Marxism: Frankfurt School, Gramsci & Evolution since Marx

• The connection between critical theory and Marxism has been an ambiguous one.
• One perspective affirms Marxism as the critical theory of capitalist society, viewing it as a totalizing discourse.
• Another perspective sees critical theory as an evolving, postmodern tradition irreconcilable with Marxist thought due to its rejection of naturalism and necessity.
• Jacques Derrida argues that the boundary between Marxism and critical theory is overdrawn, suggesting deconstruction aligns with Marxist openings.
• Marxism has never been a unified position and continues to evolve to address its limitations as part of history.
• A focus on Marx's emphasis on context and power, the Frankfurt School's development of context-based critical theory, and discourse theory are key in the analysis of social reality.
• Theorists like Gramsci, Hall, Laclau, and Mouffe have contributed to Marxist and post-Marxist traditions.
• The work of Slavoj Žižek explores a return to Marx.

Marx

• Jacques Rancière (1999) suggests Marx's enduring legacy is revealing the truth about the lie of liberal capitalism.
• Marx exposed the capitalist economy as a power structure, not a 'free market'.
• This myth originates with Adam Smith and persists in neoliberal globalization discourse.
• This myth affirms that the free market is the universal formula for achieving a rational, innovative, and harmonious social order.
• According to Marx, capitalism revolves around class oppression and an antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
• The bourgeoisie monopolizes the means of production, while the proletariat lacks access and must sell their labor for wages.
• The proletariat work is only paid only a fraction of the revenue generated by the workers' end product with the difference known as 'surplus value' which becomes the source of profit for capitalists.
• Capitalism utilizes ‘theft' of surplus value leading to wage slavery.
• Capitalism, despite its progress, is ultimately restricted because it tends towards overproduction, reducing profit margins, and undermining property relations.
• Transnational corporations respond by increasing monopolization to stifle competition and protect profits.
• There is an inherent tension between innovation and capitalism itself.
• Capitalism overproduces and seeks to manage demand by artificially inducing scarcity to maintain and inflate demand.
• The modern age aims towards cosmopolitanism and participation in markets regardless of background.
• Capitalism rejects previous social relations but only reinforces class exploitation.
• Marx analyzes socio-economic relations regarding social context of the entire experience of identity - ‘the human essence...is the ensemble of social relations'.
• Human identity is itself a product of history against the liberal thought of 'human nature', 'rational actor' etc.
• The modern economy is a human construction resulting from historical conditions

Marx's Central Points

• Capitalism cannot resolve class exploitation, which is fundamental to its existence.
• Capitalism lacks a rational or objective ground; its consistency is artificially generated through power relations.
• The idea of grounding without a final ground became a keystone of philosophical thought.
• A deterministic logic suggests history, through historical materialism, will reach ultimate resolution with communism which will be the supreme epoch of human existence where further social transformation will take place because there are no antagonisms under communism to drive social change.
• Marx remains within Enlightenment philosophy and the myth of a reachable ground.
• Marx maintains workers have objective interests in communism and will inevitably rise against capitalist overlords.
• There is no absolute guarantee that the 'ensemble of social relations' can guarantee a revolution.
• By the early twentieth century workers were far more interested in trade unionism and social democratic (party) politics than revolutionary communism.
• Marx's view of inevitable revolution held credibility under of nineteenth-century capitalism before social reform/welfarism and trade union activity.
• Such tensions in Marx's thought have not led to stagnation but rather have been the source of an ongoing history of creative intellectual development.
• Such tensions have led to a more mobilizing force and/or ideology within the social imagination.
• New perspectives attempt to incorporate context and historicity in theoretical endeavor and application.

The Frankfurt School

• Coined the term critical theory.
• Founded in 1923 at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt.
• It was essentially a Marxist think-tank that comprised Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, among others.
• The school moved to Geneva during World War II, then returned to Frankfurt in 1950.
• The purpose was to analyze systematically the central features of contemporary capitalist society.
• The school was a reaction to the 'scientific Marxism' development by the Second International under the lead of Friedrich Engels.
• For the latter, Marxist theory had what the underlying laws of historical development were.
• Early Marxist thinkers waited for these laws to manifest revolutionary effects.
• The collapse of capitalism was simply a matter of time - it's passive conception of politics in the early European fascism.
• The Frankfurt School affirmed that theory should be grounded in social reality.
• They looked to apply theoretical tools to the existing circumstances with political intervention.

How Do They Differ?

• Horkheimer argued that critical theory acts as a ‘force within [that situation] to stimulate change'.
• The school concerned itself with three main lines of intellectual development: historical context, engagement with contemporary capitalism's cultural forms, and analysis of new types of social subjectivity.
• A central assertion was that society was moving to a new level of ideological sophistication through the ‘culture industry' known as the new 'opium of the masses'.
• The emerging context was was one that compromised independent art forms compromised by mass culture.
• The mass culture basic tendency is towards the banal and mediocre, which is insidiously political.
• Cultural enterprises and artifacts are managed for consumption purposes.
• There is a self-perpetuating milieu of docility from Mainstream theatre, radio, television, internet etc.
• Media that aspires to neutral can be ideological that naturalize the power configuration of the capitalist status quo.
• The 'to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric' is the reflectoin of cultural practice what ignores human atrocities and socio-economic systems.
• A critique that that the way in which people are more exercised about the outcome of Big Brother and X-Factor.
• The focused on cultural reflexivity of contemporary capitalism, where jazz can become a paradigmatic expression.
• It appears spontaneously however is always fake structured on musical motifs, where improvisaton is really many variations on a theme.
• Capitalism is a system that seemingly allows for all kinds of individual expression seeming all kinds of individual expression is seemingly allowing an a mono-theistic attachment to the system.
• A conformism produces what leads to individualistic ‘improvisation' are accommodated on the basis of an underlying collectivist consumer culture.
• Contemporary subjectivy is thus one of perverse collaboration using survival strategy where accepted within a group means won't be victimized.
• Alluding to willingness in people to inscribe themselves within the very system oppresses them.
• The emphasis on those who have ‘made it': the rags-to-riches millionaire, the lottery winner, the pop/sports idols etc.
• These are just examples of what we can refer to as a Stockholm syndrome-like effect.

Political Culture and Resistance

• A central objective was finding ways of resisting the cultural manipulations of late capitalism.
• Benjamin admired Brecht's development of political critique demonstrating all art is a political venture, where ultimate responsibility is something Other to itself.
• As for Brecht, bourgeois culture attempts to dissipate our creative potential for critique and contestation.
• Bourgeois culture attempts to repress any awareness that reality a political is construction where the audience become mere spectators who present the existing power structure.
• Brecht avoids any easy dramatic solutions who task which is to destabilize the audience/auteur relationship to achieve freedom through active participation
• Adorno developed a similar argument in respect of the musical styles of Stravinsky and Schoenberg.
• Stravinsky's compositions can be characterized the mood music where type of muzak that stupefies.
• Schoenberg's music refuses the conventional harmonious in favour of an ‘atonal' using the twelve-tone developing a system musical expression that is uncompromising.
• Implicit in Schoenberg is a displacement of traditional music from pre-given forms where is comprises diverse and unique expression.
• Figures such as Brecht and Schoenberg acted as exemplars resistance against dominant forms of bourgeois allowing opposition.
• The viewed that people shaken view capitalism is culturally that reinforces horizon of reality
• The emphasis was on the reconceptualized nature of contestation where can different be constructed of a more resistance of
• The emphasized high culture – as opposed mass progressive culture which effect that the legacy can
• The School has in for effect the in a main legacy in and the in
• Legcy resulted from is views concerning

Negative Perspectives

• The very strength of the School's interventions has become a major weakness.
• The is has with to and of especially which configuration in the which has over
• The is and in with elements in has over and and in for has has with over which has over
• They feel it results in and is has and where is be in the position where is be position to
• The world, is means in for
• Gramsci feels the over and and in in the

Explore Marxism's evolution with insights from the Frankfurt School and Gramsci. Understand the limitations of classical Marxism, the Frankfurt School's unique approach, and Gramsci's views on knowledge, society, and identity. Discover how Marxism has changed since Marx's time.