Marxist Media Theory by Gabor Bohus Course: American Media Today 15.11.2007.

Marxist Media Theory

by Gabor Bohus

Course: American Media Today

15.11.2007

www.bohus.hu/marxism

Main points

• Karl Marx• Social theory• The individual(s)• Ideology• Mass media• Critics• Frankfurt school vs. Birmingham school

and common traits

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• The Capital• The Communist

Manifesto (In collaboration with Engels)

Society: Classes

Society: Key terms

• Dominant class (Bourgeoisie)

• Means of Production• Working Class

(Proletariat)• Interest• Class Conflicts• Historical Materialism

Society: Interests

• What are the interests of the two classes?

Capitalist Class: Maximize profit and reduce labor costs Working class: Maximize wages; improve working conditions

What do they do to reach their goals?

Capitalists: they try to keep the working class under control and maintain their powerProletariat: they want to get rid of the dehumanizing living conditions and alienation by way of revolution

Historical Materialism 1•

Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class

1. Tribal society (kind of primitive communism of prehistoric times)No classes. Human beings collectively work on nature to produce their means to live. 2. Ancient society Classes: slave-owners as the ruling class and the class of slaves 3. Feudalism Classes: land-owners and serfs 4. Capitalism Classes: capitalist and proletariat

Historical materialism 2

• Just as the bourgeoise (whose living depends on the control of capital or technology) took power from the noble class (whose wealth was based on control over land), the present system of capitalism will fall and the proletariat will take over.

The individual

Key terms:

• Object• Subject• Mechanism of

interpellation

Mechanism of interpellation• Althusser: Our identities are produced through

`Ideological State Apparatuses‘:

- the educational ISA - the family ISA - the legal ISA - the political ISA - the trade union ISA - the communications ISA (the mass media) - the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, entertaintment etc. )

• ISAs operate alongside the Repressive State Apparatus of courts, police, military

Subject (media context)

Reader Listener Viewer

Ideolgy

Key terms:

• Dominant ideology

• False consciousness

Ideology

• In Marxian literature: used in negative sense; it refers to a dominant ideology which supports the interests of the dominant class.

• False consciousness: created by ideology and makes the individual unable to recognise his or her real interests

Morpheus: „It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.“Neo: What truth?Morpheus: „That you are a slave, Neo. Like everybody else, you were born into bondage…born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.“

Mass media as source of ideology

• Media Theory:

The dominant class not only owns the means of material production, but also controls the production of the society's dominant ideas and values. ( Dominant ideology )

Why?

To maintain their power (ideological legitimation of the capitalist system) Media serves as a vehicle of ideology

Media is like a factory ( Culture Industry ) to churn out mass products

Properties of mass products:

• - commodificaton• - standardization• - massification

Critics

• 1. Marxist media theory vs Liberal pluralism

Marxists: Media as a device to spread the ideology of the dominant social class

• Liberal Pluralists: There is no all-time dominant class but society as a mass of competing interest groups with shifting power relations.

Critics

• 2. Adorno and Horkheimer - Dialectic of Enlightment

They express little faith in the revolutionary potential of the proletariat, largely because capitalist modernity has succeeded in dominating and mystifying the individual via advertising, mass communications media and new forms of social control; indeed the term 'proletariat' is generally replaced by 'masses' in their work.

Critics• 3. Antonio Gramsci

• He rejected economism - ideology is independent from economic determinism.

• Hegemony: not only political and economical control but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common' and 'natural'

• Ideological Struggle: The media is constantly losing and re-winning the consent of the audience.

Frankfurt school• Representatives: Theodor Adorno , Max Horkheimer ,

Herbert Marcuse , Erich Fromm , Jürgen Habermas• Starting point (in line with Marx):

• The dominant class in society not only owns the means of material production, but also controls the production of society's dominant ideas and values. (> Dominant ideology)

BUT Frankfurt School theorists recognised:

- Culture industries provide ideological legitimation of existing capitalist societies. - The importance of cultural industries in the process of socialisation

Birmingham school• Representatives: Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams,

Dick Hebdige , Angela McRobbie

• - Political struggle: There is no all-time dominant class but society as a mass of competing interest groups with shifting power relations.

• -There is no high and low culture distinction: all forms of culture are worthy of scrutiny and criticism.

• - Focus on the interplay of representations and ideologies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture

Both Frankfurt and Birmingham school sees

• Ideology as central to cultural studies• Culture as a mode of ideological

reproduction and hegemony; cultural forms help to shape the modes of thought and behavior that induce individuals to adapt to the social conditions of capitalist societies.

• Culture as a form of resistance to capitalist modernity