In “The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without guarantees,” Hall addresses critiques leveled at classical marxism for its “economic reductionism.” Hall counters that Marx’s writings can be read as a kind of mutual determinism between ideology and material forces, whereby material conditions necessarily shape ideology and social life, but do not determine it in a one-to-one unidirectional relationship. In the same vein, “falsities” of ideology are better understood as one of many different vantage points, or parts of a whole, or fetishisms. There are parts of capitalism that are more or less apparent, and it is this fact that makes ideology a crucial terrain of struggle.
In “Stuart Hall, Cultural studies, and Marxism,” Colin Sparks tells the history of cultural by its relationship to marxism. CS began, in part, as a kind of rejection and modification of marxism, spent a few years exploring this “Althusserian” form of marxism, which was more concerned with the “internal articulations” of superstructure, and since then has largely abandoned marxism or at least stretched it out beyond recognition. As CS has been concerned with elements of modernity like increased leisure time, a more fragmented and arguably more comfortable working-class, greater division of labor, new identities, mass media, etc., Sparks calls for the picking up of a CS that maps these new developments onto the classical concerns of marxism: solidarity, unions, communism, etc.
In Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” he distinguishes ideological state apparatuses (like churches) from repressive state apparatuses (like police or government). They differ not by their exclusive use of ideology or repression, but their relative primacy of use. Ideology, indeed, he writes are both representational (of imagined relations between individuals and their conditions) and material, making up practices concretely. Ideology can be understood as always by and for––because it makes up––subjects.
Is Hall arguing that these recent developments with which CS has been primarily concerned that these give ideology greater (analytical or mobilizing) importance? Or just that the ideological content has shifted, being––as Althusser argues––material itself.
What do Hall, Sparks, and Althusser agree/disagree on with respect to marxism and ideology? I would appreciate clarification especially on what exactly characterizes “Althusserian marxism” and what its problems were.
It would be helpful to work through an example in comparing these perspectives, such as thinking about the ideology involved in analyzing/mobilizing e.g., the urban garment worker of the 19th/20th century versus the department store worker today, or something. Or consider the way ruling class ideology is analyzed/mobilized before/after different communications technologies (e.g., television, social media, “platform capitalism”) or organizational forms (e.g., the decline of journalism, the rise of the influencer).
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