Deep's First Statement on 'Life'
Italian Antonio Gramsci extended Marx and Engels' original work so that it is more appropriate to the world today. He introduced the concept of 'State Apparatuses' - The 'Ideological State Apparatus' and the 'Repressive State Apparatus'.
The 'Ideological State Apparatus' provides a dominant ideology so that the proletariat do not recognise their situation. Gramsci identified the Church and schools as elements of the 'Ideological State Apparatus'. Today, I would include the mass media - television, papers, magazines, etc.
The 'Repressive State Apparatus' intervenes when the 'Ideological State Apparatus' has failed. It is comprised of the Army and the Police. This is how you end up in prison or die.
In applying a Marxist view to today's situation, one recognises the vast wealth and influence wielded by multinational companies and individual nation-states. Marxism needs to be updated to accommodate monopolies, oligopolies and the power of the multinational corporation. However, we can see that the drive for profit exists above all else - consider the States' position on pollution and climatic change, multinationals' activities in the underdeveloped world, deforestation, poverty, homelessness, burger companies, etc. Huge discrepancies exist in the distribution of wealth - on a worldwide scale as well as within nations.
'Existential-Phenomenology' emphasizes how the individual perceives the world. It recognises individuals as discrete entities that perceive the world according to their previous experiences. So if I were to meet you, I would perceive you according to what I've learnt from my past experiences -my view of the world, particularly relating to the people I've met in the past. I would also recognise you as an individual with a unique history.
According to this view, we are continually adding to our store of experiences which we then use to perceive the world. To extend this further, if one's experiences are of the low-grade variety, then your perceptions/experiences are going to be based on that store of low-grade garbage. Conversely, you can direct your attention to higher-grade stuff... think about it
So in the middle, you are constrained by Capitalism using it's tools of ideology and repression and you interact with people on the basis your own unique accumulated stack of experiences and others' unique stack of accumulated experiences. These stacks of experiences direct how people perceive and behave in the world.