Gramsci'S Approach To Ideology Proposes That Oppressed

According to Marx, those who have power over society exert their control as a result of economic power and therefore determine the dominant ideologies within the superstructure model. Being the greater economical and cultural barrier, the structure provides the social world with norms, rules and beliefs pertaining to age, gender, class and one’s cultural identity. Within that structure it becomes apparent that inequalities restrict your agency in terms of nationality, geographical location, class etc. In agreement with Marx, the dominant views are generally the views of the superior class; the elite. One example

AQA AS/A SOCIOLOGY ESSAY: CRITICALLY EXAMINE MARXIST PERSPECTIVES ON TODAY’S SOCIETY Classical Marxism is a conflict structural theory which argues that, rather than society being based on value consensus as functionalists would contend, there is a conflict of interest between different groups (social classes) because of the unequal distribution of power and wealth. Marxists are also interested in the way in which social change can occur, particularly in sudden and revolutionary ways. However, there are differences between Marxists especially over the way which social change can come about. For example, humanistic Marxists like Gramsci give a greater role to the conscious decisions and actions of human beings than do structural Marxists

Through Gramsci’s work, he has put forth the foundation of how dominance over people have developed and how power is continuously held. Education and religion are used to influence the culture of the masses. Setting the tone of the dominant class, it controls systems that are developed and deems what is right or wrong. From these concepts, dominant classes are able to develop their own education, economy, political and media systems. Now that the framework of Gramsci’s work has been laid out, it is important to see examples of how hegemony has been used within dominant structures.

Thus dominated class of the dominant class most be inclined not to accept the social world as is and decide to rebel against it. Therefore Gramsci’s theory of the war of movement and War of Position can affect Social change in a Capitalist Society, while social change for Bourdieu, can be affected by civil society winning the class struggle over habitus vs. fields, equalizing categories of class and recognizing and fighting the symbolic violence of the dominant class.

According to Althusser, the two ways that the state helps to keep the bourgeoisie in power are through the repressive state apparatuses and the ideological state apparatuses. The repressive state apparatuses are a set of people who suppress the working class and when they do so, they support the bourgeoisie’s rules by using physical force. Examples of people who use this force are the police, courts, army and judiciary. The ideological state apparatuses are a set of people who control people’s ideas, values and beliefs in order to support the bourgeoisie’s rules. Examples of the ideological state apparatuses include the media, religion, family, the political system and the education system. Althusser views the education as an important ideological state apparatus. He argues that the education performs two functions. The first function is that the education reproduces class inequality by failing the successful generation of the working class students. The second function is that there are set ideas and beliefs that are produced as a result of class inequality which disguises its true cause. The function of ideology is to show the workers that they deserve their subordinate position in society and that they would be less likely to challenge capitalism if they accept that inequality is unequal. Other Marxists such as Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argue that capitalism requires those employees to do the jobs who have the right

Karl Marx was an influential German philosopher who is widely known for his work on capitalism. Class was a notable social category for Marx; he discussed ruling class ideas and explained how a person’s class was defined by their relation to the means of production. Specifically, in the “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” Marx (1859) writes, “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production” (pg. 20). In this essay, I will be discussing what Marx means when he refers to the relations of production as “independent of [men’s] will,” in that people enter into enforced, coercive relationships with owners of capital because of the economic system which structures society. The class relations are built upon a base and a superstructure which in turn shape the structure of society and its means of production. Consequently, the forms of social consciousness of society are predetermined and dictated by the ruling classes as people must enter into these relationships in order to survive, thus creating a dialectical economic superstructure.

ABSTRACT: This paper is a clarification and partial justification of a novel approach to the interpretation of Gramsci. My approach aims to avoid reductionism, intellectualism, and one-sidedness, as well as the traditional practice of conflating his political thought with his active political life. I focus on the political theory of the Prison Notebooks and compare it with that of Gaetano Mosca. I regard Mosca as a classic exponent of democratic elitism, according to which elitism and democracy are not opposed to each other but are rather mutually interdependent. Placing Gramsci in the same tradition, my documentation involves four key points. First, the Notebooks contain an explicit

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian communist scholar, journalist, and activist who served as a deputy member of the Italian Parliament, representing the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he helped to establish in 1923. In the wake of the triumph of Mussolini and the Italian fascists in 1926, Gramsci was sentenced to 20 years in prison in order to prevent his thought from spreading (Crehan 2003:17). From 1926 to 1937, when he was released from prison only to die one week later, Gramsci composed thirty-two notebooks (over 2,350 printed pages) which has come to be regarded as his greatest work and an unfinished classic of Marxist thought (Simon 1991; Crehan 2002). The fact that he composed these great works while he was in prison and during a time of political turmoil that provoked him has particularly confounding effects on the reader. First, these notebooks were hand written in prison and he frequently revisits or elaborates on earlier notes throughout the journals. They are therefore not organized under coherent headings to facilitate a systematic interpretation of his thoughts. Some editors organize the notes under their own themes, and Gramsci himself at times inserts instructions that one passage should be tied to another, but some imposed order is always inevitable. Second, Gramsci, though in prison, was very much informed, and

Althusser (1970) forwarded the idea of “Ideological State Apparatuses” that function through ideology. He identified these various ISAs as religious, educational, family, legal, political (includes political system and parties), trade unions, communications (media), and cultural (literature, sports etc). These ISAs represses working class mobilization not through violence but through ideology. Cleaver failed to see that working class “self-valorization” is hindered by equally powerful forces: the Ideological State Apparatuses (Althusser 1970). In different countries working class are repressed not only in the field of the traditional State apparatuses (repressive) like “the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons etc” that ‘functions by violence’ but also by Ideological State Apparatuses which ‘functions by ideology’ (Althusser 1970). This includes culture, religion (the Churches), educational system, trade unions, media, etc that provides significant diversion of working class political consciousness which stops them to wield political power to change the system where they are

The Althusserian and Gramscian schools of thought offer contradistinctive views about the ideology that is at play in the society. Althusser staunchly advocates that ideology is the unconscious, ‘practico-social’ knowledge that reinforces the existing social order. While Athusser is more rigid in his approach about the working of ideology, by significantly downplaying the role of individualistic thinking, Gramsci stresses on the ability of individuals to change society by blurring the distinction between the individual and the political framework. This essay seeks to explore how Gramscian concepts of ‘hegemony,’ ‘national popular,’ and, ‘common sense,’ provide a more

During the 19th century, European workers would refer to themselves as an oppressed class. In a capitalist economy, the means of production are privately owned. As a result, a political economist will find himself divided into two classes: those who own the means of production and those that do not. For Marx, the political economy fails to explain the reason for the “division of labour and capital”. Marx poses a critical question when it comes to class oppression and the division of labour: who is the real producer of a commodity? Is it the capitalist or the labourer who produced it? For Marx, the idea of the means of production is an important economic category. Marx shows how capitalism’s complex process of exploitation creates not only a myriad of differences across the labour force, but also common relations that cut across the differences of income, occupation, and status. It is these common relations that create class based societies and further class oppression. In this paper, I will first analyze Marx’s theory of alienation as a cause of class oppression and explore his communist theories to determine the best answer to resist class oppression. I will argue that alienation still exists today, and in using Engles’ theory of class oppression, I will argue that and that a classless system is impossible to attain without political involvement.

Karl Marx famously called religion the opiate of the masses (par. 4). There is no denying that many people derive comfort, purpose, and meaning from religion. However, it is equally true that throughout history, religion has been used frequently as a tool to oppress the poor and uneducated. In fourteenth-century England, where abuses of clerical power were rampant, members of the clergy preyed upon the fears of the masses in order to fill their own coffers. In The Friar’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer criticizes the clergy by revealing how they used the repressive ideology of religion to oppress and exploit the working class in a highly class-conscious society.

In my view I feel Karl Marx is famous for writing this very statement, I’m sure people who don’t know him too well would still know his name by stating this statement. Even though Marx was very critical of religion I feel in a way he was also quite sympathetic of it. For Marx, ideology is a belief system that changes people’s perception of reality in ways that serve the interests of the ruling class. He argues

Poverty is an inherent adjective that must be associated with socialism. There has always been a desire to extinguish poverty and craft an equal and fraternal society in the socialist agenda (Luxemburgo, 1976). Unfortunately, with the idea of nationalized equality and the eradication of the social evil that poverty represents, the proponents of this social system have sought to abolish consumerism and the flow of goods that citizens experience by extinguishing consumption and limiting resources (Miller, 2001). The overarching principle of this abrupt extinction is the corruption summoned by materialism. Since the bourgeoisie is inherently greedy and corrupt, and the proletariat is inherently defenseless against the unsolicited class distinction, the necessary solution is the elimination of the consumer culture and the establishment of an impoverished society that permits the liberation of the oppressed and the annulment of the oppressor. As R. Luxemburg stated in one of her writings, the emancipation of the populace must be aided by the clergy, for they hold the faith as the dearest thing and hope to see the citizens understand the fraternal and equal love found in socialism (Luxemburgo, 1976). Is in this exact location, where the laity meets the new social order, that the church comes in. However, the socialist aspiration for the religious institutions to be joint with the government never comes to fruition. The clerics exhort the proletariat to abstain from fighting,

Conflict theory says religion can control and promote social inequality and conflict. People who are religious, he said, tend to view their poverty in religious terms. Meaning they think it is God’s will that they are poor, because God is testing their faith or because they are being punished . This is inspired by the work of Karl Marx, who said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” (Marx, 1964). By this he meant that religion, like a drug, makes people happy with their conditions of life. Marx felt poverty stemmed from their oppression by the bourgeoisie. Marx stressed that