Quick Summary: Marxism vs Communism We’ll begin by very briefly discussing the core tenets of Marxist thought as outlined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Like psychoanalysis, Marxist thought encompasses a very broad spectrum of ideas and orientations, so we’ve chosen a particular subset that really resonates with fairy tales and with literary texts in general.
To quickly summarize:
• Marxism is a system of analysis based on a particular theory of history and economics
• Communism is an idealized political model
• Marxism and Communism are not synonymous, particularly from a literary perspective
When we think of Communism, we think of course of the Communist states of the 20th century, most notably the Soviet Union People’s Republic of China . And while it’s true that these political models we label Communism were based very heavily on Marxist thought, leaders like Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong added some of their own innovations to the mix. This is because they were trying to realize this idealized political model, whereas Marxism at its core is really more of a theory about history and economics, specifically how the two are strongly interrelated.
Any attempt to provide a concise account of Marxism runs the risk-and perhaps faces the inevitable outcome----of inaccuracy. This is partly due to the fact that there is no single correct interpretation of Karl Marx's work, and that the actual locus of application of these interpretations is multiple as well, ranging from the economic to the cultural spheres (and it is the latter that concerns us in Russian Myths and Legends course).
To begin with the ideas of Karl Marx is to begin with one of the main philosophical devices used and refined by the German thinker Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, that of the dialectic. A crude example of Hegel's method would run something like this: he would look at opposing value systems of different societies, for example, and state that system a (or thesis) would, with time, interact with system b (antithesis) and produce a new value system c (synthesis) which would also give rise to its own opposite, and the process would begin again. Furthermore, such historical development was not a matter of chance and happenstance; rather, the path of history was determined by specific laws, and it was nothing less than the Universal Spirit that lay at the end of this thesis-antithesis-synthesis process. More important for our purposes is not Hegel's understanding of history and its end, but, rather, what Karl Marx was to make of this specific method of development.
With this "dialectic" in mind, perhaps a good place to start with Marxism would be with Marx's view of humans themselves. What separates people from other animals is our ability to manipulate our environment to produce those things that satisfy our needs and wants. A byproduct of this ability to produce, however, is a question of ownership, not just of the finished product, but also of the tools, materials, and processes that go into making a finished good. That is, what is at stake is the ownership of the means of production.
Marx's understanding of history is based on the idea that class conflict has been the engine of all major events in the past. Harnessing Hegel's dialectic methodology, Marx stripped away any idealism with which it may once have been clothed and put in its place a hard materialist understanding. From this perspective, the world consists of things, and we have to negotiate and manipulate our physical environment even for basic survival. Indeed, ideas themselves-and in many cases needs, and certainly wants-are only responses to our material surroundings and byproducts of our attempts to manipulate our world. This is due to the fact that every society has, as its fundamental organizing principle, some specific economic system. And it is from this economic core that all other social institutions and phenomena flow-the political institutions, the policing and justice systems, that society's cultural expression-all of this "superstructure" is a result of a hard economic "base."
Tying this "base-superstructure" model with the question of ownership of the means of production, we can look at history as the constant struggle by those who possess these means of production-be it land, crude machinery or entire factories-and those who simply work with these means to produce. These two classes have been under differing guises over the centuriesthe Master/Slave relationship that marked ancient Athens, for example; the Nob le/Serf dyad that distinguished Europe's Middle Ages; the bourgeoisie (factory owners)/ proletariat (workers who have only their labor to sell) relationship that characterized Marx's own epoch. Each historical era had been marked by a specific economic base, with a resulting social superstructure, and as history progressed, driven by class conflict, the dialect aspect-newer economic foundationsarose with newer cultural expressions. And with each new economic system came increased productivity, but with a paradox-those who sold their labor could hardly afford the very goods that they were producing. By the time capitalism was in full swing, the great masses-the laborers, or proletariat-were in a position where long and hard hours at the factory barely put the bread on the table, much less afforded any luxury or even the products they themselves were manufacturing, despite the fact that capitalism's production efficiency was greater than any economic system ever seen.
The state and its attending political system, which were only byproducts of the capitalist economic base, were certainly in no hurry to intervene on behalf of the laborer, save to prevent widespread revolt-maybe actually revolution This is because the state and its political system, as elements of the superstructure, were created by and worked for the bourgeois, the owners of the means of production, and as a result, workplace hours, safety, and worker age limitations were unregulated. Yet nonetheless, Marx said, revolution would indeed come, as the contradictions built into the capitalist system would become so great that the laborer's simple survival would demand it. And the high degree of efficiency and productivity would allow for the initial "dictatorship of the proletariat" to continue to meet society's material needs until "communism" itself-Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen ("Each according to his ability, each according to his needs.") could emerge.
At this point, those elements of the superstructure that had operated for the advantage of the bourgeoisie-the police, the army, in short, the state itself-would "wither away," as each person in society would know her or his "true interests," and no longer be subject to a "false consciousness" that had been instilled in the population via a multitude of superstructural means, e.g., the mass media and the entertainment industry.
Marked by the traits of elegance, simplicity, and robustness, the predictive aspect of Marx's theory proved wrong-so far. The revolution didn't happen; indeed, it would seem the reverse has been under way for a decade or so now, with the former Soviet nations engaged in various degrees of capitalist economic reform and actual Marxist groups standing seemingly at the peripheries of less developed nations or relegated to negligible political discussion groups in the First World.
Yet Marxism, in a western form, has gained a high degree of credibility over the last few decades, especially in the form of cultural criticism and the issue of society's true interests versus those interests presented by the superstructure. One of the major directions taken by Western Marxism has been well-represented by the Frankfurt School and its concern and criticism of the cultural industry.
"The culture industry claims to serve the consumers' needs for entertainment, but conceals the way it standardizes these needs, manipulating them to conform to what it produces." The Frankfurt School regarded all forms of popular culture as being one monolithic Culture Industry. They produce only a very narrow, standardized product. Variations in consumer income and taste are carefully monitored and categorized, and slight variations are applied to this product to make it salable to all demographics. But at its core, the product doesn't change; after all, we've all seen the same summer blockbuster manifest itself sixteen different ways over fifteen different summers. This standardization is a way to manipulate consumers. We all learn to want the same thing, in varying degrees, and, luckily enough, it's the same thing that the Culture Industry is providing. Sheep, think of sheep. But why would the Culture Industry want to manipulate us like this, aside, of course, from the billions and billions of dollars it makes under this system?
Well, according to the Frankfurt School, the Culture Industry is designed to be a constant distraction for the working class. It fills our leisure time constantly-and really, it's true; you never do get a break from pop culture. It's literally everywhere you go, no matter what you're doing, and it says the same thing, more or less, over and over and over again. By keeping us completely preoccupied with things like "The Justified and Stripped Tour" and "The Apprentice", the Culture Industry effectively prevents us from critiquing and rejecting the market economy it serves. That is, we're all so busy buying, watching, and listening to crap that we never look up long enough to ask, "Hey, why is more than half of the wealth in America concentrated in the top 1 % of Americans' hands?" or other such questions. Since the Culture Industry is overseen by the same people and companies that benefit from the capitalist system that is exploiting us, it's happy to distract us from that exploitation. And we're happy to go along with it, since we think we're being entertained, and buying what we want to buy, because of the way the Culture Industry has carefully packaged and marketed its product for and to us.