Synthesis: Marxism & Structuralism
The Evolution of Value – Part 8
I. Thinkers
Marx, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Beauvoir, Haraway
Signal
Systemic power, ideology, and liberation shape how value is constructed and distributed.
Interpretation
This wave shattered the illusion of neutrality. It revealed how truth, meaning, and value are entangled in systems - economic, linguistic, cultural.
Power is not merely coercive - it is productive. It shapes identities, norms, beliefs. These thinkers exposed that society isn’t built on truth, but on scaffolds.
They uncovered the structure. But they lost the soul.
Limitation
The cost of these insights was agency. Humanity became effect, not cause.
Biology was ignored. Continuity erased. Without grounding, critique spiraled into abstraction or collapsed into relativism. The map overtook the terrain.
Key Ideas
Marx: Value emerges from labor and class struggle.
Foucault: Institutions produce “truth” through power.
Derrida: Language is unstable - meaning always slips.
Beauvoir: Gender is a cultural construct, not essence.
Haraway: Identity is hybrid - biology, tech, and code entangled.
Key Texts
Capital, Discipline and Punish, Of Grammatology, The Second Sex, A Cyborg Manifesto
Synthesis Link
These thinkers diagnosed the cage.
Synthesis asks:
What is the life behind the cage?
“Life = Good”
(Synthesis, Axiom 1: Life is the frame of value.)
Yes—power shapes truth.
But why care about truth at all?
Because truth affects life.
Because systems must be judged by what they do to the living.
Synthesis restores direction:
Systems exist to serve life - not the other way around.
II. Thinkers
Saussure, Peirce, Barthes
Signal
Signs and systems structure how we think and perceive.
Interpretation
Structuralism revealed the hidden code: meaning is not innate - it’s relational.
We don’t think freely - we think within grids. Language, myth, and symbol operate like software on the human mind.
They mapped the system. But forgot the organism.
Limitation
Structuralism became a closed circuit: signs referring to signs, untethered from life.
It had no answer to: Why does meaning matter?
No grounding in biology. No evolutionary anchor. No pulse.
Key Ideas
Saussure: Meaning arises through difference, not essence.
Peirce: Semiotics connects sign, object, and interpretation.
Barthes: Culture embeds ideology into everyday symbols.
Key Texts
Course in General Linguistics, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Mythologies
Synthesis Link
Synthesis doesn’t reject signs - it grounds them.
“Life = Good”
(Synthesis, Axiom 4: Humanity is life’s agent.)
Language, story, symbol - these are tools, not cages.
They exist to help life navigate, communicate, and persist.
Meaning-making is not arbitrary. It is adaptive. It serves survival and continuity.
III. Thinkers
Fanon, Said, Spivak
Signal
Liberation from colonial and cultural systems allows authentic flourishing.
Interpretation
This was critique with purpose.
Fanon revealed how colonization disfigures identity and dignity.
Said exposed the Western fantasy of the “Orient.”
Spivak demanded we ask who gets to speak - and who gets heard.
These thinkers did not deconstruct for sport. They deconstructed to rebuild.
Limitation
Yet without a universal grounding, their critiques risked ideological rigidity, moral relativism, or cultural isolation. The struggle became about identity - sometimes at the expense of life itself.
Key Ideas
Fanon: Decolonisation must be active, bodily, and total.
Said: Cultural knowledge is never neutral.
Spivak: Voice is power - but silence is structured.
Key Texts
The Wretched of the Earth, Orientalism, Can the Subaltern Speak?
Synthesis Link
These thinkers sought flourishing.
Synthesis gives them the frame:
“Life = Good”
(Synthesis, Axiom 2: Life builds order.)
Freedom matters because life matters.
Flourishing is not identity alone - it is growth, continuity, and dignity.
Every liberation struggle is life struggling to restore itself.
- James Dean Conroy