Marxist Media Theory
by Gabor Bohus
Course: American Media
Today
15.11.2007
www.bohus.hu/marxism
Main points
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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 power
Proletariat: they want to get rid of the dehumanizing
living conditions and alienation by way of revolution
Historical Materialism 1
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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
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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:
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- 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