Marxist Criticism Critical Approach to Literature
Marxism Marxism has a long and complicated history.
It reaches back to the thinking of Karl Marx, a 19 th century German philosopher and economist. The means of production controls a society s institution and beliefs. Marxism
Marxism History is progressing toward the eventual triumph of communism. He introduced the concept of dialectal materialism, the theory that history develops a struggle between contradictions that are eventually synthesized.
Marxism Karl Marx Friedrich Engels political economist Together, they collaborate to explain the principles of communism (Marxism) and to organized an international movement.
Marxism Their ideas were expounded in The Communist Manifesto (1848), in which they identified class struggle as a driving force behind history and anticipated that it would lead to a revolution in which workers would overturn capitalists, take control of economic production and abolish private property by turning it over to the government to be distributed fairly.
Marxism Das Kapital (1867) Marx argued that history is determined by economic conditions, and he urged an end to private ownership of public utilities, transportation and the means of production.
Marxism Although Marxism was not designed as a method of literary analysis, its principles were applied in literature early on. Literature was sometimes accepted as a means of productive critical dialogue. At times, it is viewed as a threat if it did not promote party ideology.
Historical Background: Marxism The major Marxist critic is the Hungarian critic Georg Lukacs. He is responsible for what has become known as reflectionism.
Lukacs: Reflectionism Reflectionism is the assumption that a text will reflect a society that has produced it, the theory based on the kind of close reading advocated by the Formalists.
Lukacs: Reflectionism But it is practiced by the reflectionists for the purpose if discovering how characters and their relationships typify and reveal class conflict, the socieconomic system, or the politics of a time and place.
Lukacs: Reflectionism Such examination, goes the assumption, will, in the end, lead to an understanding of that system and the author s worldview or welstanschauung.
Lukacs: Reflectionism Instead, vulgar Marxism seeks to determine the nature of a given society, to find a truer, more concrete insight into reality, and look for the full process of life.
Lukacs: Reflectionism Fragmentation and alienation are the ills of capitalism.
Marxist: Louis Althusser Louis Althusser is a French philosopher whose views are not in consonant with Lukacs.
Marxist: Louis Althusser While Lukacs saw literature as a reflection of a society s consciousness, Althusser asserted that literature and art can affect society, even lead it to revolution.
Althusser: Interpellation Interpellation: A term used by Althusser to refer to the process by which the working class is manipulated to accept the ideology of the dominant class.
Althusser: Interpellation One way in which that manipulation takes place is by reinforcing capitalistic ideology through its arts. Althusser went to point out that the arts of the privileged are not all the arts that exist.
Althusser: Interpellation The possibilities remains that the working class will develop its own culture, which can lead to revolution and the establishment of a new hegemony, or power base.
Althusser: Production Theory This refers to the ability of the literature and art to change a society s base. By creating and celebrating its own cultural artifacts, the proletariat can produce a revolution that replaces hegemony of the dominant class with its own.
Marxist: Fredric Jameson Jameson is known for using Freudian ideas in his practice of Marxist criticism. Whereas Freud discussed the notion of the repressed unconscious of the individual, Jameson talks about political unconscious, the exploitation and oppression buried in the work.
Marxist: Fredric Jameson The critic, according to Jameson, seeks to uncover those buried forces and bring them into light.
Marxist: Terry Eagleton British critic Examination of the interrelations between ideology and literary form. Explored poststructuralism.
According to Marx, the moving force behind human history is its economic systems, for people s lives are determined by their economic circumstances.
The material conditions underlying the society are called material circumstances, and the ideological atmosphere they generate is known as the historical situation.
This means that to explain any social or political context, any event or product, it is necessary to understand the material and historical circumstances in which they occur.
If a society is shaped by its forces of production, the way in which society provides food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities creates among groups of people social relations that become the culture s foundation. In short, the means of production structures the society.
Capitalism has a two-part structure consisting of the bourgeoisie, who own the property and thereby control the mass of production, and the proletariat, the workers controlled by the bourgeoisie and whose labour produces their wealth.
In its need to sell more goods, capitalism preys on the insecurities of consumers, who are urged to compete with others in the number and quality of their possessions: a newer car, a bigger diamond engagement ring, a second house.
The result is commodification, an attitude of valuing things not for their utility (use value) but for their power to impress others (sign value) or for their resale possibilities (exchange value).
When the acquisition of things that possess sign value and/or exchange value becomes extreme, an individual can be said to be practicing conspicuous consumption.
Base the methods of production Superstructure the social, political, and ideological systems and the institution that the base generates (including values, art, legal processes)
In a capitalist society, the superstructure would exhibit the alienation and fragmentation that, according to the Marxists, the economic system produces.
Controlled by the bourgeoisie, texts may, at least superficially, glamorize the status quo in order to maintain a stable division of power and means.
To examine the economic forces in a narrative: 1. Who are the powerful people in the society depicted in the text? 2. Who are the powerless people? 3. Are the two groups depicted with equal attention?
To examine the economic forces in a narrative: 4. Which groups are you encouraged to admire? 5. Which do you have sympathy for? 6. Why do the powerful people have their power?
To examine the economic forces in a narrative: 6. Why is this power denied to others? 7. From what is the power of the narrative derived? For example, is it inherited? Based on money? A result of violence?
Marx: Reality is material, not spiritual. We are not products of divine design but creations of our own cultural and social circumstances.
People must be observant with the material reality. Because the base and the superstructure are under the control of the dominant class, the people s worldview is likely to be false; the critic s obligation is to expose the oppression and the consequent alienation that have been covered over.
Guide questions: 1. What does the setting tell you about the distribution of power and wealth? 2. Is there evidence of conspicuous consumption?
Guide questions: 3. Does the society that is depicted value things for their usefulness, for their potential for resale or trade, or for their power to convey social status?
Guide questions: 4. Do you find in the text itself evidence that the work is a product of the culture in which it is originated? 5. Where do you see characters making decisions based not on abstract principles, but on the economic system in which they live?
Marx: The forces of production will generate conflict between social classes (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat). They struggle against each other. This struggle / confrontation is referred to as dialectical materialism.
Dialectical materialism is a theory that history develops neither in a random fashion nor in a linear one but instead as a struggle between contradictions that ultimately find resolution in a synthesis of the two sides.
Guide Questions: 1. How many different social classes do the characters represent? 2. Where do they struggle with each other? 3. Do you find repression and manipulation of workers by owners? 4. Is there evidence of alienation and fragmentation?
Guide Questions: 5. Does the bourgeoisie in the text, either consciously or unconsciously, routinely repress and manipulate less powerful groups? If so, what are the tools they use? News media? Religion? Literature? Art?
Guide Questions: 1. Do the working-class characters realize their lack of power? 2. Does the work of literature advocate reform or revolution, either overly or obliquely?
Ideology a belief system; it is a set of values and ways of thinking through which people see the world they live in and explain why it exists. Elements: base & superstructure
Ideology (+) better world for the people. Ideology (-) serves the interests of the repressive system An ideology is dictated by the dominant class functions to secure its power.
False consciousness People s acceptance of an unfavorable social system without protest or questioning. When they assume that the difficult conditions under which they live are the logical way for things to be, they are exhibiting false consciousness.
False consciousness People s acceptance of an unfavorable social system without protest or questioning. When they assume that the difficult conditions under which they live are the logical way for things to be, they are exhibiting false consciousness.
Marxists see a literary work not as an aesthetic object to be experienced for its own intrinsic worth, but as a product of the socioeconomic aspects of a particular culture.
Marxists are concerned with finding the ideology of the work and pointing out its worth or its deficiencies. They will search out the depiction of inequities in social classes, an imbalance of goods and power among people, or manipulation of the worker by the bourgeoisie and will then point out
Marxists will search out 1. the depiction of inequities in social classes 2. an imbalance of goods and power among people, or 3. manipulation of the worker by the bourgeoisie and will then point out the injustice of that society.
The function of literature is to make the populace aware of the social ills and sympathetic to action that will wipe those ills away.
Guide questions: 1. What ideology is revealed by your examination of economic power, materialism, and class conflict in a given work?
Guide questions: Does the work support the values of capitalism or any other ism that institutionalizes the domination of one group of people over another for example racism, sexism, or imperialism? Or does it condemn such systems?
Guide questions: Is the work consistent in its ideology? Does this text make you aware of your own acceptance of any social, economic, or political practices that involve control or oppression as well as desirable?
Guide questions: Does it criticize repressive systems?