Table of ContentsIntroduction.................................................3Marx and Marxism and the problem of interpretation...........4Political and economic Philosophy and the crash of 2008............5Alienation and economics in The Call Centre (BBC 2012) ...........8Photography as ideology - 9/11 and The Arab Spring..........11The Humanist ‘individual’ exported to the Arab world..............15Criticism of Marx...........................................19Conclusion..................................................20Bibliography......................................................21

Introduction

As I start to write this lecture (October 2013), President

Barack Obama is talking about the shutdown of the Federal

Government of the biggest economy in the world due to a

political stalemate caused by the fear of a rising debt

ceiling. He is worried that as a consequence of this, the

economy will falter, stall and consequently, the USA will

default on their loans and see Credit Agencies such as Moody’s

downgrade their already diminishing credit rating. The

Republicans for their part argue that the 19 trillion dollar

debt and ‘obamacare’ are signs of a creeping socialism and are

thus anti-America. Across the pond, The Daily Mail is lambasting

Ed Milliband’s now dead Marxist critic Ralph, suggesting that

his criticism of the Church, Monarchy, Army and economic system

is both anti-British and evil!

These ‘facts’ are not in themselves proof that Marx or Marxism

is still relevant, or even if we are talking about the same

things when we refer to Marx’s philosophy and Marxist

philosophy.1 However, these contemporary discussions such as

the BBC Politics Show one entitled ‘Karl Marx in London’2 do

suggest that when the free market system is in crisis, Marx’s

voice begins to be heard echoing around academic and TV spaces

again. And be in no doubt that a crisis we are in; for as Terry

Eagleton points out, we know when the capitalism system is in

crisis when we hear economists, politicians and philosophers

talking openly of the system; it is no longer natural or

invisible.3 This lecture will examine the argument both for and

against the relevancy of Marx’s political philosophy in this

post-modern, post-industrial, post-historical world through two

short case studies. But firstly, we turn to the problem of

interpretation.

1 Balibar, Etienne The Philosophy of Marx (London and New York: Verso Books 1995)2 ‘Karl Marx in London: Owen Jones on Marxism’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24765270

3 Eagleton, Terry Why Marx was Right (Yale: Yale University Press 2012)

Marx and Marxism and the problem of interpretation

“Thus there is undoubtedly no understandingthat is free of all prejudices, however much ofour knowledge must be directed towards escapingtheir thrall” 4

Gadamer’s (1900-2002) warnings of seeking the holy grail of

unbiased interpretation is plainly intended to justify his own

brand of philosophical hermeneutics, but it still nevertheless

acts a cautionary tale of seeking certainty in such a question

as this. For Gadamer any type of textual understanding is formed

as a result of a thorough ‘prejudiced’ exegetic process that

attempts to make intelligible ambiguous or obscure texts. In a

borrowed term from Husserl, the act of interpretation can be

seen as a fusion of horizons, a dialogic interaction between

the interpreter and the words of the text.5 When trying to work

out what Marx ‘means’, it must be accepted that we are faced at

times with many contingencies (contextual, translational, re-

readings of readings etc), and as such we are confronted with

several Marxs. This was never more apparent then when both the

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the

State were published in 1932; both of these works suggested that

we cannot eliminate (as Althusser tried in his 'Lenin and

Philosophy', in 1968) the mood of German Idealism in his works

4 Gadamer, Hans Georg Truth and Method (London: Bloomsbury Academic 2013) pp 490-15 Polkinghorne, Donald Methodology for the Human Sciences (New York: Suny Press 1983)

(especially within his concept of alienation) and solely define

him by his more ‘scientific’ work;

Some argue that this concept is a philosophicalapparition of the young idealist still beingpersuaded by Hegel, only to be abandoned by themature, scientific Marx (Hook, 1962; Althusscr,1970). This point is contested by those holdingthat this concept is found throughout Marx'swritings (Avineri, 1968; McLellan, 1970).Oilman (1971) and, especially, Meszaros (1972)have dispelled the abandonment thesis althoughit still exists in various forms (LeoGrande,1977). 6

This fluidity has seen inevitably several ‘semantic shifts’ in

interpretation and application, which in their turn has

brought further fragmentation to an already complicated jigsaw

of an interpretative process. To accommodate these ‘fragments’7

that Althusser wrote of, Gadamer argued that to gain an

understanding in something and anything, the researcher must

enter into a honest dialogue with the different texts in order

to move beyond simply “...putting oneself forward and

successfully asserting one's own point of view [on it, which

results in] being transformed into a communion in which we do

not remain what we were"8 For the Marxist geographer Henri

Lebreve reaching a consensus is not so easy unless you

overcome the bias/prejudice injected in you by ‘bourgeois

consciousness;

6 Lanny Ace Thompson, University of Kansas MidAmerican Review of Sociology, 1979, Vol. IV, No. 1:p.237 Milne, Drew Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists (Oxford:Wiley-Blackwell 2003)

8 Gadamer (2013) p379.

“There is nothing more unbearable than theintellectual who believes himself to be freeand human, while in every action, gesture, wordand thought he shows that he has never steppedbeyond bourgeois consciousness. 9

With these admonitions in mind, it would seem logical to

proceed with caution and to look for agreement in

interpretations of Marx and his child, Marxism. In many ways

this very problem suggests that Marx is relevant in the sense

of the philosophical approach to the concepts of interpretation

and authorship. These two concepts are at the centre of many

discussions that relate to both philosophers and philosophies.

The same problem is endemic in continental philosophy; does

Nietzsche inevitable leads to the Nazis? Does Derrida (using

one of his disciplines questions) speak? Or are his words an

echo from his anti-colonial past in Algeria? So, on this one

level, studying Marx is of extreme relevance to the philosophy

student.

Political and economic Philosophy and the crash of 2008

Can the same be said for his relevancy to society today? Marx

is inevitably associated with a critique of capitalism (economy

and social formations) and his forecast of social revolutions.

As stated many times before, his analysis however of such a

society is not original.10 The importance of Marx can be found

in the way he synthesized issues relating to class struggle

9 Lefebvre, Henri Critique of Everyday Life (London and New York: Verso Books 1997) p.144

10 Eagleton (2012): Wood (2006)

with the design of economic system. This solitary fact can be

said to be of powerful relevance today given the problems that

have resulted in the aftermath of the economic meltdown

(epitomized by the collapse of the Lehman Bank in September

2008). This is even more striking given that it originated in

the centre of the capitalism machine, i.e. America. As Marx

would no doubt have agreed, 2008 was not the beginning of the

problem but a result of the system itself. The market’s ability

to regulate against “...masked risk” 11 simple hid the fact

that risk and instability lay at the centre of capitalist

machine.

Political or economic crisis, like 2008 tends to shake the

ideology of capitalism and reasserts Marx in the position of a

popular critic and potential instigator;

Karl Marx is back. That, at least, is theverdict of publishers and bookshops in Germanywho say that his works are flying off theshelves. The rise in his popularity has ofcourse, been put down to the current economiccrisis. "Marx is in fashion again," said JörnSchütrumpf, 12

This popularity seeped into the political system to such an

extent that one political party in Germany suggesting that they

should seriously consider that “...parts of Karl Marx's

Communist Manifesto to be officially adopted as party policy”

11 Martin Neil Bailey et al. ‘The Origins of the Financial Crisis’ Initiative on Business and Public Policy at Brookings

(November 2008) p612 Kate Connolly ‘Booklovers turn to Karl Marx as financial crisis bites in Germany’ The Guardian (2008)

Oskar Lafontaine told “Die Welt that he found some sections of

the Communist Manifesto to be "very contemporary," and should

be adopted into the party program. 13

The problem of trying to define the relationship between Marx

and Marxism is complicated by the historical and public nature

of its applications and associations. Tom Rockmore (2002) makes

an interesting and helpful distinction between Marxism and

Marxist philosophy, one official, one unofficial; “I believe

Marxism tends to obscure, even to hide, Marx’s philosophical

contributions for a number of reasons.” 14 Quite apart from the

Gulags, the repressive regimes in both China and Cuba, we have

the fall out between Marxists themselves. We see the followers

of Critical Theory rejecting the scientific nature of the later

Marx, only for Louis Althusser to come along and deny the

importance of the early Marx and his close association to the

left Hegelians. Coupled with this, is a fear to define, or to

borrow a term from Derrida, to archive Marx and his writings

into ‘a single unified world view’. 15

This hesitancy however is endemic to Marx or any grand

narrative. In fact, the postmodernists in the 1980s (especially

Lyotard’s seminar work The Postmodern Condition) placed Marxism as

one of the grand or meta-narratives whose edifice had crumbled.

This contrast noticeably with the view express in 1908 by

Georgii Plekhanov when he wrote positively “Marxism is an

integral world outlook”16 This is not a view shared by many13 http://www.dw.de/east-germanys-top-party-wants-marx-back/a-3264553-1

14 Rockmore Tom Marx After Marxism (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2002) p.2

15 ibid

16 Musto, Marcello (ed.) Marx for Today (London: Routledge 2013) p.2

post-structuralists who spent much time critiquing ‘cradle to

grave’ theories, characterising them as repressive and

totalitarian. This simply means that if we are to “return to

Marx, however, it is not to the original purity of Marx

unadulterated by interpretation...” 17

The next sections tries to show how Marx’s relevancy can be

found in its modern application to contemporary events

17 Choat, Simon Marx through Post-structuralism: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze (London: Bloomsbury Academic 2010)

Fig 1.18

Alienation and economics in The Call Centre (BBC 2012)

Marx’s understanding of alienation is heavily influenced by the

writings of Feuerbach’s 1841 critique of Hegel entitled The

essence of Christianity; “Through the influence of Feuerbach, Marx

understands alienation as the domination of a subject by an

estranged object of its own creation. For Marx, this subject is

man, specifically the worker, and the object is capital,

including all its social relations.” 19 For Althusser, what we

see in Marx’s reworking of Feuerbach is the beginning of a

scientific mode of philosophy;

What was announced in the Theses on Feuerbach was,in the necessarily philosophical language, of adeclaration of rupture with all ‘interpretive’philosophy, something quite different from anew philosophy: a new science, the science of

18 Simon Usborne http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/life-imitating-art-at-the-call-

centre-meet-nev-hes-just-a-chilledout-entertainer-8646400.html (2013)19 MidAmerican Review of Sociology, 1979, Vol. IV, No. 1:25

history, whose first, still infinitely fragilefoundations Marx was to lay in The GermanIdeology.20

To understand how alienation is embedded in and through the

ideology and economic relations of the workplace, we need only

think of the way that individuals are estranged from their

productive agency in call centres to get a sense of its

relevancy. Unlike the false images of happy workers we get in

the propaganda of the agents of the Althusser’s ISAs (mass

entertainment shows like The Call Centre (BBC 2013), in reality

"[t]he relation of the worker to the product of labour [is] an

alien object exercising power over him" 21 In keeping with the

show, the product that these ‘happy’ workers creates are not

owned by them, but rather is appropriated by the ‘...very hands

on boss who makes it his business to know the ins and outs of

the call centre workers' professional and private lives’22 i.e.

Nev the capitalist. The fact that the workers are ignorant of

their position is not surprising from a Marxist perspective as

they are not in the position to see their own slavery,

“consciousness does not determine life, but life determines

consciousness”23 This is why the workers are ignorant to their

exploited and inferior position in the division of labour, and

regardless of their love’ of being on the show it is

nevertheless the beginning of alienation. Marx summed this up

20 Althusser, Louis Lenin and Philosophy and Other Lectures (Delhi: Aakar Books 2006) p.37

21 Schumaker Paul (ed.) The Political Theory Reader (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2010) p.138

22 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018vlpy/profiles/nev-wilshire

23 Marx, Karl [1867] Capital: Volume 1 (London: Penguin 1990) p.164

effectively in his first published book known ‘mockingly’ 24 as

The Holy Family;

The propertied class and the class of theproletariat represent the same human self-alienation. But the former feels comfortableand confirmed in this self-alienation, knowingthat this alienation is its own power andpossessing in it the semblance of a humanexistence. The latter feels itself ruined inthis alienation and sees in it its impotenceand the actuality of an inhuman existence. 25

The workers are disconnected from their labour in this post-

industrial capitalist age, perhaps more than Marx or Engels

could have envisioned. Marx wrote that ". . . labour is

external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his

intrinsic nature; . . . in his work, therefore he does not

affirm himself but denies himself. . ." 26 These call centre

workers, according to Marx cannot gain control over his/her

output, as it now divorced from both immediate need and

personal ownership. The presence of wage labour diminishes both

product and labour into a commodity that is unutterably

controlled by ‘old Nev’. Such a process of commoditization in

the form of an exchange value (salary) makes the alienation

process complete and suggests that it is in fact natural.

In 1849, a series of lectures were published with the title

Wage Labour and Capital and found within these is Marx’s views on

the labour process. Labour is quite simply ‘the worker’s own

24 Singer, Peter Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks 2000) p.29

25 ibid

26 Marx and Engels (1974), v.3:274

life activity, the manifestation of his own life.27 Yet, as we

have seen above, within the Call Centre, Nev has not only owned

that ‘life activity’, but it has now become part of the

business of media; in essence the worker is even further

alienated and exploited. The wages that they receive can never

be equal to the profit that is seen by Nev, the production

company and the distributors. This is the absurd paradox found

within capitalism, without these workers/actors there is no

product, “thus capital cannot exist without hiring wage labour.

Nor can wage labour exist without being hired by capital.”28

But yet this codependency is settled, always and forever in the

interest of the capitalist and made to look “by bourgeois

economists that the interests of the capitalists and the

workers are one of the same”.29 Surely only the very naive

would believe this.

In his Grundrisse, Marx mapped the process through which we may

see how these willing actor/call centre workers are exploited.

In it he argued that these workers sell their “objectified

labour”30 firstly for the period of their time in the call

centre answering inane requests, and secondly their appearance

time in the show. In return for this they get a fixed sum, a

monthly wage that Nev has determined after calculating what is

needed to get the ‘product’ made (in this case, filmed, edited

and distributed). Once this is done, what we see next is the

beginning of surplus value. This is ‘the value the capitalist

27 Singer (2000) p.46

28 ibid p47

29 ibid

30 Gadama (2013) p307

is able to extract from the labour-power he buys, above the

exchange-value of the labour he must pay” 31

Does this analysis prove Marx’s relevancy? Well, one could

suggest that it does insofar that it shows how contemporary

workers are economically exploited and alienated from the

process of work. It also, helps explain why these workers are

happy to have the minutia of their lives broadcast to an almost

mindless audience; poverty and the need to escape it into the

world of celebrity. It also helps highlight the power of

ideology and the mechanism through which this capitalist

ideology is disseminated to the masses; and it is to this we

turn to in the next section.

31 Singer –p.50

Fig. 2 32

Photography as ideology - 9/11 and The ArabSpring

Ideology has the function (which defines it) of‘constituting’ concrete individuals assubjects, ideology being nothing but itsfunctioning in the material forms of existenceof that functioning. 33

In the previous section, the lecture suggested that the

capitalist system creates and promotes estrangement and

alienation in the very mechanism and dynamics of the capitalist

relations of production and the fetishized commoditization of

labour. This section adds to this and shows how Marx and

especially Althusser argued that ideology is employed to create

or interpolate workers to accept the system. Marx wrote in The

German Ideology that;

32 http://lightbox.time.com/2011/09/07/revisiting-911-unpublished-photos-by-james-nachtwey/#1

33 http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/a/l.htm

If in ideology men and their realizationsappear upside down as in a camera obscura, thisphenomenon arises just as much from theirhistorical life-process as the inversion ofobjects on their retina does from the physicallife-process 34

The use of the camera obscura is apt given the latter part of

this section will focus on the way photography creates false

realities that we accept as real. According to Linda Hutcheon,

photography and ‘realist’ films by extension, in fact holds a

special place for Marxists. It was a ‘true’ document of

“seeming transparency” 35 of the world in which we live and

showed the ‘real’ conditions of life under capitalism. This is

something borne out when you read the enthusiasm that Marxist

film critics emitted when discussing the social realist films

of early Soviet cinema, the Neo-Realists in Italy and the

social realism of British cinema in the 60s; “This was

signalled by the manifestos for a new Marxist film theory and

criticism announced by Cahiers du Cinema, the most important

film journal in the world, in the late '60s and early

seventies.” 36 Both cinema and photography helped challenge the

dominant ideological nature of capitalist ‘reality’.

In terms of how ideology works, Marxists of both orthodox and

scientific persuasions share a similar attitude to the role and

function of it. Generally it is seen a way of subjugating the

34 Loomba A )2005) P.27

35 Hutcheon, Linda The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge 2002) p133

36Scott Forsyth ‘Marxism, Film and Theory: From the Barricades to Postmodernism’ Socialist Register Vol 33 (1997)

p.268

workers/masses to the dictates and demands of the dominate

capitalist agenda;

The ideas of the ruling class are in everyepoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which isthe ruling material force of society, is at thesame time its ruling intellectual force. Theclass which has the means of materialproduction at its disposal, has control at thesame time over the means of mental production,so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideasof those who lack the means of mentalproduction are subject to it.37

The interpretation of the precise relationship between the

ruling ideas and the mechanism of ‘mental productions’ (quoted

above) differs depending on whom you read. Difference exists

between the more humanist strand of Marxist represented by his

Paris manuscripts and adopted by the Frankfurt school and those

structuralist views taken on by Althusser and his reading of

Das Kapital that were “...explicit interventions in a determined

conjecture: political interventions in the existing world of

Marxist philosophy” 38. However, these interventions and

differences are outweighed by the similarities. In this section

of the lecture, the role of ideology, and in particular its

modern manifestation in photography will be discussed through

its practical and material deployment in the period post 9/11

USA/Arab intervention.

37 Marx, Karl & Engels Friedrich [1846] The German Ideology: (London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. 1987) p.64

38 Elliot, Gregory Althusser: The Detour of Theory (London and New York: Verso Books 1987) p.16

The “Simply evil”39 attacks on the Twin towers on the 11th of

September 2001 initiated a series of violent and coordinated

events that have shaped not only today’s world but also the

world of tomorrow. The War of Terror (initially uttered on a

cold January day (29th) in 2002) against the so-called the axis

of evil40has been used to underpin several military operations

in Afghanistan, Iraq, the on-going ‘unlawful’ Drone strikes in

Pakistan 41 and the financial support of the so-called Arab

uprising (2008 to present day), in this case we should see

“Ideology operate[ing] as a means rather than as an end.” 42

And in many ways the ideology of the ‘story’ of these events

have been beautifully captured by photographers of all

nationalities, “The symbolic power of such photographs is so

overwhelming that they do not actually have to depict real

historical events at all.” 43 The official version of 9/11 has

lost a degree of currency over the past 12 years. We see that

surveys now suggest that more Americans now believe that the

events on that September day are not so straightforward and

that many of them believe that it was somehow a conspiracy and

false flag operation. But why would this be the case? Apart

from the needs of an economy to have these moments of

expenditure (war is an economic spurt), it also can be said39 Rockmore, Tom Before and After 9/11: A Philosophical Examination of Globalization, Terror, and History

(London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011) p. XII.

40 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1796034.stm

41 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24618701

42 Rockmore, (2011) p. 25.

43 Ellen M. Wood, “Democracy as Ideology of Empire” in Colin Moores (ed.), The New Imperialists: Ideologies

of Empire (Oxford: One World, 2006) p. 11.

that western capitalism needed to control the growth and

resources of developing countries: “The only way to conceive

of what happened on September 11 is to locate it in the

context of antagonisms of global capitalism.”44

It would be impossible to talk so freely about the motivations

for such a foreign and economic policy and so as Ellen M. Wood

discusses in her article ‘Democracy as Ideology of Empire’, the Bush

administration sold the ‘War On Terror’ as a “divinely inspired

mission” that aimed “to bring freedom and democracy to the

darkest corners of the earth and to abolish tyranny.”45 In

regard to the uprising in Tunisia, it was suggesting that the

goals of the Arab spring was to replace “repressive

regimes”.46 Such a goal is neatly encompassed within capitalism

itself as Marx fore grounded some 153 years earlier when he

wrote in the Communist Manifesto that eventually Capitalism,

...draws all, even the most barbarian nationsinto civilization, it compels them to introducewhat it calls civilization, into their midst,i.e. to become bourgeois themselves, in oneword, it creates a world after its own image” 47

This narcissistic world is one shaped by the mythic linkage

between democracy and freedom that has been forged by the west

in general, and America in particular; order over chaos, “There

44 Rockmore, (2011) p. VII.

45 Wood (2006) p.9

46 ibid

47 Loomba, Ania Colonialism/Post colonialism (London: Routledge 2005) pp.111-112)

is something pathological about this rage for order: it

conceals a ferocious inner compulsion which is the very

opposite of freedom. Fundamentalism is one system of this

disease.”48 The old dog of war Terry Eagleton points out

cleverly that the push for liberal economic and democratic

systems actually produces terrorist fundamentalism - which in

turns justifies more intervention in these areas of savagery;

Some observers take terrorism, understood asphysical violence or intimidation in thepursuit of political aims, to be new, even thesalient fact of our times. It is sometimesasserted that the supposed pervasiveness ofterrorism justifies emergency measures, evensomething like a permanent state of emergencythat has increasingly become the norm in theUnited States.49

What we have seen here is an effective use of ideology as a way

to create a reality that is dominant and naturalized. A Bush

aide put this idea rather philosophically and disturbingly when

he stated:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we createour own reality. And while you're studying thatreality - judiciously, as you will - we'll actagain, creating other new realities, which youcan study too, and that's how things will sortout. We're history's actors, and you, all ofyou, will be left to just study what we do.50

48 Eagleon, Terry Holy Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005) p.12

49 Rockmore, (2011) p. 4.

50 ibid p. x

One such ‘reality’ is the universality of capitalism and its

‘undeniable’ links to freedom and democratic niceties so

eagerly wanted by the Arab protesters:

Capitalism can, therefore, coexist with theideology of freedom and equality in a way thatno other system of domination can. In fact, theidea that capitalists and workers alike arefree and equal has become the most importantideological support of capitalism. 51

The Humanist ‘individual’ exported to the Arab world

“The individual in question behaves in such and sucha way, adopts such and such a practical attitude,and, what is more, participates in certain regularpractices which are those of the ideologicalapparatus on which ‘depend’ the ideas which he hasin all consciousness freely chosen as a subject”52

The history of capitalist ideological discourse on the subject,

coupled with such contested terms as individual freedom,

justice and Rights have been encoded into the DNA of the

modern state. To be a ‘subject’ the individual must be

‘shaped’ or moulded by forms of practice supported by, and

transmitted through ideologies. This creates the “imaginary

relationship’ whereby s/he ‘freely accepts’ their role. This

Althusser calls ‘interpellation’ – which is the moment an

individual, accepts the role defined by them by the various

ISA’s. In the images above what were the motives behind these

51

52 Sharma, Aradhana (ed.), Gupta Akhil (ed.) The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell,

2006). p. 102.

images? Were they simply ‘documenting’ the uprisings in the

Arab world, or suggesting such a fight was part of some

inevitable progressive act of humanity, i.e. to accept

American and Western values?

The revolutionary trend is essentially astruggle for self-determination, forliberation from a corrupt clique, forregaining control and power over a nation’sand the individual’s destiny. 53

This last line referring to the destiny of the individual is

the all-important one. Since the Enlightenment and through the

Renaissance the discourse of ‘subject’ has been predominantly

one that speaks of its autonomous and independent state. Marx,

according to Althusser allows us to see the history of the

subject through his post philosophical thoughts;

Marx has opened up to scientific knowledge anew third scientific continent, the continentof History, by an epistemological break whosefirst still uncertain strokes are inscribed inThe German Ideology, after having been announced inthe Theses on Feuerbach.54

But how are we to understand this in relation to photographic

practice? In images such as the one above, it seems that we are

positioned to see these acts as the individual fighting off the

shackles of collective totalitarianism. In short they are set-

53 Filiu, Jean-Pierre The Arab Revolution: Ten Lessons from the Democratic Uprising (London: Hurst company 2011) p45

54 Althusser, (2006) p. 39

up to be decoded as the inevitable and rational step on the

road to liberal humanism, liberal democracy and of course

capitalistic forces of production. Althusser’s ideas of

ideology show how we are able to see the way photography helps

in its own little way to promote this reading of the Arab

spring in his use of the term material practice and its

relationship to ideology.

Althusser states: “Ideology has a material existence… an

ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice, or

practices. This existence is material.”55 And this materiality

is manifested and contextualized in its output through of the

one of the various ISA’s (Ideological State Apparatus).

Although ISA’s work relatively independently, they nevertheless

have a close relationship to a particular (usually dominant)

ideology. For the purpose of this section, we need to examine

how photojournalism (and photojournalists) have been determined

by the processes of the everyday practices of the photography

world – production, university training, editorial and agency

control, the influence of distributors etc. How these

photographs are ritualized through the ISA, may be seen as

supporting or naturalizing a particular ideological viewpoint.

Using James Nachtway’s photograph (Figure 2) as an example, we

see that “… his material actions inserted into material

practices...governed by material rituals which are themselves

defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive

the ideas of that subject.”56 Here we see how Althusser55 Louis Althusser, On Ideology (London: Verso, 2008) pp. 39-40.

56 Althusser, (2008). p. 43.

(borrowing elements from Lacanism) locates the power of

ideology on its ability to work on an unconscious level; almost

like an inception. The individual must accept this inception in

order for the control to be complete and invisible. This way,

they do not question the authority or origins of the dominant

ideology and its manifestation in their work. Without this

subtle process, the work of the ISA’s would be questioned more

rigorously and would thus be in danger of failing. The

scientific nature of this claim is, however quite open to

criticism and it is to this and other criticisms we next turn.

Criticism of Marx

Hitherto, we have restricted ourselves to looking at the ways

that Marx can be viewed as being relevant, next we turn to the

ways in which his philosophy is ‘less on the shelf’ and more

‘pass it sell by date’. In terms of his claims of universal

applicability of his analysis, or to use Lyotard’s terms, his

‘grand narrative’ we can see that both the collapse of the

capitalist system amidst revolutionary demands for its

replacement is not one that many see as having relevancy today.

The riots of 1968 can be seen as the last eruption of Marxist

practice. The failure to move that dispute beyond that of a

seemingly middle class student protest followed the year later

by De Gaulle's demoralizing reelection signaled a closing of an

age. Many Marxists turned their intellectual backs on the

movement and drifted mostly to the new school of postmodernism

and post structuralism; the grand narrative or story of Marxist

action is it can be argued now only of historical relevancy.

This is can be seen as being linked to the idea of the efficacy

of Marxist criticism itself and its ability to understand

photography as a servant to a dominant ideology. The great

documentarist Bill Nichols wrote in Ideology and the Image that the

photograph could be ‘profoundly imprecise, ambiguous, even

deceiving’ 57 and as such its role in creating or

interpellating a subject was anything but precise. This mirrors

the words of Michelle L. Woodward that suggested we are now

living through a postmodern epoch that suggests “that there are

many truths rather than one, that the photographer cannot

presume to determine the meaning of the photograph, that

individuals are overshadowed by a world they can’t control or

understand.” 58 Marx and Marxism it seems fall silent in the

face of such a postmodernist analysis – their only rebuttal is

to lamely suggest that postmodernism itself is a product of

late capitalism (Jameson), but this feels more the words of

someone unable to deal with a new polyphonic world than one who

holds the truth at hand.

57 Nichols quoted in Hutcheon (2002) p.57

58 http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=48

Conclusion

Marx’s once scandalous thesis that governmentsare simple business agents for internationalcapital is today an obvious fact on which‘liberals’ and ‘socialists’ agree. The absoluteidentification of politics with the managementof capital is no longer the shameful secrethidden behinds the ‘forms’ of democracy; it isthe openly declared truth by which ourgovernment acquire legitimacy” 59

Ranciere’s quotation above in many ways posits perhaps Marx’s

greatest proof of relevance today; that capital and the

economic base in many ways determines all else. The level of

determinacy is, of course debatable and ultimately not

testable. In fact it would be more likely to solve the chicken

and egg question before this one. But notwithstanding that,

Marx’s ideas of the relations we, as individuals and

collectively have to political and social activities are

greatly influenced by the economic base.

He is also relevant in so far that his works have been in

discussion with other philosophers and philosophers. His

relationship to existentialism (and recruitment of Sartre) and

post-structuralism although at times hostile, nevertheless

speaks of his ability to spark debates and discussions on the

nature of humanity and the future direction of our species.

59 Ranciere, Jacques Dis-agreement (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1999) p.113

Indirectly, his legacy I would contend is also found it the

critical discussions and oppositions that have defined many

20th Century thought. As cited earlier, existentialism’s

relationship to Marxist is important in noting the perceived

limitations of existentialism in forming an ethical response to

the world – this also led to the frisson between Camus and

Sartre after the atrocities carried out in the name of

communism. Equally the list of ex Marxists that relocated to

the school of postmodernism looks like akin to a gallery of

‘who’s who?’ – Lyotard, Baulliard etc.

The lecture aimed to demonstrate that even though Marx’s

relevancy is in dispute, his legacy of Marxism is a different

order of discussion. Its ability to offer a critique of the

current system we live it (divorced from its proposed

alterative of communism) is indeed relevant if by no other

criteria that it is discussed by many commentators today. The

legacy of Marx is inextricably entangled with the existence of

capitalism. If capitalism were to be replaced, Marx would

become irrelevant in many ways, a mere historical figure

perhaps speaking of a dead age.

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