Ideology, Everyday Life And Space

Western Marxism, which occupies a distinctive position in western social thoughts, has great importance in comprehending the nature of the Marxist Philosophy as well as its current significance. Although different theorists have different practical concerns, emancipatory strategies, intellectual background and research styles, they share a common Marxist critical stand to the capitalist society and develop a key point among such critiques, say, in what way the capitalism realizes its social reproduction. This dissertation tries to reveal and take in the theoretical development and its logical transformation occurring in Western Marxism through an intensive exploration on that theme, which should be helpful to promote the current study and a better evaluation on Western Marxism as a whole on the one hand, and to enhance the solidarity between Marxist Philosophy and the contemporary conditions on the other.Basing on the changes of capitalism and centering on reproduction of social relation, western Marxism highlights the following critical perspectives:ideology, everyday life and space. These three aspects constitute not only the most typical dimensions but the themes of the social reproduction in the 20th capitalism.The first part of this dissertation is an exploration of the ideological dimension of the social reproduction of capitalism. Lukacs analyzed the production process in Taylor’System by means of Max Weber’s ideological resources. He promoted the analysis from Max Weber’s theory of rationalization to his own theory of reification. He points out that the materialized reality covers up oppression and slavery and makes proletariat lose their subject consciousness and forget their historical mission. The way of overcoming such problem is to launch an ideological criticism rooted in social production and reproduction. Meanwhile, drawing on the research of Fordism, Gramsci reveals that Fordism has become a kind of life style. That is a process in which the social reproduction of capitalism has controlled and entered into everyone’s social life. The economy, politics and culture are brought together into a unity, which has become a hegemonic structure of ideology. Struggling for cultural hegemony has become a key task for the strategy of proletarian liberation. Given that the characteristics of postwar’consumer society’had become more and more clearly manifest, Althusser discussed how the ideological hegemony theory acts on the subject in people’s social life which is beyond Marx’s production horizon and he thus propounded a theory of ideological state apparatuses. The following theorists benefiting from Althusser moved their attention from outside Marx’s production horizon and class analysis bias to focus on the relation between structure and subject. In general, ranging from Lukacs’ materialization theory and Gramsci’s cultural hegemony to Althusser’s theory of ideological state apparatuses, Western Marxism brings to the forefront the ideological dimension of the social reproduction of capitalism step by step.The second section investigates the everyday-life dimensions of the social reproduction of capitalism. In the logical sense, it is a necessity resulting from ideological criticism. These two themes identify the fact that the domain of the social reproduction of capitalism has gone beyond the economic production systematically theorized by traditional Marxism and extended into all aspects of everyday life. That is precisely why early Frankfurt School, Henri Lefebvre and Baudrillard turned their focus to study on everyday life. They identify the complete alienation state of the capitalist society and point out that the everyday life has been totally controlled by the logic of capital. Desire, psyche, physiology and imagination are entirely controlled by consumption. Moreover, the way to satisfy desire is controlled socially and covertly. Hence, the so-called social subject has reduced to a "subject phantasm" shaped by consumptive ideology. The social classes in all sectors of everyday life participate and guarantee the social production and reproduction of capitalist production relations, namely, they themselves and their everyday life are completely incorporated into the orbit of capitalism. Thus, according to Henri Lefebvre and those who engage the common topic, the nature of all alienation phenomenon in everyday life is a comprehensive control of social life by the logic of capital. Furthermore, the emphasis of the production and reproduction of capitalist production relations has moved from the reproduction of mode of production to the reproduction of life style.The third section is an interrogation of the spatial dimension of the social reproduction of capitalism. For Marx, strictly speaking, the spatial dimension cannot be viewed as a theoretical lack in logic. To a greater extent, the ’spatial turn’ in western social theory of postwar is an extension from Marx’s analyses of capital. In so far as the social and contradictions clashes stand out to the core of social stage, Lefebvre realizes the secret of the reproduction of capitalist production relations is not the colonization of everyday life but space. The secret of the survival of capitalism is to produce and reproduce space by occupying space. It is in space that the ideological form, man’s imagination, the relation between human and nature and so forth are assimilated and that the critical themes of ideology and everyday life are integrated. And it is also in space that the overall process of the reproduction of capitalist social relation becomes more conspicuous. David Harvey develops Lefebvre’s theme of the production of space by focusing on the process of accumulation of capital and class struggle. On one hand, Harvey reveals the temporal and spatial strategies of capital accumulation and their internal contradiction respectively from the perspectives of global capital flow and division of labor, the process of urbanization and body. On the other hand, his process-relation dialectics and opinion on multi-link system in social life not only provide a particular framework for the analysis of space, but also build a model of methodology for the research of reproduction of capitalism.Generally speaking, the research of the social reproduction of capitalism once again stimulates the critical theory spawned from Marx, and promotes it to a new context that Marx never encountered. It provides us with insight and inspiration in so far as we pursue alternatives of contemporary capitalism.