Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: Marxist Criticism

In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley confronts the way in which mass production and capitalism serve to disempower the individual by cementing a self-reinforcing system of consumption and production wherein the individual is reduced to his or her utilitarian function. Although the novel touches on a number of ways in which the individual is disempowered and commodified in contemporary society, from pacifying drugs to an overreliance on technology, Huxley's critique of capitalism remains the most prominent, if only because the novel includes explicit references to the father of modern capitalist production, Henry Ford. Huxley's critique of capitalism becomes most apparent in the third chapter of the novel, when the tour group is taken over by Mustapha Mond, "his fordship" and the Resident Controller for Western Europe. Examining Mond's discussion of the time before the institution of the World State, Huxley's creative demonstration of capitalist reduction, and the function of the individual within capitalist society reveals the ways in which the novel seeks to highlight the dangers of unrestrained capitalist and the consumer culture is perpetuates.

According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, bravery is “possessing or exhibiting courage or courageous endurance” (Agnes 178). Oftentimes, people are commended for acts of bravery they complete in the heat of a moment or overcoming a life-changing obstacle. Rarely one is commended for simply living a brave life, facing challenges they do not even understand. The characters in the Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World live a peculiar lifestyle demonstrating bravery for just breathing. Although Huxley’s ideas are surfacing today, the dystopia he creates is unrelatable . The genetic make-up of these men and women is different, creating a human lacking basic function of life. In Western Europe an individual forms in a laboratory, “one egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress” (Huxley 6). The dystopian way of reproduction rarely involves a man impregnating a woman. Huxley’s characters are born in a laboratory. These class divided people are manipulated to be personality less , sex-driven, dumb-downed, assembly line workers. Brainwashing from birth conditions them to go through the motions without doubting their purpose. Government controllers are not looking out for the egg at all, simply manufacturing them to keep the

In his text Brave New World Aldous Huxley imagines a society genetically engineered and socially conditioned to be a fully functioning society where everyone appears to be truly happy. This society is created with each person being assigned a social status from birth, much like caste system in modern society or the social or the social strata applied to everyday society. Huxley shows the issues of class struggle from the marxist perspective when he says the structure of society in relation to its major classes, and the struggle between them as the engine change its major classes. Huxley describes a perfect society created through genetic engineering where each individual is assigned a class from the time of being . In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley it states “Why not? Bernard’s an Alpha Plus. Besides, he asked me to go to one of the savage reservations with him. I’ve always wanted to see a savage reservation. But his reputation?”(Huxley 123). Clearly the social interactions of the upper castes are a little more nuanced than a simple matter of agreed caste status.

One may think that the society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a gross representation of the future, but perhaps our society isn’t that much different. In his foreword to the novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley envisioned this statement when he wrote: "To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda...." Thus, through hypnopaedic teaching (brainwashing), mandatory attendance to community gatherings, and the use of drugs to control emotions, Huxley bitterly satirized the society in which we live.

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley warns of the dangers of science and technology and their impact on society. In the world he describes, humans are genetically modified and developed in factories, and the population is controlled by drugs and hypnopaedic conditioning. Although this is a fictional society, it is a very possible future based on the direction science and technology are already heading. Advancing science and technology are some the largest threats to society, and action must be taken to prevent a future similar to the one described by Huxley.

In this passage, Neil Postman compared the main visions in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. Postman’s assertion was that Huxley’s view is more relevant to society today than Orwell’s.

Truth and happiness can be used in hundreds of different trivial ways, thoughtlessly. Merriam Webster defines truth as a “a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as {fact}” and happiness as “a state of well-being and contentment”. Modern lexicon tends to mash the two together, like knowing the accepting facts are essential to ones physical and mental well being. So naturally when we discuss human issues in societies, specifically those of the fictional variety we apply our mashed set of ideals based on truth and happiness on each of these different societies . In Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, by conventional societies ideas the citizens of the world state know nothing of traditional reality and by the standards of the traditional world are far from a state of contentment, but if examined by the ideals of the society in question the overall appearance is quite different. the population seems happy because they don’t know the truth. In fact the characters that do know the truth are far unhappier by both societies measures.

Neil Postman claims that between the two books, 1984, written by George Orwell, and Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley, the world we live in today is closer to the one in Brave New World. While I agree with Postman that “Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us,” (Postman, 19-20) and Postman’s overall point of our world being closer to the one portrayed in Brave New World, I disagree that what “Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book for there would be no one who wanted to read one.” (Postman, 19-20) Mankind in Brave New World did not simply stop wanting to read books, but they were pushed by the world and forced to hate books. According to Postman, “Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us,” and what

Brave New World vs.Our World Today Brave New World, a book published by Aldous Huxley in the 1930s, anticipates our development of technology in the future. He was influenced by the society around him and wrote about his thoughts of the future. These influences appeared multiple times and reflected some of our world today.

Brave New World acquires its name from Miranda’s speech is Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest”. Huxley wrote his most famous book in 1931, but it is set in the year of AF 632 in the dystopian World State City of London. In this world, humans have been engineered artificially. Therefore, words like “mother” and “father’ were non-existent. Each child is born into a predetermined gerrymandered caste based on society’s strict system of need. The upper castes of Alpha and Beta luxuriate in their privileged positions. The castes Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon carry out only the most degrading and menial tasks of society.

Society today may be on a dangerous path leading towards disarray and dystopian values. Eugenics, promiscuity, elitism and class differentiation all are problems that are on the rise in America and other developed nations today. However, all of these topics are addressed in the dystopian society of “Brave New World.” Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is an incredibly relevant piece that touches on multiple issues with which society is faced. Race, religion, feminism, and basic human rights are challenged and exaggerated throughout the novel in order to warn society of the disastrous effects of predetermined societal roles.

In Huxley’s Brave New World, after struggling to fit into New London, John runs away to live in the lighthouse in isolation. In Boyle’s Trainspotting, Mark fights his heroin addiction in order to break free from drugs and his friend group to rejoin society along with the duffel bag. The lighthouse in Brave New World and the duffel bag in Trainspotting, suggest that after one is isolated from a society, he can only rejoin that society by being willing to conform to its values.

In today’s world, People have been accustomed to love freedom, liberty, and the ability to choose. However, authors have been writing about a dystopian world where no one … Political and social repression will always fail, leading to the people’s desire for freedom and liberty. Once the masses know about freedom, they will fight for it their last breath. This is shown by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and the Soviet Union’s repressive regime on Poland.

The Marxist literary criticism states that “literature reflects class struggle and materialism.” Someone who reads texts through a Marxist lens tries to identify issues that relate to both money and power, and commonly asks questions about how they deal with the struggles for money and power, along with the roles they play in the work. These criticisms stem from the beliefs and perceptions of popular philosopher Karl Marx that human society consists of clashes and conflicts between the oppressed and oppressing; between the proletariats and the bourgeoisie (Delahoyde).

The New World, a man-made Utopia, governed by its motto, Community, Identity, Stability (Huxley 3). A man-made world in every way. Human beings fertilized in bottles. Identity, gender, intelligence, position in society, all predestined. Human beings classified in the order of precedence: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Every one conditioned to be a certain way. Every one works for every one else (Huxley, 74). All man-made to ensure social stability. Is society in the New World truly better than in the 2000s? Are people in the New World truly happier than we are in the 2000s? Do we in the 2000s have any thing in common with the New World? Are there significant sociological differences between