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KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MARXISM:Materialism, Class Struggle, Superstructure

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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
VU
LESSON 25
KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MARXISM
When we talk of Marxism we should also be clear about some important principles used in Marxism
very frequently and which are the basis of understanding Marxism. These principles will also be most
useful for the media analyst and for the understanding of different mass communication theories related
to Marxism.
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Materialism
·
Ideology
·
False consciousness
·
Class Conflict
Materialism
When we talk about Marxist thought being materialistic, we are using the term in a special way ­ not as
it is traditionally used in the United States, where it suggests a craving for money and the things that
money can buy. Let's first discuss this in the light of the quotation of crucial importance from Marx's
Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political economy (1964)
"The mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political, and
spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being determines their consciousness."
So For Marxists, materialism refers to a conception of history and the way society organizes itself. He
suggests that beneath the superficial randomness of things there is a kind of inner logic at work.
Everything is shaped, ultimately, by the economic system of a society, which in subtle ways affects the
ideas that individuals have, ideas that are instrumental in determining the kinds of arrangements people
will make with one another, the institutions they well establish and so on.
Marx also wrote in The German Ideology `1964'
`The production of ideas of conception of consciousness is at first directly interwoven with the material
activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental
intercourse of men, appear at his stage as the direct efflux from their material behavior. The same
applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion,
metaphysics of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions , ideas etc- real, active men, as they
are conditioned by the definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse
corresponding to these, up to it furthest forms.'
This passage is important because it brings people into the picture and suggests that although
consciousness is socially produced it is always filtered through the minds of real, live active men and
women and is not something that works automatically. We have now, our first important insight ­
namely that our ideas are not entirely our own, that knowledge is social.
Economic Determination
Everything in life is determined by capital. The flow of money affects our relations with other persons,
with nature and with the world. Our thoughts and goals are the products of property structures. Every
cultural activity (culture in its widest sense) is reduced to a direct or indirect expression of some
preceding and controlling economic content. Men find themselves born in a process independent of their
will, they cannot control it, they can seek only to understand it and guide their actions accordingly.
Class Struggle
The dynamic of a society can only be understood in terms of a system where the dominant ideas are
formulated by the ruling class to secure its control over the working class. The latter, exploited by the
former, will eventually try to change this situation (through revolution), producing its own ideas as well
as its own industrial and political organization.
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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
VU
The base and the superstructure
Marx's deterministic economic conception divides the society in two layers or levels: base and
superstructure.
Base
The first, upon which everything grows, is composed by the material production, money, objects, the
relations of production and the stage of development of productive forces. The overt and tangible world
plus the economic relations that capital generates.
Superstructure
What Marx has described as the `base' represents the economic system found in a given society. This
economic system, or mode of production, influences, in profound and complicated ways, the
superstructure, or institutions and values, of a given society. Capitalism is not only an economic system
but also something that affects attitudes, values, personality types and culture in general. It means that
how ideas are transmitted to human beings- through the institutions, philosophical system, religious
organizations and arts found in a given society at a given time- that is, through the superstructure. So
superstructure are the institutions like legal system philosophy, religion, ideas (educational), Arts
(media), culture.
False Consciousness And Ideology
It is important for the ruling class to affect people's consciousness by giving them certain ideas; in this
way the wealthy, who benefit most from the social arrangements in a capitalist country maintain the
status quo. According to Marx the ideas of a given age are those promulgated and popularized by the
ruling class in its own interest.
Generally speaking, then the ideas people have are the ideas that the ruling class wants them to have.
The ruling class believes its own messages .This is because it has within itself a group of
conceptualizing ideologists who make it their chief source of livelihood to develop and perfect the
illusions of the class about itself. The ruling class according to this theory propagates an ideology that
justifies its status and makes it difficult for ordinary people to recognize. This notion that the masses of
people are being manipulated and exploited by the ruling class is one of the central arguments of
modern Marxist cultural analysis. According to Marxist approach the mass media and popular culture
are centrally important in the spread of false consciousness, in leading people to believe that `whatever
is, is right'.
Alienation
The term alienation suggests separation and distance; it contains within it the word alien, a stranger in a
society who has no connections with other, no ties, or liens of any sort. According to Marx , capitalism
may be able to produce goods and materialist abundance for large numbers of people but it necessarily
generates alienation, and all classes suffer from this, whether they recognize it or not.
There is a link between alienation and consciousness. People who live in a state of alienation suffer
from `false consciousness that takes the form of the ideology that dominates their thinking ' Besides this
, alienation may be said to unconscious, in that people do not recognize that they are in fact alienated.
One reason for this is that alienation is so all ­pervasive that it is invisible and hard to take hold of.
Thus people become separated or estranged from their work, from friends, from themselves and from
life. A person's work, which is central to identity and sense of self, becomes separated from him or her
and ends up actually as a destructive force. Workers experience themselves as objects, things that are
acted upon, and not as subjects, active forces in the world. The things produce become `commodities,'
objects separated, somehow, from the workers' labor. As people become increasingly more alienated,
they become the prisoners of their alienated needs and end up, as Marx puts it, `the self-consciousness
and self-acting commodity.'
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Table of Contents:
  1. COMMUNICATION:Nature of communication, Transactional approach, Communication is symbolic:
  2. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (I):Positivistic Perspective, Critical Perspective
  3. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (II):Empirical problems, Conceptual problems
  4. FROM COMMUNICATION TO MASS COMMUNICATION MODELS:Channel
  5. NORMATIVE THEORIES:Authoritarian Theory, Libertarian Theory, Limitations
  6. HUTCHINS COMMISSION ON FREEDOM, CHICAGO SCHOOL & BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THEORY
  7. CIVIC JOURNALISM, DEVELOPMENT MEDIA THEORY & DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANT THEORY
  8. LIMITATIONS OF THE PRESS THEORY:Concentration and monopoly, Commercialism
  9. MCQUAIL’S FOUR KINDS OF THEORIES:Social scientific theory, Critical theory
  10. PROPAGANDA THEORIES:Origin of Propaganda, Engineering of Consent, Behaviorism
  11. PARADIGM SHIFT & TWO STEP FLOW OF INFORMATION
  12. MIDDLE RANGE THEORIES:Background, Functional Analysis Approach, Elite Pluralism
  13. KLAPPER’S PHENOMENSITIC THEORY:Klapper’s Generalizations, Criticism
  14. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY:Innovators, Early adopters
  15. CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM:Catharsis Social learning Social cognitive theory
  16. SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEROY:Symbolizing Capacity, MODELLING
  17. MODELING FROM MASS MEDIA:Recent research, Summary, PRIMING EFFECTS
  18. PRIMING EFFECT:Conceptual Roots, Perceived meaning, Percieved justifiability
  19. CULTIVATION OF PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY:History
  20. SYSTEMS THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION PROCESSES:System
  21. EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL & CULTURAL THEORIES OF MASS COMMUNICATION
  22. REVISION:Positivistic perspective, Interpretive Perspective, Inductive approach
  23. CRITICAL THEORIES & ROLE OF MASS COMMUNICATION IN A SOCIETY -THE MEDIATION OF SOCIAL RELATIONS
  24. ROLE OF MASS MEDIA IN SOCIAL ORDER & MARXIST THEORY:Positive View
  25. KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MARXISM:Materialism, Class Struggle, Superstructure
  26. CONSUMER SOCIETY:Role of mass media in alienation, Summary of Marxism
  27. COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE:Neo Marxism, Characteristics of Culture
  28. HEGEMONY:What exactly is the meaning of "hegemony"?
  29. CULTURE INDUSTRY:Gramscianism on Communications Matters
  30. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY I:Internationalization, Vertical Integration
  31. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY II:Diversification, Instrumental
  32. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY III:Criticism, Power of Advertising
  33. AGENDA SETTING THEORY:A change in thinking, First empirical test
  34. FRAMING & SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Spiral of Silence, Assessing public opinion
  35. SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Fear of isolation, Assessing public opinion, Micro-level
  36. MARSHALL MCLUHAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE AND MASSAGE
  37. KNOWLEDGE GAP THEORY:Criticism on Marshal McLuhan
  38. MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY:Media System Dependency Theory
  39. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY:Methods
  40. RECEPTION THEORY
  41. FRAMING AND FRAME ANALYSIS:Information Processing Theory, Summing up
  42. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION I:Communication Science, Direct channels
  43. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION II:Communication Maxims, Emotions
  44. GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA:Mediated Communication, Post Modernism
  45. REVISION:Microscopic Theories, Mediation of Social Relations