Karl Marx, Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu all conceptualize culture power in different ways. Each identifies the agent (the specific social group) which acquires and makes use of cultural power as well as the means by which the agents acquire and maintain cultural power.
As Marx and Engels observe in The German Ideology, "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it" (64). Thus, for Marx, laborers were the specific group that needed to acquire power from the elites (capitalists), owners of the means of production. The means of production were, of course, the laborers. Communism was the ideology that would free the laborers from subservience to the owners of capital.
For Weber, culture power is a class struggle that emanates from a "status structure," which can take various forms -- ethnic structure, class structure and so on: for example, "A status segregation grown into a caste differs in its structure from a mere ethnic segregation: the caste structure transforms the horizontal and unconnected coexistences of ethnically segregated groups into a ver-tical social system of super- and subordination" (Weber "The Distribution of Power within the Political Community:Class, Status, Party" 934). Thus, cultural power is essentially based on organization and segregation.
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The means by which the culturally powerful obtain and maintain their power is the organization principle itself. Weber explains it thus: "Domination in the most general sense is one of the most important elements of social action" (Weber "Domination and Legitimacy" 42) and again lays out the organizing essence that serves as the basis of domination: "The purest type of the former is monopolistic domination in the market; of the latter, patriarchal, magisterial, or princely power" (Weber "The Distribution of Power within the Political Community:Class, Status, Party" 943). In other words, the more organized the structure in terms of concentrating power in the hands of a few, the more monopolistic the power play becomes. This theory is no surprise coming from Weber who is the father of modern day bureaucracy.
Antonio Gramsci view cultural power as having a political basis, which is why he discusses at length the influence of Machiavelli, Savonarola, and others in his Prison Notebooks. He poses the framework in these questions: In what sense can one identify politics with history, and hence all of life with politics? How then could the whole system of super-structures be understood as distinctions within politics...?" (137). For Gramsci, the means of power are political and the special social group that acquires power….....
Bourdieu, Pierre. 'Principles for a Sociology of Cultural Works" In the author's The
Field of Cultural Production, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 176-191 & 215-237
Bourdieu, Pierre. "Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception" In the author's
The Field of Cultural Production, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 215-237.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 'Symbolic Power and the Political Field." In the author's The Language
and Symbolic Power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 163-251.
Gramsci, Antonio. "The Intellectuals." In Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Ed. and trans. by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971, pp.134-161. Written in 1929-1935 -- > uploaded as an additional material.
Marx, Karl; Frederick Engels. "Feuerbach- Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist
Outlook." In the authors' The German Ideology. Part One. Ed. By C.J. Arthur. New York: International Publishers, 1970, pp.39-95. Written in 1845-1846
Weber, Max. "The Distribution of Power within the Political Community:Class, Status,
Party." In the author's Economy and Society, Volume 2. Ed. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978, pp 926-939
Weber, Max. "Domination and Legitimacy." In the author's Economy and Society,
Volume 2. Ed. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978, pp 941-955
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