Lecture 12Marxism: Ideology and

domination

Marx on ideology

• The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.

• It controls both the means of material production and mental production.

• Ideology works to conceal the real relations of production

Gramsci and hegemony.

• The ruling class dominates symbolic production through control over the ideological sectors of society (culture, religion, education, the media).

• This explains the institutional basis of false-consciousness.

• Awareness of this can only be achieved with the help of an external agent.

Althusser

• Capital-owning classes needed to reproduce the means of production, which includes a compliant labour force trained in ‘proper’ attitudes.

• The ‘ideological state apparatuses’: organised religion, formal education, the family, the legal system, the media, cultural production

James Scott

• Subordinate classes are able to penetrate prevailing ideology.

• ‘Hidden transcript’ and the necessity of routine, pragmatic submission to the ‘compulsion of economic relations’.

• The hegemonic ideology creates the contradictions that permits it to be criticised in its own terms.

The political economy of the village

• The hegemonic ideology developed from the agricultural production needs of the wealthy.

• The wealthy transformed a portion of their economic capital into status, prestige and social control.

• Self interested acts passed off as voluntary acts of generosity or charity.

• This was necessary where direct physical coercion was not possible

Ideology and domination• There are multiple ideologies• ‘Hidden transcript’: The poor only conform to the

hegemonic ideology in pubic but in private have radically different interpretations and beliefs.

• Domination defines what is realistic and makes certain aspirations impossible

• The poor and rich alike manipulate the dominant ideology/moral system to their advantage.

• The poor challenge the wealth with their own ideology.

Maurice Bloch - Merina Circumcision ritual

• Despite the fact that the uses to which the ritual was put changed, as did the economic and political context, the form of the ritual remained unchanged.

• This contradicts both the structural functionalist and Marxist analysis.

The ritual’s symbolism

• Transmission of the blessing of the ancestors onto the newest generation.

• Image of the past as an unchanging and conquering the present.

• Individuality, the product of this life, is opposed to a unity of the descent group which is achieved in death.

• Legitimates the authority of elders

Marxist analysis of the ritual

• Ideology which legitimates the authority of the elders.

• In capitalist societies workers must be convinced that creativity is principally the product of a supernatural force – capital.

• Ancestors are the equivalent to capital - seen as true source of creativity.

Bloch’s analysis

• Ideology is not created by power holders.

• Knowledge conveyed through ritual has an indirect relation to practical knowledge.

• The ritual does not replace the knowledge of this world by the transcendental one; it merely suggests the transcendental world, just over the horizon, after death.

• The emotional power of the ritual comes from the fact that everyone has the potential to become ancestors.

Key message of the ritual

• Creativity is not the product of human action but due to a transcendental force which is mediated by authority

• This fact legitimates, even demands, the violent conquest of inferiors by superiors who are closer to the transcendental ancestors.

The ritual and power

• Exists independent of the political groups that have made use of it.

• Those who had power were able to place themselves in the position of ‘elders’.

• The nature of ideology is that it carries at its core a simple general message, which can be recovered and used for almost any type of domination.

Marxist anthropology

• Looked at unveiling underlying material conditions

• Key concepts are domination and resistance, power and ideology

• Concerned with the relation between local communities and the global capitalist system

• Remains a fundamentally a ‘structural’ analysis.