Problems with Mechanical- Materialism

By Maddie Lou Barink

What culture is and how it develops is a question that has plagued intellectuals for
centuries. This has lead to a classic cultural discussion between Materialism and
Ideology. A materialist sees a culture as the result of humans interaction with the
material world in one way or another. Different materialist theorists conceptualize this
in different ways as we shall see in the following paragraphs.
Karl Marx, the quintessential materialist, saw culture manifested in the
division of labour. According to Marx humans distinguish themselves from animals
when they start to produce their own means of subsistence, when they create their
material life. Both what and how they produce forms the base for their position in
their culture. As communities form and interact with one another clear conflicts of
interest occur. These conflict are, according to Marx, what drives history forward. The
have’s and the have not’s battle it out and go through various stages of development
until they form a communist society.(Marx & Engels 1998: 36-53)
In Marxism God did not create man, Man creates god. Religion, Politics, Law
etcetera are all products of man to try and explain their existence but also flow from
their existence as flesh and blood. These “ideologies” form an important tool for
ruling class, it can keep dominated classes (the proletariat) from revolting by
convincing them that they are born to serve or that their domination is otherwise
justified. This false continuousness is what Marx aims to break, and this will
ultimately lead to the communist revolution. (ibid: 54-68)
The problem with Marxism is that he put forward a clear time table in which this
revolution was supposed to take place in society. This has, in many cases, never come
to fruition nor have these revolutions had the desired effects. Many materialist writers
after Marx have racked their brains over why not and what the alternatives are. One of
these writers is Louis Althusser. His contribution to the Marxist view of culture is the
idea of the ideological state apparatus. Althusser differentiates the ideological state
apparatus from the repressive state apparatus, the latter of which is enforced by
repression of a class (the proletariat), which is already present in Marx. Althusser
recognizes that they are also partly kept in place by ideology to keep the group
cohesion within the apparatus. (Althusser 1971) The Ideological state apparatus are
manly kept together by ideology and only secondly enforced by repression in a way
that is more subtle and less undesirable than that of the repressive state apparatuses.
An important example of an Ideological State Apparatus is the educational system. He
sees this specific apparatus as the best Ideological state apparatus for the dominated
class because their means of resistance can be expressed there. (ibid)
Antonio Gramsci another writer searching for the answer to the question of
how cultural change comes about viewed the role of conflict differently from Marx.
He saw that both the dominant and dominated class worked to maintain a state of
hegemony to reproduce culture. Cultural conflict rises when the internal hegemony of
the dominant group deteriorates or failures of the dominant group become clear to the
dominated group and this opportunity is exploited to bring about change (Gramsci
1988: 193- 200).

Gramsci thus brings us to the criticisms of the Marxist oppositional model of the base
and superstructure. He saw problems with Marx’s representation on the dominated
class. In his view the dominated class willingly submits to they’re domination. He
stresses that people are able to act against their own material interests to serve an
ideology. In fact the dominant group adapts to the needs of the dominated group to
fulfil them as much as needed for them not to revolt. The will of the dominant group
prevails but only the extent that the dominated group is not to unable to sustain
themselves. (Gramsci 1988: 193,194, 200 -210, 217-221)According to Gramsci
people tie themselves to certain social groups, they may be in the best interest of their
material life but this is not always the case. A shift in ideology in the eyes of Gramsci
doesn't just arise out of need, there are leaders and organizers involved and in this way
the superstructure can in fact influence the base. (Ibid 193-200, 217-221)
Another weakness of Marx is that pure mechanical materialism leaves no
room for error, as already mentioned in the first paragraph Marx set forth a number of
(economic) conditions that are needed to bring about change. Many societies have met
with certain conditions without necessarily changing but if human action was
completely dependent on material circumstances they should have. There had to be
other forces at work to explain the different outcomes of similar economic conditions.
This is something we see explained well by Gramsci and Althusser but also by Walter
Benjamin. In the cryptic texts about the arcades Benjamin makes a small note about
the middle class (Benjamin 2002: 41), this class in and of itself is a manifestation of
the problems with Marx's mechanical materialism. They are neither proletarian or
bourgeoisie and in the end help to maintain the dialectical opposition of the two
because the bourgeoisie can propagate the middle class as a goal for the proletariat
which takes fuel away from their leaders cause. The middle class is seen as a
synthesis, or as Benjamin calls it a dream image, the classless in the class society. This
is a delusion that people accept and its ideology is mirrored in the arts(ibid: 41-45).
Adorno and Horkheimer are two writers who also try and incorporate certain Marixist
terms but are very critical of his static view of base and superstructure. They see how
culture is a double sided mirror for society. Culture shapes the society by
standardization and commodification. It tells the public what it needs and delivers it in
easily accessible formats. By satisfying shallow needs this keeps the masses docile
even despite extreme economic hardship(Adorno Horkheimer 2002: 94-98 107-
115,118-136).

Another aspect of culture is resistance. Materialism deals with resistance but it does
not adequately explain its origin. Resistance doesn't neatly flow from the economic
position of the marginalized as readily as is suggested by mechanical materialism, this
leaves very little room for agency and choice which can be very deliberate in
resistance. A form of resistance that shows a more nuanced view of how resistance
takes shape can be found the theories of Stuart Hall. In Encoding and Decoding(Hall
1993) he shows how people can deliberately misinterpret the meaning of what is a
message that a broadcasting structure is trying to convey. This is a very subtle way of
resistance since it essentially incorporates the dominant message and reinvents it to
convey their own cause. It shows that between interpretation and use there is a space
for manipulation by the marginalized. They can use ideological tools to their
advantage even if these tools weren't meant to be used in such a way. (ibid: 92-98)
An interesting view on resistance comes from Edward Said who even speaks
of a culture of resistance. He explains differing strategies marginalized peoples of
Europeans former colonies apply to provide resistance towards the culture of their
former colonizers. (Said 1993: 257-259) To explain these strategies he uses a freed
slave as an example. The slave can revert to his pre-slave existence relatively
unmoved by his experience under repression. He can also rebel against his former
oppressors, reject his experience and try to reclaim a sense of authenticity (which will
inevitably be tainted by it non the less), but he can also except his experience and (in
an almost Hallian way) reinterpret it in his own way. In the context of (de)colonialism
the latter two strategies of resistance often takes the shape of nationalism. Said
discusses a theory by Partha Chatterjee in his book Culture and Imperialism that
states that this nationalism can become a panacea for not dealing with dire material
conditions (Ibid: 262). This shows how resistance isn't just a vocal reflection of
economic conditions within a particular group, it can even silence them in conquest of
a goal that is considered more important at the time, which is this case may be
independence and self-determination. Often times there are groups within that are
repressed within the marginalized. One example that can often be found is woman.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak refers to this in her text Can the subaltern speak?
She states that these people can essentially only refer to themselves and their position
with a framework and terms foreign to their position to be understood by the
dominant class. This is a very problematic finding for mechanical materialism, since
she argues that they need the superstructure to even be able to express their resistance.

It is clear that culture and its elements cannot be fully explained by Marxist
terminology and theory alone. Cultural mechanisms, conflicts and resistance al have
dimensions that cannot be fully explained by mechanical materialism. The dominant
and marginalized ideologies have a role to play and as we have seen can influence the
material base. Neither a wholly material or ideational approach suffices to explain
cultural phenomenons.

Bibliography
Althusser, Louis
1971 ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’. In Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays. New York/London: Monthly Review Press.
Adorno & Horkheimer, Thomas & Max
2002. [1947] ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as
Mass Deception’. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Benjamin, Walter
2002 ‘Paris Capital of the 19th century’ in Selected Writings Volume 3,
1935-1938. Cambridge Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press.
Gramsci, Antonio
1988. [1929-1935]Prison Notebooks. In The Antonio Gramsci Reader.
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Hall, Stuart
1993 ‘Encoding, Decoding’. In Simon During (ed.). The Cultural Studies
Reader. London: Routledge.
Marx & Engels, Karl & Friedrich
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Said, Edward
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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty
2001 ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. In Vincent B. Leitch (ed.).
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