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Examples Of Marxism In A Christmas Carol

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The England depicted by Charles Dickens in his “A Christmas Carol” was also the world that influenced Karl Marx, for he was living in England when he wrote the Communist Manifesto. What Marx had to say about the nature of capitalist society and about the struggle between classes can be applied to the idea of economic relations offered by Dickens in his book. Dickens was a social critic as well as a writer and often commented on the social order of his time in his writings. In “A Christmas Carol”, Dickens’ view of the economic structures of British capitalism in the nineteenth century is clearly evident and helps define and shape the character of Ebenezer Scrooge and those who interact with him. Scrooge is a man all about business, largely for its own sake. He lives entirely for the moment and for work and amassing a fortune, and he does not express any vision of building for the future, of achieving some social improvement, or of contributing anything to the social order. He sees work and the creation of wealth as an end in itself. Scrooge is described as “ A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, and covetous old sinner” (Dickens, I). Marx would have described the capitalist as a class, and Marx would also find significance in the way Scrooge treats his clerk, hardly giving him even the one day off a year for Christmas. This type of men is called “Bourgeois” according to the Communist Manifesto. In Marx’s time the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and

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