Assigment paper 204

 Name Hirva Pandya

Roll No.: 10

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210022

Paper no: 204

Paper code: 22409

Paper name: Criticism

Topic: Brief overview on Marxism

Sem.: 3 (Batch 2021- 2023)

What Is Marxism?

Introducation:

Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism.

Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes—specifically between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers—defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will inevitably lead to revolutionary communism.

Both criticized capitalism, claiming that with its downfall would come an inevitable and harmonious socialist future mediated by a global revolution led by the global majority (Prychitko, 2002).

Marxism itself can be considered to be both a political philosophy and a sociological method.

What differentiates Marxist philosophy from method is the extent to which it attempts to use scientific, systematic, and objective methods over attempts to formatively and prescriptively evaluate the world.

• Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx that focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.
• Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.
• He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.

Generally, Marxism argues that capitalism as a form of economic and social reproduction is inherently unfair and flawed, and because of this will ultimately fail. Capitalism is defined as a mode of production whereby business owners (capitalists) own all of the means of production - the factory, the tools and machinery, the raw materials, the final product, and the profits earned from their sale - while workers (labor) are hired for wages and have no claim on those things. Moreover, the wages paid to workers are lower than the economic value that their work creates for the capitalist. This surplus labor is the source of capitalists' profits, and is the root of the inherent class struggle between labor and capital.

Marxian Economics

Like the other classical economists, Karl Marx believed in a labor theory of value (LTV) to explain relative differences in market prices. This theory stated that the value of a produced economic good can be measured objectively by the average number of labor hours required to produce it. In other words, if a table takes twice as long to make as a chair, then the table should be considered twice as valuable. What Marx added was that this labor value actually represented the exploitation of workers.

Marx claimed that there are two major flaws in capitalism that lead to the exploitation of workers by employers: the chaotic nature of free market competition and the extraction of surplus labor. Ultimately, Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually destroy itself as more people become relegated to working-class status, inequality rose, and competition would lead the rate of corporate profits to zero. This would lead, he surmised, to a revolution where production would be turned over to the working class as a whole.

Class Conflict and the Supposed Demise of Capitalism

Marx’s class theory portrays capitalism as one step in the historical progression of economic systems that follow one another in a natural sequence. They are driven, he posited, by vast impersonal forces of history that play out through the behavior and conflict among social classes. According to Marx, every society is divided into social classes, whose members have more in common with one another than with members of other social classes.

The following are some key elements of Marx’s theories of how class conflict would play out in a capitalist system.

1. Capitalist society is made up of two classes: the bourgeoisie, or business owners, who control the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, whose labor transforms raw commodities into valuable economic goods.
2. Ordinary laborers, who do not own the means of production, such as factories, buildings, and materials, have little power in the capitalist economic system. Workers are also readily replaceable in periods of high unemployment, further devaluing their perceived worth.
3. To maximize profits, business owners have an incentive to get the most work out of their laborers while paying them the lowest possible wages. This creates an unfair imbalance between owners and laborers, whose work the owners exploit for their own gain.
4. Because workers have little personal stake in the process of production, Marx believed they would become alienated from it, as well as from their own humanity, and turn resentful toward business owners.
5. The bourgeoisie also leverage social institutions, including government, media, academia, organized religion, and banking and financial systems, as tools and weapons against the proletariat with the goal of maintaining their position of power and privilege.
   
6. Ultimately, the inherent inequalities and exploitative economic relations between these two classes will lead to a revolution in which the working class rebels against the bourgeoisie, takes control of the means of production, and abolishes capitalism.

Thus Marx thought that the capitalist system inherently contained the seeds of its own destruction. The alienation and exploitation of the proletariat that are fundamental to capitalist relations would inevitably drive the working class to rebel against the bourgeoisie and seize control of the means of production. This revolution would be led by enlightened leaders, known as “the vanguard of the proletariat,” who understood the class structure of society and who would unite the working class by raising awareness and class consciousness.

As a result of the revolution, Marx predicted that private ownership of the means of production would be replaced by collective ownership, first under socialism and then under communism. In the final stage of human development, social classes and class struggle would no longer exist.

What Kind of Philosophy Is Marxism?

Marxism is a philosophy developed by Karl Marx in the second half of the 19th century that unifies social, political, and economic theory. It is mainly concerned with the battle between the working class and the ownership class and favors communism and socialism over capitalism.

Marxism in Bollywood Movies

Gully Boy

Until Gully Boy, some critiqued Zoya Akhtar for constantly making films about the privileged and upper-class.  However, she proved otherwise in this film.

It is a gritty but positive depiction of Mumbai’s rampant rap-culture, through the main protagonist, Murad (Ranveer Singh).

Whilst the movie highlights the plight of the colonised poor, it is not all about the doom and gloom of living in the ghettos.

Super 30

The movie exhibits the class disparity within the education system and it is quite sad to think that so many financially disadvantaged kids have to suffer such circumstances.

In fact, a particular thought-provoking sequence is when the Super 30 alumni dream about studying at the high-class institute, IIT and in that reverie, they are shown to be misfits.

They are constantly engulfed in a web of negative thoughts, which is contributed by society.

As a result, ‘education’ is represented to be a ‘beacon of change’… That subject becomes like an additional character in the movie as it becomes the strength/escapism for the underprivileged.

It is high time that dynastic privileges are omitted and opportunities are given to those who truly deserve it.

The ‘Basanti No Dance’ sequence signifies the power of overcoming ‘weakness’ especially language barriers.

Consequently, use Sholay, a film which has quite prominently formed the fabric of Indian pop-culture, as a way to stand up to class disparity.

Ishq 

Ishq is the story of two rich kids, Ajay (Ajay Devgn) and Madhu (Juhi Cahwla), and their love for Kajal (Kajol) and Raja (Aamir Khan) respectively -- who come from a poor section of the society. It begins with an unctuous voice-over that tells us how the rich perceives the poor - as vermin - and are ever ready to quash them under their richly clad feet. It goes on to introduce the ultra-rich businessman Ranjit Rai (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), (Ajay's dad in the film) and his friend Harbans Lal (Dilip Tahil) who detest nothing more than the poor. The houses they live in is as big as the ego of the filmmaker, Indra Kumar, who had clearly mistaken himself as the satirist of the century. Needless to say, that Ranjit Rai and Harbans Lal are the Machiavellian villains of Ishq, a film which leaves no opportunity to belittle the poor.

In almost every scene, poor people are denigrated by Ranjit Rai, degraded and humiliated, and generally made to feel like scum. Not just his character, the younger generation also -- especially Ajay (Devgn) and Raja (Khan) -- display a disregard for those in supposedly 'menial' jobs such as bank managers, clerks, servants and others in the service of the rich. In the end, the film tries to malign and ridicule the classist, rich villains, but fails miserably. If Ishq is meant to be a comment on our social structure and class differences, it clearly doesn't come across.

As a Conflict Theory

One modern sociological perspective derived from the grand Marxist narrative of history is Conflict Theory.

Conflict theory posits that society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources. This social order is maintained by domination and power, rather than by the consensus and conformity of those within it.

The primary conflict in Marxism occurs between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie

Critical Theory

Marxism would come to facilitate the development of critical theories and cultural studies.

Critical theory is a philosophical approach to culture — especially literature — that seeks to confront the social, historical, and ideological forces and structures of power that produce and constrain culture.

The first and most notable critical theorists are the members of the Frankfurt School (Bohman, 2005).

The critical method of analysis has far-reaching academic influence. Often, critical theorists are preoccupied with critiquing modernity and capitalist society, the definition of what it means to be free in a society, and the detection of wrongs in society.

Critical theorists often use a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy focusing on economic and political ideas such as commodification, reification, fetishization, and the critique of mass culture.

Work cited:

Charlotte Nickerson. “What Is Marxism?” Marxism | Definition, Theory, Ideology, Examples, & Facts, https://www.simplypsychology.org/marxism.html.

Team, The Investopedia. “Marxism: What It Is and Comparison to Communism,

 Radia, Anuj. “Mainstream Bollywood: The Recent Representations of Class Disparity.” Filme Shilmy, 17 July 2019, https://filmeshilmy.com/2019/07/17/mainstream-bollywood-the-recent-representations-of-class-disparity/.

“#90SMOVIESIN2018: 1997 Mega-Hit 'Ishq' Is Nothing but a Classist Cringe-Fest.” News18, 21 Sept. 2018, https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/rewatchingmovies-1997s-mega-hit-ishq-is-nothing-but-a-classist-cringe-worthy-film-1884567.html.

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