Marxist Theory
A very brief overview
An important note
Marxist theory can be talked about in multiple ways.
1. A theory of society: How society is structured, the
roots of culture, power relations
•
This will be our focus for this course
•
Many people agree that this is a strong, useful
description/ way to talk about class
2. A call towards revolution; Marx also assumed that
the proletariat would rebel and overthrow the
capitalist system.
•
This is the more controversial part—and the one
that has not yet come to pass.
But, if constructing the future and settling
everything for all times are not our affair, it
is all the more clear what we have to
accomplish at present: I am referring to
ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless
both in the sense of not being afraid of the
results it arrives at and in the sense of
being just as little afraid of conflict with the
powers that be.
-- Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge, 1943
Dialectical Materialism
Derived from Hegel’s
Superstructure
(Culture)
Base
(Economy)
Dialectical Idealism
Production
Proletariat
(Working class)
Means of Production
Owned by the Capitalists (a very small group)
• Owns only his or her own labor
Makes a profit.
• Must sell that labor for a wage
Social Effects
Alienation
• Workers are alienated from their own labor and their
own bodies
• Work is routine and boring
• Workers are not connected to the products of
labor – or to one another
• Work is often fragmented (especially factory
work)
• For Marx, meaningful work is an important part of
being a fully realized human being. (Key to selfactualization)
Commodity Fetishism
• In the marketplace, the product of
labor is displaced from the laborer.
•The value of the object is disconnected from the
work that has gone into it. (The work is invisible.)
• People are more focused on the exchange of
things than relationships between people.
Commodity Fetishism
Commodity Fetishism
• Commodity Fetishism: In the marketplace, the product of labor
is displaced from the laborer.
• The value of the object is disconnected from the work that has
gone into it. (The work is invisible.)
• People are more focused on the exchange of things than
relationships between people.
• “A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in
it the social character of men‘s labour appears to them as an
objective character stamped upon the product of that labour;
because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own
labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not
between themselves, but between the products of their labour”
(Marx 46-47).
• “ . . . the relations connecting the labour of one individual with
that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between
individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations
between persons and social relations between things” (47).
In other words . . .
Bianca: There's a difference between like and love.
Because, I like my Sketchers, but I love my Prada
backpack.
Chastity: But I love my Sketchers.
Bianca: That's because you don't have a Prada
backpack.
— from 10 Things I Hate about You
False Consciousness
• “Dominated and exploited classes typically do not
understand their situation or their interests. They
do not realize that the situation is unjust” (Trainer).
• False consciousness = support of a hegemonic
(dominant) ideology even if it is in direct conflict
with a person’s personal interests.
• A person’s mental image of society obscures the
systems of exploitation that shape society.
Questions that Marxist Critics
Ask
• What is the author’s social class or background?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• What social values does the work support or subvert
(question or undermine)?
• What is the economic basis for the central struggles
in the text?
• How is the text (or society represented in the text)
shaped by capitalism?