Marxism: Introduction

1. Marxism: Introduction

2. Basic Questions: • Is money (or the economic relations we are in) the most important determinant in our life? • our achievements; • our social relations; • our ideas; • literature and all the cultural products.

3. Marxism: Focuses • Dialectic Materialism -- Marx and Vulgar Marxism • Literature & Society: Marxist Views and Althusser’s theory of Ideology • Marxist Literary Critics: Jameson and Eagleton • Cultural Marxism (if time allows)

4. Marx: Basic Ideas • Critique of capitalism –Exploitation of laborers and Alienation of them from their productive process • (His Dialectic View of History: Revises Hegel’s view of history) • Dialectic Materialism • Social Structure: Base and Superstructure

5. Social Structure: Base and Superstructure • Base-- “The sum total of [the] relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation” • Superstructure--a legal and political superstructure, cultural institutions and forms of social consciousness. • Relations between -- The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general.

6. Marx’s Critique of Capitalism • Capitalism – caused by industrialism’s amplification of labor power with machines surplus values accumulation and expansion of capitals 2. Consequences: exploitation and alienation of laborers, exchange values over use values; reification(物化) and commodification of human relations 3. Marx’s argument: State-owned properties (example: clips of The Greatest Thinker: Marx)

7. Marx’s Critique of Capitalism (2) Example 2: “Rocking Horse Winner” I. Central questions: • Why does the family hear a voice? Why do toys here it, too? p. 296; 295 • How is the rocking horse used as a means of production? (horse race) How is the boy, laborer of the family? (luck vs. lucre; work + mysticism) • What role does the family (mother, uncle, Bassette) play in the exploitation of the boy to death? (Bassette’s and the uncle’s partnership 208-209, the mother’s birthday gift p. 301)

8. Marx’s Critique of Capitalism (3) Example 2: “Rocking Horse Winner” 2. --Related issues:fetishism –誰來問凱蒂貓是否也流了汗﹖ -- Commodities as system of signs. (e.g. “The Lesson”)

9. Dialectic Materialism: Marx’s Two major Statements • It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. • (In other words-- Consciousness does not determine life; life determines consciousness.)

10. Marx: Two major Statements (2) • The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various way; the point is to change it.

11. Social Structure: Base and Superstructure (2) • Other ways to describe their relations: • reflect, determine ultimately, cause, condition,sets the limit Vulgar Marxism’s reflectionism (presupposes a homology in social structure) Example: The Bicycle Thief

12. Social Structure: Base and Superstructure (3) • Ideology: the ruling ideas of the ruling class; imposed on the other classes. • Superstructure Parallel, reflect Base as foundation, center

13. Althusser’s idea of social formation; de-centered • Relative autonomy of the social levels and ultimate determination by the base