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    Marxist Criticism

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    Larry Erbite

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    Marxist Criticism

    Uploaded by

    Larry Erbite
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    Copyright:

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    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    3 views17 pages

    Marxist Criticism

    Uploaded by

    Larry Erbite

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 17

    Marxist

    Criticism
    Karl Marx Friedrich Engels
    (1818-1883) (1820-1895)

    German Philosopher German Sociologist

    The founders of
    Marxism
    • Derived from the political and social ideologies written
    by Karl Marx in the book Das Kapital (1867)
    • Developed into a political system that became the basis
    of communism
    • It is about how your social circumstances determine your
    life. It is our social existence that determines our
    consciousness.

    Marxism
    1. To bring about a
    classless society,
    based on the
    common
    ownership of the
    means of
    production,
    distribution, and
    exchange.

    The Aims of
    Marxism
    2. Seeks to change
    the world

    The Aims of
    Marxism
    1. Marxism sees
    progress as
    coming about
    through the
    struggle for power
    between different
    social classes.
    Those who control or
    have power are called the
    bourgeoisie. Those who do
    not have power and who have
    to sell their labor for minimal
    pay are called the proletariat.

    Characteristics
    2. The result of the
    exploitation is
    alienation. The
    alienated workers
    have undergone the
    process of reification
    (from Das Kapital).
    This means that
    workers are bereft of
    their full humanity
    and are of thought of
    a ‘hands’ or ‘the
    labor force.’

    Characteristics
    3. It inverted the early view of economic theory – that the
    pursuit of individual economic self-interest would bring
    economic and social benefits to the whole society.

    Characteristics
    4. The simplest Marxist
    model of society is
    constituted by a base
    (production,
    distribution, and
    exchange) and a
    superstructure (the
    cultural world of
    ideas, art, religion,
    law, etc.) Economic
    determinism – the
    economic base
    determines or shapes
    the superstructure.

    Characteristics
    1. They make a division
    between the ‘overt’ and
    ‘covert’ content of a literary
    work and then relate the
    covert subject matter of the
    literary work to basic
    Marxist themes such as class
    struggle, or the progression
    of society through various
    historical stages.

    What Marxist
    critics do
    2. They relate the context of a work to the social class
    status of the author.

    What Marxist
    critics do
    3. They explain the nature of a whole literary genre in
    terms of the social period which ‘produced’ it.

    What Marxist
    critics do
    4. Another practice is to relate the literary work to the
    social assumptions of the time in which it is
    ‘consumed’, a strategy in the later variant of Marxism
    known as cultural materialism.

    What Marxist
    critics do
    5. Another practice is the ‘politicisation of literary form,’
    that is, the claim that literary forms are themselves
    determined by political circumstance.

    What Marxist
    critics do
    1. Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is
    accepted/successful/believed, etc?
    2. What is the social class of the author?
    3. Which class does the work claim to represent?
    4. What values does it reinforce?
    5. What values does it subvert?
    6. What social classes do the characters represent?

    Typical questions
    7. What role does class play in the work?
    8. How do characters overcome oppression?
    9. In what ways does the work serve as propaganda for the
    status quo; or does it try to undermine it?
    10. What does the work say about oppression; or are social
    conflicts ignored or blamed elsewhere?
    11. Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a
    solution to the problems encountered in the work?

    Typical questions

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