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Marxism and Marxist Literary Criticism

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Title: Marxism and Marxist Literary Criticism


1
Marxism and Marxist Literary Criticism
  • Literature in English
  • ASL

2
Introduction
  • Any political practice or theory based on an
    interpretation of the works of Karl Marx and
    Friedrich Engels
  • Including Communist Parties and Communist states

3
Characteristics of Marxism
  • Attention to the material conditions of people's
    lives, and lived relations among people
  • Peoples consciousness of the conditions of their
    lives reflects these material conditions and
    relations
  • Social class" differing relations to
    production (a particular position within such
    relations)

4
Characteristics of Marxism
  • Material conditions and social relations
    historically malleable
  • View of history class struggle (evolving
    conflict between classes with opposing interests)
    structures each historical period
  • A sympathy for the working class
  • The ultimate interests of workers best match
    those of humanity in general

5
Characteristics of Marxism
  • Workers' revolution the means of achieving human
    emancipation and enlightenment
  • The actual mechanism through which such a
    revolution might occur and succeed

6
Main Ideas in Marxism
  • Means of production
  • A combination of the means of labor and the
    subject of labor used by workers to make products
  • Means of labor machines, tools, equipment,
    infrastructure, and "all those things with the
    aid of which man acts upon the subject of labor,
    and transforms it"
  • Subject of labor raw materials and materials
    directly taken from nature
  • Means of production produce nothing
  • Labor power is needed for production to take
    place.

7
Main Ideas in Marxism
  • Base and superstructure
  • Base people with regard to the social
    production of their existence forms the economic
    basis
  • Superstructure political legal institutions
    religious, philosophical, and other ideas
  • The base conditions the superstructure and the
    social consciousness
  • Reflexive changes in one group often influence
    the other

8
Main Ideas in Marxism
  • Class consciousness
  • The self-awareness of a social class
  • Its capacity to act in its own rational interests

9
Main Ideas in Marxism
  • Ideology
  • Consciousness and perceptions within a society
  • Often controlled by the ruling class
  • Determined according to what is in the ruling
    class's best interests
  • Confuses the alienated groups
  • Creates false consciousness
  • Example commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as
    capital a degradation of human life)

10
Main Ideas in Marxism
  • Exploitation
  • Exploitation of an entire segment or class of
    society by another
  • An inherent feature and key element of capitalism
    and free markets
  • Profit gained by the capitalist the value of
    the product made by the worker the actual wage
    that the worker receives
  • Paying workers less than the full value of their
    labour
  • To enable the capitalist class to turn a profit

11
Class System in Marxism
  • Identity of a social class derived from its
    relationship to the means of production
  • As opposed to the notion that class is determined
    by wealth alone

12
Class System in Marxism
  • The proletariat
  • Individuals who sell their labour power
  • The bourgeoisie
  • Owns the means of production"
  • Buys labour power from the proletariat
    (recompensed by a salary)
  • Exploits the proletariat

13
Class System in Marxism
  • The lumpenproletariat
  • Social scum criminals, vagabonds, beggars
  • People with no stake in the economic system
  • Selling themselves to the highest bidder
  • The Landlords
  • Wealthy people owning pieces of land
  • Retaining their wealth and power
  • The Peasantry and Farmers
  • Disorganized
  • Incapable of carrying out change
  • Disappearing most becoming proletariat but some
    becoming landowners
  • http//hk.youtube.com/watch?veMZRYMlv9tU

14
Marxist Literary Criticism
  • A loose term describing literary criticism
    informed by the philosophy or the politics of
    Marxism
  • Terry Eagleton (Marxism and Literary Criticism,
    1976)
  • Not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned
    with how novels get published and whether they
    mention the working class
  • Aim
  • To explain the literary work more fully
  • A ensitive attention to its forms, styles and
    meanings
  • Grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the
    product of a particular history

15
Marxist Literary Criticism
  • Goals
  • An assessment of the political "tendency" of a
    literary work (determining whether its social
    content or its literary form are "progressive)
  • Applying lessons drawn from the realm of
    aesthetics to the realm of politics

16
Marxist Film Theory
  • Expressing ideas of Marxism through film in terms
    of film editing, such as montage
  • Employing radical choice of subject matter, as
    well as subversive parody, to heighten class
    consciousness and promote Marxist ideas

17
Marxist Film Theory
  • Sergei Eisenstein
  • Shunning narrative structure by eliminating the
    individual protagonist
  • Telling stories where the action is moved by the
    group
  • Story told through a clash of one image against
    the next (whether in composition, motion, or
    idea)
  • The audience is never lulled into believing that
    they are watching something that has not been
    worked over
  • Important works
  • Can dialectics break bricks? (1973)
  • http//hk.youtube.com/watch?v6lEz5rye_U4

18
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