Important Marxist concepts (and examples from Oleanna that illustrate them)

1. Ideology: Ideologies are the changing ideas, values, and feelings through which individuals experience their societies.They present the dominant ideas and values as the beliefs of society as a whole, thus preventing individuals from seeing how society actually functions. Literature, as a cultural production, is a form of ideology, one that legitimizes the power of the ruling class. In the eighteenth century, for example, literature was used by the English upper classes both to express and transmit the dominant value systems to the lower classes.”

2. Hegemony: is a pretty complex concept, but . . . it’s a form of power, influence, and (often hidden)coercion that “[. . . ] does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own”, according to Raymond Williams a preeminent Marxist theorist (his “Marxism and Literature” is one of the additional pieces of Marxist theory I posted for you in BB.)

Keep in mind that a Marxist believes that no one/no group “owns” power; it’s out there, circulating, until someone grabs it, and it’s slippery, too – one might have easily get it and even more easily lose it, and thus the need for it to be “renewed . . . altered”, etc. 

Consider John’s recognition of hegemony operating in his feud with Carol: he says, “is it not always at those points that we consider ourselves least assailable that we are the most vulnerable?” )

Hegemony is both dynamic and “. . . it attempts to neutralize opposition – ‘the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate [alternatives and opposition]’" (also Williams). Hegemony is also “the necessary condition for a successful overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat and its allies”.

If you consider Carol part of the proletariat group and John as a part of the bourgeoisie who exercises social and educational hegemony, we see how this condition is operating prior to the a major shift in power dynamics.

According to another major Marxist theorist, Antonio Gramsci, “hegemony, therefore, is a process by which "educative pressure [is] applied to single individuals so as to obtain their consent and their collaboration, turning necessity and coercion into 'freedom' . . .." The "freedom" produced by instruments of the ruling class thus molds the "free" subject to the needs of an economic base, "the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production." Essentially, this is a condition/process whereby people can be manipulated and controlled so long as they are made to feel/believe that they’re free. Hegemony is further described by Gramsci as “"the "'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group [i.e. the ruling class – in Gramsci's Western Europe, the bourgeoisie]; this consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. For Gramsci, hegemony is exercised primarily through the superstructure. This is an important distinction as we move to the . . .

3. Superstructure: according to Williams in “Marxism and Literature”:

1. "(a) legal and political forms which express existing real relations of production;
2. (b) forms of consciousness which express a particular class view of the world;
3. (c) a process in which, over a whole range of activities, men [sic] become conscious of a fundamental economic conflict and fight it out.

A simpler definition of superstructure: “all human institutions and ideologies . . . including all social and legal institutions, all political and educational systems, all religions, and all art. These ideologies and institutions develop as a direct result of the economic means of production, not the other way around.” (this comes from Charles Bressler, who wrote the introduction to theory text I use regularly with my students). How do you think the superstructure works with regard to higher education?

4. Economic base: the economic means of production in a given society (a Marxist would suggest that the economic base of a capitalist system is exploitative and designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

An elite university (or any college, really), the kind at which John teaches and Carol attends, has an economic base; the mighty budget controls the organization of everything: the tenure John is on the verge of getting, the tuition that Carol likely has paid for her through grants and scholarships, etc.)John, of course, hopes to attain tenure primarily for the economic value – as he admits, “I have an interest in the status quo” (as opposed to wanting tenure purely for altruistic reasons).

5. Proletariat: from the good ol’ Manifesto: "the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live".

Can you see how Carol might be a symbolic representation of the proletariat position?

Lenin himself articulated the proletariat "As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary society, [the proletariat] must be the leader in the struggle of the whole people for a fully democratic revolution, in the struggle of all the working and exploited people against the oppressors and exploiters.”

 Obviously, Carol, then, is the visible face of her group, which is working toward unseating John, who’s obviously the exploiter (from Carol’s point of view, of course).

From Bressler: “Consciously and unconsciously, the ruling class forces its ideology on the working class or the proletariat, also called the wage slaves. In effect, the bourgeoisie develops and controls the superstructure. In such a system, the rich become richer, and the poor become poorer and increasingly more oppressed. The bourgeoisie’s ideology effectively works to perpetuate the system upon which it was founded. By controlling material [economic] relationships, the bourgeoisie controls a society’s ideology” (emphasis mine).