Raymond Williams' Thought On Mass Culture And Its Influence

Raymond Williams is an important Marxist literary and cultural theorist in British after War II, and one of the representatives and founders of British Cultural Studies. He paid attention to the development of mass culture (MC) from quite early time, and showed a ratherobjective understanding of it. On the key problems of MC studies as the theoretical stand and basis, Williams had explanations completely different from Frankfurt School's cultural theory, offering a new theoretical train of thought and method, which is of pioneering significance.Under the influence of Marxism, Williams strongly criticized the Brush elite's cultural theory, reviewed and reconstructed the concepts of "culture" and "mass", so that he could consider the develOpment of MC basing upon the future of the whole human culture, but not the traditional cultural nobles. Furthermore, the cle~r theoretical stand of Williams enabled him jump out of the old aesthetical theory frame, and explore the MC-the new cultural phenomenon--on a new theoretical basis. Williams' theory of MC is constructed basing on his theoretical stand and the Cultural Materialism, mainly consists of the considerations and explanations of three problems:1. the production-mode of MC. 2.the relationship between MC and daily life. 3. the revolutionary significance of MC. By solving these problems, Williams clarified the inevitability, the rationality, and the future development of MC.William's thought on MC is theoretically originated from the traditions of British empiricism and Marxism. Combining these two, he carried on a historical materialistic amelioration upon the empiricism, tried to explore possibility and approach of the general people to obtain enlightenments and to accomplish liberation from the reality, and presented a rather objective and reasonable evaluation on MC, which is totally different from the unsatisfaction and arrogance of Lukas, Adomo, Horkheimer and Marcuse to the reality and the mass. Williams is one of those western Marxist theorists who have come back to Marxism originally. His thought on MC has great influence on the later thought of Terry Eaginon, an active Marxist theorist at present. At the same time, it directly precipitated the rising and the developing of British Cultural Studies, and promoted positively the development of thecontemporary Marxist cultural theory and Marxist aesthetics.