Blindspots about Western Marxism. A Reply to Dallas Smythe

Abstract

After the publication of Dallas Smythe paper about the blindspots about Western Marxism in the Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory (vol. 2, n.º 3, autumn 1977), Graham Murdock answers in this text to these ideas. He shares with Smythe his perspective of putting again economy in the center of Marxist cultural analysis, but he exposes a series of critical ideas. Murdock reflects about considering the North-American situation as paradigmatic, and focuses on showing the differences between the situation in North-America and Europe. These differences are expressed in the interests and objectives of Marxists theories developed in Europe. Murdock accuses Smythe of underestimating the importance and centrality of the state in contemporary capitalism, of underplaying the independent role of mass media content in reproducing dominant ideologies and of presenting the operations of mass communications system in society as relatively smooth and unproblematic.