Marxist literary Theory

 

Marxism refers to the philosophical, economic, and political principles of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In literary theory, it means reading and interpreting literature through Marxist philosophical and historical perspectives. Marxist literary theory studies literature in relation to history, society, class, and economy. It argues that literature is not timeless, but a product of the material and social conditions of its age.

Both Marxism and Marxist criticism are complex fields that go beyond academic study. As Terry Eagleton warns, Marxism is not simply a theory of ideas but a science of human societies, rooted in struggles against exploitation and oppression. These struggles are real and historical, not just intellectual debates.

Although Marx and Engels did not create a separate literary theory, they extended their ideas to literature, art, and culture. From their perspective, literature must be understood in relation to the social and cultural conditions in which it is produced. Marxist aesthetics thus grew out of applying their theories to culture and art.

Marxist criticism became an evolving school of thought. Thinkers like Lenin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, Lukács, Brecht, Gramsci, Althusser, Raymond Williams, Aime Césaire, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Aijaz Ahmad, Fredric Jameson, Eagleton, and the Frankfurt School philosophers all contributed to its development. Interestingly, some of them never identified strictly as Marxists, but their work is often read within Marxist traditions.

For Eagleton, Marxist criticism is an analysis of literature in relation to the historical conditions that produced it. It studies literature in its social, political, economic, and cultural context. Marx defined history as the history of class struggle between the working class (proletariat) and the ruling capitalist class (bourgeoisie).

Marx explained this through the concepts of base and superstructure. The base (or economic structure) consists of the forces and relations of production. Base refers to the material foundation of society, encompassing the forces of production (like labor and technology) and the relations of production (the social and economic relationships, such as ownership of factories and the employer-employee dynamic) that people enter into to create goods and services. The base determines how wealth is created and distributed, and from it emerges the superstructure, which includes society's legal, political, cultural, and ideological systems, such as religion, media, art and education. The base ultimately shapes and influences the superstructure

Literature, therefore, is not timeless or universal, but a product of its social and historical moment. Later thinkers like Raymond Williams emphasized that the relationship between base and superstructure is dialectical—each influences the other.

The philosophical foundation of Marxism is dialectical materialism, which holds that matter, not ideas, is the foundation of reality. Ideas arise from material conditions, not the other way around. Dialectics stresses totality, contradiction, and change—everything is in motion, and history itself is driven by conflicts between opposing material forces. Engels described dialectics as the “science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, society, and thought.” Thus, the essence of Marxism lies in historical and dialectical materialism.[Change in society comes from contradictions]

Raymond Williams outlined three main directions of Marxist literary criticism:

1. Studying literature as part of ideology.

2. Giving importance to popular or neglected forms of literature.

3. Relating literature to the social and economic history in which it was created.

ideology simply means a system of ideas that's the basis for political thinking. Ideologies are the ideas in a society that serve as the foundation for people's opinions and which contribute to political activity. The dominant ideology is that held by those in power, or by the majority in society. For Marxists, ideology is a set of ideas held by the elite, which they use power to maintain. This in turn keeps them in a position of economic dominance. Ideology is presented by the state as natural.

The idea of ideology was developed by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-90) in his 1970 essay 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses '. In this work, Althusser extends the Marxist idea of ideology to consider in more detail precisely how ideologies are reproduced. He suggests that this takes place through the work of two separate forces. First, what he calls the repressive state apparatuses are those government structures, such as the police, law courts and military, which enforce rule either through violence or coercion (the threat of violence). These can be distinguished from the ideological state apparatuses, which exist outside of official government structures in schools, religious institutions and family. Here, there is no threat of violence, but rather a fear of being socially rejected or ridiculed. 

The Frankfurt School, founded in the 1920s, is a school of social theory and philosophy associated with thinkers who blended Marxist theory with other philosophical and sociological frameworks to critique modern capitalist societies. Among its most notable members were Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and later Jürgen Habermas. Although not exclusively a literary theory school, its ideas profoundly influenced Marxist literary criticism and cultural studies by examining how culture, ideology, and mass media impact society and individual consciousness.