Page 27 - summer 22

exercised? How can it be challenged? And where do popular culture and the mass

media fit in?

The shadow of Marx
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No single figure casts a longer intellectual shadow over the 20 century than Karl
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Marx, the 19 century founder of communism. It is not simply that every 20 century
communist regime (Soviet Russia, the Eastern bloc, post-1949 China, North Korea,
Cuba under Fidel Castro) traces its existence to Marxist thinking. In the west too, his
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influence on 20 century intellectual and academic life has been profound. This is as
much due to what didn’t happen as to what did.

What didn’t happen
Marx’s influence is largely due to the sheer depth and range of his thinking about the
development of modern industrial society. His writing embraces history, politics,
philosophy and economics. His intellectual achievement is breath-taking and
unrivalled. This helps explain why so many academics admire him*.

*Marx’s thinking is often described as a synthesis of French politics, German philosophy and English
economics, with a completely original theory of history. French socialist thought, the German
philosopher Hegel, and the English political economists were all influences.

But he also made some quite specific predictions and in these he was far from
successful. Indeed, their failure to materialise had far-reaching effects on the
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direction of 20 century history. Marx’s fundamental idea was that everything is
driven by economics, specifically work. Work is fundamental to civilisation. It’s how
we act upon our world, and how we produce and make the things we need to live. As
civilisation evolved, work became specialised, and different social classes appeared.

Eventually a ruling class emerged, whose ownership of the means of production
made them dominant. They became rich and politically powerful. They controlled the
government, made the laws, and created the culture for the whole of society.

Marx saw history as the story of class struggle. Consider lords and peasants in the
Middle Ages. The lords were the ruling class. They owned the means of production,
the farmland, so they dominated the peasants, who did the manual work (ploughing
etc). They also controlled the government (advisers to the king), made the laws

(feudalism), and created the culture (chivalry and all that). The peasants were
exploited, resentful but powerless; their occasional rebellions were easily crushed.

Change happened when the technology of work changed. The invention of sailing
ships, compasses and maps, created global commerce; then came the industrial
revolution, steam engines and factories. These new means of production were