Helen Davies
Marxism
Russia (U.S.S.R)
1700-1800 – time of mass production technology. Cities and towns gradually became industrialized, known as the industrial revolution. Working class came to live in the cities to work for other people to sell their labor and ability to the wealthy classes.
Means of production: owned by the Bourgeoisie, the Capitalist class while the working class were proletariat
Karl Marx- had seen all this happen, recognizes the significance in the way human relations have changed.
Marx suggested that the system is flawed due to the minority controlling the masses. Marx suggested a revolution by the proletariat to smash the dominance and control of the capitalist class.
Marx questioned how the capitalists claimed to own the means of productions and claiming raw materials as their own – hence, he foreseen the revolt and predicted that the masses would rule.
Marx also questioned the laws made from (by) the capitalist state, e.g. laws concerning property ownership and protection – made to protect the wealthy – the State Apparatus : the way the government controls its citizens.
False consciousness- exhibit a false consciousness on the view, classical conditioned to believe that its how the world should be run. The idea droned into the classes
1930 – 1960’s – many believed that Marx portrayed an accurate description of how the world was run and that there’d be a revolt by the masses for the masses. Marx also thought the revolt would be bloody for the army work only to serve the queen and upper class people.
Marxism provides a remedy for the pointlessness of life. And perceived humans as co operate beings who could work harmoniously yet were divided by religion and class.
The Communist Manifesto: the book of communist beliefs
* Capitalism * Communism
- Profit - Common property
- Competition (within industries) - Co-operate beings
- Money - No profit (sharing the world &
- Property (believe that humans are governing together)
naturally competitive and that
it benefits everyone)
Land ownership – cause of wars, strong theme of capitalists
Communism – no wars- no nation. Marx believed that communism would rid the world of unemployment and poverty.
Alienation – Key concept in cultural products
Separation/ segregated: Marxist argued that humans are no longer whole & the only way to conquer this is through communism. The belief that people separate themselves from eachother.
Psychological alienation: we separated ourselves by the idea of God
Marx is a materialist – materialist – doesn’t believe in god or anything materialistic. Believes that all ideas are human constructs, human created god therefore there is nothing spiritual in our lives. God comes from an expression from within our selves (conscience). The idea of good put into an abstract entity, making us un-whole.
British political system
new relation between employer and employee established. Our society is not about his members its about profits – therefore we are separated from eachother because of our relationship with money.
Trends in human society: from ancient civilizations
slave civilisations
feudal civilizations (farmer, peasant relationship) (all controlled by the
capitalist civilizations economic structures
socialist that exist in society)
communist (utopia)
Marxist theory: the system you live under, defines you, your beliefs and the way you live e.g. ideas on love.
Under the Capitalist society the masses are not happy therefore Marx forsees the socialist movement to over throw the government.
Religion: a controlling mechanism employed by the Capitalist classes to prevent the Revolution. E.g. Christianity says ‘turn the other cheek’ to keep the masses down.
‘Religion is the Opiate of the Masses’ – Marxist view
‘media is the Opiate of the masses’ – neo-marxist view
Literature Review
The Frankfurt School
In order to discuss the Frankfurt school and their theories, we have to look more closely at the way Marxism was a basis for the theories that follow.
Marxism: Lecture notes, Jason Merril-Glover 11/10/05
* Marxism is a theory that offers the explanation of how life and society is the way it is, it provides a remedy to the pointlessness in life and states that there is no such thing as god, just substance.
* Karl Marx was a philosopher who was around at the beginning of the industrial revolution, through which mass production came of age through technological advances.
* The means of production was inherited and owned by the bourgeois se, the upper class citizens leading to the birth of the capitalist class.
* The lower class proletariats would sell their labour to the upper classes who would gain large profits yet under-pay the proletariats.
* Karl Marx saw the current situation and recognizes the significance in the way human relations have changed developing an employer/employee relationship status. Marx criticized the new system because the minority held most of the wealth and therefore gaining control over the masses.
* Marx questioned how the Capitalists claimed to own the means of production such as raw materials. He also questioned the laws made by the capitalist state that were only created to protect the property of the wealthy, thus reinforcing the state apparatus.
* Marx foresaw that the system needed a revolution and that a revolt would take place in the generations to come resulting in the masses being in control and therefore establishing a socialist state, then later paving the way for the utopian ideal of a communist state.
* Marxist roots can be seen from Ludwig Feuerbauchs’ sociological theory that religion was a human construction, therefore the concept of god is rendered as an expression for our inner moral conscience. The idea was that religion was a device to make people to conform to the state without questioning. The Morals presented in Christianity also protect the Capitalists and has been a firm controlling mechanism for centuries because it speaks against the violent overthrow of authority and the government.
* Marx argued that although proletariats were treated as one mass crowd, they were made to feel alienated through competition that initially drove the capitalist state . The believe that God was an abstract entity took focus off society that severed chords of communications between one another creating distance between the people in society. He believed that through communism we could conquer the alienation.
* Marxist theory argued that many people brought up under a capitalist state would have a false consciousness on life because the capitalist values would have been drilled into their way of thinking therefore not seeing the flaws considering the system as functional. This also enables more segregation to take place among society.
* A communist society could only be achieved if religion and the false consciousness was eliminated. And reconsidering the economic sub-structure, that has mapped out human lifestyle since the start of Capitalism.
‘The Media Students Handbook Third Edition
-Gill Branston & Roy Stafford, Routledge Publications.
Page 149, 379
* The Frankfurt school compiled of a group of intellectual German/Jewish theorists, the school itself was set up in 1923. The theorists were first concerned with the effects of Germany’s modern propaganda on the public; this consisted of various forms of fascism through entertainment, radio and advertisements.
* The Frankfurt school saw the rise of Hitler’s Aryan regime and the way Hitler convinced so many people to conform to his idea of the supreme race through the media.
*Ten years later they were in exile from Nazi Germany and continued their work in the United States of America. It was in the U.S they saw the level of power that America gained also through mass media in terms of controlling the masses and attempts to convince us what normal is.
* Due to the level of capitalism, all media was corporate owned and therefore under total control. This restricted the freedom and identity of the various culture groups and attempted to make the separate culture groups conform together as a single ‘Mass Culture’ through commercial imperatives. There is no such term as ‘individual identity’ in ‘mass culture’, therefore restricting those who desire to be innovative and original in thought.
*This theory was considered a ‘variant in Marxism’ and was named the ‘critical theory’, this theory continued to see how cultures were effected by mass media and the capitalists attempts to secure total domination by using media as a device.
* The Frankfurt School proposed that the advertising system was a constant way for the media to stress the power of identities that the corporations were dividing and branding cultures with. The school created numerous theories in the two fields of Mass culture and mass communication. They acknowledged that the culture industries were being reduced to the same commodities of mass production. Therefore it urged the viewers to question the representation of ‘reality’ on their television and in doing so it erases their cultural identity because it no longer seems palatable due to the way culture was being commercialized.
* The main theorists of the Frankfurt school were: Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkeimer and Walter Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin- ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’
http://www.Marxists.org/referance/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm 17/10/2005
* To summarise the message behind this theory is that Benjamin states that innovation is the only way to make a change in notions of art and society in order to improve itself.
* Benjamin summarises audience positioning in theatre and film. How the audience view all modern art forms through the scope of the camera. Allowing time and space to me adjusted and experimented with, resulting in the foreshortening or elongating spatial coherence.
* Because we live in a postmodern age, where everything is a representation of past stereotypes and figures, we can no longer accept total credit in Western society. Because of the lack of originality, new art being influenced by traditional art.
* There’s a personal drive in each of us to rise above their status and become recognized in the media. Benjamin states: ‘the newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra.’
* For the most of history a small amount of writers were writing for the majority of readers. However, nowadays, the increase of the press extension offered up to date: ‘political, religious, scientific, professional and local’ articles for the readers, allowing them to attain author status in being able to reply to the editors, giving them a slight sense of control in the media, a false sense of security.
* He states that the actors in Russian films are representing the director/writer of the story, therefore being a self representation. Whereas in Western capitalist states, the actors with iconic status play characters that in now way acknowledge themselves as stereotypical re-representations, it is partially through this factor that capitalists are able to exploit popular culture.
* Walter Benjamin compares the cameraman to a surgeon and an artist to a magician. This is to explain that when an artists work is presented it isn’t attempt to be more than just an illusion of reality. Whereas, when the camera mans shots are edited and pieced together, it sets up an intimate, invasive relationship between viewer and creator and as a result the creator is able to penetrate the distance and surface of the viewers personal identity as the film tries to manipulate reality.
* ‘Film has enriched our field or perception’ and people can now interpret films in various ways using such theories as psychoanalytical theory to deconstruct characterization and the way in which the film apparatus is used in order to create deeper meaning in the text. For example the use of simple editing devices such as: close-ups,slow motion, symbolic and technical codes helps to intensify emotion and appreciation within the spectator.
* The main direction of art was always intended for future improvement, to reincarnate itself as a new art form altogether. The idea of pioneering a new form of creation is said to aspire beyond it goal in technical aspects.
‘The cultural industry: Enlightenment of mass deception’
-Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer (1944)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm
Sociological theory
* The sociological theory states that due to the lack of support for religion and pre-capitalism, we have led ourselves into cultural chaos. However culture is the main function in society.
* Industries such as film, radio and magazines are all a part of one big controlled system.
* The entrepreneurial system makes low quality houses for the proletariats, whilst the corporate industries own quality, international tower buildings are world wide.
* The government provides the lower classes with a false sense of security and possession by providing them with the low quality homes.
* The people in control are no longer concerned with concealing their monopoly.
* They claim that the standards for the industries were originally based on the consumers needs, through the industries manipulation they are able to attain more power.
* All consumer products are also controlled. All different factors are controlled by same authorities, the sense that all corporations in uniformity. Opposed to political parties, that are united in their obedience.
* Gesamtkunstwerk: the creator of the ‘Wagnerian dream’ that all arts will be fused together in one work – the process in which our society is heading
* all works of media has been constructed, edited and censored by those in control, the lower classes have no choice in their own leisure. The culture industry is forced upon by the power of society.
* There is nothing for the consumer to classify because the producers have already done so. No independent voice can be heard, all escapism for the consumer is government controlled, and ‘they’ control the stereotypes and media in order to control society as a whole.
* The culture industry has therefore put an end to the term ‘free expression’.
* Religion used to be the tool to keep society in line, however now it is the media that holds the ideologies on how to live your life.
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was one of the Key players in the Frankfurt school and draws upon Marxism countless times in his theory written in 1964.
Ref: ’One-Dimensional Man’ http://home.cwru.edu/~ngb2/Authors/Marcuse.html
* Marcuse criticizes both communist and capitalist system for neither one practices democracy. He states that the only way of being free would be to abolish both the Communist and Capitalist Systems.
* However, like Marx, Marcuse also agreed that economical system drained peoples’ potentials in society.
* He points out that because we are not free from either system we are left with false needs, where the economies provide us with materialist goods.
* He suggests that the only way forward in terms of equality in society, we should learn to use technological advances to ‘benefit citizens, instead of restricting them’.
The Frankfurt schools approach links to the neo-marxist beliefs that mass media is the new ‘opiate of the masses’ replacing Christianity as a controlling medium to insure the main-stay of a Capitalist regime.
The main argument against The Frankfurt schools approaches to culture is that the findings were only evident in their written theories, rather than quantity surveyed, the only argument to support the schools theories is the theory of Marxism and Neo-Marxism.
Marxism
Russia (U.S.S.R)
1700-1800 – time of mass production technology. Cities and towns gradually became industrialized, known as the industrial revolution. Working class came to live in the cities to work for other people to sell their labor and ability to the wealthy classes.
Means of production: owned by the Bourgeoisie, the Capitalist class while the working class were proletariat
Karl Marx- had seen all this happen, recognizes the significance in the way human relations have changed.
Marx suggested that the system is flawed due to the minority controlling the masses. Marx suggested a revolution by the proletariat to smash the dominance and control of the capitalist class.
Marx questioned how the capitalists claimed to own the means of productions and claiming raw materials as their own – hence, he foreseen the revolt and predicted that the masses would rule.
Marx also questioned the laws made from (by) the capitalist state, e.g. laws concerning property ownership and protection – made to protect the wealthy – the State Apparatus : the way the government controls its citizens.
False consciousness- exhibit a false consciousness on the view, classical conditioned to believe that its how the world should be run. The idea droned into the classes
1930 – 1960’s – many believed that Marx portrayed an accurate description of how the world was run and that there’d be a revolt by the masses for the masses. Marx also thought the revolt would be bloody for the army work only to serve the queen and upper class people.
Marxism provides a remedy for the pointlessness of life. And perceived humans as co operate beings who could work harmoniously yet were divided by religion and class.
The Communist Manifesto: the book of communist beliefs
* Capitalism * Communism
- Profit - Common property
- Competition (within industries) - Co-operate beings
- Money - No profit (sharing the world &
- Property (believe that humans are governing together)
naturally competitive and that
it benefits everyone)
Land ownership – cause of wars, strong theme of capitalists
Communism – no wars- no nation. Marx believed that communism would rid the world of unemployment and poverty.
Alienation – Key concept in cultural products
Separation/ segregated: Marxist argued that humans are no longer whole & the only way to conquer this is through communism. The belief that people separate themselves from eachother.
Psychological alienation: we separated ourselves by the idea of God
Marx is a materialist – materialist – doesn’t believe in god or anything materialistic. Believes that all ideas are human constructs, human created god therefore there is nothing spiritual in our lives. God comes from an expression from within our selves (conscience). The idea of good put into an abstract entity, making us un-whole.
British political system
new relation between employer and employee established. Our society is not about his members its about profits – therefore we are separated from eachother because of our relationship with money.
Trends in human society: from ancient civilizations
slave civilisations
feudal civilizations (farmer, peasant relationship) (all controlled by the
capitalist civilizations economic structures
socialist that exist in society)
communist (utopia)
Marxist theory: the system you live under, defines you, your beliefs and the way you live e.g. ideas on love.
Under the Capitalist society the masses are not happy therefore Marx forsees the socialist movement to over throw the government.
Religion: a controlling mechanism employed by the Capitalist classes to prevent the Revolution. E.g. Christianity says ‘turn the other cheek’ to keep the masses down.
‘Religion is the Opiate of the Masses’ – Marxist view
‘media is the Opiate of the masses’ – neo-marxist view
Literature Review
The Frankfurt School
In order to discuss the Frankfurt school and their theories, we have to look more closely at the way Marxism was a basis for the theories that follow.
Marxism: Lecture notes, Jason Merril-Glover 11/10/05
* Marxism is a theory that offers the explanation of how life and society is the way it is, it provides a remedy to the pointlessness in life and states that there is no such thing as god, just substance.
* Karl Marx was a philosopher who was around at the beginning of the industrial revolution, through which mass production came of age through technological advances.
* The means of production was inherited and owned by the bourgeois se, the upper class citizens leading to the birth of the capitalist class.
* The lower class proletariats would sell their labour to the upper classes who would gain large profits yet under-pay the proletariats.
* Karl Marx saw the current situation and recognizes the significance in the way human relations have changed developing an employer/employee relationship status. Marx criticized the new system because the minority held most of the wealth and therefore gaining control over the masses.
* Marx questioned how the Capitalists claimed to own the means of production such as raw materials. He also questioned the laws made by the capitalist state that were only created to protect the property of the wealthy, thus reinforcing the state apparatus.
* Marx foresaw that the system needed a revolution and that a revolt would take place in the generations to come resulting in the masses being in control and therefore establishing a socialist state, then later paving the way for the utopian ideal of a communist state.
* Marxist roots can be seen from Ludwig Feuerbauchs’ sociological theory that religion was a human construction, therefore the concept of god is rendered as an expression for our inner moral conscience. The idea was that religion was a device to make people to conform to the state without questioning. The Morals presented in Christianity also protect the Capitalists and has been a firm controlling mechanism for centuries because it speaks against the violent overthrow of authority and the government.
* Marx argued that although proletariats were treated as one mass crowd, they were made to feel alienated through competition that initially drove the capitalist state . The believe that God was an abstract entity took focus off society that severed chords of communications between one another creating distance between the people in society. He believed that through communism we could conquer the alienation.
* Marxist theory argued that many people brought up under a capitalist state would have a false consciousness on life because the capitalist values would have been drilled into their way of thinking therefore not seeing the flaws considering the system as functional. This also enables more segregation to take place among society.
* A communist society could only be achieved if religion and the false consciousness was eliminated. And reconsidering the economic sub-structure, that has mapped out human lifestyle since the start of Capitalism.
‘The Media Students Handbook Third Edition
-Gill Branston & Roy Stafford, Routledge Publications.
Page 149, 379
* The Frankfurt school compiled of a group of intellectual German/Jewish theorists, the school itself was set up in 1923. The theorists were first concerned with the effects of Germany’s modern propaganda on the public; this consisted of various forms of fascism through entertainment, radio and advertisements.
* The Frankfurt school saw the rise of Hitler’s Aryan regime and the way Hitler convinced so many people to conform to his idea of the supreme race through the media.
*Ten years later they were in exile from Nazi Germany and continued their work in the United States of America. It was in the U.S they saw the level of power that America gained also through mass media in terms of controlling the masses and attempts to convince us what normal is.
* Due to the level of capitalism, all media was corporate owned and therefore under total control. This restricted the freedom and identity of the various culture groups and attempted to make the separate culture groups conform together as a single ‘Mass Culture’ through commercial imperatives. There is no such term as ‘individual identity’ in ‘mass culture’, therefore restricting those who desire to be innovative and original in thought.
*This theory was considered a ‘variant in Marxism’ and was named the ‘critical theory’, this theory continued to see how cultures were effected by mass media and the capitalists attempts to secure total domination by using media as a device.
* The Frankfurt School proposed that the advertising system was a constant way for the media to stress the power of identities that the corporations were dividing and branding cultures with. The school created numerous theories in the two fields of Mass culture and mass communication. They acknowledged that the culture industries were being reduced to the same commodities of mass production. Therefore it urged the viewers to question the representation of ‘reality’ on their television and in doing so it erases their cultural identity because it no longer seems palatable due to the way culture was being commercialized.
* The main theorists of the Frankfurt school were: Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkeimer and Walter Benjamin.
Walter Benjamin- ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’
http://www.Marxists.org/referance/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm 17/10/2005
* To summarise the message behind this theory is that Benjamin states that innovation is the only way to make a change in notions of art and society in order to improve itself.
* Benjamin summarises audience positioning in theatre and film. How the audience view all modern art forms through the scope of the camera. Allowing time and space to me adjusted and experimented with, resulting in the foreshortening or elongating spatial coherence.
* Because we live in a postmodern age, where everything is a representation of past stereotypes and figures, we can no longer accept total credit in Western society. Because of the lack of originality, new art being influenced by traditional art.
* There’s a personal drive in each of us to rise above their status and become recognized in the media. Benjamin states: ‘the newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra.’
* For the most of history a small amount of writers were writing for the majority of readers. However, nowadays, the increase of the press extension offered up to date: ‘political, religious, scientific, professional and local’ articles for the readers, allowing them to attain author status in being able to reply to the editors, giving them a slight sense of control in the media, a false sense of security.
* He states that the actors in Russian films are representing the director/writer of the story, therefore being a self representation. Whereas in Western capitalist states, the actors with iconic status play characters that in now way acknowledge themselves as stereotypical re-representations, it is partially through this factor that capitalists are able to exploit popular culture.
* Walter Benjamin compares the cameraman to a surgeon and an artist to a magician. This is to explain that when an artists work is presented it isn’t attempt to be more than just an illusion of reality. Whereas, when the camera mans shots are edited and pieced together, it sets up an intimate, invasive relationship between viewer and creator and as a result the creator is able to penetrate the distance and surface of the viewers personal identity as the film tries to manipulate reality.
* ‘Film has enriched our field or perception’ and people can now interpret films in various ways using such theories as psychoanalytical theory to deconstruct characterization and the way in which the film apparatus is used in order to create deeper meaning in the text. For example the use of simple editing devices such as: close-ups,slow motion, symbolic and technical codes helps to intensify emotion and appreciation within the spectator.
* The main direction of art was always intended for future improvement, to reincarnate itself as a new art form altogether. The idea of pioneering a new form of creation is said to aspire beyond it goal in technical aspects.
‘The cultural industry: Enlightenment of mass deception’
-Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer (1944)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm
Sociological theory
* The sociological theory states that due to the lack of support for religion and pre-capitalism, we have led ourselves into cultural chaos. However culture is the main function in society.
* Industries such as film, radio and magazines are all a part of one big controlled system.
* The entrepreneurial system makes low quality houses for the proletariats, whilst the corporate industries own quality, international tower buildings are world wide.
* The government provides the lower classes with a false sense of security and possession by providing them with the low quality homes.
* The people in control are no longer concerned with concealing their monopoly.
* They claim that the standards for the industries were originally based on the consumers needs, through the industries manipulation they are able to attain more power.
* All consumer products are also controlled. All different factors are controlled by same authorities, the sense that all corporations in uniformity. Opposed to political parties, that are united in their obedience.
* Gesamtkunstwerk: the creator of the ‘Wagnerian dream’ that all arts will be fused together in one work – the process in which our society is heading
* all works of media has been constructed, edited and censored by those in control, the lower classes have no choice in their own leisure. The culture industry is forced upon by the power of society.
* There is nothing for the consumer to classify because the producers have already done so. No independent voice can be heard, all escapism for the consumer is government controlled, and ‘they’ control the stereotypes and media in order to control society as a whole.
* The culture industry has therefore put an end to the term ‘free expression’.
* Religion used to be the tool to keep society in line, however now it is the media that holds the ideologies on how to live your life.
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was one of the Key players in the Frankfurt school and draws upon Marxism countless times in his theory written in 1964.
Ref: ’One-Dimensional Man’ http://home.cwru.edu/~ngb2/Authors/Marcuse.html
* Marcuse criticizes both communist and capitalist system for neither one practices democracy. He states that the only way of being free would be to abolish both the Communist and Capitalist Systems.
* However, like Marx, Marcuse also agreed that economical system drained peoples’ potentials in society.
* He points out that because we are not free from either system we are left with false needs, where the economies provide us with materialist goods.
* He suggests that the only way forward in terms of equality in society, we should learn to use technological advances to ‘benefit citizens, instead of restricting them’.
The Frankfurt schools approach links to the neo-marxist beliefs that mass media is the new ‘opiate of the masses’ replacing Christianity as a controlling medium to insure the main-stay of a Capitalist regime.
The main argument against The Frankfurt schools approaches to culture is that the findings were only evident in their written theories, rather than quantity surveyed, the only argument to support the schools theories is the theory of Marxism and Neo-Marxism.
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