Social Change - Marx on Base & Superstructure
"The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production."
"In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of reality--the real foundation, on which legal and political superstructures arise and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. 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."
What does this mean for efforts to create voluntaristic social change, and especially systematic or revolutionary social change?
posted by Juggleandhope @ 10:43 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Hi Professor. It is interesting to think about how the ruling class is imposing these ideas in our heads without us realizing them. In class, we talked about how adults basically run our lives. Little kids have to be in school and seniors have to be in homes. Before the class, I thought that this idea is normal. Children should be in school because they have to learn whatever they need to learn. Seniors shouldn't be working or running wild in the street because they might get hit by a car.
Now, I see school as a mental institution where subliminal messages are programed into our heads. Once children qualifies as adults, they use their learning and do the same thing to the little kids. After their usefulness are fully exhausted, they are put away until they wither away.
I think it is important to be aware of what your mind is accepting. Like in Feed, people are not aware of what their feeds are picking up. This led to them being zombies. We should question everything that comes into our head, and make sure the ruling class is not ruling your mind too.
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness." This is very true about our society. Whenever people meet each other, they always want to know what each other's jobs are. It seems that the job determines your worth. And being in that job influences your mentality, so that even you measure yourself using your job.
When applying these things to revolutions, they hinder the process. If a low wage worker is given a chance to rebell against the employer, the worker will have the ideas that the capitalist put in him, like "I am contributing to the good of the factory" or "my boss is a good man because he gives me money to feed my family". This will prevent the worker from rebelling against the employer and he is easier to exploit.
Since the low wage worker is viewed as so unimportant in our society, this mentality will also affect the worker's thinking. Even if the worker want to rebell, he will not have the determination to rebell because he will think that he is just a small guy. What can he do? All these techniques are the ruling class' attempt to stop a revolution.
Zhi,
Thank you for your comments. I think you've analyzed the notions of hegemony and false consciousness very well. These are important implications of the quotes from Marx that I've excerpted here.
I think that these quotes also convey another philosophical idea - one that contradicts much Western thinking. We are taught to believe that we are each a spirit/soul/consciousness floating around in a physical world. We think that the soul animates the consciousness which animates the body which participates in society. But Marx says the opposite is true. It is what is happening in the society that determines what our bodies do, and that is what determines what sort of consciousness we have. A factory worker will see himself (as you said) as a powerless part of a larger social machine. That is the obvious conclusion to draw from his experience. A prostitute will see her body as an object to be used and as not deserving of tenderness - again, a reasonable conclusion based on experience.
We might wish that they could just "see past" their roles and experience, but roles and experience are what they "see from".
The middle class will believe that "if you work hard you can succeed in our society" because that is largely true for them (in a limited way). Many poor Black kids will think that they should try to become well-dressed basketball stars - again, based on their experience. It is usually the experience that determines perspective rather than the perspective that determines experience.
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