Literature is one of the major constituents of consciousness, and should be studied within the framework of history. As much as literature can be used as an oppressive tool to maintain and enforce the master-capitalist hegemony, it can also be used to undermine this hegemony. For Marxism, literature can be viewed in two main ways, regardless of the difference in opinion and practice among various Marxist thinkers and critics such as Lucaks, Brecht, Adorno, Raymond, Jameson and others:

    As reactionary narrative that aims at marketing, devoting and enforcing the ruling classes’ ideology; yet not without contradictions, that can undermine its basic thematic assumption(s). As a progressive narrative that champions the oppressed in their long and bitter struggle against the decadent bourgeois order. Some traditional Marxist critics including Lukacs stressed the importance of realism in writing and denigrated other modes of narrative like naturalism, post/modernism as less, if at all, representative of class struggle. In defense of their theoretical position, they claim that modernist writers, like Eliot, Joyce, Wolf among others dwell usually in their writings on the personal experiences of demented characters that can hardly be taken to represent the suffering and struggle of the oppressed at large. Traditional Marxists favored realism because of its total representation of people in real situations trying to improve their social conditions by engaging with the repressive forces in the bourgeois world. They favored narratives that compromise inherited bourgeois obsolete ethics and values. Other thinkers and writers like Brecht, Adorno, Althusser among others considered all forms and schools of narrativity suitable for exposing human suffering, class conflict and the various ideologies that dominate the world of the text and shape consciousness of the generations.

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. The master gives little money to cover the minimum basic needs of the subjects; and the rest of the money turns into capital. By doing so, the capitalists ensure that their capital grows bigger and bigger, while their subjects conditions remain at the minimal level possible.

    To keep this state of affairs current, the capitalists rely on a network of oppressive tools. And they die hard to keep their tools live and constantly upgraded. Religion, traditions, rigid patriarchal order, high culture, literature, philosophy are among these tools. However, Marxism sees that the capitalist culture is inherently unstable because of the insidious contradictions and conflicts it generates between the classes. Therefore, capitalist culture will come to an end altogether once the workers and the oppressed realize their potential and begin the struggle to own the means of production. Then a new phase in history, without contradictions, will begin and bring everlasting peace.

Karl Marx    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. Read More..

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...