Page 113 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

102 Chapter Three

declined to mention, however, was that Williams and Hoggart (and Adorno
for that matter) fretted that in the contemporary era commercialized cultural
products have largely displaced authentic, “self-produced” culture, and that
both E. P. Thompson and Richard Hoggart had related the de-skilling of labor
through the mechanization of industry to a “dulling” of the working class and
a concomitant decline in their ability to produce their own culture. In these
circumstances, the greater attention Garnham and other political economists
pay to commodified cultural outputs seems warranted, although that is cer-
tainly not to say that there is no place in cultural studies and in political econ-
omy for scholars to provide analyses of “self-produced” culture. In any event,
and this is the main point, rather than accusations flowing back and forth as
to what one side or the other is or is not doing, it would have been far more
productive to incorporate findings and analyses from both areas (production
and consumption; self-produced and commercial culture) to constitute (re-
constitute) an integrated field.

Base/Superstructure (Economic Determinism)
Grossberg, Hall, and McRobbie denounced political economy for its purport-
edly hard economic determinism, and in particular for not acknowledging
that audiences have interpretive capabilities and hence are not meekly subject
to dominant ideology. They charged, moreover, that political economy’s al-
legedly hard economic determinism is a regrettable but marked departure
from the position staked out by Williams and Hoggart, who they noted insis-
tently disassociated themselves from the base/superstructure formula.
In chapter 2, I recounted in some detail Williams’ stance on determinisms
generally and on base/superstructure in particular. McRobbie, Hall, and
Grossberg were certainly correct in noting that Williams and other founders
of British cultural studies rejected the base/superstructure model as a general
theory. What McRobbie and Hall neglected to mention, however, is that
Williams continuously expressed disgust at the inordinate influence (“deter-
minism,” in the softer sense of guiding, directing, impacting) that economic
affairs (the base) have on culture (the superstructure) in contemporary capi-
talist society, a disdain shared by Hoggart (and, for that matter, Adorno).
These writers were univocal in contrasting the authentic working class culture
as it arose and was practiced, with commercialized, centrally produced pop-
ular culture that was displacing and obliterating it.
Garnham’s position on this issue is largely in agreement with that of the
founders of cultural studies. Garnham acknowledged agency on the part of
message recipients, but insisted that agency is exercised only within a politi-
cal-economic context of concentrated power; Williams similarly emphasized