Cultural Materialism versus ‘Received Marxist Theory’

Abstract

It took me thirty years, in a very complex process, to move from that received Marxist theory (which in its most general form I began by accepting) through various transitional forms of theory and inquiry, to the position I now hold, which I define as “cultural materialism”. The emphases of the transition — on the production (rather than only the reproduction) of meanings and values by specific social formations, on the centrality of language and communication as formative social forces, and on the complex interaction both of institutions and forms and of social relationships and formal conventions — may be defined, if anyone wishes, as “culturalism”, and even the crude old (positivist) idealism/ materialism dichotomy may be applied if it helps anyone. What I would now claim to have reached, but necessarily by this route, is a theory of culture as a (social and material) productive process and of specific practices, of “arts” as social uses of material means of production (from language as material “practical consciousness” to the specific technologies of writing and forms of writing, through to mechanical and electronic communications systems). I can only mention this here; it is spelled out more fully in Marxism and Literature and New Sociology: Culture.¹