MARXIST LITERARY CRITICISM

Who started it?

- Karl Marx – He was a 19th Century German Philosopher that became a part of the the Young Hegelians, and later, the
Communist League. Marx is revered as one of the most influential socialist thinkers of the 19 th Century. Some of his most
notable works are The German Ideology (1846), The Communist Manifesto (1848), and Das Kapital (1867).
- Friedrich Engels – He was pretty much Marx’s best friend. He shared Marx’s socialist beliefs and provided support financially
as well as intellectually while Marx developed his theories. Some of his major works were The Condition of the Working Class
in England (1844) and The Communist Manifesto (1848) which he co-authored.

What about Marxist Literary Criticism?

- Marxist Criticism is the belief that literature reflects class struggle and materialism.
- It looks at how literature functions in relation to other aspects of the superstructure, particularly other articulations of ideology.
- Like feminist critics, it investigates how literature can work as a force for social change, or as a reaffirmation of existing
conditions.
- Like New Historicism, it examines how history influences literature; the difference is that Marxism focuses on the lower
classes.

Marxist Criticism begs these questions about the work:

1. What is the economic status of the character?
2. What happens to them as a result of this status?
3. How do they fare against economic and political odds?
4. What other conditions stemming from their class does the writer emphasize?
5. To what extent does the work fail by overlooking the economic, social, and political implications of its material?
6. In what other ways does economic determinism affect the work?
7. How should the reader’s consider this story in today’s developed or underdeveloped world?

General Principles of Marxist Criticism

- It promotes the idea that literature should be a tool in the revolutionary struggle.
- It attempts to clarify the relationship of literary work to social reality.
- It is political in nature.
- It aims to arrive at an interpretation of literary text in order to define the political dimensions of literary work.
- It believes that the literary work has ALWAYS a relationship to the society.
- It judges literature by how it represents the main struggles for power going on that time, how it may influence those struggles.
- It highlights and lauds solution from the critic [if ever s/he could come up with one].

The simplest goals of Marxist Literary Criticism:

1. Assessment of the political tendency of a literary work, determining whether its social content or it literary form are progressive.
2. Analyzation of the class constructs demonstrated in the literature.
3. Analyzation of the narrative of class struggles in a given text.
o Does the text serve to perpetuate the ruling class ideology; to subvert that ideology, such as William Morris’ News
from Nowhere or
o Does it signify both a perpetuation and subversion of the dominant ideology, such as in the works of Charles Dickens
with Hard Times being the novel that most openly textualizes such a double signification as it offers a damning
criticism of capitalism while also and at the same time seeking a perpetuation of a class-structure society?

The thought behind Marxist Literary Criticism is that works of literature are mere products of History that can be analyzed by looking
at the social and material conditions in which they were constructed. Put simply, the social situation of the author determines the types
of character that will develop, the political ideas displayed and the economical statements developed in the text.