Cultural Studies and

Post-Marxism

Vishwendra Singh Parmar

Understanding
Terms
Cont…

Cultural studies: A diverse field of study

which examines culture through a variety
of academic theories

Materialism: There is nothing more than

the material world (and anyone who claims
otherwise is either confused or wants to
confuse you for their own advantage)
Capitalism
Capitalism refers to system of production based on
human labor in which the power of labor is
commodified and exchanged for other commodities
For capitalism to work, the value of commodities which
the labor receives for labor power has to be less than
the value of labor power itself, even though these
commodities are produced by labor power
The difference between the two values is surplus from
which are derived both profit and additional capital
which is invested in production of more commodities
Marxism
Refers to social, political and
economic theory which is
based on the writings of Karl
Marx (
dictionary.cambridge.org)

Karl Heinrich Marx

•Born on May 5, 1818
• Philosopher, Political
Economist, Historian &
Sociologist
• Founder of communism
• Died on March 14, 1883
Communist Manifesto
– Published by Marx and Engels
– Originally drafted as a program for an
international “communist league”
– Became one of the most important
political documents of all time
– Left an incredible mark on human
progress
Key Demands
• Abolition of property in land and
application of all rents on land to public
purposes.
• A heavy progressive or graduated
income tax.
• Abolition of all right of inheritance.
• Confiscation of the property of all
emigrants and rebels.
Key Demands
• Centralization of credit in the hands of
the state, by means of a national bank
with state capital and an exclusive
monopoly.
• Centralization of communication and
transport in the hands of the state.
• Equal liability of all to labor.
Establishment of industrial armies,
especially for agriculture.
Key Demands
• Extension of factories and instruments
of production owned by the state, the
bringing in cultivation of waste lands,
and the improvement of the soil
generally in accordance with a common
plan.
Key Demands
• Combination of agriculture with
manufacturing industries; gradual
abolition of the distinction between
town and country, by a more equable
distribution of population over the
country.
• Free education for all children in public
schools. Abolition of children's factory
labor in its resent form.
Three Parts of Marxism
• Philosophical basis
– Derives much from Hegel
– Neatly inverts the key central idea of
Hegelian perspective
• Theories of political economy
– Follow from the philosophical position
– Theory of Surplus Value
– Labor theory of Value
• Theory of revolution
A Materialist World
• our ideas do not make the world, the
world makes are ideas
• the dialect made Marx and Engels
theories scientific
• free of mysticism and metaphysics but
describing something like a scientific
“law” (inevitably)
Modernist Optimism
• a view that underneath the haphazard
and contingent ordinariness of
everyday life were certain dynamic
power that while remaining hidden,
controlled the way things changed and
determine the future
• materialistic and positivistic
• believing in progress through an
accumulated of knowledge
Class Struggles
Class Struggle
• active expression of class conflict
looked at from any kind of socialist
perspective
• Main class struggle
– Bourgeoisie
– Proletariat
Class
• refers to the hierarchical distinctions between
individuals or groups in societies or cultures
• social classes in capitalist societies
– Bourgeoisie
• Petite Bourgeoisie
– Proletariat
– lumpenproletariat
– landlords
– peasantry and farmers
2 Main Class Struggles
Bourgeoisie
• those who own means of production
• control the process of production
• buy labor power from proletariat
• Their wealth depend on the work of the
proletariat
• exploit proletariat
Proletariat
• individuals who sell their labor power
• add value to the products
• do not own means of production
• labor power generates surplus value
greater than the worker's wages
 Stages of
Development
Stages of Development
• Primitive Communism
• Slave Society
• Feudalism
• Capitalism
• Socialism
• Communism
Primitive Communism
• as seen in cooperative tribal societies
– everyone would share in what was
produced by hunting and gathering
– no private property
– primitive society produced no surplus
– few things that existed for any length of
time were held communally
– there would have been no state
Slave Society
• when the tribe becomes a city-state.
Aristocracy is born
– Systematic exploitation of labour
– Compelled to work for another
– held against their will from the time of
their capture, purchase, or birth
– deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to
work, or to receive compensation in return
for their labour
Feudalism
• aristocracy is the ruling class
• Merchants develop into capitalists
– derived from the Latin word feodum
– composed of a set of reciprocal legal and
military obligations among the warrior
nobility
– revolving around the three key concepts
• lord
• Vassals
• fiefs
Capitalism
• ruling class, who create and employ the
true working class
– Economic system in which the private
ownership of property is protected by law
– mode of production characterized by
• predominant private ownership of the means
of production
• distribution and
• exchange in a mainly market economy
Capitalism
• has been dominant in the Western
world since the end of feudalism
• provided the main, but not exclusive,
means of industrialization throughout
much of the world
Socialism
• Dictatorship of the Proletariat
• workers gain class consciousness
• share the belief that capitalism unfairly
concentrates power
• achieved via class struggle and a
proletarian revolution which represents
the transitional stage between capitalism
and communism
Communism
• classless and stateless society
• socioeconomic structure and political
ideology
• based on common ownership of the
means of production and property in
general
The Prophecy
• Revolution would be preceded by a
series of intensifying crisis
• Goods would be produced which the
impoverished proletariat could not
afford to buy
• More workers would be forced out of
work because their labor was not
needed
The Prophecy
• This would drive wages down further
• Lessen the ability of people to buy the
products of capitalism
• Enterprises would collapse and be
swallowed by larger organization in the
centralization of capital
Class Status and
World View
 Class
• Identity of a social class is derived from
its relationship to the means of
production.
• Social Classes in Capitalist Societies
Proletariat
Bourgeoisie
• very wealthy Bourgeoisie
• Petit Bourgeoisie
Lumpenproletariat
Landlords
Peasantry and farmers
Class Antagonism

• Hostility Between two antagonistic

classes.
Exploiters
Exploited
Revolution
 Capitalism’s Role

• Capitalism: constitutes necessary and

progressive step toward ultimate
human liberation
> Cause:
* Capitalists are alienated from
their true human nature
Capitalism’s Role
• Capitalism cannot resolve the internal
contradiction between its forces of
production and its relation of production
> Forces of production: actual
material methods of production
previously in a given society
>Relations of Production: human
side of the production process
• Forces of production promises social
wealth but relation of production
remains unchanged.

• In short, capitalism produces the means

of human liberation but prevents its
realization
 Rise of Revolutionary Consciousness

• in the boom and bust cycle of capitalism:

1. Poor becomes progressively poorer

and their lives more intolerable.

2. Simple contrast with the bourgeoisie

becomes too flagrant to be ignored because
proletarian ranks have swelled.
Proletariat Victory
• to experience indignities of starvation—
wages for years leads to outrage
• It becomes clear that capitalists are not
honorable benefactors
• working class matures and becomes militant
• workers realize that their agonies are intrinsic
to capitalist exploitation and that they will
never be free unless capitalist system is
smashed
Proletariat Victory
• Revolutionary moment arrives when the
proletariat concludes that their bourgeoisie
masters must be overthrown
• from sporadic, unsynchronized strikes, they
will turn to well-orchestrated, economy-wide
work stoppages and boycotts
• when repressive powers of the state are
wielded against them—workers will be driven
toward armed resistance
• In the end, the many will prevail over the few
 Proletariat

• individuals who sell their labor power

• add value to the products
• do not own means of production
• labor power generates surplus value
greater than the worker's wages
Proletariat as Universal

• Embodiment of everything that is wrong

with capitalism
• very being refutes the bourgeoisies’ claim
to have created a just and human society
• they do not wish to merely alleviate their
own suffering
• their aim is to abolish themselves as a
class
• because their degradation is limitless, and
their dehumanization total, their aims are
universal as well
Dictatorship of the Proletariat

• turns the table on what had been the

dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
• for Marx, this would be more human and
less dictatorial than its predecessor

1. Role of the great majority over the few minority

2. Coercive only in order to serve broad interests of
humanity
3. explicitly a transitional stage
DAWN OF COMMUNISM
• arrives when the workers:
>take control of the means of production
>humanize the relation of production
>unleash the forces of production allowing
them to work without impediment for the
general good
• release of the forces of production for the
destructions of capitalism will make for a
quantum leap in human material abundance
WITHERING OF THE STATE
• results when a super-abundant, classless
society would be a society without dissension
or coercion
> State would lose its functions
> State would lack anyone to
repress
>in place would only be the
administration of things for the general
good
• proletariat will have abolished itself and
created a universal society
FUTURE COMMUNIST SOCIETY

• Marx ideal communist society is

democratic in a radical sense
• work, though it would still be necessary,
would no longer be drudgery
• possessiveness would disappear as its
cause, scarcity was overcome
• conception of cooperative public
ownership will be a communist
alternative to private ownership
FUTURE COMMUNIST SOCIETY
• No longer would individuals be
appendages to their social belongings
and social statuses
• family would be replaced by new forms
of human association
>equality, free choice, love, and
human need are decisive
• there will be a creation of international
working-class unity
Analysis
 Although Marxism is an alternative for capitalism was
a great idea, we still found this not good. Our reason is
that if the country which is not that advanced would
grasp this concept and apply this; we would also have a
hard time. The equality in democracy that we have
today could be means of having the will to achieve
something. If communism would be applied in the
Philippines, then, most of us would just be dependent
since we could still have something for our living due
to the equal distribution of resources.
Cont…
Critical materialist analysis, which takes social
change as it’s object
Marxism is materialist, the account of social
formation it develops are rooted in the principle
that the social world is produced and that the
production is socially organized
Marxism is critical because it undermines the
view that social formation is natural or are
given by god
Cont…
“catur varnam mayam sristam guna-
karma vibhagasah
tasya kartaram api mam viddhy
akartaram avyayam ” Lord Krishna
Translation: The four different
categories (varnas) of 
People were created from me
(Parmatma) Based on the three
gunas (attributes/forces) 
And their influence on performing
of karma But, even though I am
the source of the creation
(creator) Know me as a non-doer
(akarta) (Because I am completely
non-attached) ~ Bhagavad Gita
(4:13)
The Varna System
Cultural Studies & Post-Marxism
• The Problem: Marxism is not stable and unified
object which could simply be applied to the study of
culture
• Post-Marxism: The critical approach of Marxism is
also aimed at Marxism itself. ‘post Marxism is simply
a term with which to categorize this process. The
term is needed in order to differentiate a critical
materialist approach from a dogmatic approach
which tends to regard Marxism as canonical
• The chapter focus on direction within post-Marxism,
which is “within shouting distance of cultural studies”
Shouting at Post-Marxism
• The relation between cultural studies and Marxism: Cultural
studies has never been submerged within Marxism but remains
within shouting distance of it ~ Stuart Hall
• It will take the distinguishing characteristics of cultural studies
to be its engagement with a post-Marxism which emphasises
the analysis of the relations between culture and politics within
determinate historical conditions ultimately derived from
capitalism
• As distinct from the original positions of Marx and Engels, post
Marxism is concerned with developing a materialist
understanding of the increasing complexity of social relations
and the place of production within them…
• The significance of the political dimension of culture emerges
from the analysis of such complex relations
Culture and Politics in post-Marxism
• The relation between culture and politics within
cultural studies is dependent upon the direction
within post-Marxism that has sought to develop
the political dimension of Marxism
• The proponents are united to a certain extent by
a common emphasis on the ways in which
culture is constitutive of relations of power
which may become political (e.g. The rise of
Fascism in Italy after WWI, drawing support
from working class as well as industrial
capitalism)
Post-Marxism in cultural studies
• Decline of political value of the classical
working class and emergence of new
forms of social protests to the structural
transformation of capitalism
• Further development of a materialist
analysis of social formation would have
to begin from political dimension of
culture