Analysis Of The Book ' Requiem Of The American Dream '

Karl Marx passed away before the time where significant political change occurred. Today, we live in a capitalist mode of production where bottom line pressure is a significant and dominating aspect of the society in which we live. The further analysis will focus on how the documentaries, Requiem of the American Dream, The Illusionist, The New Economics 101 and She’s Beautiful when she’s Angry, relate to Marxist theory and prove the argument that Marxism is much more present today than it was in the past.

To begin, Marxist main argument, stated in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is that the economic and political model of capitalism creates inequality between classes, which he named the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. (Carver, 1996, p.7)The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are maintained through the Marxism model of the superstructure and the base. The superstructure is the ideologies that maintain the base working dependently of the superstructure while still needing it as a key factor in maintaining it (McLellan, 1989, p.15). Noam Chomsky paralleled the Marxism views of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the base/superstructure model with the 1%, the 99% and the Vicious Cycle. He coined the term Vicious Cycle to explain when those who possess economic power would influence political power by various means (Hutchinson & Nyks, 2015). The 1% was created by the blatant disregard of law, religion and existing social order, they appropriated resources that were not rightfully theirs and “divorced the producer from the means of production” (Marx, 1990, p.875). The majority of the population were not greedy enough and had higher moral standards to not appropriate the means of production, ironically, they are the ones whom end ...

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...achieve rights. (Hutchinson & Nyks, 2015) But as Juliet Schor points out the change cannot be done overnight and the environment (an aspect that was to no concern for Marx because the society at the time was not in an ecological crisis (Jhally & Schor, 2013)), does not have time to wait for the time to raise consciousness and create a powerful enough political movement to cause change. Which is why Schor proposes to start now with more simple steps to moving in the right direction. (Jhally & Schor, 2013)

To conclude, Noam Chomsky is a modern day Marxist who argues that Marxism is still a relevant theoretical perspective. The feminist movement parallel the proletariat revolution that Marx discussed and surplus created advertising that as Juliet Schor argues can only be resolved by a revolution to instate an all new never seen before economic and political model.