Marxist Criticism
By Luis Alberto Cabrera
Presentation Outline:
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Beginning and basics of Marxism
Main influences on early Marxist thinking
Marxist Criticism: general
Marxist Criticism: Main Streams
Leninist-Marxist criticism
Engelsian-Marxist criticism
Contemporary Marxist criticism: Louis Althusser's influence
What Marxist critics do
Questions about Marxist criticism
Works Cited
Beginnings and Basics of Marxism
• Marxist criticism is the literary theory based on the socialist - dialectic
doctrine of the German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883) and
sociologist Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).
• They called their economic theories 'Communism', according to their
believe in the state ownership of industry, transport. Rather than private
ownership. Marx and Engels proclaimed the advent of Communism in
their work Communist Manifesto, published in 1848.
• Marxism has as objective to abolish social classes in the society, based on
both: the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and
exchange.
• Marxism also aims to give an explanation to societal phenomena
employing a material-rationalist philosophical approach, rather than a
spiritual methodology based on a supernatural being.
• Different to other philosophies which only try to understand the world
Marxism both: intends to transform it and foresee the advent of the
progress as a fruit of the different social class struggle.
• Marxism analyses and combat the modern industrial Capitalism, a system
which allows the exploitation of the man for another man, or the
exploitation of a social class for another.
• A result of this unfair system is the laborers are in a state of alienation,
which means that they are dishonored and obligated to do monotonous
tasks which don’t allow them to improve their situation.
• But also, alienated workers have suffered the process of reification, which
according to Marx's main work, Das Kapital is related to the way the
owners of the capital think about the workers: people without any dignity,
working force or simple labor things.
• This is also one of the main claims to the economist, that they see people as
cold facts and numbers.
Main Influences on
Early Marxist Thinking
• Marx and Engels own social-political experiences and the works of Friedrich
Hegel, influenced early Marxist philosophy.
• Specifically, Hegel’s idea of dialectic (which holds that opposing forces or ideas
bring about new situations or ideas).
• Also French revolution thinking and concepts exerted great influence on the
theoretical basis of Marxism. Due to, Marxist inverted and combated some
French revolution mean concepts.
• Namely, the ideas of the early economic theory which states that the pursuit of
individual economic self-interest result, will produce economic and social
benefits to the entire society.
• Marx inverted this idea, stating that only in the collective pursuit of economical
development will bring about social benefits to the whole society. Which is no
possible in a capitalist system.
• Marxist simplest model of society, establishes a society without social
class, constituted by both: a base (means of production, distribution and
exchange) and a superstructure or a cultural world of ideas, law, art,
religion, and so forth.
• Marxists believe that cultural manifestation is determined or shaped by the
nature of the economic base. Therefore, regarding culture, traditional
Marxist philosophy is centered in an economic determinism.
Marxist Literary Criticism:
General Point of View
• Even though, Marx and Engels did not produce a theory of literature.
Nevertheless, their perspective toward literature and art is evidently
undogmatic. Namely, they preferred the good art, free from economic
circumstances.
• As cultured and highly-educated Germans, they felt reverence for 'great'
art and literature typical of their class, and desire to highlight the
difference between art and propaganda.
• Nonetheless, Marxist literary critics, holds that the author's social class and
predominant ideology (values, tacit assumptions, viewpoint, half realised
allegiances, and so on)are more influent on what is written by a member of
that class.
• Therefore, the authors are no seen as autonomous-inspired beings, whose
talent and creativity allow them to produce original and timeless art
oeuvres, rather, Marxist perspective seems authors as determined by their
social contexts.
• Traditional Marxist criticism usually deals with history in a very
generalized way. Namely, it discusses both: clashes of large historical
forces and conflicts between social classes.
• Notwithstanding, contrary to general believe, it seldom discuses about a
specific historical event and relates it to the analysis of a particular work.
Marxist Criticism main Streams
Marxist criticism
Classical Streams:
Leninist-Marxist criticism
Insists on the need for
art to be explicitly
committed to the
political cause of the left
Engelsian-Marxist criticism
Stresses: the necessary
freedom of art from direct
political determinism.
Leninist-Marxist Criticism
• Is the result of 1930s Soviet society's reaction, where the State started to control
cultural manifestations such as art, literature and so forth. As a result, liberal
views were considered illegal and Lenin's writing point of view was imposed.
• According to Lenin's outlook, literature must become a Party tool, or a Party
literature. To put it simply, Literature must become in an element of the
democratic party labors.
• As a consequence, any type of literary experimentation or innovation was
forbidden.
• Authors inside or abroad the soviet government and who had an affective
position toward communist ideas, intended to follow the Moscow line, Leninist
perspective or vulgar Marxism.
• As a consequence, literature and economy were considered elements in a closed
relationship, or cause and effect and writers were trapped in the intellectual limits
of their social-class position.
Engelsian-Marxist Criticism
• Emerged from 1930 in the exile of some authors, under suppressed works
or underground form.
• These writers were denominated the Russian Formalist criticism,
nevertheless their work is not Marxist in all the sense of the work.
• The most main representatives of these authors are Victor Shklovsky,
Boris Tomashevsky, and Boris Eichenbaum.
• Their main concepts about literary criticism involve the needing for close
formal approach of the literary work.
• Namely, they believed that the language of literature has its own and
specific procedures and effects, and is not just a version of ordinary
language.
• Shklovsky's concept of 'defamiliarisation' or 'making strange' (expounded
in the essay 'Art as Technique', holds that one of the main effects of the
language in literature is the achievement of making the familiar world, to
look as a world totally new for us.
• A world which we are seeing for the first time and therefore we can
reevaluate.
• Shklovsky's Defamiliarization, therefore, makes a clear distinction
between the reality and the literary work verbal representation.
• As a consequence, the literary work is not conceived as a copy of the
reality in a documentary way.
Influence of
Engelsian-Marxist Criticism
Some Formalist, writers
remained in Russia
e.g. Mikhail Bakhtin.
Others went abroad,
e.g. the linguist Roman
Jakobson (1896-1982).
Jacobson continued
his work in Prague,
founding the
prestigious Prague
Linguistic Circle.
In America
Jakobson was
influential in the
'New Criticism
which departs from
formalist ideas.
Other Russian Formalists
influenced the Frankfurt
School of Marxist aesthetics
in Germany. They practiced
a form of criticism which
tried to combine Freud and
Marx, as well as some
aspects of Formalism.
Contemporary Marxist Criticism
Louis Althusser
• The French theorist Louis Althusser (1918-1990) is one of the Marxist
critic who has exerted more influence in the contemporary Marxist literary
thinking.
• His contribution is evident in a number key terms, notions and concepts
that he has made known.
• For instance: overdeterminism, repressive structures , relative autonomy,
decentering, ideological structures, etc.
• His Engelsian announcements, do not censure Marxist tendency to
imprison art and literature with economics. Nevertheless, it is intended to
release literature in a high degree.
• Due to both: his innovative perspective and reformulation of the Marxist
vision of literature, Althusser could be considered a revisionist of
Marxism.
Main Althusser's Concepts
Ideology
Decentering
Overdeterminism
Relative autonomy
Repressive structures
Ideological structures
• Is a system (possessing its logic and proper rigour) of representations
(images, myths, ideas or concepts according to the case) gifted with an
existence and an historical role at the heart of a given society.
• Implies that there is no overall unity: art has a relative autonomy and is
determined by the economic level only 'in the last instance‘.
• Designates an effect which arises from a variety of causes, that is, from
several causes acting together, rather than from a single (in this case,
economic) factor.
• Claims that in spite of the culture-economics connections, art has a degree
of independence from economic forces.
• Are institutions like the law courts, prisons, the police force, and the army,
which operate, in the last analysis, by external force.
• Are groups such as: political parties, schools, the family, and art
(including literature) which oster an ideology, ideas and attitudes
concerned to the aims of the state and the political status quo.
What Marxist Critics do?
1. They divide the literary work content in: overt (surface) and covert
(hidden). Then they make a relation between the hidden subject of the
literary work with elemental Marxist topics such as class struggle, clashes
of large historical forces, conflicts between social classes and so forth.
2. They make a relation between the literary work context and the socialclass status of the writer, supposing (similar to psychoanalysts) that the
author is not conscious of what he or she is saying in the text.
3. They also try to explain the fundamental qualities of a whole literary
genre, based on the main social issues of the époque in which the text was
produced. For instance: they can state that a novel is a the speaking of a
certain social class, the tragedy is the way of expression of the monarchy,
whereas ballad speak for the working class.
4. Similarly, they make a relation between the text and the social conjectures of the
time in which it is consumed.
5. Marxist critics also tend to politicize the literary form. Namely, they state that the
political circumstances are the determiners of the distinct literary forms. For example:
For some critics, the sonnet formal and metrical form, is a counterpart of social
stability, order and good manners.
Questions about Marxist criticism
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What are the main streams of Marxist criticism?
What are the main differences between them?
Which is the main contributions of the Engelsian-marxist criticism?
Which are the main characteristics of the Leninist-marxist criticism?
What is the meaning of the concept defamiliarisation?
Do only Marxist employ the Marxist literary criticism or it is an approach employed
for all kinds of critics?
• Are there any relationship or similarity between the Marxist criticism and the
Psychoanalytic criticism?
Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.
Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2009. Print.
Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: the Basics. London: Taylor & Francis,
2008. Print.
"Marxist literary criticism." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc. 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 12 April 2014.
Thank you very much
for your attention!