Page 137 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

of production (tools), and the relations of production constituted by the social
organization of labour, form a mode of production, which is a central category of
Marxism. The organization of a mode of production is not simply a matter of
114 coordinating objects, rather, it is inherently tied up with relations between people
which, while social, that is, cooperative and coordinated, are also matters of power
and conflict. Marxists regard social antagonisms, which are an intrinsic part of a
mode of production, as the motor of historical change. Further, given the priority
accorded to production, other aspects of human relations, for example,
consciousness, culture, and politics are said to be structured by economic relations.
For Marxism, history is not a smooth evolutionary process but is marked by
significant breaks and discontinuities. Thus, Marx discusses the transformations
from an ancient mode of production to a feudal mode of production and thence to
the capitalist mode of production. Different forms of material organization and
different social relations characterize a mode of production and each is superseded
by another as internal contradictions, particularly those of class conflict, lead to its
transformation and replacement.
The centrepiece of Marx’s work was an analysis of the dynamics of capitalism, a
mode of production premised on the private ownership of the means of production.
The fundamental class division of capitalism is between those who own the means
of production, the bourgeoisie, and those who, being a propertyless proletariat,
must sell their labour to survive. The central driving force of capitalism is the
endless search for profit that is achieved through the extraction of surplus value
from the workforce. The realization of surplus value in monetary form is achieved
by the selling of goods as commodities. By commodity fetishism Marx means that
the surface appearance of goods sold in the market place obscures the origins of
those commodities in an exploitative relationship. At the same time, the fact that
workers are faced with the products of their own labour that are now separated from
them means that they are alienated from the core human activity of labour and
indeed from themselves.
Capitalism is a dynamic system whose profit-driven mechanisms lead to the
continual revolutionizing of the means of production and the forging of new
markets. Indeed, for Marx this was its great merit in relation to feudalism. However,
the mechanisms of capitalism also lead to perennial crises and ultimately, or so
Marx argued, to its superseding by socialism. Notably, Marx hoped that capitalism
would be rift asunder by class conflict with the proletariat’s organizations of
defence, trade unions and political parties, overthrowing and replacing it with a
mode of production based on communal ownership, equitable distribution and
ultimately the end of class division.
For Marxism, culture is a material force tied into the socially organized
production of the conditions of human existence and refers to the forms assumed
by social existence under determinate historical conditions. This idea is expressed
in the metaphor of the base and the superstructure wherein the cultural
superstructure is shaped or determined by the organization of the economic mode
of production. This is a form of cultural materialism. Amongst the criticisms of
Marxism to have emerged are: