Society and The Material Dialectic

An important shift in critical theory came with Horkheimer, the head of the Frankfurt School of Social Criticism. Horkheimer, a German, was alive to witness the failed socialist revolution in Germany and began to question the validity of the simple material dialectic. Horkheimer started his analysis, naturally, with the working class. From this he split the working class into the employed and the unemployed. The employed seemed comfortable enough, and it was the unemployed that was getting relatively worse off. As the industrialization of labor increases, unemployment for a period also increases. By the time the effects somewhat wear-off the separation of workers from their capital creates disproportionate economic landscapes and exacerbates income inequity. The unemployed, however, are the least educated and the least organized class thus making it almost impossible to raise their class consciousness. To show this, Horkenheimer pointed out the swaying between the unemployed votes for the communists and the NSDAP, a sign of the disorganization and herd-like voting. For Horkenheimer, the situation seemed completely and utterly helpless. The employed were too comfortable and the unemployed were too disorganized and easily swayed to promote any serious economic change. In traditional Marxism, the role of economic laws were wholly emphasized and human actors came secondary, but to Horkenheimer and the Frankfurt School (due to the current conditions of capitalism) a far more sophisticated view was needed. Human actors, especially how these actors understood themselves psychologically, became just as important in social progression as the economic conditions. For this, the school turned to Freud. His 1930 work Civilization and its Discontents which presented society as a surface phenomena centered around the repression of instinctual, subconscious energies. Due to the irrationality of said natures, like that found in the Id, complete fulfillment of them would make social living impossible. Therefore the forces of civilization have shifted and evolved by incrementally suppressing instincts and morphing them into more orderly and “moral” representations. We are then left with scalding repressed desire in the id in conflict with society. For when the Id wins, society devolves into chaos, and when society wins the Id is forced intro repression. The desires do not disappear, as Freud notes, but are merely displaced. But eventually, the desires must exude at some point.

Traditional Marxism and many subsequent theories on Marx (Marxism-Leninism for example) is built upon the understanding of history as mere class struggle. Societal classes and their relationships to their means of production is the sole determiner of the progression of society. Upon the discovery and usage of psychoanalysis within Marxist thought, however, I do feel it is necessary to update the material dialect so it fits more nuanced understandings of the state, social appendages, ideology, and apparatuses. It is not merely class struggle that propels history in a linear progression, but rather it is the role of who each class understands their own placement in society independent of class-contradiction that allows for the progression of new ideological, and hence repressive, appartusses to take hold. A significant struggle between, for example, the British royalists and American colonists was necessary, the battle was carried out ideologically through primarily the loss ideological control from the British crown (though some Marxist historians have made the case that it was actually a class war, I believe the point to be a cope for orthodox and Marxist Leninists.) The fact of the matter is the American revolutionary war, and indeed many revolutions before and after, arose out of not class struggle, but the loss of ideological influence. These wars transcended class, with many of the wealthiest in society fighting for the new society alongside the working class and vice versa. The American Revolutionary War was not a battle of class, but a battle between the enforcers of ideology and the desire for a new repression. This is not a total rejection of the material dialect, as ideology is embedded materially through various appendages, but updates the traditional understanding of class warfare to include warfare against not only the oppressive class, but transcendent absolute ideology. Where the material dialect does hold within this formation is in that ideology must be embedded, interpellated, and enforced materially. In this, the failure of ideology to perform one of its three necessary tasks yields a failure for ideology to perform them. Ideology is a triadic structure in this form. It also follows, for enforcement specifically, that if the primary way ideology becomes embedded is via force and not through ideological modes that it will necessarily fail. The justification for repressive forces comes via the ideological, unconscious, structure. Therefore, the ideological apparatus must, even in primitive form, predate an overt repressive apparatus. In the case of Nazi germany, for example, the ideological apparatus of anti semitism must be “enforced,” through media, speeches, rallies etc, that an inferior group was to exist. It was only when the concept was embedded, and the authority of groups like the SS (formly SA), that the ability to carry out repressive aims became possible. The creation of apathy through ideological grounds allows for the controlling class to perform repressive actions. The same holds true in the economic sphere as well. When the ideology fails to embed itself within the society, a new ideology springs out of it, thus creating new forms of social interaction. It is not a sole class struggle that creates a new society, but a new relationship to ideology that morphs people’s understanding of the world around thus presenting the illusion of a new world, even if the social formations remain almost completely the same. Ideology is embedded within all of society, not just for one oppressed class, so the shift in ideology affects the conceptualization of the ruling class amongst the ruling class. It is not the ruling class gradually changing how the class exists, it changes in how they understand themselves due to the effects of a new interpellation ideology, in much the same way the working class does not change in function but rather how the working class is to be understood. It is this new form of understanding from a new interpellation of ideology that a shift in perceived social relations arises, not a contradiction located within solely the existence of class.