Marxist Foundations

Basics:

• Marxism as materialist philosophy → grounded in obeservable “material” world (no spirituality, metaphysics, …)

• Marxist idea of history

  • history is driven by class struggle → Antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat will lead to classless society → history will end

• Bourgeoisie:

  • class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labours

• Proletariat:

  • class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production on their own, are reduced to selling their labout to live

• Alienated labour:

  • Manufacturing processes have been broken down into simple steps performed by unskilled workers

    → Workers alienated from product of their labour and themselves

    → they are dehumanized, “machines”

Marxist model of society:

• base:

  • material reality: economy, production, trade, work

• superstructure:

  • world of ideas: art, media, politics, religion, …

• influence each other

  → economic determinism: superstructure of society is determined by economic base upon which it rests

Marxist view of ideology

Ideology:

• set of beliefs of a social group, which explains its culture and relation to other groups and which rationalizes its values.

• what makes set of beliefs an ideology is its function → promoting a particular way of life or set of social arrangements

Important: Marx and Engels never developed literary theories, but their ideas were adopted and transformed by literary theorists in 20th and 21st century