2026-09-26
cultural
Marx & Marxism
The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Brussels
The Marxists said many things. They said that a culture must be finally interpreted in relation to its underlying system of production. … What I got from the Marxists … was a relationship between culture and production.
Relation, production → material conditions → how it relates to society
The way we relate to nature.
Stuart Hall: The Marxist bag of Tricks
The Marxists that came before him, were unable to grapple with the post-war period. Also the subsequent period of neoliberalizm.
- Commodities/commodofication
- Surplus value
- the mode of production
- capitalism
- labor & labor theory of value
- exploitation
- class
- ideology
- base / superstructure
Marx & Engels wrote in the 19th century, a different reality from the 20th, two world wars, industrialism.
“The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodities.”
A commodity is a product that was produced with an aim to sell it on the market.
When something is made to be a commodity, its commodification. The baking of a cake rather than the cake itself is caught up in an economic interest. The cake itself has become commodified.
Surplus value → exploitation for profit, Marx asks: “where does the profit come from?”
To produce the biscuits, I sell biscuits, I get more chance to make more biscuits. How do I have more biscuits to make then? → surplus value here is Labor. Capitalism depends on those who are exploited. They take the surplus value.
“The mode of production of material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual procsses of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determiens their being, but, on the contrary, teir social being determines their consciousness.”
Geist
its about ideas, spirit is mind.
Why someone like Raymond Wliliams would be suspicious?
Workers themselves have no means to shape culture, they’re simply puppets of capitalism, excluded from cultural production.
The Frankfurt School (1923)
Associated with the institute for Social Research.
Tends to be seen as the “antithesis” to the Birmingham School & its democratic character
Foundational for “critical theory”. If we refer to critical theory, there are two distinct ways. Generational way → tradition that came out of The Frankfurt School.
General sense → Forms of reflective engagement with goals of various political movements. (its theory and its critical)
One of the early objectives of the Institute: determine why the economic oppression of workers did not lead to revolution.
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Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer
Englightment as mass desception
”In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster tirumphant. The program of the Enlgihtenment was the disenchantment of the world; the dissolutino of myths and the substitution of knowledge for fancy.
Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant. The program of the Enlightenment was the disenchantment of the world; the dissolution of myths and the substition of knolwedge for fancy.
smoke break I wont return sorry anon
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