Neo-Marxism

Neo-Marxism: Ideology, Class, and the Culture Industry

•Althusser, "Letter on Art" and “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses” (NATC, 1476-1509)
•Jameson, excerpt from The Political Unconscious and “Postmodernism and
Consumer Society” (NATC, 1932-1975)
•Horkheimer and Adorno, excerpt from Dialectic of Enlightenment (NATC,
1220-40)

So we’ve just discussed Marxism and are now moving on to Neo-Marxism, which sounds pretty similar. So what exactly is the difference then? The fundamental difference between classical Marxism and Neo-Marxism is in classical Marxism’s focus on economic determinism differentiating from Neo-Marxism’s broader consideration of social and intellectual influences that perpetuate oppression of the working-class. Essentially this twentieth-century approach attempts to extend Marxist theory by incorporating critical theory, psychoanalysis or Existentialism. This new emergence on Marxism was the foundation of Neo-Marxist theory. Critics began to argue that Marx saw the economic sector as preeminent, ignoring the dialectical processes such as politics, religion, and mass-media. Neo-Marxists argued that the disregarded processes could not be reduced to something determined purely by the economy.

One Neo-Marxist critic, Louis Althusser, set out to solve how a society was able to reproduce its basic social relations, thereby ensuring its continued existence, considering “ideological state apparatuses, interpellations, imaginary relations, and overdetermination” (1477). Althusser believed that “one tactically learns the practice of obedience to authority, for dominant social order would not survive if it relied only on force” (1477). The proposal of these new adaptations to Marxist theory suggest that while Marx’s concept was restricted to the economic system, these concepts relative to all systems of society (state, law and economic) provided the social structures for one’s ‘objective character.’

Clearly, neo-Marxism was a relaxation of the economic determinism and positivism of
classical Marxist theories. It incorporated other sociological views developed after the Marx to provide a more holistic view of social class structures and dynamics with a focus more on society than the economic system alone. Critics such as Louis Althusser, Horkheimer, Adorno and Jameson offer views on the importance of both social and intellectual forces on the emergences of class-consciousness and provide insight into the dialectical process which explains why capitalism remains so pervasive in light of the people’s awareness or unawareness of their oppression.