A Marxist Understanding of Culture

In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.

— Mao Zedong

What is culture? The Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines “culture,” in its noun form, as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; the characteristic features of everyday existence shared by people in a place or time. In other words, culture encompasses the attitudes, feelings, and beliefs of a specific group of people situated in a particular place and time. Therefore, understanding culture involves examining its components and contradictions, and exploring the relationships it constitutes between human society and the natural world.

The birth of culture, as understood here, is synonymous with—and antecedent to—the emergence of modern humanity. The oldest known cultural artifacts, the Lomekwi stone tools from Kenya, date to approximately 3.3 million years ago, and are generally attributed to early members of the Homo genus; Homo habilis, or possibly australopithecines. This places these tools at a pivotal moment in evolutionary history, as well as at the beginnings of proto-human culture ¹. Culture, then, may be understood as a fundamental expression of evolutionary development across all species (not only our own) and gradually developing over time through the mass movement of the members of that species. It may be asserted, then, that as the sole Homo species in the world today, we as Homo sapiens represent the highest emergence of both evolutionary and cultural development thus far within the genus. Culture, within that context, is a fundamental expression of the human experience, which co-arises with our continued mass-development as a species; an outward reflection, or machination, of increasingly complex representations of consciousness and the need to understand and thrive within the material world.

Fundamentally, then, the question of culture is the question of human society; of its successes and failures, wealth and poverty, joy and suffering. It is thus, necessarily, also fundamentally linked with the question of human development. For Marxists, culture appears simultaneously as cause as well as effect; that culture arises naturally among human groups wherever they appear, shaped by the material conditions of the natural world, and in turn likewise shapes that world towards satisfying human interests. That is, fundamentally, that the birth, development, and death of culture occurs through dialectical motion between human belief and material reality. Culture is the logic of how any given people throughout history have, or will, interpret and interact with the natural world, how they themselves have been shaped within the context of all that has come before, as well as how they in turn further shape it for future generations.

In the final analysis, culture arises from the contradiction between human yearning for prosperity and meaning within the context of a hostile and dangerous natural world.

The Anatomy of Culture

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.

— Mao Zedong

Bound up within the question of culture are a multitude of further aspects and contradictions, with each aspect simultaneously arising with, interacting with, and influencing the other within the overarching dialectical motion. It is precisely due to this cumulative nature that one-sided or limited attempts to understand or influence some aspects of culture without accounting for the others are fundamentally limited in their outcomes, and why, ultimately, human culture evolves and changes unceasingly from generation to generation. The logic of their accumulated motion is the same as that of other dialectical progressions: arising first from antagonism, and proceeding from quantitative to qualitative.

1. Material Conditions

As with all things, the primary shaping force of human culture is the material reality within which any group finds itself; the innate (evolutionary) human need for understanding and survival, within the context of time and place. This primacy is derived from, or reflected in, the antagonism found in the contradiction between human belief and natural circumstance. That is, that material conditions, at all times, retain the fundamental position within the motion of cultural development. This remains true, even and especially in those times when it appears most irrelevant, as material conditions fundamentally shape the context within which all other aspects arise. Culture does not exist beyond the context of materiality, and, conversely, the context of materiality without the lens of culture is fundamentally incomprehensible. Of particular importance, especially since the birth of class society, are the forces of production and the social relations of production in any given society.

Exploitation and private property. The birth of class society, denoting the end of so-called primitive communism, marked the beginning of a fundamental change in human relations and material conditions: the enslavement of man, and the privatization of property (the social relations of production). While justified within their contexts through cultural interpretations of “the natural order” etc., and wielded ruthlessly towards economic ends, this qualitative emergence in human development has shaped the world for millennia. In turn, this shaped reality further shapes the ground for its own replacement: the qualitative emergence of new epochs, which in our time reaches the stage of Socialism, and will ultimately emerge as either Communism or extinction. The contradiction between moribund capitalism and immature Socialism, that is, the crisis of a late-stage capitalism that is now failing, and a Socialism that is not yet ready to emerge in its totality, is precisely the primary contradiction of the present period. That is, that it is the point of rupture from which all other crises of our time now flow. Thus, now, the foremost material force in the shaping of human culture is the crisis of capitalism, and the obsoletion of its previous advances.

Revolution and liberation. Just as the emergence of class society appeared out of primitive communism as a result of the qualitative progress of human development within the context of material reality (characterized in part by the development of social relations of production), through the implementation of exploitation of both human and nature as the source of all wealth, so too these conditions now form the basis of development for the emergence of Socialist society: of revolution and liberation. Likewise, just as the exploitation of human and nature finds its highest (most complex) expression in capitalism and capitalist society, so too does liberation finds its highest expression in the final emergence of Communism; Socialism functions as the intermediary period between capitalism and Communism, just as early mercantilism and merchant capitalism functioned as intermediary between feudalism and industrial capitalism.

2. Ideology

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas (Marx). Arising first from the material reality within which a people finds themself, beliefs, feelings, and attitudes soon form: an understanding of material reality and how such forces should function, an interpretation of the (mis)alignment between those understandings and material reality itself, and the logic through which this process occurs. Importantly, this is not a linear process, and occurs through the dialectical interaction of three factors: humankind’s use of tools to shape the natural world, the natural world’s use of unrelenting cosmic phenomena to shape humankind, and humankind’s ability to shape their own and others’ beliefs, reactively and proactively, in accordance with those phenomena². For example, the Catholic denomination of Christianity understands the world to be in a fallen state due to the original sin of eating the fruit of knowledge; not only interpreting the current state of the natural world, but also retroactively justifying its own notions of human origin, status within creation, gender roles, etc., and establishing the logic through which further questions may be explored towards the ideal of “going to heaven.” This includes, most notably, notions of morality that remain socially divisive more than millennia later. Thus, we see that religion itself is essentially an expression of, and contributing aspect to, culture; an opium, or pain-reliever, for human suffering which arises reactively to the material. Most acutely, this position of reactivity and idealism naturally results in its further ideological shaping, ultimately finding its highest expression in reactionary ideology.

The bourgeoisie has to give itself and its activity the semblance of universality and to represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones (Marx). While religion arises essentially as an expression of, and contributing aspect to, culture reactively to the material, culture itself generally encompasses the capacity for both reactive and progressive elements. The emergence of one over the other in the attitude (that is, the cultural logic) of a people more specifically depends upon the form and understanding of the power relations of that people: ideology. In the epoch of class society, power relations must necessarily, if one wishes to be accurate, be understood in terms of class. For example, the ideology of liberalism arose precisely out of the emergence of the bourgeois class at the head of the new capitalist order; the new ruling class supplanting the ancien régime, with a new way of thinking (liberalism) justifying its new order (capitalism). It thus appears that ideology encompasses the second key aspect of culture, arising out of the material conditions of society, dominated by the ruling class.

It is right to rebel (Mao). Through the course of generations, a contradiction arises between the prevailing ideology and the material reality of the society itself. As the higher development of productive forces gave way to the industrial revolution and the birth of the capitalist economy, the divine right of kings (ideological monarchism) was torn asunder by the rising bourgeoisie; the social relations of the serf replaced with that of the wage laborer, the feudal manor with the industrial complex, and the oath of vassalage to the king with the pledge of allegiance to the state. So too, in the late-stage period, the further development of productive forces give rise to new social relations, compromising the prevailing ideology of liberal-imperialism, and ultimately leaving it trampled underfoot by the rising class and the emergence of a new system (socialism).

Base and Superstructure

The place of culture as a fundamental component of human expression appears in its totality as arising through the dialectical motion of material conditions (namely, productive forces and social relations) and ideology (namely, power relations), of their unity and rupture in the ceaseless march of human progress, ultimately tending towards that state in which the lowest complexity in representation and greatest understanding (greatest efficiency) finds its highest and final synthesis with the ascension of human flourishing (abolition of suffering), over and above all previous iterations: Communism.

Explained by Marx as the base and superstructure, the dialectical progression of these two aspects appear as the crucible of human culture. They are not, however, its casket, as the fundamental actor within history (Marx’s subject) remains the mass of the oppressed, bound up therein:

[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

— Karl Marx

That is, that while human culture is fundamentally shaped by the material world, it is human action in general, and the collective action of the mass subject, which guides the progressive, revolutionary unfolding of history towards humanity’s ultimate destiny (Communism or extinction). The subject of revolution, or, translated to Korean, juche, is humanity itself:

The subject of the revolution and construction are the masses of the people, and they are also the motive force of the revolution and construction.

— Kim Il-Sung

Revolutionary Culture

As the productive forces and social relations of production progress in their quantitative to qualitative attributes towards the rupturing of capitalist culture and the collapse of liberal ideological hegemony, the emergence of the new revolutionary order, of Socialism in the New Era, lay just over the horizon. This emergence, however, cannot happen on its own. It is not the current of history on its own which moves the masses; rather, it is the masses, the subject of all history and culture, who moves itself along the current, creating history as they do so. It is thus the task of the revolutionary movement in general, and the Communist Party in specific, to take up the leading role in guiding this movement, and ensuring that the masses do not run aground or find themselves trapped on the shore. It is precisely here that the revolutionary is most vital; without the revolutionary, the waves of history may arise as torrents and hurricanes, but will be of no avail. It is there, rather, in that moment of greatest crisis and greatest failure, that the force of reaction arises and coalesces towards barbarism: to fight the tide of history and to drag the whole of society to the bottom of the sea in a desperate, forlorn attempt at self-preservation against the inevitable. It is thus that each generation passes to the next the greatest and most fundamental task of nurturing, developing, and raising up that new culture: the revolutionary culture that will inspire the masses of the people to take up their role as the subject of history.

The revolutionary culture is, thus, naturally, both ideological as well as material, and directed at all times simultaneously towards understanding the history of the people, their present circumstances, and, on that basis, strong enough to uphold the vision of a future of prosperity and fulfillment such that inspires the growth and development of the revolutionary movement. It is precisely in the moment of greatest irreconcilability, of greatest rupture between the new and old, that revolution may be said to fully emerge. While distinct in its characteristics between time and place, and generally taking the form of the rupture itself, revolution as such naturally entails many aspects; none more fundamental than the revolution of the culture itself.

Just as the masses of the people are wild and listless, incapable of grasping their role as the historical subject without the guidance of revolutionary forces in the moment of crisis, no such revolutionary actor may arise in any noteworthy or effective capacity without being firmly rooted in both the communities of the oppressed as well as the revolutionary organization, the Communist Party. It is in the development of both, of the mass and the Party simultaneously, that the true revolutionary movement finds itself. The work of building revolutionary culture is thus the simultaneous work of building the Party within, through activist training, democratic-centralist organization, Marxist-Leninist study, etc., as well as building the masses without, through direct action, community and labor organization, progressive education, etc.

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