- Using Marxist perspectives, offer a critique of contemporary capitalism and its excesses and injustices. Assess the role media play in promoting and challenging capitalist values.
Marxist critique of contemporary capitalism and its excesses and injustices mainly focuses on its alienation of commodities and currencies, capital, labor products, and human beings. The role of media play is more in promoting rather than challenging capitalist values.
The term alienation has many interpretations. It has both the legal and technical meaning. It is always used in the description of how we are or feel separated from the situation or activities we do not like. With Marx, the main alienation reason is work separation of labor from the worker and product separation from the labor from the worker where they both end up being taken away by employers and controlled by them, dominating the worker.
First, Marx criticized the alienation of labor products. In contemporary sociology, the word alienation has been used in a different type of ways. In labor sociology, some of the authors use alienation in the sense of Marxian; in such way, capitalism and private property alienate the workers from what they struggled to produce. Alienation is considered by other writers to have a more social-psychological interpretation, such as powerlessness, normlessness, social isolation, meaninglessness, and self-estrangement (Sher, 1977). Different causes of this alienation might be there, with organizational structures and bureaucracy, not having the right to own, social disorganization or poor management, or another form of explanation might be technology. Most of these alienation approaches refer to losing the work control, lack of value at the workplace, and lack of expressing yourself at the workplace. Assembly line workers are considered by some authors to have a great sense of alienation, physicians being among them, teachers or other professionals to have the least alienation (Furnham, 1984). “Alienation is likely to be lowest in an organizational setting where members have control, meaning, and opportunities for self-fulfillment in their roles.” (Super, 1976, pp.213). This type of using alienation is somehow different from that of Marx; in such a way, this alienation form is to make work more meaningful, and this is a view that is more reformed, while it was considered by Marx to necessary abolish the private property and change the economic and social structures.
Second, Marx (2015) analyzes the dissimilation of goods and money, stating that money is universal, the self-constituted value of all things, and therefore robbed the whole world, human and natural, of its values. According to Marx (1976), the subject is in control differentiates money from the capital. Wealth owned is constituted in the former, lend invested or borrowed by the organization person, whereby refers later primary to payment means. The definition is so revealing that money that is in the wage form has become provision dominant afforded to man for the labor exchange. However, capital ownership is a man’s labor produces and payment that is transcended and becomes control focus and means to present itself. As noted by Meszaros, money is the pimp between men’s need and the object, between his life and the ways of being (Buchanan, 1979).
Nevertheless, according to Marx’s argument, by ownership virtue, what is produced is controlled by capitalism, when, how much, and the man’s labor intensity. Therefore, it makes the man able to make sure that production far outstrips that he pays out in wages. According to Marx, conditions are produced by labor itself or production as capital, and work is provided by the capital and means of capital realization as wage labor. To this end, the labor of a man is understood by capitalism as a commodity of itself to get better financial returns and profits on the investment. Reduced to a product, the person will find himself at the wretched, where he is endlessly trapped in a cycle that is scientifically instigated, brought about via production and bourgeois control, where he gets divorced from being a human being. And this makes him engage in a futile attempt to end his alienation via ever material consumption improvement (Pfeffer, 1978).
Marx (1959) also analyzes the alienation of capital. Marx does alienation of labor analysis by first noting what exactly happens to workers under capitalism. As the worker creating wealth, it is designed for capitalism and not for the worker or direct producer. The worker produces the worker’s deteriorating condition and the commodities, and from the products provided, the capital is created, and the same capital dominates the worker later. The worker he or she becomes worthless as a result. This fact implies that the objects produced by the labor, its product, and now get opposed to it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer. Its objectification is work performance. For example, in the Hegelian approach to Marx’s manuscript (1959: 12), Marx refers to objectification as loss of the object. It is a concurrent product vitiation and product production of the worker — objectification as servitude to object and alienation. Work result includes an essential aspect of loss work and life, capital domination, and work itself. There is a similarity in religion and practice because the more it is put into the object, the less there is of the self. This is actual domination or separation, and not just bad feelings.
Third, Marx not only analyzed the alienation between capital and human but also explained the alienation between technology and human. Marx (1964) pointed out that machine labor severely damages the nervous system. At the same time, it suppresses the movement of various muscles and consumes all free physical and mental activities. Lightening labor has also become a means of torture, which the machine does not free the worker from labor but makes his labor uninteresting. All capitalist production produces not only useful things, but also creates surplus-value, so that in all capitalist production, it is not the workers who dominate the working conditions, but the working conditions that govern the workers. However, only a machine has made this reversal technically practical for the first time. The machine industry finally completed the separation of physical labor from productive intelligence and turned intelligence into the capital’s power over labor. The skill of the worker is negligible in the face of fantastic science, in front of enormous natural forces, and the look of the massive social job. Science, high natural strength, large-scale social work are reflected in the machine system, constitute the master’s power. Therefore, in the capitalist social life, the universal objectification process, performance for the overall alienation. The so-called complete alienation refers to the fact that labor creates capital, which turns into a substantial social power that comprehensively governs economic life, political life, and spiritual life. In turn, it comprehensively suppresses the subject of labor.
Fourth, Marx criticized the alienation of human nature. Marx (1844) believes that the essence of human beings is free and conscious activities, with their own will and thoughts, and they know how to create according to the law of beauty. However, alienated labor makes the characteristics of human beings’ free and conscious disappear, creativity, and aesthetic feeling go, and human beings become like animals to live and lose their essence. There is no difference between man and animal. The nature of human beings cannot be realized, not to mention, cannot possess. The essence of man has become the sum of the survival competition of animals. Marx criticizes the alienation of people. The relationship between people becomes the relationship between things. People become the means and tools of others and are used and ruled by others. The direct result of man’s alienation from his products of labor, from his activities of life and nature, is man’s alienation from man. That is to say, the alienation of labor products, labor, and human nature inevitably leads to the alienation of people (Furnham, 1984).
Fifth, Marx also criticized the alienation of consumption. The movement of private property (production and consumption) is by far the emotional manifestation of the evolution of all production, that is, the realization of man’s reality. Marx (1844) holds that since the root of alienation is private property, and the private property contains production and consumption, alienation naturally contains production and consumption alienation. Marx (1844) holds that the root of “alienation” lies in “alienated labor.” The essence of a human being is realized through human labor practice, and labor is an objective and inevitable process of the realization of reality. Animal production is one-sided, while social production is comprehensive; the animal produces only under the direct control of bodily needs, and man produces even without the supervision of physical requirements, and only indeed produces when he is not affected by such needs. Animals present only themselves, while men reproduce the whole of nature; the products of an animal directly belong to its body, while man is free to face his products. The animal is built according to the scale and needs the species to which it belongs, but the man knows how to produce according to the level of any species, as well as how to apply the inner scale to the object everywhere. Therefore, the man also builds according to the laws of beauty.
On the whole, Marx’s theory of labor and alienation of human nature is a critique of capitalism. Thus, the production of human beings should be a free and conscious activity, which is the essence of human labor and human nature. However, the products under “alienated labor,” including the property system, constitute a kind of alien antagonism. As the alienated labor practice becomes an animal-type survival instinct to adapt to nature, the human-like essence cannot be realized. Because human beings should be free to carry out labor practice, freely create value, possess value. Still, in the reality of labor practice has denied their own, unable to develop their own, labor practice has become a means of personal gain. As a class, people lose their purpose, and the relationship of equality, unity, and cooperation becomes alienation, that is, the relationship of individuals fighting for their interests. Alienation is relative to the essence, which is revealed in the historical process of alienation and overcoming alienation.
After the 1970s and 1980s, with the development of new information and communication technologies and the advent of the global society, the capitalist culture industry’s production environment has undergone significant changes with the cross-cultural, supranational, and global replacing the original localized, working-class and nation-state culture. Stuart Hall proposed to rediscover the importance of “ideology” in the study of media culture, and he investigated in detail how “ideology” in the field of mass media produces the ideology conforming to the ruling class through the operation of discourse (Chen & Morley, 2006). Hall (year) argues that thinking becomes more than just a “raw material power” to use an old expression. Because in its effect, it is “real”; moreover, it has become a place of struggle (between competing definitions) and a piece of fat. Hall (year) saw that the struggle process of ideology was complicated, and the whole mass media field was a battlefield, where different forces played games with each other and competed for hegemony. The dominant “ideology” was created in various discourse struggles. However, influenced by Gramsci’s (year) thoughts, Hall realized that there was no compromise between the dominant class and the junior class.
On the contrary, the dominant class often used the method of “legal coercion” to win the consensus of the subordinate classes and groups, thus establishing the “cultural leadership.” In this process, mass media play an essential role. Modern mass media is the “regulator” of different interest groups (Fuchs, 2011). It not only serves the ruling class but also considers the interests of other classes. Through the “rediscovery” of ideology, Hall (1980) not only affirmed the important role of the “critical theory” of Frankfurt school, but also absorbed the theory of structuralism semiotics, and revised the critical mode of the critical theory of Frankfurt.
Although the early Frankfurt school focused on criticizing the capitalist media culture industry, the capitalist media culture industry at that time was far less developed than today, and the media culture in the United States and Europe was not as centralized monopolized as it is today. However, in the eyes of today’s critical theorists, the world today is an age of technology and media, and new media is everywhere. To understand the world today, in a way, is to understand technology and media culture. Through the operation of power and the advocacy of mass media, the mass media of capital and social politics and economic power institutions are united to create a mythological spiritual illusion (Schou, 2016). These myths are used to cover up the real purpose of power institutions to control and manipulate social thought. The mass media mediators take part in the social control of power institutions, create a false reality, and create the word of god, which is to cover the incomplete society of the capital, weaken people’s critical energy, and defend the truth of capitalism.
In Schiller’s (year) view, the national government is the central territory of this neutral myth, and the mass media is its tireless advocate. Schiller (1973), for example, said that for half a century, all media had participated in the propaganda of deifying the FBI as a non-political and efficient executive agency. In fact, the FBI has repeatedly been used to intimidate and intimidate social critics. The news media has done its utmost to present itself as a neutral, impartial approach to reporting on any issue. When errors or inconsistencies occur, they exert a great deal of force in convincing people that the situation is the work of an individual and cannot be explained as the error of the basically-correct information disseminators.
The mass media’s advocacy of neutrality is intended to abolish ideology, which Schiller strongly opposes. Schiller (1973) believes that ideology is by no means the end of the time, society should strengthen its critical understanding. The mass media has created for itself a neutral myth that entertainment and recreation have no values in order to mask its true purpose of participating in social control. For example, public television is eager to deny that it is educational television. Commercial television, they argue, does attract a broad audience, but they do not show educational programs, except for news programs and documentaries. Schiller described the idea that “entertainment has no educational value” as “one of the greatest frauds in history.” Virtually all the myths that power men need to manage their thoughts can be found in the Madison Avenue – Hollywood video factory, which produces recreational entertainment.
Schiller’s critique of media myth shows that he is contrary to capitalist mass media. These myths are part of his conception of the mass media as a machine of consciousness run by capitalist corporations and government. It is necessary to establish the word of god to achieve the maximum effect of manipulation and not to show any signs of manipulation. From the standpoint of western Marxism, Schiller believed that “myth” was the primary manifestation of the falsity of ideology. In the modern industrial civilization society, the ideology becomes increasingly hidden, and the myth Schiller criticizes is just the false ideology created by the authority to maintain the rule. Schiller’s almost obsessive criticism not only criticizes capitalism’s mass media value but also exposes the capitalist system.
In short, Marx criticizes the alienation of labor products. Marx (2015) analyzed the dissimilation of goods and money, namely commodity fetishism and monetary fetishism. Marx also examines the alienation of capital. Marx analyzed the alienation between capital and human, and the alienation between technology and humans. Marx criticizes the alienation of human nature. Marx also criticizes consumption alienation. On the whole, Marx’s theory of labor and alienation of human nature is a critique of capitalism. These myths are a partial product of the ideology of mass media, which is operated by capitalist companies and government.
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