Marxist Theory

A very brief overview

An important noteMarxist theory can be talked about in multiple ways.

1. A theory of society: How society is structured, the roots of culture, power relations

• This will be our focus for this course

• Many people agree that this is a strong, useful description/ way to talk about class

2. A call towards revolution; Marx also assumed that the proletariat would rebel and overthrow the capitalist system.

• This is the more controversial part—and the one that has not yet come to pass.

But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.

-- Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge, 1943

Dialectical Materialism

Base

(Economy)

Superstructure

(Culture)

Derived from Hegel’s

Dialectical Idealism

Means of Production

Owned by the Capitalists (a very small group)

Makes a profit.

Proletariat (Working class)

• Owns only his or her own labor

• Must sell that labor for a wage

Production

Social EffectsAlienation

• Workers are alienated from their own labor and their own bodies

• Work is routine and boring

• Workers are not connected to the products of labor – or to one another

• Work is often fragmented (especially factory work)

• For Marx, meaningful work is an important part of being a fully realized human being. (Key to self-actualization)

Commodity Fetishism• In the marketplace, the product of labor is displaced from the laborer.

•The value of the object is disconnected from the work that has gone into it. (The work is invisible.)

• People are more focused on the exchange of things than relationships between people.

Commodity Fetishism

Commodity Fetishism• Commodity Fetishism: In the marketplace, the product of labor is displaced from the laborer.

• The value of the object is disconnected from the work that has gone into it. (The work is invisible.)• People are more focused on the exchange of things than relationships between people.

• “A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men‘s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour” (Marx 46-47).• “ . . . the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things” (47).

In other words . . .Bianca: There's a difference between like and love. Because, I like my Sketchers, but I love my Prada backpack.Chastity: But I love my Sketchers.Bianca: That's because you don't have a Prada backpack.

— from 10 Things I Hate about You

False Consciousness

• “Dominated and exploited classes typically do not understand their situation or their interests. They do not realize that the situation is unjust” (Trainer).

• False consciousness = support of a hegemonic (dominant) ideology even if it is in direct conflict with a person’s personal interests.

• A person’s mental image of society obscures the systems of exploitation that shape society.

Questions that Marxist Critics Ask

• What is the author’s social class or background?• What social classes do the characters represent?• What social values does the work support or subvert

(question or undermine)?• What is the economic basis for the central struggles

in the text?• How is the text (or society represented in the text)

shaped by capitalism?