LECTURE 3 - Marxism & Design Activism (Richard Miles)

AIMS

• to introduce a critical definition of ideology
• To introduce to some of the basic principles of Marxist philosophy
• To explain the extent to which the media constitutes us as subjects
• To introduce 'culture jamming' and the idea of design activism. - looking at the trend of left wing and activist designers. 
• What can designers do to change the world we live in?

QUOTE

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however, is to change it"

Marx, K (1845) 'Theses On Feuerbach

• There is no point thinking without action - to find some kind of synthesis of theory philosophy and thinking and action. 
• Praxis - the unification of thought and action
• A political practice

• Wasnt the most successful plan of attack
• Politics that describes how laberours, workers and bosses were always in conflict
• Invented a particular way of thinking about every aspect of the society and word
• It is a physisolophical method
• Marxism lead to the rise of the soviet union in 1917
• Most of the communist counties took their ideas from Marxism

• Capitalism is the society that we live in - where the control of the ability of the means to make money and prefect is held by a few people - everyone else works to make money for the few individuals.
• It evolves around a market where everything is brought and sold - people as well as shoes and products
• Our interactions evolved around the logic of the market - this is controlled through the exchange of money
• It is a system which makes us (based on individualism) - it is a competition which makes us compete, right from the early days of schooling where you are taught to compete against other people with grades

• Primitive communism - early stages of societies - they co-operated at every single level, they shared everything, there was no such thing as a monogamous relationship, sexual and social freedom. 
• It is only when a system is introduced where some people have more than other people is when GREED is introduced
• The more that is input into the society - the more a HIERARCHY and relations of productions would emerge. Where someone woudl have power and someone wouldn't. 
• FEUDALISM - people own the ability to make money, the super super right who own factories who and create money - BOURGEOISIE - people would start to see the difference in wealth, that it was so unfair that people woud gang together and start a revolution and start a state. Workers confronted with the unfairness of their situation makes them stand up. 

• Another important aspect - the materialist conception of society
• Marx is a MATERIALIST philosopher
• He argues taht society can be broken down into sections - economic - the BASE - this is when at any given moment a society will have certain tools techniques and skills (nucular power plants, workers in number, what skills and machines) - in that base you have relations of productions where people are put into the situation and by accident they end up in some sort of reatino of production - male or female side, black or white side - certain relations emerged and work around the FORECES of production
• Every thing is a result of the FORCES OF PRODUCTION - law, politics, culture, art, design, eduction, philosophy, ideas of family - everything can be traced back to class, gender politics, ratial politics - it bares the stamp
• Relations of production product various situations of society

• BASE - produces the contents and form of the SUPERSTRUCTURE - which legitimises and reflects the form of the base
• One produces the opposite and then the other strengths and builds the producer
• EG - EDUCTION/Schools - the base are bosses, workers - boss telling the worker what to do, so an education situation emerges. At school pupils are taught by a teacher constantly telling the pupils what to do - this then goes onto work places situation where a boss says 'do this do that' and the employee thinks that it is natural. 

• BASE - produces; education, family, politics, mass media. Family - when society were at a primitive stage, just living together, there was no such thing as a monogamous relationship - women were the dominant people (matriark) - the only reason that changed that as society became more developed, more and more food was harvested and they didn't need it, the men started to think about who they can hand down the food and weapons to e.g. to a son - that was the only way men could identify who their children were. 

• Where we are in life we are forced into relations that we don't really need to know about - they correspond to the stage of society that we are at

• Our society from 1917 that we live in - Poster by the American workers organsitation
• The pyrimad of capitalist society - this is how our society operates.
• The ruling class (the queen of England is not in charge)
• Aristrocracy - church, army - 
• The rich owners of investment banks etc think that the Queen is the head of the society
• 'We eat for you' - Bourgousie - the state to manage this class - 
• 'We feed all, We work for all" - they manage through the way they think about themselves or physicalls (shoot them)
• Control the working class through IDEOLOGY - e.g. set up an organised religion - religion teaches us (marxis religion) - teaches us that if we are good and honoourable and dont kick up a fuss, it doesn't matter if you are poor, as long as you are moral, then eventually when you die you go to heaven. A Marxis reading of Religion could show that it is the ultimate trap of thinking. 

• The 2nd connotation of 'ideology' - e.g. religion - they way in which a certain systems of ideas only masks, distorts or selection of ideas - legitimises the impression of certain classes, genders, races - and creates in people a 'false consciousness' - we don't understand the our true relation of society
• False consciousness - there are all sort of ideologies operating around us. 

• Art - always been ideological - people have an idea that art is one persons free expression and that they have to communicate a message to society - but in reality this has never been like this
• Artists were normally from the rich class - they were the only ones that could afford to be educated. Women were not allowed to be educated and not allowed to produce art. This creates rich men are the only ones that are making art
• Rich people are also the only ones that are going to buy the art. So it is actually going to reflect the way the ruling class thinks. Rich people making art for Rich people. 
• STALIN painting - commissioned by the ruler or society, people look at it and start to think that he is a good person when in reality he is a mass murderer. 
• SCULPTURE - It was a message that if you don't behave according to the church (homo or fornicator) they you would be eaten alive by snakes - people making art to train people to think a certain way 

• Most of the pictures are of naked women - most of the artists are men
• "NUDE" - starting to say that they are a work of art not porno or nothing sexual - not really true, bit of a lie

• One of the main writers about IDEOLOGY - not just produced by society, that it becomes a relation, something we live in and something that bonds us to society
• Most of the artists are men, they chose sexually to pain naked women - on the back of that a load of writing occurs about how the painting of naked women isn't sexual - this then feeds into society, people say that 'women have a beautiful form' this is actually born from the ideology
• It becomes a mechanism through the way we live our lives
• Ideology - offers reasons for why we are in our situation 

• There are various different aparatus in society that relfect, create, acceminates and disseminates in society e.g. The Church
• Education is about training you to exists in the way society wants you to behave. It is an ideologyical state aparatus
• The media - is the most important ideological state aparatus - all of the media out there is owned by a super rich media person - the media reflects ideology that is in the world already and perpetuates false conciousness
• Because the media is EVERYWHERE - it is a very powerful way of affecting the way we think and the way we feel - this is controlled by the rich person who ownes it - scary at how much this person has power over us. 

• Rupert Merdoch - boasts that he has the power to control the elections
• Blair cut a deal to relax the monopoly so that he could buy up more stuff - in return they would back the labour party - so the labour party would get into the government.
• Then the Tory party said they would completely relax the monopoly of it - so the Sun backed Tory then destroyed Labour

• Paper which are marketed at the upper class society - they are written in a certain way and has a certain quality to it - the stories are more sophisticated

• The papers for the working classes have covers like this - slang and naked women - the stories on the front cover are about TV, sport, X-Factor etc
• What you are saying - in a common sense - that the working class are stupid - but in reality it is the journalists who are writing this in a dumbed down manner, they are idolosing the fact that all the working class are intersted in is trashy stories. 
• Ideology is more than propogander, it becomes a way of life - working class women start being fed images of beautiful women on display which makes them think that they have to be like this
• It can all be traced back to the base relation of production

• Also they act as judges of those who challenge society 
• Student Protests - get absolute summary judgements of the students as hoolagons - 'brainless' - this is what is going to happen if you let them out
• No discussion of the politics of the situation - just judgements

• An educated man who contradicts the ideologyical movements that all people are brainless - when they talk about the social reasons for he he was accused that he was a rioter as well

• Wonderbra adds - reflect the ruling dominant society - patriatric society - the men are the dominant class
• Most people think about them selves in the way men think about them. 
• The add - as long as you have a wonder-bra (big boobs) you don't have to be educated, you can still shag your way to the top
• The women and the mens road to success is very different

• Ideology - it is a self fulfilling circles, that provides answers for questions that havn't been asked
• Right image - underlying assumption - that all women should automatically sleep with men, if they don't then get them hypnotised. 

• Reach a situation where the strange thing about ideology (e.g. wonder-bra - symbols of success rather than success) we start to identify with these sort of things. We move our relationships onto things, onto what people consume. From this arises the false assumption that workers with 2 cars and colour TV's are not part of the working class. 
• No revolution - tricked into thinking that from what we buy, we have everything, we make ourselves poorer through buying, making other people richer - that we will never gain status in society. 

• FETISH - something that gets in the way of something else, something that is used as a substitute. It acts as a barrier for human sexual relations.
• Fettishize thing - NIKE trainers being cool, then the appearance of the trainers start to become cool rather than you being cool. 

• It can commodify and brand anything. 
• Clever as a marketing tool - idea that you can sell anything as well as it is branded properly. Piking up garbage and putting them in a plastic pocket with Helvetica on it and sells it for $100 a piece!

• Ultimately - our society is grossly unfair - something should be done to change the system of creating money out of nothing. 

• Since 1989 all the COMMUNIST countries have dissolved and we have now got a society where society has judged which class is the best and that it is going to stay that way. 
• Exiting times for a Revolution.
• At the moment there is no class conciousness

• Increasingly people don't consider themselves to be workers - most people work in jobs where things are immaterial - don't create a car, you create something less tangible - so people forget that they are part of the working class. 

• Condems the young and the poor
• No chance for the young to go to college and get an education unless they pay a load of money
• Pensioners - that they are going to take all their money away

• Social movement occuring through MEDIA - 

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