BUILT ENVIRONMENT &

SPATIAL CULTURE
Lecture 12, 18-04-2014
Marxist Theory
• In order to sustain any society, man’s physiological needs like – food, clothing, shelter etc, need to be:
• Produced by a population
• Distributed to people and
• Exchanged in some way
• In order to produce, distribute and exchange any commodity, people have to co-operate. Hence they enter
into a variety of social relationships and therefore our society sustains.

1. The Forces of Production: involve such things as:

• Land,
• Raw materials,
• Tools / Machines,
• Knowledge (scientific / technical and the like),
• People (or, more correctly, their labour).
Different societies at different times in their historical development involve some or all of the above as part of
the general production process

2. The Means of Production:

Those parts of the Forces of production that can be legally owned - for example, land and raw materials, but not
such things as "knowledge" or "labour power" (the ability to put people to work).

Legal ownership ≈ power

Concept of “labour power” is significant, in terms of Capitalist forms of society because it means that an
employer does not own an employee; all an employer buys is the labour power of the employee, which means that
the latter is “free” to sell their labour power to the highest bidder – an important idea that has considerable
economic and political consequences.
According to Marx, different historical periods have different dominant means of
production (which, in turn, produces different types of society).
• In Feudal society, land was the most important means of production.
• In Capitalist society, land is still significant, but the most important means of production are
things like factories, machines and so forth.

3. The Relations of Production:

People cannot produce anything without entering into various social relationships with others.
This involves both individual / personal relationships and group relationships.
“Social classes" - groups of people who share a basically similar position in the production
process.
The relationship between social classes is:
• Unequal,
• Exploitative,
• Founded on a "conflict of interest"
Relationship to the means of production determines our social class. Marx identified two great classes in
Capitalist society:
1. The Bourgeoisie (Upper or Ruling class): Those people (a minority) who owned the means of
production.
2. The Proletariat (Lower or Working class): Those people (the majority) who did not own the means
of production.
Social change is a result of conflict between these classes or “class struggle”. The basis of this conflict
lies in the fact that although wealth is created by the Proletariat (the working class), it is appropriated
(that is "taken away") privately - by the Bourgeoisie - in the form of profits.

The problem area is the relations of production where the nature of relationship is private and more
individualistic rather than a group relation.

In effect, Marx argued that the Bourgeoisie are able to use the power that comes from economic
ownership to "control” the nature of the social world.
Types of Social relationships:
• Primitive communism - characteristic of early human history where people held everything in
common.
• The Ancient epoch (slave society) - societies based upon slavery where the means of production was
owned and controlled by an aristocratic elite.
• Feudal society - where land was the most important means of production. This was owned / controlled
by an aristocratic class, the majority of people belonging to a peasant class (who had few, if any,
political rights).
• Capitalist society - where technological development (machinery etc.) has allowed a bourgeois class
to exploit factory forms of production for their private gain. The aristocracy (landowners) have either
been marginalized or co-opted into the Bourgeoisie whilst the majority of people are wage-labourers
(they own little or no capital). The main relations of production in this epoch are between employers and
employees.
• Communist society - where the means of production are held "in common" for the benefit of everyone
in society (the dictatorship of the Proletariat). In this society class conflict is finally resolved and this
represents the "end of history“ since no further form of society can ever develop.

The possession of power gives:

1. Economic power
Wealth,
Status.

2. Political power
Control over political institutions (government, the State).

3. Ideological power
Control over the way in which people are able to visualise and interpret the social world. This is carried-out
through various forms of socialisation through the mass media, the workplace, the family, the education
system and so forth.
Marxist Theory of Power

Means of Production

Legal Ownership
Personal Power Production for profit
of employees not for need
Economic Ownership

Economic Power
Profits made to
wield power
and influence Political & Ideological Power
 Ideology
• If the purpose of science is to discover the nature of reality concealed under
surface appearance, social science is the search for the real nature of society,
underneath all of its visible, external façades.
• The idea that society has an 'appearance', which is not the same as social
'essence', forms the starting point for the Marxist discussion of ideology.
• Ideology conceals the contradictions between the appearance and essence of
society, and therefore benefits the status quo and the ruling class.
• The ideological battle between classes is for 'hegemony'. Hegemony is created in
the domain of the superstructure, by forming alliances with other classes so that
an ideologically dominant class can rule by consent.
Marxist Theory of Infrastructure & Superstructure
• Types of Social relationships:
• Economic relationship: the "infrastructure" or "economic base" of society.
• Political/ideological relationship: the "superstructure" of society.
Marxist Three Levels of Culture Model

Infrastructure -- population, basic biological need, and resources (labor,

equipment, technology, etc.).

Structure -- pattern of organization (government, constitution, laws,

education, etc.).

Superstructure -- social institutions (religion, politics, culture, art, science,

superstition, values, emotions, traditions, media etc.).

Consciousness

Social
Being
Structural, or macro perspectives analyses the way society as a whole fits together.
Structural theory sees society as a system of relationships that creates the structure
of the society in which we live. It is this structure that determines our lives and
characters. Structured sets of social relationships are the 'reality' that lie below the
appearance of 'the free individual' of western individualism. Structuralism focuses
on the particular set of 'structural laws' that apply in any one society.
Marxist theorists began to develop structuralist Marxist accounts of the state, law,
and crime. Structuralist Marxism disputes the instrumentalist view that the state can
be viewed as the direct servant of the capitalist or ruling class. Whereas the
instrumentalist position argues that the institutions of the state are under the direct
control of those members of the capitalist class in positions of state power, the
structuralist perspective takes the position that the institutions of the state must
function in such a way as to ensure ongoing viability of capitalism more generally.
Structuralists view the state in a capitalist mode of production as taking a
specifically capitalist form, not because particular individuals are in powerful
positions, but because the state reproduces the logic of capitalist structure in its
economic, legal, and political institutions.
Hence, from a structuralist perspective one would argue that the institutions of the
state (including its legal institutions) function in the long-term interests of capital and
capitalism, rather than in the short term interests of members of the capitalist class.
Structuralists would thus argue that the state and its institutions have a certain
degree of independence from specific elites in the ruling or capitalist class.