MARXIST CRITICISM

Beginnings and Basics

of Marxism
Karl Marx (1818-1883), a German philosopher,
and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), a German
sociologist (as he would now be called), were
the joint founders of this school of thought.
Unlike many schools of literary criticism, Marxism did not
begin as an alternative, theoretical approach to literary
analysis. Before many twentieth-century writers and critics
embraced the principles of Marxism and used these ideas in
their theory and criticism, Marxism had flourished in the
nineteenth century as a pragmatic view of history that
offered the working classes an opportunity to change their
world and their individual lives.
By providing both a philosophical system and a plan of
action to initiate change in society, Marxism offered a social,
political, economic, and cultural understanding of the
nature of reality, society, and the individual, not a literary
theory.
The essential aim of Marxism is to bring about
a classless society, based on the common
ownership of the means of production,
distribution, and exchange.
• 1. Marxist criticism is based on the political and economic
theories of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Some representatives of
this school are Christopher Caudwell, George Lucas, Luciene
Goldmann, and Walter Benjamin.
• 2. Economic structure is the main driving force behind all
social conditions and historical changes. Marx considers
human history as a series of struggles between classes
-between the oppressed and the oppressing. Capitalism is
based on exploitation of laborers.
• 3. The workers’ revolution is the inevitable result of
exploitation and the means of emancipation. The aim of
Marxism is to bring about a classless society, based on the
common ownership of the means of production,
distribution, and exchange.
• 4.  Karl Marx (1818-1883), a German philosopher and Friedrich Engels
(1820- 1895), a German sociologist, were the joint founders of this school
of thought.  Marx was a son of a lawyer but spent most of his life in great
poverty as a political exile from Germany living in Britain.  Engels had left
Germany in 1842 to work in Manchester for his father’s textile firm.
• 5.  They both met each other after Marx had read an article by Engels in
a journal to which they both contributed.  They themselves called their
economic theories ‘communism’ (rather than ‘Marxism’), designating their
belief in the state ownership of industry, transport etc., rather than private
ownership.
• 6.  The aim of Marxism is to bring about a classless society, based on the
ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange.  It is
a materialist philosophy: that is, it tries to explain things without assuming
the existence of a world beyond a natural world around us.  It looks for
concrete, scientific, logical explanations of the world of observable fact.
WHERE DOES WEALTH
COME FROM?
WAGE LABOUR AND CAPITAL
Marx argued that the extra or “surplus value”
in goods that allows them to be sold for more
than they cost to make comes from labour.
Workers put more value into a commodity or
good than they are paid for. That difference
allows goods to be worth more than they cost
to produce. The secret of wealth is that
workers are systematically underpaid.
• Capitalism: an economic system in which a country’s
businesses and industry are controlled and run for
profit by private owners rather than by the
government
• Bourgeoisie: the capitalist class who owns or controls a
lot of wealth and uses it to produce more wealth.
• Proletariat: the class of ordinary people who earn
money by working, especially those who do not own
any property; in other words, who can have nothing to
offer to his state but his body and off springs.
• Wage: a regular amount of money that you earn,
usually every week, for work or services.
 Use Value
and
Exchange Value
Four types of alienation:
• From the product (As soon as it is created, it is
taken away from its producer)
• From productive activity (which is experienced as
torment)
• From Species’ Being (Humans produce blindly and
not in accordance with their needs and power)
• From other human beings (where the relation of
exchange replaces mutual needs)
The industrial capitalist economy, says Marx,
“alienates” individuals from the work that they do;
unable to control their own labour, which they
must “give” (sell) to another, they lack control and
knowledge of themselves and never achieve their
full human potential. However much they resent
their situation, they believe – that is, they are
conditioned to believe – that it cannot be
changed, and that ultimately they have only
themselves to blame for their discontent and
failures.
MATERIALISM
x
IDEALISM
Marxism is a materialist philosophy: that is, it
tries to explain things without assuming the
existence of a world or of forces beyond the
natural world around us, and the society we
live in. It looks for concrete, scientific, logical
explanations of the world of observable fact.
(Its opposite is idealist philosophy, which does
believe in the existence of a spiritual 'world
elsewhere' and would offer, for instance,
religious explanations of life and conduct).
 Influences on Marxism

• English Economy
• French Revolution
• German Ideology (G. W. Hegel 1770-1831)
Hegel argues that two ideas, thesis and antithesis will continue to struggle in
competition until both are destroyed and a new synthesis comes into
existence.
As Marx stated in Communist Manifesto, “the history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. For
him, four historical periods developed as a result of these
forces: feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and communism.
Analysis of the laws of history and political economy reveals
that capitalism is doomed and will be overthrown by the
proletariat. This revolution will pave the way to a classless,
communist society. In this society which Marx calls “the
worker’s paradise”, private property will be abolished, and
the political state (which upholds the interests of the ruling
class) will cease to be necessary and will ultimately wither
away. In this society, all human beings will achieve their
potential as creative labourers, and none will be alienated
from their labour, from the products of their labour, or from
each other.
• “Base/Superstructure: concepts derived from Marx’s
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy. Marx argued that the economic organization
of any given society … was the foundation of all other
social relations and cultural production: that is, the
economic Base makes possible or determines the kinds
of legal, political, religious and general cultural life of
the world – what Marx termed the Superstructure”
(Wolfreys 11).
Wolfreys, Julian, Ruth Robbins and Kenneth Womack.
Key Concepts in Literary Theory. London: Fitzroy
Dearborn Publishers, 2001.
• Both Engels and Marx assert that
consciousness does not determine life: life
determines consciousness." A person's
consciousness is not shaped by any spiritual
entity; through daily living and interacting with
each other, humans define themselves.
Russia and Marxism
Even before the Russian Revolution of 1917,
Communist Party leaders insisted that literature
promote the standards set forth by the Party. For
example, in 1905, Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin
(1870-1924) wrote Party Organization and Party
Literature, a work in which he directly links good
literature with the working-class movement,
claiming that literature "must become part of the
common cause of the proletariat, a 'cog and
screw' of one single great Social-Democratic
mechanism."
Soon after the Russian Revolution, the revolutionary
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) authored Literature and
Revolution (1924), the first of his many pivotal texts.
Trotsky is considered the founder of Marxist literary
criticism. Advocating a tolerance for open, critical
dialogue, Trotsky contends that the content of a
literary work need not be revolutionary. To force all
poets to write about nothing but factory chimneys or
revolts against capitalism, he believed, was absurd.
The Party, asserted Trotsky, can offer direct leadership
in many areas, but not all. The Party's leadership in art,
he claimed, must be indirect, helping to protect, but
not dominating it. Furthermore, the Party must give
what Trotsky called "its confidence" to those nonparty
writers—who he called "literary
fellow-travelers"—who are sympathetic to the
revolution.
 The Soviet Union's next political leader, Joseph Stalin
(1879-1953), was not as liberal as Lenin or Trotsky in
his aesthetic judgments. In 1932, he abolished all
artists' unions and associations and established the
Soviet Writers' Union, a group that he also headed.
The Union decreed that all literature must glorify Party
actions and decisions. In addition, literature should
exhibit revolutionary progress and teach the spirit of
socialism that revolves around Soviet heroes. Such
aesthetic commandments quickly stifled many Russian
writers because the Union allowed only "politically
correct" works to be published.
 Georg Lucaks (1885-1971)
• A Hungarian Marxist & one of the founders of Western
Marxism
• The first major branch of Marxist theory to appear
outside Russia was developed by the Hungarian Georg
Lukacs (1885-1971).
• Lucaks and his followers borrowed and changed the
techniques of Russian Formalism, believing that a detailed
analysis of symbols, images, and other literary devices
would reveal class conflict and expose the direct
relationship between the economic reveal class conflict
and expose the direct relationship between the economic
base and the superstructure reflected in art. Known as
reflection theory, this approach to literary analysis
declares that a text directly reflects a society's
consciousness.
• For these theorists, it is the critic's job to show how the
characters within the text are typical of their historical,
socioeconomic setting and the author's worldview.
 The Frankfurt School
• Closely allied to Lukacs and reflection theory,
another group of theorists emerged in Germany,
the Frankfurt school, a neo-Marxist group devoted
to developing Western Marxist principles.
Included in this group are:
• Theodor Adorno (1903-1969)
• Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
• Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
• Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
• They agree with Lucaks: literature reveals a culture’s
alienation and fragmentation, the Frankfurt school
critics such as Benjamin assert that a text is like any
other commodity produced by capitalism. An artist
must be aware of this and should not blindly conform
to the codification of the established rules. Having
stripped literature of what Benjamin calls its
"quasi-religious aura' a Frankfurt school critic is able to
resist the bourgeois ideology embedded within a text
and does not mindlessly conform to the inane images,
thinking, and desires depicted in some literary works.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), a close friend of Benjamin, applies this
new way of thinking directly to the theater. According to Brecht,
dramatists use the theater to express their ideas, but the theater
actually controls them. Instead of blindly accepting bourgeois
conventionality as established through dramatic conventions,
dramatists must revolt and seize the modes of production.
Applying this principle to what became known as the epic theater,
Brecht advocated an abandonment of the Aristotelian premise of
unity of time, place, and action, including the assumption that the
audience should be made to believe that what they are seeing is
real. By deliberately seeking to abolish the audience's normal
expectations when viewing a drama, Brecht hopes to create the
alienation effect. For instance, in his dramas, he frequently
interrupted the drama with a direct appeal to the audience via a
song or speech to keep the audience constantly aware of the
moral and social issues to which they were being exposed in the
drama. Disavowing Aristotle's concept of catharsis, Brecht argued
that the audience must be forced into action and be forced to
make decisions, not revel in emotions. In the hands of Brecht, the
epic theatre became a tool for exposing the bourgeois ideology
that had permeated the arts.
 Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
• Italian Marxist theoretician and politician.
• He is best known for his theory of cultural
hegemony which describes how privileged
class/states use cultural institutions to maintain
power in capitalist societies. This concept of
hegemony, developed by the British Marxist
Raymond Williams, has become fundamental to
cultural studies.
• The working people themselves give their
consent to the bourgeoisie and adopt bourgeois
values and beliefs. As sustainers of the economic
base, the dominant class enjoys the prestige of
the masses and controls the ideology—that
shapes individual consciousness.
Louis Althusser (1918-1990)
A French Marxist philosopher.
In seeking an answer to the question of why
anyone should write and study literature,
Louis Althusser (1918-1990) rejects the basic
assumption of reflection theory: namely, that
the superstructure directly reflects the base.

His answer, known today as production

theory, asserts that literature should not be
strictly relegated to the superstructure.
Althusser argues that the superstructure can
and does influence the base. Art, then, can
and does inspire revolution.
RSA (Repressive State Apparatus)
• Police
• Army
• Legal system
ISA (Ideological State Apparatus)
• Church
• Art
• School
• Religion
• Tradition
• Institutions (Marriage, festivals, ceremonies, funerals, etc.)
Athusser fills in the gaps and tells us how the capitalist
system works and what the mechanisms of its
reproduction are. According to Althusser, the capitalist
system perpetuates or solidifies itself by ideology. The
ideology reproduces itself through ideological states
apparatuses and the repressive state apparatuses. RSA
includes police, army, and legal system. ISA are church,
school, religion, psychiatry, media, TV, tradition,
institutions such as marriage, festivals, ceremonies,
funerals, trade union (they give you the impression
that they have negotiation but it is an illusion), and so
forth. All these institutions reinforce the dominant
ideology.
Therefore, he asserts that if you are born into all these things,
you don’t have a possibility to create an ideology for yourself.
You are already a ideological production. For him, one is born
into ideology and cannot shape it, cannot become a holder of
a certain ideology. There is no independent individuality.
Ideology shapes our identity. It is not a choice for us. As the
very embodiment of the capitalist society, your education
starts at family. You are produced as a proper being for social
rules and then school doesn’t educate but produce you
according to the established ideology of the state. So, all we
become subjects. Only through this way, we are given a place
in the society. We freely accept our submission. We are all
indoctrinated. As the subjects, we just guarantee or
perpetuate the social construction.
 METHODOLOGY
• A text cannot exist in isolation from the cultural
situation in which the text evolved. Thus, the study of
literature and the study of society are intricately bound.
• By placing the text in its historical context and analyzing
the author's view of life, Marxist critics arrive at one of
their chief concerns: ideology. The ideology expressed
by the author, as evidenced through his or her fictional
world, and how this ideology interacts with the reader's
personal ideology interests these critics.
• Studying the literary or aesthetic qualities of a text must
include the dynamic relationship of that text to history
and the economic means of production and
consumption that helped create the text and the
ideologies of the author and the readers.
• This kind of an ideological and political investigation
exposes class conflict, revealing the dominant class
and its accompanying ideology being imposed either
consciously or unconsciously upon the proletariat.
• It also reveals the workers' detachment not only from
that which they produce but also from society and
from each other, a process called alienation, revealing
what Marxists dub fragmentation, a fractured and
fragmented society.
• The task of the critic is to uncover and denounce this
anti-proletariat ideology and show how such an
ideology entraps the working classes and oppresses
them in every area of their lives.
• Most importantly, through such an analysis, Marxist
critics wish to reveal to the working classes how they
may end their oppression by the bourgeoisie through a
commitment to socialism.
• A Marxist critic may begin such an analysis by elucidating
how an author's text reflects the writer's ideology through
an examination of the fictional world's characters, settings,
society, or any other aspect of the text. From this starting
point, the critic may launch an investigation into that
particular author's social class and its effects on the author's
society.
• Or the critic may choose to begin by examining the history
and culture of the times reflected in the text and how the
author either correctly or incorrectly pictures this historical
period.
• Whatever method the critic chooses, a Marxist approach
exposes the dominant class, demonstrates how the
bourgeoisie's ideology controls and oppresses the working
class, and highlights elements of society most affected by
such oppression.
• Such an analysis, Marxist critics hope, will lead to action,
social change, revolution, and the rise of socialism.
Marxist literary criticism does not deal with aesthetic
values or merits of a text. It aims to examine the age of
the text. It deals with the background, social and
economic conditions, ways of living, dominant
philosophy of the time, living and health conditions of
the time, writer (what sort of family s/he is coming
from, his/her education, education politics of his/her
time, the occupation of her/his father and mother,
social circumstances of her age and how they are
represented), whether the country mercantile,
industrial, or agricultural in that given time, writer’s
main concern while writing this particular work. The
work does not necessarily have to directly reflect these
points. However, the text consciously or unconsciously,
explicitly or implicitly, overtly or covertly reveals
something about its contemporary time.
• What class structures are established in the text?
• Which characters or groups control the economic means of production?
• What class conflicts are exhibited?
• Which characters are oppressed, and to what social classes do they belong?
• Which characters are the oppressors?
• What is the hegemony established in the text?
• What social conflicts are ignored?
• Who represents the status quo?
• Does the work suggest a solution to society's class conflicts?
• What is the dominant ideology revealed in the text?
• Did the main character support or defy the dominant ideology?
• Is the narrator a member of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat?
• Whose story gets told in the text? Whose story does not get told?
• When and where was the text published?
• Is the author's stated intention for writing the work known or public?
• What were the economic issues surrounding the publication of the text?
• Who is the audience?
• Who is the ideal reader? Real reader?
 JANE EYRE
The problem of social class is an important theme of the novel,
especially a particular class of women in Victorian society:
governesses. They are middle class and poor. Jane is a governess
but she is not a conventional character. She has her own personal
morality which is at odds with the conventions of her society.
Governesses as a class have an unclear standing in society: They
have the culture of aristocracy but they are servants.
She struggles against a world whose expectations she is unable
and unwilling to fulfill. She constantly asserts that she is an
independent individual with her own free will.
To break the conventions Brontë has made her protagonist marry
Rochester. So the fallen woman is rewarded in the end.
Jane refuses to be placed in the traditional
female position:
-disagrees with her superiors
-stands up for her rights
-comments on the role of women in society
So Brontë criticizes the morality, laws and
customs of the period, using Jane as a
mouthpiece. sözcü
Jane's indefinite class status becomes evident from the
novel's opening chapter. A poor orphan living with
relatives, Jane feels alienated from the rest of the Reed
family. John Reed tells Jane she has "no business to take
our books; you are a dependent . . . you ought to beg, and
not to live here with gentleman's children like us." Jane's
lack of money leaves her dependent upon the Reeds for
sustenance. She appears to exist in a no-man's land
between the upper- and servant classes. By calling her
cousin John a "murderer," "slave-driver," and "Roman
emperor," Jane emphasizes her recognition of the
corruption inherent in the ruling classes. MARX FAMILY
INHERITANCE
• As she's dragged away to the red-room following her
fight with John Reed, Jane resists her captors like a
"rebel slave," emphasizing the oppression she suffers
because of her class status. When Miss Abbot
admonishes Jane for striking John Reed, Jane's "young
master," Jane immediately questions her terminology.
Is John really her "master"; is she his servant?
Emphasizing the corruption, even despotism of the
upper classes, Jane's narrative makes her audience
aware that the middle classes were becoming the
repositories of both moral and intellectual superiority.
Jane's experiences at Thornfield reinforce this message. When
Jane first arrives, she is happy to learn that Mrs. Fairfax is a
housekeeper, and not Jane's employer, because this means
they're both dependents and can, therefore, interact as
equals. Mrs. Fairfax discusses the difference between herself,
as an upper-servant, and the other servants in the house; for
example, she says Leah and John are "only servants, and one
can't converse with them on terms of equality; one must keep
them at due distance for fear of losing one's authority." As a
governess, Jane is in the same category as Mrs. Fairfax:
neither a member of the family nor a member of the serving
classes.
The relationship between Jane and Rochester also
emphasizes class issues. Although they share
spiritual equality, Jane is aware of the fact that she is
inferior of Blanch Ingram whom, Jane thinks,
Rochester will marry. Upon that, Jane resolves to
leave Tornfield and she gets angry when Rochester
insists her to stay, she delivers a defiant speech:
Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you
think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings? and
can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips,
and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you
think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am
soulless and heartless?
You think wrong!—I have as much soul as you,—and full as
much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and
much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave
me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you
now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor
even of mortal flesh—it is my spirit that addresses your
spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we
stood at God's feet, equal,—as we are!'
The Chimney Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,

That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.“

And so he was quiet; and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, -
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,

And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

by William Blake
•
The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is set against the dark background of child labor
that was prominent in England in the late 18th and 19th century. With the
increased urban population that came with the Age of Industrialisation , the
number of houses with chimneys grew apace and the occupation of chimney sweep
became much sought-after.
• The wretched figure of the child sweep is a key emblem in Blake’s poems of social
protest. Not only are the sweeps innocent victims of the cruellest exploitation but
they are associated with the smoke of industrialisation. A report to a parliamentary
committee on the employment of child sweeps in 1817 noted that ‘the climbing
boys’ as young as four were sold by their parents to master-sweeps, or recruited
from workhouses. Many suffered ‘deformity of the spine, legs and arms’ or
contracted testicular cancer.[1] The practice was not abolished until 1875, nearly 50
years after Blake’s death.
• A chimney sweeper is a worker who clears ash and soot from chimneys. At the age
of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys, due to their small size. Boys as
young as four climbed hot flues that could be as narrow as 9 inches square. Work
was dangerous and they could get jammed in the flue, suffocate or burn to death.
As the soot was a carcinogen, and as the boys slept under the soot sacks and were
rarely washed, they were prone to Chimney Sweeps Cancer.
• By criticising the bleak conditions of child labour and by making the reader
empathise with the lower class children, Blake attacks and reveals the unfairness of
a capitalist society.