CMNS 247 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Antonio Gramsci, Aristocracy, Herbert Schiller
5 Nov 2017
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Lecture #4
Materialism and Dependency
- critical perspective
- realists ask how states ensure continued existence
- liberals ask how to make the world a better place
- materialists are asking how capitalism shapes international communication, and how
communication is used to enforce unequal relations of exchange on a global scale
- one way flow of wealthy urban centres in West, to poor peripheral centres in the rest of world
Critical Perspectives
Mainstream vs. Alternative
Mainstream or dominant: Realism, Liberalism
Alternative or Critical: Marxism or Material, Cultural or Post-Colonial
Liberalism, Realism, Marxism
Materialism Overview
- Key Assumptions
• Relations of production give rise to all else: law, politics, culture
• Production is the first thing; governing arrises
• The ways in which things are produced would require different forms of governance
• Historial approach - when the relations of production change, then politics and culture will
also change
• Study over time how change in organization of productions gives rise to other cultures
• Change itself happens through class struggle
- Different Vision of the State
• The state (or superstructure) is a product of economic relations (or base)
• The state emerged with feudalism as an instrument of class rule
• It is upheld under capitalism as a way to maintain the capitalist division of labour; the state is
what allows the owners of capital (bourgeoisie) to maintain power over the workers
(proletariat)
• States don’t serve themselves (Realism) or the people (Liberalism). They serve capital.
• Pyramid of Capitalist System
- Materialism in IR
• Capital always wants to expand
• If you have no more opportunities for growth in own country, one may go to government and:
• It expands through imperial conquest
of new territories
of cultures, mindsets, or policies
through dispossession (because most world territories are fully colonized)
• States are at the service of capitalist expansion
military
diplomacy
domestic policies - labour, taxation, etc.
All designed to support the system and expansion of capitalism at home and abroad
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Realists ask how states ensure continued existence. Liberals ask how to make the world a better place. Materialists are asking how capitalism shapes international communication, and how communication is used to enforce unequal relations of exchange on a global scale. One way flow of wealthy urban centres in west, to poor peripheral centres in the rest of world. Alternative or critical: marxism or material, cultural or post-colonial. They serve capital: pyramid of capitalist system. All designed to support the system and expansion of capitalism at home and abroad. A critical history of the rise of states. For marxists, the realist story is idealogical in nature - it serves the interests of elites for us to believe that the state is a good thing that needs to be maintained and protected. Marxists study of history reveals how biased the realist theory is. Primitive society: shared property gave rise to proto-democracy.
