The difference between Karl Max and Hegel is that Marx is materialist and Hegel is idealist. Marx was influenced by German ideology but reject the basic notion of Idealism. For Marx it is the material reality that determines the human consciousness but Hegel as a leading figure of German Ideology argues that it is human consciousness that determines the matter.

    Marx as a believer of social economist reality argues that human beings are born in certain social reality that ultimately shapes their mental faculty. Thus for Marx all the ideas and discourse are the out come of social reality and economic reality.

    For Marx society is a conflicting ground where the exploiter appears in different names and tries to dominate or exploit the working class people. As an art critic, Marx argues that, the literature is the social product and has to reflect the social reality. So there is a deep and inseparable attachment between the literary art and society. The work of art is not like a hermit but the expression of social condition.

The German Ideology

    Marx forwards the key idea that “production of ideas or consciousnesses is directly related to material reality.” Man is the producer of ideas who himself is determined by the material reality. The idea, consciousness can never be other than the consciousness of existence, and the existence of his actual life process.” This actual life process is of the material base which determines the consciousness. Marx takes the German Ideology an opposite stand to whole German ideology that was developed by Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel and so on. Western metaphysics, especially German idealism always undermined matter and only focused on human consciousness. On contrary Marx believes that human consciousness is shaped our of socio economic context.

    Marx criticizes German ideology because it created the camera obscure of the reality. German Ideology/ philosophy descends from the heaven to earth. But Marx says we set out from actual life process.

George Lukacs    Lukacs believes that art should reflect the social reality that is objective totality of society. Lukacs reflects the model of art is not only reflection of mere appearance of the society, but the objective totality of the reality. Thus the notion of reflection is not slavish copy or just mere imitation. The term objective totality for Lukacs in art is the reflection of contradiction or dialectical tension between or among social objects, social classes, individual relationship to the society and others. For him, the art should have its political function and such function is possible only by depicting the social reality objectively. In doing so, the art does reflect the totality of social reality by becoming the art not as the reality itself but as the best form for such a reflection of reality. Read More...

Theodor Adorno     In the essay ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’ Theodor Adorno shares Lukacs emphasis on dialectical thinking. Though Lukacs had influenced Arono, the latter differs from the former with respect to whether the opposites of dialects should be reconciled or not. Adorno is of the opinion that the job of cultural critic is to show the dialectic contradictions but not to reconcile them. He claims that society is full of contradiction which art should depict without any favor or disfavor. Read More...

Marxism: History and Economy

    Marxism regards history as a series of conflicts between the dominated majority and the dominating minority to gain power over the means and excess of production. After people have exited from their first state of nature, where they have been equal by default; they have found themselves cast into two main categories. The category of those who spend all their lives laboring in the fields and other places of production; and the category of those who usurp the labor of the working class to increase their capital. If we examine history carefully, we see how the economies of ancient and modern societies are based on slavery and exploitation.All through human history, the masters made their wealth on the expense of the labor of their subjects. The subject works hard in the field or in the factory. The subject, whether aided by machinery or not, generates commodities through his labor. These commodities are valued according to their market price and not according to any intrinsic value in them. Their value is automatically turned into money in the hands of the master. Read More...

Marxism and Literature