Marxism & Design Activism

Key Aims:

•To introduce a critical definition of ideology

•To introduce some of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy

•To explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as subjects

•To introduce ‘culture jamming’ and the idea of design activism

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however is to change it. – Karl Marx (1845)

Praxis – a unification of thought and action. A philosophy that’s realised in a political movement.

Marxism is :

            a political manifesto, leading to socialism, communism and the twentieth century conflicts between capital and labour

            a philosophical approach to the social sciences, which focuses on the role of society in determining human behaviour, based on concept of dialectical materialism

What is capitalism?

– The society that we live in (in the west) it a society where;

•Control of the means of production in private hands (few individuals make lots of money, everyone one else works to make them money)

•A market where labour power is bought and sold

•Production of commodities for sale

•Use of money as a means of exchange

•Competition / meritocracy -It’s a competition that makes us compete against each other for grades, money, hierarchy.

Primitive communism – Slave Society – Feudalism – Capitalism – Socialism – Communism

Everything; law, culture, education, philosophy can be tracked back to issues of class, race or gender.

Capitalism, the society that we live in, produces laws culture, politics, education art that reflects that capitalist attitude

Schools/Education- The base is one of the bosses and work

Engles writes about when societies were at a primitive stage, there was no idea of a single monogamous relationship, those societties were dominant, matriarcal societies. As these societies became more evolved and produce became inexcess, excess weapons and goods, the men started wondering what was going to become of these goods. Sexual relations were fast and loose only leaving women with definite knowledge of who their children were.

Religion in a marxist reading is thought to be the ultimate form of mental control, 

Ideology
∆ system of ideas or beliefs (eg. beliefs of a political party)
∆ masking, distortion, or selection of ideas, to reinforce power relations, through creation of 'false consciousness' / legitimizes the oppression of certain classes, races, genders.


The ruling class has ] to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, ... to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.  - Karl Marx, (1846) The German Ideology
 Religion is the opium of the masses - Karl Marx, 1843


ART AS IDEOLOGY-


The only people who were allowed to be artists were those with money, within that class, women were never allowed to be artists, only men. White, rich men making art.
Kings and queens buy art, who dictate what is painted, so only rich people made and bought art.

This picture was painted in an attempt for people to perceive Starlin as a nice, friendly guy. Art was made to almost train people in a certain way, to believe and conform with ideologies.

SOCIETY = ECONOMIC, POLITICAL & IDEOLOGICAL

Ideology is a practice through which men and women ‘live’ their relations to real conditions of existence. Ideology offers false, but seemingly true resolutions to social imbalance
- Althusser, (1970) ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

Ideology becomes a mechanism for which we live our lives and the way we orchestrate situations.


The Media As Ideological State Apparatus

•A means of production
•Disseminates the views of the ruling class (dominant hegemonic)
•Media creates a false consciousness
•The individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture. (Fiske, 1992)
–The constitution of the subject
–Interpellation (Althusser)

All of the media outlet are owned by 8 superior forces.

The ways in which the media is idealogical -

Rupert murdok boats that he has the power to control political elections, The Sun backs Labours coming into power untill conservatives come along and say they want control, so The Sun switches and then Conservatives come into power.
This certain paper changing its stance sways a whole populations vote?

Journalists write in a certain way, dumbed down. They all went to university, and can write in a more high brow manor. But they write in such a way because the working class are believed to act a speak in such a way. When only exposed with such imagery and reading, the working class starts to believe and follow this ideology as their only way of life.

Commodity Fetishism -where the idea of a product making 'someone' cool opposed to that person being thought of as 'cool' for who they are.

- Fetish/Something that gets in the way of an act/eg.sexual fetish becoming betwen human sexual.

•The assets of the worlds top three billionaires are greater than those of the poorest 600 million on the planet
•More than a third of the worlds population (2.8 billion)live on less than two dollars a day
•1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day
•In 2002 34.6 million Americans lived below the official poverty line (8.5 million of those had jobs!) Black American Poverty double that of whites
Why do we still live like this? Since 1989 all the comunist contries dissovled, we supposedly live in an age of no alternatives.

The system has managed to Cut off Ema, biggest strike since the 1926, radicalised students, riots on the street, old people and pensioners protesting.

These is a pwoerful movement starting up through social networking.



Questions to think about...

•What examples of art or design in your field could be determined by social or political factors ?
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•Where is ideology hidden behind the appearance of design ?
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•What other aspects of political divisions, or class conflict, affect design ?