Bourdieu and Marx: Practices of Critique

Author: Gabriella Paolucci (ed.)
Year: 2022
Source type: book (edited volume)
Raw file: raw/books/paolucci-2022-bourdieu-marx-practices-of-critique.md

Summary

An edited volume exploring the intellectual encounter between Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Marx, examining how Bourdieu engages with Marx's critical project while maintaining distance from orthodox Marxism. The collection argues that both thinkers share a commitment to the "practice of critique" — a radical interrogation of social reality that refuses scholastic classification. Key themes include: the bipolar structure of modern class domination (economic capital vs. cultural capital/competence-power), symbolic violence and the civilizing process, the concept of capital beyond economism, and the potential for Bourdieu-M Marx synthesis in addressing ecological crisis. Contributors include Jacques Bidet, Bridget Fowler, Michael Burawoy, Philippe Corcuff, David Swartz, and others.

Key Claims

• Bourdieu works "within the spirit, if not always the letter, of a Marxist perspective on inequality and social change" (Savage, Foreword)
• Bourdieu refuses classification as "Marxist" or "non-Marxist" — the question itself is a "scholastic" trap that neutralizes critical power (Paolucci)
• Modern class domination is bipolar: property-power (economic capital) and competence-power (cultural capital) constitute two fractions of the dominant class (Bidet, Fowler)
• Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital represents an epistemological break from ideology critique to culture critique (Bidet)
• Bourdieu uses concepts as "rapiers" — lightning-fast critical strikes that avoid setting up alternative orthodoxies (Savage)
• Both Marx and Bourdieu privilege history and time over space; capital is "accumulated history" (Savage, Fowler)
• Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence complements Marx's theory of exploitation but risks obscuring the specific logic of capitalist exploitation (Bidet)
• The ecological crisis requires synthesizing Bourdieu's account of cultural domination with Marx's account of capital's abstract destructiveness (Bidet)
• Bourdieu inherits Marx's critical gesture toward philosophy — the move from theoretical critique to practical critique anchored in scientific rationality (Paolucci)
• Bourdieu accuses Marx of economism and insufficient attention to subjective/symbolic dimensions, but this critique may be polemical rather than textual (Paolucci)

Connections

Concepts: habitus, symbolic capital, cultural capital, field, doxa, symbolic violence, exploitation, domination, ideology, spectacle, everyday life, practice
Authors: pierre bourdieu, karl marx, Jacques Bidet, Bridget Fowler, Michael Burawoy, Philippe Corcuff, David Swartz, Mike Savage, Norbert Elias, henri lefebvre, Louis Althusser
Debates: theory of the everyday, critical vs projective
Related source notes: bourdieu 1977 outline of a theory of practice, bourdieu 1990 logic of practice, webster 2011 bourdieu for architects, felski 2000 invention of everyday life, lefebvre 1991 critique of everyday life

Direct Quotes

"This book does not therefore intend to sanction orthodoxies or ascertain heterodoxies, and nor does it intend to indulge in the vulgate of a Bourdieu without Marx, against Marx or with Marx. Rather, it devotes its attention to the unclassifiable in order to better understand it." (Paolucci, p. 4)

"To be or not to be a Marxist is a religious alternative, and not at all scientific" (Bourdieu 1990a: 49, cited p. 5)

"Bourdieu's diagnoses of cultural capital are premised on his awareness that during the twentieth century, the hold of cultural capital has become completely inescapable, and this now sets us apart from the capitalist world that Marx critiqued in the nineteenth century." (Savage, p. 6)

"We need to understand Bourdieu's concept of habitus in a similar spirit. Taken too literally, and too mechanically, it can easily be criticised for assuming an over-socialised and over-determined conception of human agency... His main purpose is simply to assert, against economists and game theorists, that people come to any kind of social interaction with an inescapable historical baggage which is bound to affect how they interact." (Savage, p. 9)

"Bourdieu refuses to play the game of setting up an overarching conceptual system, which would perform its own kind of symbolic violence. Hence, he prefers to draw out the metaphorical appeal of concepts, leaving them incomplete and understated." (Savage, p. 8)

"With Bourdieu, the economically dominant and the culturally dominant appear as constituting two 'fractions' of the dominant class... With Marx, and in the tradition which refers to him, there would be no room for such a bipolarity in the dominant class." (Bidet, p. 13)

"By advancing the concept of 'cultural capital,' [Bourdieu] operates an epistemological break, leading us from a theory of ideology to a theory of culture, which is a critique of culture." (Bidet, p. 14)

"The concept of 'capitalism'... in reality constitutes an epistemological obstacle, which weighs on both Marxism's socio-economic analysis and its political strategy." (Bidet, p. 15)

"Bourdieu's approach pertains to a programme which is that of 'sociology,' as it was invented in the nineteenth century, in its historical emergence, by its separation from philosophy of history, and also from economics... Marx's programme shows some kind of resistance to this epistemic rupture." (Bidet, p. 17)

"Where the one deals with 'exploitation,' the other chooses to speak of 'domination.' This term certainly makes it possible to embrace economic domination and cultural domination in a single concept. But at what cost?" (Bidet, p. 18)

"Capitalist production certainly has to do with use values, since it aims at the production of commodities. But it is indifferent to the fact that some 'commodities' can be destructive. It aims, in the last analysis, only at maximizing surplus value, the only way to survive in the competitive struggle. Capital flourishes on misery, deforestation and pollution." (Bidet, p. 19)

"Bourdieu's sociology of power focuses less on coercive domination than on symbolic violence, encompassing various forms." (Fowler, p. 23)

"The force of the social world resides in this orchestration of unconscious minds, mental structures. Now there is nothing more difficult to revolutionize than mental structures. This is why revolutions often fail in the project of making a new man." (Bourdieu 2014: 145, cited p. 24)

"Marx's fundamental concern was demystification, particularly of economic ideology. Paradoxically, he undertakes this destruction of secular scholarly myths by frequently deploying a religious or magical language." (Fowler, p. 24)

"Bourdieu takes this on but frames it in terms of Marx's notion of 'mediation.' He elaborates on it with his concept of cultural fields—artistic, legal and so on: key mediating institutions that have achieved significant degrees of autonomy from the market's profit constraints." (Fowler, p. 26)

Open Questions

• Can Bourdieu's account of cultural capital and symbolic violence be fully integrated with Marx's theory of exploitation and surplus value, or do they represent incommensurable frameworks?
• Does Bourdieu's refusal of systematic theory (his "rapier" approach) limit the political efficacy of his critique compared to Marx's comprehensive account of capitalism?
• How does the bipolar domination thesis (property-power + competence-power) reshape contemporary class analysis and political strategy?
• What would a Bourdieu-Marx synthesis look like for addressing ecological crisis — can "the common of the people" + "the competent" form an emancipatory alliance?
• Is Bourdieu's critique of Marx's "economism" fair, or does it overlook Marx's attention to symbolic/subjective dimensions (e.g., commodity fetishism)?
• How does the concept of "accumulated history" as capital relate to Marx's labor theory of value — are these compatible or competing accounts?