Neo-Marxian Theory

 

Neo Marxism is also known as critical theory where class divisions under capitalism is viewed as more important than gender or sex divisions or issues of race and ethnicity. Neo Marxism encompasses a group of beliefs that have in common rejection of economic or class determinism and a belief in at least the semi autonomy of the social sphere. The Neo-Marxists after seeing the failure of working class revolutions in western Europe after World War I choose the parts of Marx’s thought that might clarify social conditions that were not present when Marx was alive. They filled in what they perceived to be omissions in Marxism with ideas from other schools of thought.

Critical Theory

The Critical Theory is a theory which is self-aware of the social milieu in which it is being practiced. So the challenge in a sense is dual in front of critical theorization: on the one hand, it is to recognize its own rootedness in social reality; and at the same time, step outside of that society to criticize the society. Criticizing the society is to criticize the categories through which collective thinks and acts.

The Frankfurt School also generated one of the first models of a critical cultural studies that analyses the processes of cultural production and political economy” the politics of cultural texts and audience reception and use of cultural artifacts.

The critical theory “as its noun indicates” consists in diverse critical analysis about several aspects of the social and intelectual life” but its ultimate goal is disclose in a better way the nature of the society itself.

For Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, in particular, sociology and critique are inseparable: to analyse a work of art, or a particular cultural artifact, is to analyse and assess the way it is interpreted. This entails an inquiry into its formation and reception. Such an inquiry seeks to understand given works in terms of their social origins, form, content and function – in terms of the social totality. The conditions of labour, production and distribution must be examined, for society expresses itself through its cultural life and cultural phenomena contain within themselves reference to the socio-economic whole. But a sociology of culture cannot rest with an analysis of the general relations between types of specifically, cultural products and social life. Generally, a theory of culture should include, on Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s account, reference to the processes of production, reproduction, distribution, exchange and consumption. Needless to say, such a theory was never completed. But a large number of contributions was made to the theory of culture and cultural forms.

The emergence of an entertainment industry, the growth of the mass media, the blatant manipulation of culture by the Nazis and other totalitarian regimes, the shock of immigration to the US, the inevitable discovery of the glamour and glitter of the film and record industries: together all made imperative the task of assessing the changing patterns of culture.

Unlike many orthodox Marxists who relegated culture to the superstructure of society and derived an analysis of the form and content of the superstructure from the ‘base’, the Frankfurt theory insisted that cultural phenomena could not be analysed within the simple base-superstructure model.