Marxism

Conflict Theory
of Society and International Relations
 Marxist Historical Materialism
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence,
but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their
consciousness.
(Marx: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)

The Base-Superstructure Model

The economic base • Productive forces (Means of production)
• Relations of production
The superstructure • Institutions of society
• To each stage in the development of the productive forces
corresponds a certain set of production relations.
• As the means of production develop through technological
advancement, previous relations of production become
outmoded and inhibit the further development of the means
of production
• Social change – political evolution

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The development of the productive forces brings into
existence
(a) different production relations
(b) different forms of class society

● Class – a group of people in society with the same

relationship to the means of production;

● The class that owns and controls the means of production

rules society;

● Ownership on the means of production enables the ruling

class to force the oppressed or laboring class to toil in the
rulers’ interests;

● The laboring class is forced to produce a surplus which the

ruling class lives off.

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 The history of European society had progressed through the
following stages or modes of production. Each mode of
production had its own economic system which gave rise to
a system of class stratification based around ownership of
the means of production.
● Primitive communism or tribal ownership
● Slave society, ownership through subjugation
● Feudalism, ownership conferred by military conquest
and allegiance
● Capitalism, ownership through investment and market-
based success
● Modern Communism
Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is
displaced by a new emerging class. Eventually the mode of
production would give way to Communism.
Communism is a return to the collective ownership of pre-
historical/aboriginal society, but taking place on a much grander
scale. Ownership of the means of production is distributed evenly
among all individuals directly involved in the utilization of the
productive mechanism. The goal is the elimination of class.
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 Marx’s commitment to social emancipation

Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;

the point, however, is to change it (Thesis of Feuerbach)

Marx: ● The economic mode of production determines broader

social and political relations as well as relations among states
● Exploitative system―the source of all wars
Lenin: Imperialism―the Highest Stage of Capitalism
● The character of capitalism has changed;
● Capitalism has entered its highest and final stage of
development―monopoly capitalism (imperialism);
● A two-tier structure in the world economy has been created:
the core countries exploiting the periphery;
● All politics (domestic and international) takes place within
the framework of a capitalist world economy;
● It is the location of states and classes within the structure of
the capitalist world economy that determines patterns of
interaction and domination between them
Immanuel Wallerstein: World System Theory
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● Leninism, Soviet & East European Communism
(Stalinism – Bolshevism – dialectical materialism)

● West European Marxism (lesser-known independent tradition)

Austro-Marxists
Antonio Gramsci – Italian Philosopher / Sociologist (1891-1937)
Georg Lukacs – Hungarian Philosopher (1885-1971)
Henri Lefebvre – French Philosopher (1901-1991)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty – French philosopher (1908-1961)
Jean-Paul Sartre – French philosopher, writer (1905-1980)
Simone De Beauvoir – French writer (1908-1986)
Louis Althusser – Philosopher (1918-1980)
Émile Zola – French Writer (1840 -1902)
Anatole France – Nobel Prize for Literature (1844 -1924)
George Bernard Show – Irish play-writer (1856 -1950)
Shkolla e Frankfurtit

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● Communism vs. Nationalism – China, Cuba, North Korea

● Marxism’s Repudiation (embarrassment in Eastern Europe); In

the U.S., the term Marxist is often used to designate any type of
radical or critical approach influenced by Marxian concepts;
● Renewal of interest in Marx and Marxist theory in Western
Europe and the U.S. – The New Left (Western Marxism) ―
“Marxism Renaissance”?
The emergence of radical and critical theories (Ralph
Dahrendorf in West Germany and C. Wright Mills in the U.S.)

Marx misunderstood, misinterpreted

Two “things” Marx did not say:
(1) Socialism will succeed in poor countries;
(2) Socialism will prevail in one single country

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 Resurgence of Marxism
in American social science since the 1970s

Kew influences:
(1) The broadened influence of the journal Monthly Review
(founded in 1949), pioneering the application of Marxist
economic theory for an analysis of the United States and its
“imperial” role in world politics;
(2) Marxist historians who developed a critique of American
liberalism and proposed a class-base interpretation of
American history;
(3) The Hegelian Marxism and Critical Theory of the Frankfurt
School tradition;
(4) Structuralist Marxism of largely French inspiration that sought
to reestablish the credentials of Marx’s theory as a science of
society

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 Three basic types
of Marxist social theorists
All forms of Marxist though trace themselves to the general theoretical
approach of historical materialism as developed by Marx and Engels

(a) Those who work directly within the Marxist tradition (Marxist
social theory proper), but incorporate social science insights,
findings, and methodologies

(b) Thos who are Marxist-influenced in the sense of being

stimulated by its historical approach and the “big questions”
Marxists have posed but remain indifferent to whether the best
explanatory answers turn out to be Marxist;

(c) Those identifying with highly revisionist critical theories (some

time still in the name of Marxism) that seek to preserve the
emancipatory vision of the Marxist tradition despite
abandonment of the conventional notion of working class
revolution

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 Marxism and Ideology
Thanks to Freud, when a person thinks a thing, the thing he thinks is not
the thing he thinks he thinks but only the thing he thinks he thinks he
thinks.
And thanks to Marx, when a class thinks a thing, the thing it thinks is not
the thing it thinks it thinks but is instead a “false consciousness,” in a
word, ideology.

The term “ideology” was not coined by Marx. It originates from French
(idéologie) and it was first used by a psychologist, de Tracy, as meaning the
science of ideas.
In modern political and social theory the concept of ideology is one of the
most original and comprehensive concepts that Marx introduced. Marx and
Engels transformed the meaning of the term to an inverted, truncated,
distorted reflection of reality.
According to them, in ideologies men and their conditions appear upside
down like images on the lenses of a camera. Consequently, human beings
do not perceive themselves and the conditions in which they live exactly as
they are, but as projected on a screen.

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 Marx & Engels: Every ideology is a collection of illusions, mystifications,
which can be accounted for by reference to the historical reality it distorts
and transposes.
According to Marx, ideologies possess a number of characteristics:
(1) The starting point of all ideologies is objective reality, but a fragmentary, partial
reality. In its totality, social reality escapes the ideological consciousness because
the conditions of this consciousness are limited and limiting.
(2) Ideologies refract (rather than reflect) reality via pre-existing representations,
selected by the dominant groups (social classes) and acceptable to them.
Each class—bourgeois, proletarian or whatever—has its own ideology, one that
grows out of the class’s perception of its economic conditions and interest.
(3) Ideological representations, though distorted and distorting, tend and generally
claim to constitute a self-sufficient whole. It follows that every great ideology—
Marx and Engels referred to German ideology as a typical example—strives to
achieve universality.
(4) Since ideologies have a starting point and a foot-hold in objective reality they are
not altogether false. Marx makes a distinction between ideology, illusions, and lies,
on the one hand, and ideology, myths, and utopias, on the other.
(5) Ideologies, whatever form they may assume, serve as instruments of persuasion,
inducing the people to follow ideas like liberation from class exploitation, popular
sovereignty, etc., thus giving them a sense of goal and guiding their social action.
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Ideology might be seen not only as a programmatic and
rhetorical application of some grandiose philosophical system
(goals), but also as a strategic guidance for political action
(instruments).

This is certainly true with regard to revolutionary ideologies, first

of all, Marxism, as it was explicitly pronounced by Marx in his
famous Theses on Feuerbach:

The philosophers have only interpreted the

world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
To reiterate Lenin, ideologies tell individuals and groups involved
in revolutionary social change “what’s to be done”.

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Marx claimed that his work (Marxism) is a specific science,
related to the working class as a guide to socialist
revolution.

The distinction between Marxism as a “science” and as a

“critique” provides a way of describing Marxism, which
most commonly seeks to develop an objective, political
economic science of society rather than a critical
philosophy of praxis.

Such a project is inherently interdisciplinary and often

referred to under the heading of political economy, a term
designating Marxist-oriented research that may be carried
out in various disciplines: economics, political science,
history, and sociology.

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Anthony Giddens:
Marxism does not constitute a unified system so much
as diverse, though interrelated, modes of theorizing:
(a) Early writings outline a theory of philosophical critique,
an analysis of alienated labor, and a normative vision
of human emancipation;
(b) A general social theory in the form of historical
materialism (i.e., a theory of modes of production) as
an approach to historical evolution;
(c) A specific account of capitalism and its economic
contradictions deriving from this general theory;
(d) A political philosophy and theory of praxis concerned
with translating objective crisis tendencies in capitalism
that would bring about a new form of “socialist” and
eventually “communist” society.

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 Contemporary themes
in Marxist theory
• The primacy of economic and class factors (labor as the
only source of profit); class and class structure of modern
capitalist society;
• The priority of objective structures over subjectivity and
consciousness;
• The labor process and the new international division of
labor;
• The state and crisis theory
• Culture and ideology

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 A Crisis of Marxist Theory?
It has already collapsed in Eastern Europe where a
completely new tradition of social science is in the process
of formation;
As a philosophy of history, or a general theory of modes of
production, and more specifically as part of a particular
theory of working-class revolution, orthodox Marxist theory
has been seriously called into question, especially in
advanced capitalism;
As a specific theoretical approach that seeks to discover
the role of economic and class factors in social change,
Western Marxism will certainly endure, though its
significance will vary with the type of social formation and
topic examined;
This is not to say that economic and class factors or Marx
become irrelevant.

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 Three contemporary countertendencies:

(1) ANALYTICAL MARXISM – defined more by its methodological stance than its
substantive content; it differentiates itself from traditional Marxism in its
commitment to abstract theorizing (as opposed to more concrete historical
analysis), a search for rethinking the foundations by asking heretical questions,
and using “state-of-the-art” methods of analytical philosophy and “positivist”
science. Though these developments will undoubtedly have some impact on
social theory, they are too heterogeneous and revisionist to fall under the
heading of Marxist social theory in the sense used here;
(2) POSTRUCTURALISM as is evident in the work of some former Marxists who have
retreated from orthodox class concepts, arguing that a “post-Marxism” is
required that involves eliminating the notion of the working class as a “universal
class” and resurrecting a new conception of socialist democracy. This trend
has provoked important debates about the role of new social movements and
democratic processes, but has been treated with hostility by many neo-Marxist;
(3) CULTURAL MARXISM argues that a crucial feature of contemporary
“postmodern” societies is the distinctive role of the “cultural”. It puts particular
stress upon the contested and uneven character of cultural production in
capitalist societies (how dominated groups resist cultural domination in ways
that often become the basis of counter-hegemonic social movements).

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 Conflict Theory
Conflict theory explains social structure and social changes
by arguing that actors pursue their interests in conflict with
others and according to their resources for social
organization;

Conflict theory builds upon Marxist analysis of class

conflicts, but it is detached from any ideological
commitment to socialism;

Max Weber generalized conflict to the arenas of power and

status as well as economic class, and this
multideminational approach has become wide-spread
since the 1950s.

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 What constitutes
a conflict group?
MARX & ENGELS: A society’s conflicting interests derive from
the division between owners and nonowners of property;
RALF DAHRENDORF: Property is only one of the bases of power
conflict; and conflicts can be expected inside any type of
organization, including socialist ones. Conflicts are based
on power, dividing order-givers, who have an interest in
maintaining the status quo, from order-takers, who have an
interest in changing it;
MAX WEBER (and neoweberians): There are many types of
conflict, since every cultural group (such as ethnic,
religious, or intellectual groups) can also struggle for
advantage. Gender stratification produces yet another
dimension of conflict.

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 The process of conflict
• Conflicting interests remain latent until a group becomes mobilized for active
struggle;
• This occurs when its members (a) are physically concentrated, (b) share a
similar culture (c) have material resources for communicating among them;
• The higher social classes are more mobilized than lower classes, and most
struggles over power take place among different factions of the higher classes;
• Lower classes tend to be fragmented into localized groups and are most easily
mobilized when they are a homogenous ethnic or religious group
concentrated in a particular place;
• The better organized a conflict group is, the longer and more intensely it can
struggle; Such struggles become routinized, as in the case of labor unions or
political parties;
• Less organized conflict groups that become temporarily mobilized are more
likely to be violent but unable to sustain conflict;
• Conflict leads to a centralization of power within each group and motivate
groups to seek allies, thus polarizing society into two factions and creating
alliances among warring states.

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 Who wins what?
• Conflict shapes the distribution of power, wealth, and prestige in society.
• Concentration of wealth throughout history is determined by the interaction of
two factors: (a) the higher the production of economic surplus (beyond what is
necessary to keep people alive), the greater the potential for stratification;
(b) this surplus in turn is appropriated according to the distribution of power;
• The concentration of power is unequal to the extent that there is external
military threat to the society, or there is a high level of internal conflict among
social groups;
• Both external and internal conflicts tend to centralize power. If the state has
high resources relative to its enemies, conflict is the route by which it
concentrates power in its hands;
• Prestige is determined by the concentration of power and wealth. Groups that
have these resources can invest them in material possessions and in culture-
producing organizations (such as education, entertainment, and art), which
give them cultural domination
• PIERRE BOURDIEU: The realm of culture is stratified along the same lines as the
stratification of the surrounding society.

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