In ancient India, the society was divided into four basic classes- the ‘Brahmins’ (scholars), the ‘Kshatriyas’ (the warriors), the ‘Vaishyas’ (traders, manufacturers and merchants) and the ‘Shudras’ (so-called lower class doing menial jobs). Although they were divided in terms of their professions (hereditary) for the sake of convenient classification but it was much more than just occupational; it became an economic base of division leading to social categorization weavingthe political and ‘cultural’ fabric. Had Marx been alive at the time, this would have been an interesting case study for him as this kind of a superstructure did not echo an economic base in the initial setup and thus the cultural genesis in this case must have been something else.
Defining culture has always been a herculean task for the scholars but nonetheless of vital importance because of the exploitative use of the word ‘culture’. Narrowing my area of focus to Britain in the early twentieth century, there was no scholarly analysis on the culture (Pete Anderson made his presence felt too, but none of them were concrete enough in terms of ideas). One of the earliest cultural thinkers was Raymond Williams (1921-88). He was a Welsh academic, critic and novelist. He came from a ‘British working-class background’; his father was a railway signal worker, a trade unionist and a socialist. This might be one of the reasons for Williams’ association with Marxism. The materialist conception of history (Marx) was a great influence on Williams and he went on to study at Cambridge University. He, in his widely read academic works like Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961), Problems in Materialism and Culture (1980) and many more, asserted the idea that ‘Culture is Ordinary’ and ‘culture is a whole way of life’ (Williams, R., 1958). Coming from a working class background, he had seen the discriminations made between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ cultures. He was concerned with the question of culture in the class-based society of England. He attacked the ‘high’ culture saying that it is not comprehensive and is not a reflection of the society as a whole, the way a culture ought to be. Through culture, people and groups identify and define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society.
For his idea of ‘cultural democracy’ he broadly used Marxian analysis to illustrate the genesis of culture in a society. To him ‘it is (was) capitalism….which is (was) confusing us’ (Williams, R., 1961, 327). Marx used the concepts of historical and dialectical materialism to provide a clear picture of the world we live in. Williams took this theory further and “…..traced the evolution of culture through its various historical conditions towards a complete form” (Sardar and Van Loon, 1997). He emphasised that in order to understand the holistic nature of culture, the proposition to determine the base and the superstructure became vital. Crucially, he revalued the ‘base’ separately from its traditional economic notion of being restricted to just the ‘relations of production’ to real social and economic relations which make the base dynamic. Williams reviewed all the elements of Marxian analysis such as ‘productive forces’, ‘social consciousness’, ‘class struggle’, added to them the contemporaneous recognition and reproduced it to fit in a superstructural framework for the study of culture. As he says, “…if we fail to see a superstructural element, we fail to recognise reality at all.” (Williams, R., 1980)
He argues that one of the unfortunate consequences of Marxian analysis is that it is so hard to comprehend that people often choose a much easier way such as the ‘totality complex’ theory which takes into account all the human activities such as social intention law, institutions, which affect the culture but without assigning any specific weights to any aspect. He endorsed the views of Antonio Gramsci, the great political philosopher and thinker, on ‘hegemony’ and its complexity. Williams found “this notion of hegemony as deeply saturating the consciousness of a society” to be fundamental (Williams, R., 1980)as it had an obvious advantage over the concept of totality, recognising the class domination over culture and society.
“The theoretical model which I have been trying to work with is this. I would say first that in any society, in any particular period there is a central system of practices, meanings and values, which we can properly call dominant and effective. This implies no presumption about its value. All I am saying is that it is central.”
-(Williams, R., Problems in materialism and Culture, 1980, 38)
The above statement highlights the theme of selective tradition formulated by Williams, according to which, there are certain parts of any culture which are passed off as being traditional or residual and the ‘selectivity’ is that central point from which certain ideas or social practices are excluded. He describes the culture to be ever changing and hence the dominant (central) culture also has to be amended from time to time. His ideas echo a Marxian theme of dialectical materialism when he talks about the old ideologies being discarded for alternative ones (oppositional culture).
Williams imagined a democratised culture in which every individual’s beliefs could shape their mindset and together would shape the culture of the ‘masses’. He argued that ‘there is no such thing as masses, only ways of seeing people as masses’ (Raymond Williams); this was his basis of supporting the statement that culture is extremely dynamic.
Williams had responded to a lot of criticism for his earlier works in his latest book- Problems in Materialism and Culture. His earlier critics noted that his idea of a democratised culture was utopian and that he never explained in any of his works on how he aims to amalgamate the contemporary situation and his own idealised notions. What they did not however understand was that Williams never put forth the theme of a ‘uniform culture’ but a ‘democratic’ one. By this he meant that the culture should not be restricted to the ruling or dominant class and should ‘recognise’ or ‘acknowledge’ the culture and the lifestyles of the proletarian class. The study of culture could no longer be reduced to an aesthetic or moral question but involved a ‘whole way of life’, a complex, lived-in ‘structure of feelings’. (Chambers, I., 1986, on Raymond Williams).
What I particularly noticed in his writing is that he acknowledged that unfortunately just like when in capitalism, a non-profit making entity is overlooked till the time it starts making losses, even certain human practices outside or against the conscious dominant form of culture exist only till the time the interests of the ruling class are served or rather, not opposed. If the stakes are too high, new ‘traditions’ will emerge out of the ‘central point’ which will minimize the effects of the emerging struggling culture.Williams immersed himself so much in Marxian analysis that it was the only framework he could set things in. He could not build his own crucible which could encompass and withstand all the heated culture-debates. So, although his reasoning was quite scientific and his last work mostly satisfied his critics, the lack of originality remains prominent. In this essay, on the basis of Gramscian view, I noted the role of state in forming the social and economic relations in a society. The state, according to this view, is the ‘site of a permanent struggle to conform…. the whole complex of social relations, including those of civil society, to the imperatives of development in a social formation.’ (Hall, S., 1986).
Conclusion
To summarise my essay, I would highlight its key objectives which were- first, to give evidence of how Raymond Williams supported his views on culture as ‘a whole way of life’ and second, to rate his reasoning. On focusing on the former, we see a prominent presence of Marxian analysis, which he used to support his view. I have given examples of how he supported his arguments with the concept of materialism and class-struggle. He explained the earlier seeming follies in his later works and thus made his theory clearer. When I considered the second part, it was not an innocent exercise to critically examine his reasoning because the culture-studies is a complex subject which is not dependent on ‘definite’ elements, but I constantly searched for his views on the role of state in the society. Being restricted to Marxist thought, he could not analyse the state’s role in isolation and thus, lost a very crucial study theme. This drawback also led to exclusion of the ‘emerging capitalist culture-industry’ from the subject in question. The contemporary popular culture is fed to the media audience by the ‘providers’ in the industry who control the content and project a tempting illusion of media-democratisation.It makes people believe that they can actually be a part of controlling the content meted out to them. It would be interesting to discern how Raymond Williams would perceive Lady Gaga or issues of Social Networking Sites like Facebook! Or perhaps this is what he had idealised- a world free of prejudices between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures. My only question is- how would he explain the emergence of capitalistic media content providers? Will he totally condemn their presence, keeping in mind his Marxian mental background? We would know, only if he were to be alive today. The research, meanwhile, continues.
References
1. Bennett, T., Colin, M., et al., (1986) Popular Culture and Social Relations, Philadelphia: Open University Press
2. Chambers, I. (1986) Popular Culture- the metropolitan experience, London: Methuen
3. Sardar, Z., Borin, V.L., (1997) Cultural Studies for Beginners, Cambridge: Icon Books
4. Williams, R. (1980) Problems in Materialism and Culture,Chapter 2,London: Redwood Burn Ltd.
5. Marx, K. (1859) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
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