Monday, February 06, 2006
Question: Culture or economics?
Should Marxists focus on culture or economics? I'm pretty sure I first read this question in Perry Anderson's Considerations on Western Marxism, but it's worth repeating.
Posing the debate of 'culture or economics' immediately sparks a chorus of 'culture and economics': analyze the economic forms of culture, and the cultural forms of economics. Normally I'd agree, but after slogging through another reading on culture, I'm not so sure. Here's why.
Most Marxists today analyze culture, primarily. Why? The best answer I've heard is that capitalism itself has changed drastically. It operates diffusely, mobilizing different cultural mechanisms to maintain and obscure power. We have to understand those mechanisms to oppose them.
But in the past, to be a Marxist was to be a critical economist, to analyze the operations of capitalism in order to better arm the socialist movement. Have Marxists abandoned this ground because they've conquered it i.e. they know how the capitalist economy works, and now the point is to analyze its particular forms: films, music, 'texts', etc?
Still...
Or have we just ceded the field of political economy to the victors? By abandoning political economy to the Greenspans and Stiglitzes and Bonos of this world, are we declaring our own irrelevance? That analyzing power, and figuring out how to oppose it, is useless because, fundamentally, we know we're not going to win? That all we have left to do is speculate on the minutiae of cultural forms?
I ask because, in all the - admittedly few - writings on culture I've encountered, from Marxists and non-Marxists alike, everyone takes the permanence of capitalist power for granted. There are a few optimistic words tossed off about 'struggle' and 'resistances', and then it's on with the important stuff: the critique. Nobody asks 'what is to be done'. I used to think that's because everyone knew what was to be done: build the socialist movement (and that they were actively involved in doing it). But they don't even mention it. Maybe it doesn't come up, because they don't understand:
a) where capitalist power comes from: control of the means of production
b) the agent being controlled: the working class
c) the ideology of that domination: political economy
d) the theory of liberation opposing it: socialist revolution
A through D have many points of contention & debate. But no one's debating them. In 'cultural studies', even the Marxist variety, it's irrelevant. Is this because we've 'moved on', or have we given up?
Posing the debate of 'culture or economics' immediately sparks a chorus of 'culture and economics': analyze the economic forms of culture, and the cultural forms of economics. Normally I'd agree, but after slogging through another reading on culture, I'm not so sure. Here's why.
Most Marxists today analyze culture, primarily. Why? The best answer I've heard is that capitalism itself has changed drastically. It operates diffusely, mobilizing different cultural mechanisms to maintain and obscure power. We have to understand those mechanisms to oppose them.
But in the past, to be a Marxist was to be a critical economist, to analyze the operations of capitalism in order to better arm the socialist movement. Have Marxists abandoned this ground because they've conquered it i.e. they know how the capitalist economy works, and now the point is to analyze its particular forms: films, music, 'texts', etc?
Still...Or have we just ceded the field of political economy to the victors? By abandoning political economy to the Greenspans and Stiglitzes and Bonos of this world, are we declaring our own irrelevance? That analyzing power, and figuring out how to oppose it, is useless because, fundamentally, we know we're not going to win? That all we have left to do is speculate on the minutiae of cultural forms?
I ask because, in all the - admittedly few - writings on culture I've encountered, from Marxists and non-Marxists alike, everyone takes the permanence of capitalist power for granted. There are a few optimistic words tossed off about 'struggle' and 'resistances', and then it's on with the important stuff: the critique. Nobody asks 'what is to be done'. I used to think that's because everyone knew what was to be done: build the socialist movement (and that they were actively involved in doing it). But they don't even mention it. Maybe it doesn't come up, because they don't understand:
a) where capitalist power comes from: control of the means of production
b) the agent being controlled: the working class
c) the ideology of that domination: political economy
d) the theory of liberation opposing it: socialist revolution
A through D have many points of contention & debate. But no one's debating them. In 'cultural studies', even the Marxist variety, it's irrelevant. Is this because we've 'moved on', or have we given up?
