical.

Another important reading is derived from Pierre Macherey’s A Theory of Literary Production. For Macherey, literary works are pervaded by ideology. So in order to get beyond a text’s ideological dimension, the reader has to begin with the cracks in the facade, the sites where the text is not fully in control.  In order to expose the ideology of a text, the interpreters must focus on what the text does not say, on what the text represses rather than expresses. It is only in the gaps, silences that the unarticulated is found. Thus, literature reveals the gaps in ideology. The text might be almost said to have an unconscious to which it has consigned what it cannot say because of ideological repression. (effects of psychoanalysis). Macherey finds these gaps not in the dominant themes which are fully controlled by ideology, but in textual elements which are only tangentially related to the main theme/s.

Therefore it can be said that through the politics of the text –its ideological dimension, Marxist criticism addresses the politics of the outer world.

Dialectical materialism - "the theory that history develops neither in a random fashion nor in a linear one but instead as struggle between contradictions that ultimately find resolution in a synthesis of the two sides. For example, class conflicts lead to new social systems"

Material circumstances - "the economic conditions underlying the society. To understand social events, one must have a grasp of the material circumstances and the historical situation in which they occur"

Reflectionism - associated with Vulgar Marxism - "a theory that the superstructure of a society mirrors its economic base and, by extension, that a text reflects the society that produced it"

Superstructure - "The social, political, and ideological systems and institutions--for example, the values, art, and legal processes of a society--that are generated by the base" 

1.      Marxism and Structuralism in Althusser

Ans: In the 1960s, Marxist critic Louis Althusser assimilated structuralism into his theories on Marxism. He was of the view that the structure of society as a whole was formed by diverse social formations or ideological state apparatuses including religious, legal, political and literary institutions. Each of these apparatus is connected with the others in complex ways, but possesses a relative autonomy. The ideology of a particular institution is determined by the material base in the contemporary economic production. Althusser views ideology as a ‘false consciousness’. Because Althusser held that a person's desires, choices, intentions, preferences, judgements and so forth are the products of social practices, he believed it necessary to conceive of how society makes the individual in its own image. Within capitalist societies, the human individual is generally regarded as a subject endowed with the property of being a self-conscious 'responsible' agent, whose actions can be explained by his or her beliefs and thoughts. For Althusser, however, a person’s capacity for perceiving him-/herself in this way is not innate or "given". Rather, it is acquired within the structure of established social practices, which impose on individuals the role (forme) of a subject.[48] Social practices both determine the characteristics of the individual and give him/her an idea of the range of properties he/she can have, and of the limits of each individual. Althusser argues that many of our roles and activities are given to us by social practice. In Althusser’s view, our values, desires and preferences are inculcated in us by ideological practice, the sphere which has the defining property of constituting individuals as subjects.[49] Ideological practice consists of an assortment of institutions called Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), which include the family, the media, religious organisations and, most importantly in capitalist societies, the education system, as well as the received ideas that they propagate. Despite its many institutional forms, the function and structure of ideology is unchanging and present throughout history;[51] as Althusser states, "ideology has no history".[52] All ideologies constitute a subject, even though he or she may differ according to each particular ideology. Memorably, Althusser illustrates this with the concept of "hailing" or "interpellation," which draws heavily from Lacan and his concept of the Mirror Stage.

Althusser advances two theses on ideology: I, "Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence";[61] II, "Ideology has a material existence".[62] The first thesis tenders the familiar Marxist contention that ideologies have the function of masking the exploitative arrangements on which class societies are based.

The second thesis posits that ideology does not exist in the form of "ideas" or conscious "representations" in the "minds" of individuals. Rather, ideology consists of the actions and behaviours of bodies governed by their disposition within material apparatuses. 

Structuralism: similar to Levi-Strauss’s anthropology in that the human being is acted upon by culture, he is not free. Althusser's theory of ideology draws on Marx and Gramsci, but also on Freud's and Lacan's concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that enable the concept of the self. These structures, for Althusser, are both agents of repression and inevitable - it is impossible to escape ideology, to not be subjected to it.