Marx, Wiliams and Innis on what shapes the capacity for creative thought in capitalist society10/16/2012 It may not be pretty, essays are really simply a 'first draft,' but I'm sharing nonetheless. This was my mid-term paper for a theory course on interdisciplinary foundations of media studies.
Although Marx was never explicit about the capacity for creative thought, his critical analysis of capitalism has allowed others to determine the fundamental ways in which such a system can create the conditions for innovative thinking to flourish or flounder. Using Raymond Williams and Harold Innis' insights, I will explore Marx's conception of class struggle (broadly), as that which in capitalist society fundamentally shapes our capacity for creative thought. For my analysis, I employ Williams' nuanced interpretation of divisions of manual and mental labour within material labour production, and Innis' historical study of communication media. Through the exploration of these concepts we will see that all humans have the capacity for creative thought, but it is - natural forces notwithstanding - the social-economic conditions in which we find ourselves that shape the capacity to do so. Marx only touches upon the question of capacity for creative though breifly and superficially in his writings. On the one hand Marx is clear that capacity for creative thought is what, on a primal level, makes us human: ...what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of the labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. (Marx in Williams 1983, 26) In this way, no matter what we produce or what we do, we are all able to think imaginatively. Williams qualifies this deduction stating that within a given society many people are "reduced from this fully human status by social and economic conditions which practically diminish their humanity" (Williams 1983, 27). What these social and economic conditions are depends on the historical context. Innis, who takes his concept of capacity from an economic tradition, would agree to that there are limits imposed by natural and social pressures, but would add that certain conditions also present the potential for creative thought to be supported and protected. To get a better sense of how we might develop a creative thought, Marx (1978) touches upon this in his seemingly incomplete analysis of ancient Greek art in The Grundrisse. Williams deftly revisits Marx's commentary some 125 years later, in an effort to push for the exploration of 'higher order', 'ends in themselves' types of mental labour, which Marx mentions a few times, but never explores in depth. Williams, through his careful reading of Marx's writings on manual and mental labour, works of art, and judgment of art, concludes that our capacity to think creatively is bound up in: ...a range of human faculties, resources, and potentials - some of the most important based in a relatively unchanged human biological constitution; others in persistent experiences of love and parentage and death, qualified in a physical world - with which certain works connect, in active and powerful ways, often apparently beyond the limited fixed ideas of any particular society and time. (Williams 1983, 48) Here, Williams eloquently explains how a work of art despite its social and material relations of production, can 'speak' to us. By demonstrating that the valuing of art over time changes within each particular social-economic moment, so too our own ability to judge a work of art, to receive it, is bound in our current social and material context. This, along with all the other elements that make up our whole way of life, to use William's conception of culture (Babe 2008, 72), enables a thought - seemingly arising from the art itself and not from our material relations - develops. In that moment, that spark of creative thought, Williams claims, "is the practical expression of actual and possible human development"(1983, 48). In this configuration, it need not be only art that can lead to this type of thinking, arguably any material labour, be it a commodity or not, be it a physical or a social product, can lead us there. Our judgment - as it is bound in these broad social and material relations - is what ignites new ideas. If we take this process at face value, and Innis does not give us any reason to question otherwise, then we can begin to see how this capacity if shaped within capitalist society. Marx, if he would be undertaking this exercise, would have us look at "real active men" in the world of production. So, let's start there, with an example Williams explores within modern capitalist society. In looking at communication organizations, Williams identifies his, and arguably Marx's, main point in all his writing on base and superstructure[1]: divisions of labour are an abstraction of real social relations, they are a social and economic construction, that have real material effects. Divisions of labour are not 'natural' or predetermined in some idealist, metaphysical sense of 'pure' theory (Williams 1983, 36). Marx was aware of this, having come to define these divisions out of determined "variable social and material relations" (ibid.), they are also not determined by forces of production alone (e.g., technology of writing) either. In looking at broadcast and print communication, Williams identifies how broadly mental capacities for creative thought exist even in areas traditionally seen as within the realm of manual labour. Manual labours, having taken over the course of time come to mean 'brainless' work. The ability to act on these thoughts, however, is limited by pressures of those with the control over the medium primarily because they also control the capital. Thus, there is a persistence of this division of labour, not because it is genetic or natural, but because it is supported, perpetuated and redefined in each particular historical time. In Williams' example, material and social relations unique to that time and place are such that ownership and control of media fall to those historically in the 'mental labour' class, those also who have been considered to be authoritative in these matters: matters of media, technology, knowledge. The division is also perpetuated in the media sources themselves that are predominantly uni-directional broadcast mediums. 'Experts' and 'authorities', selected by the few with the means, communicate, reinforce and cajole to an undifferentiated and virtually silenced mass who readily consent. Innis' sophisticated exploration of print and broadcast media in the West, takes this impact of the bias of communication from individual relations to the realm of civilizations. Print media because of its mechanized production and its short-lived physical substrate, makes it a product for immediate consumption. As such, the content in the newspapers, over time moved from being political and philosophical in nature (which it was at its inception leading to the Restoration), to more ephemeral issues. The printing press, though developed on the margins of Western civilization as counterpoint to imperialism in Europe, was also used in the US as a central tool in their own independence. As a result it became instituted in their constitution, and remained their prime communication medium. With no other form of communication media developed within the US to complement or counterbalance it, newspapers increasingly became suffused with public opinion instead of knowledge. "Superficiality became essential to meet demands of larger numbers of people" (Innis 1950, 372), resulting in broadcast media and cinema, filled with entertainment and amusements, developing out of this demand. These "improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult" (Innis in Watson 2006, 311) because the content was biased away from knowledge. The entire social fabric, then, becomes one woven of superficial, ephemeral threads controlled by those with the monopoly of communication. Their continued focus on the present, and on content in the vernacular, secures their control through a simple consent because their audience is captive, attractive to the masses because of its direction to "you the reader" (Williams 1983, 39). On the surface it may appear that Innis is a technological determinist, a common misconception. This is categorically not the case. His body of work in the area of media communication (which he defines broadly to be institutions, technologies or organizations that transmit or produce social knowledge (Comor 1994) demonstrates that technology is not inherently flawed, nor that the technology itself determines the content of the messages (though to a certain degree it will). His historical analysis of communication media from Mesopotamia to the modern era is actually an analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations and the role, or at least the place of, that communication media therein. Fundamental to his theory is that for a civilization to be successful, there needs to be a balanced tensions of particular powers: force, knowledge and wealth. Let's take an example from modern capitalism to illustrate this tension: The university can protect the social scientist in part. Even in countries which have witnessed the most serious disturbances, apparently work in the social sciences can continue without serious disruption, chiefly because the complexity of the subject renders conclusion of little value to those in control of policy, and terminology to become a defense against the inquisitive. (Innis 1935, 437) Here Innis argues the capacity for creative thought is protected through structural forces such as institutions (universities) and laws. Likewise, the social scientists ensure their security in the university by maintaining a monopoly over certain knowledge that is of use to the holders of force, but cannot develop it on their own as they do not have access to the specialized language. Implicit in this arrangement is a sufficient amount of wealth to support the force and knowledge elements. Despite his apparent support then of a pejorative 'Ivory Tower', this is not what he is arguing for. In fact, Innis has been know to rant against the tyranny's of universities, particularly when they allow the knowledge being produced in them to be influenced by business, personal advancement, or other instrumentalist persuasion (Innis 1935). What Innis means with this support of force, is that forces should protect knowledge to allow it to develop independently - unfettered by outside utilitarianism purposiveness. Thus, in this configuration, knowledge is removed from the vernacular but not to hidden in a tower. Rather, knowledge, with its supports from force and wealth, can safely search the horizon from the tower's windows (or elsewhere) to see society in all its glories and ghastliness, from the margins. Coming back to the divisions of labour identified in the broadcast and print media, Marx, Williams and Innis would agree that they are artificial constructions that also have material consequences at personal and societal levels. In one sense they are "at root a form of class division between those who have practically appropriated the general human faculties of consciousness, intention and control"(Williams 1983, 37). But then Innis also sees their having a complementary, dialectically related relationship as well. Under capitalism, the one-directional, vernacular-focused nature of broadcast and commercial print media in the West becomes a way to perpetuate and reinforce these artificial divisions. Struggle between these divisions is fundamental in Marx's politics, while for Innis it may seem to be a contradiction considering he sees these divisions of 'labour' (in balanced tension) as part of a successfully functioning social order. But, when pried open, we see that Innis and Marx are closer than we think in their political positioning. Certainly, Innis was no proletarian revolutionary, but he was vocal in his views against tyranny - as he demonstrates through his historical and modern analyses. Tyranny, in the form of militaristic or ideological force, at a civilization and institutional level was for him what should be struggled against. Marx can also be said to be broadly against tyranny. We can all agree he had no love for Feudalism or slavery. His main concern was the poor and the oppressed, whereas for Innis his politics were to protect the 'knowledge class' that he was fighting for, "to reconcile the continued relevance of the role of the thinking individual with contemporary imperial structures of unprecedented range and centralization" (Watson 2006, 320). By taking a definition of class struggle that is more social as opposed to economic in nature, which is something Marx does at times as well, we can see that these are indeed class struggles. Coming back for a moment to Williams: while he was waxing eloquent about Marx's comments on Greek art, he identified in passing that there is within any particular society an element of unevenness in the "development of various human faculties and practices" (Williams 1983, 46) where certain processes of material production (perhaps also the impact of one's whole way of life) can result in discoveries. Though occurring within a particular social and material context, these 'discoveries' are happening, in a sense, in a marginal way; they are exceptions, not the norm. In a similar sense, Innis sees creative thought relating to unevenness, and most certainly developing more often than not on the margins of society. Unevenness for Innis would be exemplified in the way in which media technologies are not evenly distributed across civilizations, and they are also not used evenly either. For instance, in the case of capitalist Russia, their marginality from the dominating West, physically, socially and economically meant they had an opportunity to turn new technologies, including new communication media, to their advantage. As they were an agricultural economy their attraction to mechanization was not great, so they were slower to bring in new mechanical technologies. This lag, or unevenness, buffered them from the way in which these new modes of production and communication were leading to alienation and fragmentation in Western society, which bear resemblance to how Marx saw the mechanized capitalist world in general. As a result of their economy and their more socialist system the media tended to focus not on commercial goods advertising, but on propaganda. Like the ancient Greeks whom Innis had a great fondness for, Russia was able to use their marginal situation to creatively develop their own use of this new media technology. As the Greeks were able to use their marginal position to develop a flexible, accessible alphabet that revolutionized writing, so too the Russians used print technology to create one of the most sophisticated propaganda industries of the modern era. Despite its socialist ideals imposed by militaristic force, Innis saw virtues in this Russia because it exemplified a stability and continuity that Innis considered as central to a successful social order. He was particularly attracted to this Russia because it acted, in his view, as a counterpoint against American imperialism, something Marx would have joined arms with Innis in opposing. Marx's philosophical musings and marginal comments never explicitly dealt with the capacity for creative thought. However, using insights and theories from Raymond Williams and Harold Innis, I explored, through Marx's conception of class struggle, that which fundamentally shapes our capacity for creative thought in capitalist society. By employing Williams' nuanced interpretation of divisions of labour within material labour production, and Innis' historical study of communication media, the determining influences of social and economic conditions were explored to reveal that the capacity for creative thought is shaped by our nature, our socials-economic environment, and a position on the margins. References Robert Babe, Cultural Studies and Political Economy: Toward a New Integration (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009), pp. 13-138 Edward Comor, “Harold Innis’s Dialectical Triad” in Journal of Canadian Studies 29:2 (1994), pp. 111-27. Harold Innis, Staples, Markets and Cultural Change (Montreal and Kingston: McGill - Queen’s University Press, 1995), pp. 429-437; 350-355; and 325-49 Karl Marx, “Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy” in The Marx and Engels Reader Second Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), R.C. Tucker (ed.), pp. 222-250 Alexander Watson, Marginal Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 306-319; 321-329; and 367-393 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 75-82 & 83-89 Raymond Williams, “Culture” in Marx: the First 100 Years (London: Fontana, 1983), D. McLellan (ed.), pp. 15-55. [1] I take here Williams' understanding of base and superstructure as a metaphor for division of labour, forces and relations of production and other terms Marx used to speak to these phenomenon, as "the decisive sense that these are not separate 'areas' or 'elements'" (Williams 1977, 80) but rather this is a process of determining limits and pressures that are "the whole specific activities and products of real men" (ibid., 80).
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