WESTERN MARXISM and the FRANKFURT SCHOOL

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WESTERN MARXISM and the FRANKFURT SCHOOL
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KEY ISSUES

• 1. What happened to Marxism after Marx?
• 2. Multiple different Marxisms
• 3. Changing nature of Western societies
• - Why has the revolution not yet happened?
• 4. New types of Marxism
• FOR understanding new social conditions
• Produced BY new social conditions

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OUTLINE

• History after Marx
• Eastern Marxism
• Western Marxism
• New Marxism 1 Georg Lukacs
• New Marxism 2 Antonio Gramsci
• Hegemony
• (More) Optimistic Marxism
• 6. New Marxism 3 The Frankfurt School
• Critical Theory
• (More) Pessimistic Marxism
• 7. Evaluation

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History after Marx

• Marx dies in 1883
• Marxs legacy
• Intellectual social theory
• Practical Socialist movement
• (The International)

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• Changing social conditions
• in the West
• 1880s to 1930s
• Appearance of mass media
• (esp. cheap newspapers) and
• mass leisure
• - Cinema (beginnings of celebrity
• culture beginnings of Americanization)
• - Radio (possibilities for propaganda Mussolini)

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• 2) Rising working class standards of living
• Development of welfare state
• Beginnings of mass consumerism
• (e.g. USA mass car ownership by 1930s)

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• 3) Crises in capitalism
• Wall Street Crash, 1929
• Large number of businesses go bust
• Many capitalists ruined
• Mass unemployment
• Hyper-inflation
• 4) Challenges to capitalism
• - Communist revolution in Russia, 1917
• Increased popularity of Fascism
• Hitler wins power in Germany, 1933

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EASTERN MARXISM

• Marxism in the Soviet Union (USSR)
• Russian Revolution, 1917
• Communist Party attempts to foster democracy
• VERSUS
• Communist Party keeps all power for itself
• Death of Lenin, 1924

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• 1924 1930
• Coming to power of Joseph Stalin
• 1) Opponents killed or sent to prison camps
• 2) USSR becomes totalitarian
• Communist Party has total power
• Cult of Personality Stalin as God
• 3) Marxism becomes official religion of the
  State Dialectical Materialism

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• Stalins presentation of Marx
• 1) Positivism scientific approach facts
• 2) Fixed laws of social life
• 3) Inevitability of Communism
• 4) A State religion - The Truth
• Beyond criticism
• Uncritical of Russian society

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All other social institutions
Economy

• Base and Superstructure
• Economy by far the most important of all social
  institutions
• All other institutions merely products of, and
  subservient to, the economic base

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WESTERN MARXISM

• Response in Western Europe to the Soviet Union
• 1) Admiration emulation by some
• 2) Increasing distrust of Stalin by others
• More information becomes available
• Not communism but totalitarianism
• By late 1930s, Stalin the mirror-image of Hitler

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• Need to develop a new sort of Marxism
• 1) More flexible not just base creates
  superstructure (mechanistic Marxism)
• 2) Not a state religion not dogmatic
• - could criticise Communist Party and USSR
• 3) Attuned to new social conditions
• 4) DOESNT claim Communism would emerge
  inevitably
• - the revolution depends on circumstances

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• WESTERN MARXISMS TWO QUESTIONS
• 1) Why has the Revolution not yet happened?
• Physical repression armed force
• Ideological repression dominant ideologies
• Marx culture not very important merely part
  of the social superstructure
• Western Marxism culture very important
  controls how the working classes think
• 2) What forces are emerging in society that can
  lead to Revolution?

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Georg (Gyorgy) Lukacs

• Need to develop non-mechanistic Marxism
• - Rejects base and superstructure model
• Goes back to Hegel
• a) Young Marx influenced by Hegel
• b) Tension in Marx between active human agency
  and constraining social structures
• c) Hegel emphasises human agency humans are
  critical and creative
• d) Hegelian Marxism focus on human
  creativity change and movement

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• Social Totality
• 1) Must look at the whole society
• 2) Look at how all parts relate to and effect
  each other
• 3) Changes in one part have effects in all other
  parts
• 4) The economy INDIRECTLY shapes other parts of
  the society
• 5) Other parts of the society can impact on the
  economy too

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• Reification
• 1) Develops Marx on alienation commodity
  fetishism
• 2) Reification seeing as an objectively
  existing thing what are actually fluid and
  changing social relationships
• 3) Capitalist economy
• EITHER A thing with a life and mind of its own
• OR Fluid and changing social relationships
• Social conflicts and new social forces
• 4) Aim of Marxism to break through reification
  to identify social change, and encourage it

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WESTERN MARXISM and the FRANKFURT SCHOOL

• RECAP
• Marxism after Marx
• Adapted to fit 20th C conditions e.g. mass media
• Against Eastern Marxism
• Simplistic base and superstructure model
• 4. Hegelian - Lukacs emphasis on human
  creativity
• 5. Why has the revolution not happened?
• How might it happen?
• Antonio Gramsci / The Frankfurt School

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Antonio Gramsci

• Imprisoned by Mussolini regime
• Prison Notebooks
• Hegelian Marxism
• Emphasis on thoughtful and active human agency
  (praxis)
• Why has the Revolution not happened?
• Physical Force
• Dominant ideologies

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• Hegemony
• Aspect 1 ruling classes control the society
• a) Their ideas are the dominant ideas
• b) Their ideas successfully repress the ideas of
  other classes
• c) Their ways of thinking shape everyones ways
  of thinking
• d) Their rule is seen by everyone as natural and
  inevitable (just the way things are)

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• Hegemony - Aspect 2
• The rule of the ruling classes is not guaranteed
• The rule of the ruling classes is always
  potentially threatened
• a) The population can become sceptical
• (e.g. due to crises in the economy)
• b) New counter-hegemonic social forces can
  emerge
• (e.g. anti-Iraq War protestors)

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• c) Disputes within the ruling classes
• Not just one ruling class ruling classES
• Different groups within ruling classes
• e.g. business leaders, government officials
• Must work with each other to retain power

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• Gramscis Conclusions
• 1) ruling classes power often quite fragile
• 2) ruling classes must constantly work to secure
  their rule
• 3) ruling classes must try to control
  counter-hegemonic social forces
• 4) ruling classes have to negotiate and
  compromise with the populace
• e.g. the welfare state

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The Frankfurt School - Members

• Institute for Social Research
• University of Frankfurt, 1923
• Multi-disciplinary membership
• Max Horkheimer (philosophy)
• Theodor Adorno (philosophy and musicology)
• Walter Benjamin (philosophy and literature)
• Herbert Marcuse (Freudian psychology)

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Critical Theory

• Sources
• Marx 2) Max Weber 3) Sigmund Freud
• Following Marx
• Most sorts of social science see only the surface
  of society
• Must find the hidden workings of society
• Frankfurt against positivism
• - scientific sociology / Durkheim
• - can only see surface-level things

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• Marx Sociology must be critical
• Must be highly sceptical of all claims
• Must get beyond how a society presents itself
  understands itself
• Internal Critique
• Compare capitalist societys claims about itself
  with the reality of that society
• e.g. freedom for individual / meritocracy
• Show a societys hypocrisy
• Frankfurt negative dialectics

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• Updating of Marx
• 1) Must avoid the flaws of other sorts of
  sociological theory
• BOTH Theoretical AND Practical
• BOTH Theory AND Data
• 2) Must avoid flaws of Eastern Marxism
• - must be open to being corrected by evidence
• - must change as society changes

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• Max Weber
• The Iron Cage
• 1) Instrumental rationality
• thinking based on calculation
• most efficient ways of achieving aims
• 2) Bureaucracy rational control over people
• Frankfurt view
• Total administration
• - dominance of instrumental rationality
• - complete bureaucratic control
• The main bureaucracies
• 1) The State
• 2) Capitalist Economy (Monopoly Capitalism)
• 3) Leisure industries mass media

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• Mass Media
• Adorno and Horkheimer
• The Culture Industry
• Mass Culture standardised culture
• for the masses
• 1. Propagates dominant ideologies
• - audiences influenced
• - conformist thinking and behaviour
• 2. Pacifies the populace
• - superficial pleasures
• - a break from unfulfilling jobs
• 3. Outcome capitalist system reproduced over time

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• Sigmund Freud
• Social shaping of individual psychology
• - blank slate
• Frankfurt view (Fromm Adorno)
• psychology shaped by dominant ideologies e.g.
  capitalist ideologies
• these make people passive and conformist

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• 2) Social shaping of collective psychology
• a social group e.g. the capitalist class
• a whole society e.g. capitalist society
• All societies need to repress individuals
  natural, biological instincts
• sex drives
• violent tendencies
• uncontrolled egotism selfishness

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• Modern Western (capitalist) societies repress
  natural instincts very much
• PROBLEM - Too much repression
• Individual becomes neurotic
• - Individual is psychologically sick
• b) The whole society becomes neurotic
• - The whole society is psychologically sick

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• Frankfurt view (Herbert Marcuse 1960s)
• 1) Capitalist society overly represses natural
  instincts
• 2) Individuals in capitalist society are made
  neurotic e.g. craving wealth fame
• 3) The whole society is neurotic
• e.g. happiness consumer goods
• 4) Encouragement of worst human traits
• a) Greed b) Seeing others as objects to be used
  c) Hatred of foreigners and outsiders
• 5) Solution Critical Theory as therapy makes
  society realise its own sickness

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EVALUATION

• Take Weber on Iron Cage at face value?
• forget it is just a model / ideal type
• 2) Use of Freud
• assume individual psychology thoroughly
  influenced by society
• overestimate power of mass media?
• 3) Overly pessimistic?
• No hope for social change.
• Total power of the System.
• (Adorno Horkheimer NOT Marcuse)
• Betray Marxism? Gramsci more appropriate?

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Evaluation 2

• Has Western Marxism improved on Marxs ideas?
  Still flawed?
• Has Western Marxism successfully kept up with
  social developments?
• Has it been able to understand these developments
  effectively?
• Has Marxism been thoroughly outmoded? (e.g.
  Postmodernism)