Discursive Marxism: how Marx treats the economy and what discourse studies contribute to it

ABSTRACT

This contribution seeks to develop some reflections on Marx as an analyst of the economy. I argue for a discursive Marxism that makes the integration of Foucauldian ideas into a Marxian framework possible. Three distinctive but interrelated questions will be addressed. First, what is specific about a Marxian understanding of the economy, especially compared to certain tendencies in economic sociology and political economy? Second, how is a Marxian understanding of the economy reflected by current Marxist studies and how have these studies contributed to a discursive-cultural turn in Marxist and neo-Marxist analysis of the economy? Third, while the discursive-cultural turn became increasingly important, what is the contribution of discourse studies of the economy to a Marxian framework? The paper concludes with the idea of a Discursive Political Economy approach in order to grasp the cultural and institutional complexity of power. To put discursive processes into a Marxian framework, a combined analysis of discursive-imaginary as well as institutionalized-sedimented power positions is required.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic sociology
• discourse and power
• economic expert discourse
• cultural political economy
• poststructuralism
• neo-Marxism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Dr Jens Maesse, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Giessen. His research focus is on discourse analysis, sociology of science and education, economic sociology and political economy. His publications include: (2018). Austerity discourses in Europe: How economic experts create identity projects. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 31(1), 8–24. (2017). The elitism dispositif. Hierarchization, discourses of excellence and organisational change in European economics. Higher Education, 73, 909–927. Department of Sociology, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Karl-Glöckner-Str. 21E, Giessen D-35394, Germany.