Lecture 12 Marxism: Ideology and domination

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Lecture 12Marxism Ideology and domination
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Marx on ideology

• The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
  the ruling ideas.
• It controls both the means of material production
  and mental production.
• Ideology works to conceal the real relations of
  production

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Gramsci and hegemony.

• The ruling class dominates symbolic production
  through control over the ideological sectors of
  society (culture, religion, education, the
  media).
• This explains the institutional basis of
  false-consciousness.
• Awareness of this can only be achieved with the
  help of an external agent.

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Althusser

• Capital-owning classes needed to reproduce the
  means of production, which includes a compliant
  labour force trained in proper attitudes.
• The ideological state apparatuses organised
  religion, formal education, the family, the legal
  system, the media, cultural production

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James Scott

• Subordinate classes are able to penetrate
  prevailing ideology.
• Hidden transcript and the necessity of routine,
  pragmatic submission to the compulsion of
  economic relations.
• The hegemonic ideology creates the contradictions
  that permits it to be criticised in its own
  terms.

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The political economy of the village

• The hegemonic ideology developed from the
  agricultural production needs of the wealthy.
• The wealthy transformed a portion of their
  economic capital into status, prestige and social
  control.
• Self interested acts passed off as voluntary acts
  of generosity or charity.
• This was necessary where direct physical coercion
  was not possible

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Ideology and domination

• There are multiple ideologies
• Hidden transcript The poor only conform to the
  hegemonic ideology in pubic but in private have
  radically different interpretations and beliefs.
• Domination defines what is realistic and makes
  certain aspirations impossible
• The poor and rich alike manipulate the dominant
  ideology/moral system to their advantage.
• The poor challenge the wealth with their own
  ideology.

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Maurice Bloch - Merina Circumcision ritual

• Despite the fact that the uses to which the
  ritual was put changed, as did the economic and
  political context, the form of the ritual
  remained unchanged.
• This contradicts both the structural
  functionalist and Marxist analysis.

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The rituals symbolism

• Transmission of the blessing of the ancestors
  onto the newest generation.
• Image of the past as an unchanging and conquering
  the present.
• Individuality, the product of this life, is
  opposed to a unity of the descent group which is
  achieved in death.
• Legitimates the authority of elders

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Marxist analysis of the ritual

• Ideology which legitimates the authority of the
  elders.
• In capitalist societies workers must be
  convinced that creativity is principally the
  product of a supernatural force capital.
• Ancestors are the equivalent to capital - seen as
  true source of creativity.

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Blochs analysis

• Ideology is not created by power holders.
• Knowledge conveyed through ritual has an indirect
  relation to practical knowledge.
• The ritual does not replace the knowledge of this
  world by the transcendental one it merely
  suggests the transcendental world, just over the
  horizon, after death.
• The emotional power of the ritual comes from the
  fact that everyone has the potential to become
  ancestors.

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Key message of the ritual

• Creativity is not the product of human action but
  due to a transcendental force which is mediated
  by authority
• This fact legitimates, even demands, the violent
  conquest of inferiors by superiors who are closer
  to the transcendental ancestors.

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The ritual and power

• Exists independent of the political groups that
  have made use of it.
• Those who had power were able to place themselves
  in the position of elders.
• The nature of ideology is that it carries at its
  core a simple general message, which can be
  recovered and used for almost any type of
  domination.

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(No Transcript)