Page 105 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

94 Chapter Two

101. Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”
(1973; reprint, Problems in Materialism and Culture, London: Verso, 1997), 32.
102. Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” 34. In Cul-
ture and Society, Williams had denied that Marx had actually proposed that the eco-
nomic base determines the cultural superstructure. There, Williams noted that in the
Preface to Critique of Political Economy, Marx stated, famously: “The mode of pro-
duction in 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 ex-
istence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.
. . . With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is
more or less rapidly transformed.” Further quoting from Marx, Williams, however,
immediately suggested that the relation between base and superstructure in Marx’s
view was not nearly as deterministic as the foregoing excerpt, in isolation, would in-
dicate. He also quoted Engels as follows: “According to the materialist conception of
history, the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduc-
tion in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore
somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only deter-
mining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase.”
Williams, Culture and Society, 258–60.
103. Williams, Marxism and Literature, 86–87.
104. Williams, “Literature and Sociology,” 29.
105. Williams, “Literature and Sociology,” 26.
106. Williams, “Literature and Sociology,” 28.
107. Williams, Communications, 19.
108. Williams, “Literature and Sociology,” 20.
109. In the first part of his contribution to the Colloquy, Murdock gave numerous
instances in which Williams afforded strong emphasis, even “deterministic” value, to
the impact of economic factors on culture. Murdock, “Across the Great Divide,” 90.
110. In The Year 2000, for instance, he remarked: “What we now have is a huge
sector of capitalist-sponsored art, displayed in the polished routines of crime, fraud,
intrigue, betrayal, and a glossy degradation of sexuality. Grace notes of diminishing
audibility are played at its edges. . . . The sector is supported by light intellectual for-
mulations of the ruling class ideas: ‘alienation’ as violent competition and impersonal
appetite; ‘dislocation’ as arbitrariness and human disability.” Williams, The Year
2000, 144.
111. Williams, The Year 2000, 16.
112. Williams, “Literature and Sociology,” 21.
113. Members of a mass, although receiving common media content, are not in
communication one with another.
114. Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” 40.
115. Williams, The Year 2000, 144.
116. Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 21.
117. Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 21.
118. Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 22.
119. Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form, 26.