Marx On Culture

Raymond Williams (1921-1988) was a highly influential Welsh academic, novelist and critic. A committed socialist, he was greatly interested in the relationship between language, literature and society. Author of several books on these and other issues, Williams is a founder of an important stream of Cultural Studies.

Extracts from “Marx on Culture”

“What then of the relation between the ‘division of labour’ and the attempted distinction between forms of mental labour which are aspects of more genral productive processes and those forms which were seen, at least by the young Marx, as ‘ends in themselves’?….To move from Marx on art to Marx on ideas is to enter a very different and much more authoritative dimension. It is here his major contribution to cultural theory was made.”