Whom Does it Benefit?

Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system: “Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience” (Tyson 277).

Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] benefit? The elite? The middle class? And Marxists critics are also interested in how the lower or working classes are oppressed – in everyday life and in literature.

The Material Dialectic

The Marxist school follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic. This belief system maintains that “…what drives historical change are the material realities of the economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law, philosophy, religion, and art that is built upon that economic base” (Richter 1088).

Marx asserts that “…stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build into the social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of a new society upon the old” (1088). This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must continue: there will always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working) classes and this conflict will be reflected in literature and other forms of expression – art, music, movies, etc.

The Revolution

The continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution by oppressed peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and economics where capitalism is abolished. According to Marx, the revolution will be led by the working class (others think peasants will lead the uprising) under the guidance of intellectuals. Once the elite and middle class are overthrown, the intellectuals will compose an equal society where everyone owns everything (socialism – not to be confused with Soviet or Maoist Communism).

Though a staggering number of different nuances exist within this school of literary theory, Marxist critics generally work in areas covered by the following questions.

Typical questions:

• Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
• What is the social class of the author?
• Which class does the work claim to represent?
• What values does it reinforce?
• What values does it subvert?
• What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:

• Karl Marx – (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist Manifesto, 1848; Das Kapital, 1867; “Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions” from The German Ideology, 1932; “On Greek Art in Its Time” from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859
• Leon Trotsky – “Literature and Revolution,” 1923
• Georg Lukács – “The Ideology of Modernism,” 1956
• Walter Benjamin – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1936
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Louis Althusser – Reading Capital, 1965
• Terry Eagleton – Marxism and Literary Criticism, Criticism and Ideology, 1976
• Frederic Jameson – Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, 1971
• Jürgen Habermas – The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1990

Text Attributions

• Written by Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle for the Purdue OWL.  Last updated 2010-04-21, no longer available online. Adapted by Octaviano Gutierrez © Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Licence.