MARXISM --Theory

MARXISM

Lecture notes by S. Sreekumar

1.  Introduction

            Marxism can be defined as a set of theories (mostly political and social), a system of thought and analysis formulated by Karl Marx, a German philosopher ¹ who lived in the nineteenth century.   These theories had tremendous political, social and literary influence during a major part of the twentieth century.  Marxism still retains an aura of past glory though as a political system its future has become bleak after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

            The basic aim of Marxism is to correct the evils of capitalism such as political and economic inequalities in society. This aim it hopes to achieve by overthrowing capitalism and bringing in socialism.

            Marxism is not a simple doctrine as may seem from the above statements. Rather, it is a complicated doctrine with three dimensions in Philosophy, History and Economics.

a. Marxism and Philosophy

          As a movement in Philosophy, Marxism is much indebted to the doctrines of Hegel, Kant and other German philosophers. Based on their theories, Marx evolved a new branch of philosophy called Dialectical Materialism ². According to this, all political / historical events in the world have their base in the conflict of social forces. These social forces originate from man’s material needs.

b. Marxism and History

          Marxism opens a new way called Historical Materialism to understand History. According to this, historical or social changes happen not because of any non-human or super-human force like God or destiny but these changes are caused by man’s material culture. By material culture, Marx means the tools, objects and other materials man use in their daily lives. These tools are also described as “instruments of production”. Marx believes that the modes of production in a society decide its organization into different social groups.

          Marx views capitalism as a mode of production that emerged from medieval feudalism. Like feudalism, capitalism is also an unjust system. Exploitation of the poor and working class is inbuilt in the system. Marx believes that capitalism will collapse because of its internal contradictions. It will give way to socialism and to a higher form of socialism called communism. When communism is achieved all social changes will end and there will be no more injustice in the world.

          According to Marxism, History is a struggle between the working class (proletariat) and the capitalists. In between these two groups stand the middle class (bourgeoisie), which identifies itself with the capitalists. But the middle class has neither control over the mode of production nor any share in the profits.

c. Marxism and Economics

          Economic theories are seen in relation to modes of production. Everything taking place in a society is determined by the mode of production. The mode of production is the ‘base’ (‘economic base’). All other activities, beliefs and system including politics, religion, philosophy, morality, art (literature) and science are called “superstructures”. These ‘superstructures’ are shaped and formed by the economic base.

          The Marxist tenets can be summarized thus:

1. All political and historical events are the result of the conflict of social forces, which are based on man’s material needs.

2. The mode of production determines historical and social changes.

3. All recorded history is a history of class-struggle

4. Capitalism originates from feudalism. Capitalism will give way to socialism, which will reach a higher stage in communism. This will put an end to exploitation and class struggle.

5. Art (Literature), science and religion are mere ‘superstructures’. Their ‘base’ is in economics.

2 Marxism and Literature

          Chernyshevsky, who lived before Marx laid the foundation of Marxist theory on literature.  He developed a purely materialistic view of art that placed art subordinate to reality. He believed that the highest beauty is that which man sees in the world and not that which is created by art. He viewed art only as an empty amusement. The basic premise of Marx’s view on art is not much different. Marx views art as subordinate to society. It is just “one of the forms of social consciousness”. Marx also believes that “art is not created in a vacuum”. It needs a society for its existence.

            Marx and Engels authored another work – The German Ideology (1845 –46) – that brings out some other important concepts of Marxism; especially connected to ideology. The dominant ideology of any period is the product of the socio-economic structure of that period. That is to say, ideology originates from class-relations and class-interests. Ideology is a ‘superstructure’ with its ‘base’ in contemporary economic system. Literature is part of the cultural ideology and therefore it is only a ‘superstructure’.

          Capitalists who are engaged in a class struggle with the proletariat or working class control the economic base in a capitalist society. Therefore the literature produced in such a society will be controlled by the enemies of the working class and it will  protect only the capitalists or anti-labour forces. Thus, by implication, all the creative works produced in European culture – Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Tennyson etc. – support the capitalists and are against the working class. Indeed, this book – The German Ideology – is the source of much schism in Marxist criticism and a group of critics who are called “Vulgar Marxists” (about whom we will deal with in this essay later on) have taken upon themselves a magisterial role to decide what is ‘good’ literature and what is not. These critics inadvertently painted Marx as a bigot quite contrary to the facts.

          Actually, Marx and Engels held creative writers in high esteem. Marx loved the grandeur of Aeschylus. He knew Shakespeare by heart. Both he and Engels had great admiration for Goethe. On his part, Engels had warned socialist writers against ideologically committed literature. Even Lenin, the practical Marxist, was a sensitive admirer of creative art. He loved the music of Beethoven and used to say that Tolstoy was a Colossus. He and Trotsky tried to keep literature free. But the sliding into dogmatism happened immediately after the death of Lenin and the banishment of Trotsky. With the rise of Stalinism, the Soviet Union and its literature ran themselves into a blind alley. During the Stalinist years ideology reigned supreme. Marxist doctrines were unimaginatively applied to creative writing and the “Vulgar Marxists” took over. They evaluated each and every word of creative literature with their narrow doctrines. Liberal Marxist thinkers were driven to a corner.

a. Who are the “Vulgar Marxists”?

          Elsewhere the role of “Vulgar Marxists” in distorting Marxism is mentioned. With Stalinism reigning unchallenged in the Soviet Union these group of Marxist theoreticians began to lay down rules and principles for creative writing. For example, in an article called “The Crisis in Criticism” in the ` New Masses` of February 1933, Granville Hicks drew up a list of requirements, which the ideal Marxist work of literature should possess. The primary function of such a work must be “to lead the proletarian reader to recognize his role in the class struggle”. Therefore it must (1) ‘directly or indirectly show the effects of the class struggle’; (2) ‘the author must be able to make the reader feel that he is participating in the lives described ‘ and finally, (3) the author’s point of view must be that of the vanguard of the proletariat. This formula, according to Hicks, will help us to recognize the perfect Marxian novel’ – and adds – ‘no novel as yet written perfectly conforms to our demands’.

            Similar attempts by the “Vulgar Marxists” to put creative writing in a straight jacket earned a bad name to Marxism. Marxism began to be looked upon as a crude theory because of the utterances of such dogmatic critics like Hicks. Fortunately, the ideological dictatorship of the “Vulgar Marxists” did not last long and good sense and taste returned to Marxist studies with critics like Christopher Caudwell and Edmund Wilson whom we can call liberal Marxists.

b. Christopher Caudwell

          Caudwell’s chief works are: Illusion and Reality, Studies in a Dying Culture and Romance and Realism. These works place him in the rank of a great Marxist critic. In Illusion and Reality Caudwell traces the development of poetry from the primitive ages. During that time poetry was a communal art connected to rituals. But during the middle ages and the present epoch the poet is compromised to the injustices of the socio-economic system that supports him. The book displays Caudwell’s capacity for original thought.

c. Edmund Wilson

He is the author of Axel’s Castle, The Triple Thinkers and To the Finland Station. He was deeply impressed by Marxism but became disillusioned by it with the rise of Stalinism.  This disillusionment is reflected in the essay “Marxism and Literature “. He declares in the essay that “Marxism by itself can tell us nothing whatever about the goodness or badness of a work of art”. Wilson says again:” A man may be an excellent Marxist, but if he lacks imagination and taste he will be unable to make the choice between a good and an inferior book both of which are ideologically unexceptionable”.

d. Georg Lukacs

Is a Hungarian critic with wide influence. He has a flexible view of ideology. He believes that each great work creates its own world. This world is unique and is different from “everyday reality”. A great writer like Tolstoy can bring to life a rich variety of aspects and characters. These will reflect the motives and conflicts of many situations including those of class struggle and class-conflicts.

e. The Frankfurt School

          This school includes German Marxists like Bertold Brecht and Walter Benjamin. Brecht believes that the illusion of reality created by an artistic work must be deliberatively broken. The readers/audience must be made aware of the fact that they are witnessing the product of a capitalist society. Brecht created characters who do not attract the audience’s sympathy. He tried to create a distance between the work and its audience.

f. Neo-Marxists

          In the 1960s an influential Marxist critic Louis Althusser created a renewed interest in Marxism. Althusser believes that a great work is not the product of mere ideology. Its fiction establishes a distance between it and the reader. It tries to expose the ideology from which it is born. Other influential neo-Marxists are Pierre Macherey, Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson.

Louis Althusser assimilated the principles of structuralism into the Marxist theory.

·         The structure of society as a whole is constituted by diverse social formations or “ideological state apparatuses”.

·         Religious, legal, literary and political institutions are part of the ideological state apparatus.

·         Ideology vary according to the form and practices of each mode of state apparatus and the ideology of each mode operates by means of a discourse which ‘interpellates’ the individual to take up a pre-established ‘subject position’.

·         A great work is not a mere product of ideology, for its fiction establishes for the reader a distance from which to recognize the ideology from which it is born. 

Pierre Macherey

Macherey was a follower of Althusser. He stressed that a literary text not only distances itself from its ideology by its fiction and form, but also exposes the contradictions that are inherent in that ideology by its ‘silences’ or ‘gaps’—that is what the text fails to say because its ideology makes it impossible to say it. The aim of Marxist criticism is to make these silences speak and reveal the flaws, stresses, and incoherence in the very ideology that it incorporates.

Raymond Williams & Terry Eagleton

Williams adapts Marxism to his humanistic concerns with the overall texture of the individual’s ‘lived experience’. Eagleton believes that literary text is a special kind of production. In this ideological discourse is described as mental representation of lived experience. In recent years Eagleton has incorporated the concepts of deconstruction and Lacanian psychoanalysis into Marxist theory.

Fredric Jameson

The American Marxist, Jameson has a synthetic critical approach to Marxism. Modes of criticism like Structuralism, archetypal criticism, semiotics and deconstruction are applicable at various stages of a critical interpretation of a literary work. Marxism subsumes all the other modes. It retains the positive findings within its political unconscious.  

IV Notes

1.     Karl Heinrich Marx (1881-1883) was born in the Rhenish city of Trier. His father was a successful Jewish lawyer who converted to Christianity in 1824. Marx studied law at the University of Bonn and at the University of Berlin. When studying in Berlin, he switched over to Philosophy.

2.     ‘Dialectical’ originates from ‘dialogue’ (=to argue). Marx is indebted to Hegel for the idea of dialectical. Materialism is a branch of Philosophy from which science originates. It is based on direct observations of all material phenomena.

VI Books for further Reading.

1. Raymond Williams:    Culture & Society (1780-1950)

2. Peter Dermetz:            Marx, Engels and the Poets.

3. Terry Eagleton:           Marxism and Literary Criticism.