Marxism and Marxist Literary Criticism

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Marxism and Marxist Literary Criticism

• Literature in English
• ASL

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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Main Ideas in Marxism

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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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