Marxist method and theoretical practice still offers the most fruitful and enduring base for the integration of design research with the main strands of philosophy and intellectual history. Sharing in the rationalisation of change and transformation in both it’s social and technical dimensions. Marxism and design are both products of capitalist social relations with the potential of rising beyond their origins in a human future.
Thoughts to be continued ...
A short introduction to Marxism, please?
Hello,
can you elaborate a little what this "Marxist method and theoretical practice (??!)" is to you? I am not directly familiar with Marx's writings and I am curious which parts you find particularly suitable to integrate design research and philosophy, and why. He seems to be an interesting thinker for designers, at least what I have learned so far (indirectly, from Pelle Ehn for example). What I read was more related to his notion of production, because it is so directly linked to designing. Also I am wondering if the capitalist social relations are the prerequisite for this production, because it feels to me like a market perspective, and this is not how I was considering design.
And why poverty of design theory?
Katharina.
Marxism in Design Theory
Hello Tim and Katahrina,
you (Tim) really have to expand a bit on your claims--please. Meanwhile I'll try to answer the questions of Katharina in your place.
On the one hand as a critique of capitalist' society I guess Marxism also critiques design as only promoting the excange value (Tauschwert) of the commodity (Ware). This is the central claim of W. F. Haugs "Kritik der Warenästhetik".
On the other hand -- in the "Thesen über Feuerbach" Marx demands for a (materialist) theory which takes into account the activity (Tätigkeit) as a mediator between mind and society, subject and object. Activity Theorists (Vygotsky, Leontjew and later Engeström and others) have elaborated this concept which is already important in interaction design (Kuuti, Nardi and others).
So I'd say there is already a marxist influence in design theory -- surely not as a unifying paradigm. But -- hey Tim, tell us more!
J.
W.F. Haugs conclusions
Hey J.,
thanks for your elegant short summaries. The one from interaction design sounds familiar to me. However, I did not know about its roots in Marx' ideas. And I just discovered that it was developed as a psychologist theory, or descriptive approach.
So maybe you have some more answers to my half-baked questions?
I looked into W.F. Haugs text (it's available online here). Without knowing "The Capital" in original, I guess he sticks close to it... sound like...
I immediately felt completely naive about everything: My aesthetic preferences, my needs and wants, my notion of designing... Do I only work for the Tauschwert, is it really that superficial? And do I then seduce poor manipulable customers into buying promises that the object cannot keep? Is the pleasure that people have with their purchased objects necessarily a false pleasure? With other words, is that still what we want to regard as designing? (- so do we want to be restricted to design like professional design-design (not engineering, not planning, not politics), as it evolved from industrial production, or is this notion outdated anyway?)
I did not proceed to the conclusions for design practice, if he has any. Can somebody elaborate (J., if you like)?
And what about Critical Design? It was the first thing that came to my mind. I always thought of it as a designerly implementation of critical theory, which is after all neomarxist approach, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Looking forward to your answers!
Katharina.
Some months later...
Some months later... (where's Mr. Martin?) -- we can certainly identify design which serves primarily to sell and therefore is working with deception and exaggeration-- packaging design, advertising design etc. I wouldn't blame design for that. (I hope we can talk about this at the dgtf conference?!)
marxism vs design theory
frankly speaking (to whom it may concern), advertising above school of belief (er, thought [...]) in claiming that 'it offers the most fruitful and enduring base for the integration of design research with the main strands of philosophy and intellectual history' somehow reminds me of someone trying to ride a dead horse, and in this moving and shaking it a bit, and claiming it was not really dead... (and what i am talking about: i was to get soaked in this stuff for 1.5+ decades of my life). less polemically, apart from (at least and even to schumpeter) decent analyses of (early) capitalist economy - which still is but one viewing angle to observe society from (and, as others, a highly contingent one) - those beliefsdo not, regarding, say, anthropological matters in particular, seem to be empirically tenable at all: and (also, but not only) to me, this untenability in fact is what made the whole experiment practically fail throughout (and don't mention its ongoing(?) in china or north korea or cuba: the c.p.s there are in power because they remain in power because they are in power... - and regardless of whatever ideologically correct rhetoric packaging of what is going on). Granted certainly that mind-free profit-orientation (as opposed to: mindfully entrepreneurial capitalism) as amunitioned in itself least not last in likewise mind-free instrumental design(ation) of consumables, does as well seem to prove less than sustainable (in 3ple bottom line sense) meanwhile. But going out to remedy that (theoretically) while being ill-framed as per above would rather imply fostering romantic delusion again (and: beware of honorable believers in 'greater good' of such)...