Informal group interest approaches have been criticized variously for reducing the motivations for political action to material interest, for viewing the formation and operation of groups in ad hoc or historically contingent terms, and for oversimplifying the operation of power as a possession wielded over others. But if group power approaches spend less time theorizing about their own assumptions concerning the operation of power and politics, then Marxian-influenced approaches head in the opposite direction. Friends and foes alike find themselves subject to exhaustive (and often exhausting) elaborations, distinctions, and criticisms of definitions, concepts, and theoretical applications of Marx. Even Marx cannot escape being labeled a ‘‘proto-Marxist’’ at times (Rose 1999: 27).
It is a shame, though, that Marx has not figured more prominently in classical scholarship. One can employ Marxian insights without being a Marxist (which is why I have chosen to refer to the approach as ‘‘Marxian’’ rather than ‘‘Marxist’’). Marxian approaches can be helpful in clarifying and challenging how one understands (or what one even looks for in) the operation of power and politics. Marx guides the scholar to focus on the economic production process, which is the critical factor in dividing individuals into classes, defining the terms of class struggle and the basis of power, and providing the foundation (and impetus) for the creation of political, religious, and ideological structures supportive of the economic relations of a society. Most importantly, Marxian approaches emphasize the relational character of economic, social, and political existence: classes become conscious of themselves as they enter into conflict with other groups over the means and relations of production, and over the distribution of the outcomes of production. Politics thus encompasses a broad set of relationships that direct our attention not just to the elites, but to marginal, and previously unstudied, groups (the ‘‘mice’’ in social power analysis): women, laborers, slaves, and communities in the periphery.
The story that Marxian analysis tells of ancient politics is twofold: on the one hand, Marx (particularly in his early work) saw in ancient (especially Athenian) politics the possibility of human emancipation and self-determination (see Marx 1975: 201; Mewes 1976); on the other hand, ancient politics was part of a process of the enslavement - and separation from politics-ofincreasing portions of the population (Vernant 1976: 68-9). Marxian approaches have lent themselves well to analyses of the economic forces that moved Rome toward a slave (and increasingly enslaved peasant) economy (de Ste Croix 1981; Hindess and Hirst 1975; Carandini 1988). They have posited how we can read the increasing division and conflict in early Greece between an exploitative aristocracy and an exploited, but increasingly resistant, demos (Wood and Wood 1978; de Ste Croix 1981; Bintliff 1982; Tandy 1997; Rose 1997; Thalmann 1998). And others have employed Marx to hypothesize about the structural contradictions around a land tenure system that underlay Spartan society (Cartledge 1975, 2002b).
But Athenian democracy is more perplexing. Both the inclusiveness of political relations among the body of citizens and the difficulty of defining the form of economic relations have confounded Marxian attempts to carve out a distinctive contribution to understanding Athenian politics, specifically, and the emergence of democracy, generally (see Hindess and Hirst 1975: 82; Wood 1988: 51-80). In seeking to address the peculiarity of Athens, several scholars, including Vernant and Godelier, have modified Marx to suggest that politics may have assumed the ‘‘functions of relations of production’’ since the appropriation and distribution of surplus was ‘‘mediated via political status’’ (Godelier 1977: 36; Vernant 1976: 76; 1980: 10; also Hindess and Hirst 1975: 82-91).
Such reconceptualizations, though, have not been uniformly applauded. For some, the elevation of the political over the economic does not explain ‘‘the dynamics of ancient society’’ (McKeown 1999: 112). That is to say, it takes the economic engine out of political change. Rose paints a picture of ongoing exploitation of the ‘‘peasant masses’’ in order to support Athens, and of Athenian imperialism as a way of exploiting labor abroad in order to purchase ‘‘political accommodation’’ at home (1999: 26, 36). And though recognizing the ‘‘astonishing development of real democracy’’ in Athens, de Ste Croix insists somewhat unpersuasively that the ‘‘basic economic situation asserted itself in the long run, as it always does’’ (1981: 97).
It is around class approaches to the study of politics that ‘‘ideology’’ has assumed recent theoretical prominence. Whether accurately or (as often) inaccurately ascribed to Marx (or Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Fredric Jameson, Pierre Macherey, or Raymond Williams), the focus on ideology is meant to identify the systems of belief by which groups (in this case, classes) understood themselves in their relationship to each other (see Rose 2006). The study of ideology has been used to describe the emerging consciousness of the plebeians and demos (Hahn 1975). But ideological approaches have more often identified the ways in which a dominant system of beliefs is able to perpetuate itself. That is, ideological approaches explore how governments exact compliance (particularly from exploited groups) without continual shows of force. To this end, scholars, even those expressly non-Marxian, have employed some version of Althusser’s notion of an ‘‘ideological state apparatus’’: how institutions such as education, religion, and media, as well as patronage networks, serve as ways to enforce, through persuasion, the views of the elite (de Ste Croix 1981: 342-3; also Hindess and Hirst 1975: 93; Rose 1999: 31; Ando 2000: 41; Morstein-Marx 2004: 15-16). And fashionable, as well, has been the use of Marxian approaches to view literary texts as sites of ideological conflict and resolution. As Kurke writes, in employing Macherey (a student of Althusser’s), ‘‘literary text does the work of ideology’’ by ‘‘transforming the ‘raw materials’ of ideological values in complex ways. Because these values suppress certain possibilities, because they are incomplete and contradictory, the text incorporates those suppressions, inadequacies, and contradictions’’ (Kurke 1999: 24). More than anything else, these approaches have added considerable sophistication to oversimplified views of ideology as perpetuated by propaganda used to manipulate mass belief.
World History
