Literature : Demonstrating Individual, Ideologies, While Challenging The Dominant Ideology

According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that

Marxism is a critical perspective based off of the ideas of Karl Marx, with Marx’s most famous work being the Communist Manifesto. This book illustrates

Karl Marx, a philosopher, made many statements on ideology. He had a strong focus on capitalism and communism, he believed that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” (Marx, Engels and Arthur, 1993) This is the belief that the bourgeoisie, the upper class,

Marx and Engels talk of ideology in terms of 'economic base' and 'ideological superstructure' (Easthope 2004:34) They argue that the bourgeois gained control by moving away from the 'religious ideology of the feudal epoch' (34) and forward into what McGowan terms 'Ne-Classism (34), reminiscent of Roman imperialism. We see in The Communist Manifesto that Marx believes 'each step in the development of the Bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class' (5) and in doing so they 'resolved personal notion into an exchange value' (5). It appears that the Bourgeoisie gained power by redefining societal values and casting off 'religious fervour' (6). We turn again to Brown's Red Rising to see these methods in

For this assignment, you will, first, need to find one passage from the short story you’ve selected that can speak to the focus and concerns of one specific literary theory of your choice (e.g. Marxism). Your job is to fuel discussion, make connections, and analyze.

As human beings, we think of a society as a place where people usually interact with each other to share a common belief, culture, thought, and way of living. However, within each society, there is always a conflict that leads to the understanding of social changes. Karl Marx, one of the main authors of the Communist Manifesto—written in 1848 in a revolutionary time with the thought that it happened to make changes towards

In this paper, I will analyze the Marxist connections between Angela’s Ashes and a quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The memoir written by Frank McCourt, focuses on social class and economic issues endured by his family in America and Ireland. While analyzing McCourt’s memoir, I will pay attention to Marxist concepts including: alienation, religion, and revolution.

Throughout history, regimes around the world have orchestrated their own social system, influenced by political and economic ideologies. Humans have been victims of corrupt government systems that set a large gap between two distinct social classes: The Proletariat and Bourgeoisie. This system is mostly seen in places where one or many have an excessive amount of power (tyranny). Whether it’s an overpowered ruler who puts himself far beyond everyone else in terms of social class, or a society where the lower class is completely irrelevant to the rich, this has been prevalent throughout the course of humanity. One classic novel that exhibits the ideas and consequences of Marxism within a society is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. In Brave New World, Huxley was able to analyze the book through a Marxist lens where there is a major difference in social classes, desire for power, and ideological perspectives within the Bourgeoise and Proletariat.

Marxism, which was based off the political writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel, aimed to react against the new industrial conditions of the working people. The Communist Manifesto, by Marx and Engels, started by stating, “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles” (Engels and Marx, 4). As in the Enlightenment, there was an attempt to take complex processes and simplify them. Marx categorizes society into class groups, which creates clearly defined divisions. Not only does this statement make past human history, in all its complexities, observable and understandable to theorize about, but it removes the nuances in social organization. Additionally, Marx and Engels used their assumed intellectual knowledge to predict humanity’s future: “...we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat” (Engels and Marx, 10). By using intellectual certainty, they were able to propose a theory for the future. In this theory, there seemed to be an assumption that humans have the capability to understand the trajectory of human societies. By continuing the pattern of striving for intellectual control

Marxist Criticism is understanding the analysis between money, power, and social classes. This theory focuses on the poor and lower classes which deals with the roles of the social class and ideology (Shmoop). It is also the relationships among social classes that explains human activity in terms of distribution of economic power. The goal to use this literary theory is to identify the ideology and how that ideology supports the socioeconomic system (Brizee). Religion, race, ethnicity, and gender has a role to where there are differences in the social classes. To portray the differences between the upper, middle, and lower classes and their conflicts within each other, it is reflected in literature and other forms of expression that can tell people the struggles between these classes (Brizee).

In H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a social struggle between the mainstream society and a character estranged from the established normal behavior of the masses of people in these novels exists. While the main characters in both of these books are different from society for entirely different reasons, analyzing these novels using marxist criticism exemplifies just how similar the societies and main characters really are.

Karl Marx, lived between 1818 and 1883, was a humanist, materialist, and a philosopher, not an economist, contrary to popular belief. “[…] a man engaged in endless internecine political and philosophical warfare” (Menand, 2016, pg. 2). He is the author to the popular text, “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (1848), where Marx defined communism, discussed how industrial capitalism is evil, alienation versus objectification, liberation from alienation, types of class struggles in society, dialectical materialism, and socialism. Marx have always been harshly criticized for his advocacy of communism, but often times, it’s only because people fail to understand Marx’s communism (Marxism). The communism that modern days’ people came to know of are through the political system of Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, among other communist countries, where it’s controlled through absolute dictatorship and human’s freedom is reduced; the rise of state capitalism and crude communism. In this essay, I will define communism based Marx’s definition in his text, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, and explore why and how communism has been distorted for political purposes.

We live in a society that is divided into three classes that Karl Marx labeled as aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat. People are placed into one of these different factions based on their wealth, power, and social institutions. When we analyze literature, focusing on identifying these different divisions, we begin to realize how large an influence they have on an individual’s personality, actions, beliefs, hopes, and fears. At first glance, Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, seems like trivial comedy, but if one were to adjust the mirrors and look past the surface, he would see that this literary work reflects the ideologies of the classes born from society's partition.

A cultural text can be anything from film to music, or art to books, such things only become a text after they have been decoded through critical interpretation. Each individual interprets text differently and it is through such things that we can experience culture. What exactly is culture though? The word culture comes from the Latin to mean 'tend and grow on land.' Over the years it has come to mean other things, we can see this by looking at the dictionary which shows us there are eight different meanings to the word culture and it is the more traditional meaning which is put near the end of this list, making way for new and more important meanings. It is the first four meanings which are of most importance to us; "1. the ideas,

“It was juvenile of me to imagine that humanity as a whole…”, reflected Max Eastman on his support for socialism in his younger ages (Eastman). Max Eastman, an active socialist turned free-market advocator, was the editor for popular socialist magazines The Masses and The Liberator. Max Eastman’s career as a socialist editor ended when he moved to Russia in 1922. Since his return from Russia, the once-active socialist began to speak out against socialism and wrote several books and articles on his regrets of having once supported socialism (The Encyclopedia of Marxism). In the preface of Marx and Lenin; the science of revolution, Eastman wrote, “I was deterred from finishing those articles (Towards Liberty, The Method of Progression) by many things, but chiefly by my ignorance of the international literature of Marxism.” (Eastman, Marx and Lenin; the science of revolution). He set his mind on advocating against socialism and was not afraid of criticizing claims that he himself had previously made as a socialist. Max Eastman is a self-conflicting man who is extreme and inconsistent, such qualities in him can be seen through his choices during his time as an editor for The Masses and after.