Marxists and their theories:

Marxism shares the view that society is a structure or system that shapes individuals’ behaviour and
ideas. They see the social structure based on a conflict of economic interests between social classes
of unequal power and wealth.

They stress the possibility of sudden, profound and revolutionary change. Stability is merely the
result of the dominant class being able to impose their will on society.

Marxism is a continuation of the Enlightenment project.

Karl Marx (1818-83)

Marx believed that it was possible to understand society scientifically and this knowledge will point
the way to a better society (scientific socialism).

Marx saw historical change as a contradictory process in which capitalism would increase human
misery before giving way to a classless communist society in which humans would be free to fulfil
their potential.

THE KEY IDEAS OF KARL MARX:

1: Historical materialism

Materialism is the view that humans have material needs, such as food, clothing and shelter, and
must therefore work to meet them. In doing so, they use the means of production.

Over time, means of production grow and develop, so too the social relations of production also
change. In particular DoL develops, and this gives to rise to a division between 2 classes:

- A class that owns the means of production

- A class of labourers

From then on, production is directed by the class of owners to meet their own needs.

Mode of production- the forces and relations of production together. E.g.- the capitalist mode of
production in our society forms the economic base of society. This shapes all other features of
society like the institutions, ideas and beliefs.

2: Class society and exploitation

In the earliest stage of human history, there were no classes, no exploitation and no private
ownership (Primitive communism). But as the means of production grow, different types of class
society come and go.

In class societies, 1 class owns the means of production, which enables them to exploit the labour of
others for their own benefit. They can control society’s surplus product (difference between what
the labourers produce and what is actually needed for survival).
Marx identifies 3 successive class societies, each with its own form of exploitation:

- Ancient society: based on the exploitation of slaves legally tied to their owners.
- Feudal society: based on the exploitation of serfs legally tied to the land.
- Capitalist society: based on the exploitation of free wage labourers.

3: Alienation

Our true nature is based on our capacity to create things to meet our needs. Alienation is the result
of our loss of control over our labour and its products and therefore our separation from our true
nature.

Alienation exists in all class societies, because the owners control the production process for their
own needs. However, under capitalism alienation reaches its peak, for 2 reasons:

- Workers are completely separated from and have no control over the means of production;
- DoL is at its most intense and detailed: the worker is reduced to an unskilled labourer
mindlessly repeating a meaningless task.

4: The state, revolution and communism

Defines the state as ‘armed bodies of men’ (army, police, prisons etc). State exists to protect the
interests of the class of owners who control it. This forms the ruling class. They use the state as a
weapon in the class struggle, to protect their property, suppress opposition and prevent revolution.

The proletarian revolution that overthrows capitalism will be the first revolution by the majority
against the minority. It will:

- Abolish the state and create a classless communist society

- Abolish exploitation, replace private ownership with social ownership and replace
production for profit with production to satisfy human needs.
- End alienation as humans regain control of their labour and its products.

5: Class consciousness

Capitalism sows the seed of its own destruction. E.g.- by polarising the classes, bringing the
proletariat together in ever-larger numbers, and driving down their wages, capitalism creates the
conditions under which the W/C can develop a consciousness of its own economic and political
interests in opposition to those of exploiters.

This results in the proletariat moving from being a class in itself (one whose members occupy the
same economic position) to a class for itself (members are class conscious- aware of the need to
overthrow capitalism).

AO3 OF KARL MARX:

- Marx has a simplistic, one-dimensional view of inequality. Weber argues that status and
power differences can also be important sources of inequality, independently of class.
- Feminists argue that gender is a more fundamental source of inequality than class.
- Class polarisation has not occurred; the M/C has grown while the industrial W/C has shrunk.
 Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937):

The most important example of humanistic Marxism. He introduced the concept of hegemony
(ideological and moral leadership of society) to explain how the ruling class maintains its
position.

He argues that the W/C must develop its own ‘counter hegemony’ to win the leadership of
society from the bourgeoisie.

He rejects economic determinism as an explanation of change. Gramsci sees the ruling class
maintaining its dominance over society in 2 ways:

- Coercion: uses the army, police, prisons and courts of the capitalist state to force other
classes to accept its rule.
- Consent (hegemony): uses ideas and values to persuade the subordinate classes that its rule
is legitimate.

HEGEMONY AND REVOLUTION:

In advanced Capitalist societies, the ruling class rely heavily on consent to maintain their rule.
Gramsci agrees with Marx that they are able to maintain consent because they control institutions
such as religion, the media and the education system.

However, according to Gramsci, the hegemony of the ruling class is never complete, for two
reasons:

- The ruling class are a minority – and as such they need to make ideological compromises
with the middle classes in order to maintain power

- The proletariat have dual consciousness. Their ideas are influenced not only by bourgeois
ideology but also by the material conditions of their life – in short, they are aware of their
exploitation and are capable or seeing through the dominant ideology.

Therefore, there is always the possibility of the ruling-class being undermined, especially in times of
economic crises when the poverty of the working classes increases.

However, this will only lead to revolution if the proletariat are able to construct a counter-
hegemonic bloc, in other words they must be able to offer moral and ideological leadership to
society.

According to Gramsci, the W/C’s can only win this battle for ideas by producing their own ‘organic
intellectuals’ – by forming a body of workers who are class conscious and are able to project a
credible, alternative vision of what society would look like under communism.

AO3 OF GRAMSCI:

Gramsci has been criticised for under-emphasising the role of coercive political and economic forces
in holding back the formation of a counter-hegemonic bloc – for example workers may be unable to
form revolutionary vanguards because of the threat of state-violence.
Louis Althusser (1918-90)

While humanistic Marxists see humans as creative beings, able to make history through their
conscious actions, for Structuralist Marxists, it is social structures that shape human action, and we
should be researching structures not individuals.

The most important structural Marxist thinker is Louis Althusser (1918-90), a leading intellectual of
the French Communist Party. Althusser’s version of Marxism rejects both economic determinism and
humanism.

CRITICISMS OF THE BASE-SUPERSTRUCTURE MODEL

Instead of being structured into two levels, Althusser argues that society has three levels, or
structures:

- The economic level: all of those activities which involve producing something or meeting a
need
- The political level: comprising all forms of organisation
- The ideological level: involving all the ways that people see themselves and their world.

In the base-superstructure model, there is one-way causality: the economic level determines
everything else. By contrast, in Althusser’s model, the political level and the ideological level have
relative autonomy, or partial independence from the economic level, and instead of one way
causality, we have two-way causality.

IDEOLOGICAL AND REPRESSIVE STATE APPARATUS

Although the economic level dominates in capitalism, the political and ideological level still perform
indispensable functions – for example, workers need to be socialised into a work ethic, and those
who rebel must be punished.

In Althusser’s model, the state performs political and ideological functions that ensure the
reproduction of capitalism – he divides the state into two ‘apparatuses’

- RSA: these are ‘armed bodies of men (such as the police and the army). -which can physically
quash dissent and rebellion.

- ISA: these include the media and the education system. It is, however, difficult to maintain
order in this way over an extended period of time – a more effective tactic is to manipulate
the way in which people think, instilling false consciousness, and avoid the necessity for
physical oppression.

AO3 OF ALTHUSSER:

For Humanistic Marxists (such as Gouldner) the problem with Althusser is that it discourages political
activism because the theory suggests there is little that individuals can do to change society.

The theory also ignores the fact that the active struggles of the working classes have changed society
for the better in many countries