Gramsci begins his essay The Formation of the Intellectuals with the question, “Are Intellectuals an autonomous and independent social group, or does every social group have its own particular specialized category of intellectuals?” (929), a problem that he goes on to say is complex for the reason that there are a variety of different kinds of intellectuals due to the many different processes of formation. He calls these different processes “forms”, that were enabled by the historical processes of formation, and claims that there are two most important forms that we should focus on.

The first important form of the development of intellectuals is the idea that every social group will naturally create their own category of intellectuals who pay homage with their participation in said social group. An example that Gramsci provides is one of intellectuals under the capitalism; he says “The capitalist entrepreneur creates alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political economy, the organizers of a new culture… It should be noted that the entrepreneur himself represents a higher level of social elaboration, already characterized by a certain directive and technical capacity.” (930). It can be thought of as an pyramid, where those highest up on the pyramid are experts in a field, breeding “intellectuals”, all those underneath them, and sharing their knowledge. Each level on the pyramid passes on their knowledge to the level below them, and it continues on as it has been historically.

The second important form is the idea that every existing social structure represents a historical continuity of intellectuals, as these social structures have been developed to do such. He says, “The most typical of these categories of intellectuals is that the ecclesiastics, who for a long time (for a whole phase of history, which partly characterized this very monopoly) held a monopoly of a number of important services: religious ideology, that is the philosophy of science of the age, together with schools, education, morality, justice, charity, good works, etc.” (931). These social structures have been built and operate on a system that encourages those within them to develop and carry on with intellectual activities. With this said, Gramsci made an important note that all men participate in intellectual activities within these social structures, whether it be voluntary or involuntary, but this participation does not mean that all men possess a societal function as an intellectual. Gramsci says that social structures like this attempt to deepen and broaden the “intellectuality” of individuals, school being the structure that does this the most.

He calls intellectuals “functionaries” (934) in the fabric of society and its superstructures, a phrase that emphasizes the idea that we operate within these structures. But I partly disagree because without intellectual participants to uphold this structure, they would collapse, as this participation is what has continued these social groups historically. I believe that functionary is not the word to describe intellectuals, because while we all are “functionaries” in Gramsci’s terms, we do a lot more than just operate within these systems; we promote them and voluntarily participate, which is what allows them to keep existing.

Marx starts the fourth section of Capital’s first chapter by speaking about the fetishism of commodities, and how the “metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties” (667) surrounding commodities make them “queer”. The metaphysical and theological niceties that he speaks of are the abstract concepts that we attach to the commodities we produce and consume, as well as the practices and experiences that give them so much value in our minds. The value that we attach to commodities has nothing to do with what they are, but what they have been transformed into by way of manual labor, which Marx believes to be unusual because of the “fetishism” that it’s rooted in, an idea that he presents early on in his essay.

Commodities have an undeniable value in their usage, whether their purpose is to please humans or serve a different purpose, but the price value of a commodity is determined by the production that the item underwent, as manual labor makes commodities more “valuable”. To give a better understanding of how manual labor changes the psychological value of an object, Marx provides the example of table, which is a common item, wood, in a different form. The fact that wood is now useful to humans in the form of a table changes it to something “transcendent” (668) and evolved into something with more value once presented as a commodity. But the value of the commodity is not what makes it “queer”, it is the idea that they are products of men’s labor, which gets “fetishized” and used to set the price value of an item.

Men’s relation to the commodities they produce is what makes them profitable, an idea that Marx calls the fetishism of commodities. He says that “the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor” (668). This fetishism “attaches” itself to the products of men’s labor as soon as they are presented as commodities and makes the idea that a man created them inseparable from the item itself.”

This ideology immediately makes me think of the climate crisis that we are currently experiencing, as well as the methods that people are using to try and prevent the crisis from worsening. In the fashion industry, as well as others, brands that are more sustainable have the highest “value” in today’s crisis, though they are not as affordable. The most sustainably made items are those that are handmade, as these create the least waste and consume the least energy. Handmade items have the highest costs, as they have been carefully crafted by a human rather than in a factory; the fact that the commodity is handmade is a fact that attaches itself, as the item is marketed and priced as such. Manmade items and the “fetishism” of commodities always coincide, but it may be beneficial in the prevention of a worse climate condition.

In “Death of the Author”, Barthes speaks to the separation that should exist between the real world and the world created in an author’s writing. According to Barthes, writing is “neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, [and] the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (1268), basically saying that there should always be a divide between the identity of the author and the identity of the narrator or characters in the story. The death of the author is metaphor for the relationship that should take place between an author and their writing, Barthes saying that the author “enters death” the second they start writing, as the divide between reality and the story begins to widen the moment that the pen hits the paper.  He says that is it the language that does the speaking or “performing”, not the author.

Barthes emphasizes the importance of the author’s work being a secondary fragment of the author’s life rather than a derivative or imitation of it because the image of literature is centered around the author’s life and tastes, while the criticism is directed towards the author’s behaviors or public perception, his given examples being Van Gogh’s madness and Tchaikovsky’s vice; regardless of the behaviors demonstrated by these artists, they still produced remarkable work that is not a reflection of these behaviors. Rather than being a derivative of the author’s life, the work should be more of an explanation, as Barthes says, as is may contain symbols that speak to what the author is going through at the time.  Anyone can write about their life and the troubles within it, but not everyone can use language to convey emotion that moves people.

An immediate idea that this reminds me of it the concept of separating the art from the artist with many artists, specifically Kanye West, as they have demonstrated behaviors that are not popular within society, but their music catalogues have been essential to their genres and influential to those that have produced music after them. Kanye does not write music that states explicitly what is going on in his life; if that was the case, he would write about his struggles with mental illness or political standpoints, two aspects of his life which have been heavily focused on by the media in the past few years. His art reflects the emotions that he feels through the language being used, and while it is still his voice, many listeners can relate to it because it is not wrapped around his own single narrative.

In “The German Ideology”, Marx starts off by highlighting the actions of “definite individuals who are productively active in a productive way” (659), who as a result enter definite political and social relations. Their lived experience brings out the connection between these social and political structures, which are continuously evolving as they live and learn; Marx states that these definite individuals work under their circumstantial limitations by acting intentionally and with confidence, and these actions are what produce the ideas that are used to set standards within these structures. He goes on to say that “conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behavior” (659). In saying this, he introduces the idea that people will always be a product of their environment, and their thinking will be a result of their material conditions as well as productive forces. These ideas are all true, as there are billionaires that have come from nothing, who used their material resources to create their own success story; their journey to success may be different from someone who came from a wealthy family, and therefore the ideas produced by these two individuals will never be the same.

These ideas create a philosophy that differs from that of the Germans, theirs descending from heaven to earth while our philosophy descends from earth to heaven; this is to say that in German philosophy, the dominant idea is that men set out to be what is narrated through other men, while our philosophy tells us that men are set out from the real, active individuals who set the basis of their lives on real and lived experiences, demonstrated by the development of ideological reflexes that echo their life-processes. Our philosophy further drives the idea of people being a product of their environment, as Marx says the “phantoms”, or ideological reflexes, are all “sublimates” (660) of material life-processes. To support these ideas, he reminds us that morality, religion, and other ideological fields have no history beyond men aa they are always changing and developing as men live; therefore, these fields are all reflections of empirical experiences rather than what we are setting out to be. Life is determined by consciousness in German ideology, as consciousness in German ideology is derived from the living individual, while in American philosophy, consciousness solely means one’s own, as it conforms to real life experiences of only the individual.

In Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lying, he argues the idea that the human perception of what is truth differs from the actual truth. The idea of truth becomes fixed when concepts begin to have the same validity and influence universally. The laws used to govern and create harmony within nations have become fixed, all having the same validity within those borders. Because these laws are set in place in all parts of the nation, they become the “truth”. Nietzsche compares these laws to the laws of language, where words are equivalent to “valid tokens of designation” (Nietzsche, 754), which we use to give things meaning. Even though we use words to make things seem more real, they are arbitrarily used as labels, designating “only the relations of things to human beings” (Nietzsche 755).

Nietzsche claims that the idea of words being universal truths is the only factor distinguishing humans from animals; from our words comes our dependency on dissolving images into concepts, concepts that we then use to give the world around us meaning. We might get the mere feeling of truth when we describe something as smooth, orange, or loud, but in all actuality, these words only describe them in relation to the human experience of the world because they were created and are only used by us. Nietzsche uses the example of a leaf, which we might describe as green or soft, but in nature, neither of these concepts are useful as nature does not need to attach words to forms, nor does any other species on earth. Language is only used to describe the human perception of the world; therefore it is not an adequate expression of the truth.

According to Nietzsche, the correct perception of anything “would mean the full and adequate expression of an object in the subject” (758), which he then deems as impossible, an idea that I can agree with. The full and adequate expression that he refers to is allowing an object to exist without giving it meaning other than its existence, which is something I personally am unable imagine. Human cognition, as Nietzsche says, makes us feel superior to other species; it is what we do to validate our existence and lived experiences. It is instinctive to conceptualize an object rather than letting it be, because as humans, it is what we do to make meaning while other species in nature do not. We cannot strive for Nietzsche’s truth, as it would require humans to let go of everything that differentiates us from other species.