MARXISM explain with perspectives, Lecture notes of English Language

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MARXISM

KARL MARX

Karl Marx was born in Trier, Prussia on the 5 th May 1818 to a wealthy middle-class family. His family was from Jewish ancestry but his parents had eventually converted to Christianity. He grew up in an environment of dissent as his father tried to oppose the government of the time. The rebellious nature of his father might have influenced him to question existing social and political factors at a very young age, which would later translate in his more revolutionary ideas. He began his studies in October of 1835, at the University of Bonn. However due to him being imprisoned for drunkenness, his father decided to send him to Berlin university where he became familiar with the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. As a consequence, Marx became involved with the Young Hegelians, a student group mainly known for their criticism of the political and religious institutions of the time. After his university life, Marx began to work as a journalist and then as editor in 1842 Rheinische Zeitung , a liberal newspaper in Cologne.

Feudal Society The feudal society is one where agriculture is the basis of economy and political power is monopolised by landowners. It is important to note that the feudal system existed long before any other system. The feudal system was introduced in England by William 1 the Conqueror between the 5 th and 15 th century. It consisted of the King, barons, knights and villeins. The King owned all the land and he would give some land to the baron if the latter promised to give him money and men for the army. The barons in turn gave some of their land to the knights if they promised to fight when needed. The knights gave a few strips of land to villeins and they also had the duty of protecting the baron and his family. The lower level, the villeins, were very poor. They had to work on the Lord’s land, they were not allowed to leave, they were not free men and they had no rights.

Capitalism Capitalism is characterized by economic contradiction, social conflict and human degradation. According to Marx, capitalism is a system of market anarchy. The forces of production are the means that men and women use to exploit their environment to meet their needs. These forces of production are expressed in relationships between men. In other words, Marx argues that forces of production enable people to enter into social relationships by participating in economic life. Marx further talks on the labour theory of value and capital. Commodities are objects that satisfy the needs and wants of the people. They possess an exchange value which helps to determine their usefulness. Exchange value allows men to determine the worth of one commodity in relation to another commodity. Exchange value actually means the value of a commodity. This value is expressed in terms of labour time in making that commodity. This is what Marx’s labour theory of value is about. Marx also talks on the aspect of exploitation. In a capitalist system, commodity is the source of money. Capitalists want to raise as much capital as possible and for this to happen they have to rely on the workers. So, capitalists sell the labour power to factory owners. Marx’s aspect of exploitation therefore suggests how workers have to let themselves be exploited so as to be able to survive.

Communism Marx’s political aim was to overcome capitalism. According to him, communism was the best way to do so. He argued that in a communist society, men must regulate themselves in an ‘association of free men’ whereby there is no exploitation, instead solidarity. A communist would create a new form of production which would help in new developments and in harmonizing different interests of factory owners and workers. Communism would lead to a better world according to what Marx argues.

PROPERTY AND CLASS STRUGGLE

Property ownership plays an important role in Marx’s theory of class struggle. For him, property ownership not only defines the different classes, it also determines the relations between said classes. He actually advocated for the abolition of private property in the long run. First off, he made the distinction between private property and personal property. Private property or production property referred to means of production while personal property referred to consumer goods that resulted from production. It is, for him, private property that originally divided society in tree classes: those who owned means of production (bourgeoisie), those who owned land (landowners), and those who did not possess any part of the production property (proletariat). Afterwards, with industrialization, when agriculture took a backseat to mass production in factories, only two classes remained: the bourgeoisie (owners of means of production) and the proletariat (factory workers).

Property ownership thus enables the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat, more specifically, by rewarding them with less than the effort they have contributed to the production process. In fact, Marx believed that the value of a product can only be estimated based on the amount of human labour that went in its production. This is in line with his Labour Theory of Value. “Capitalism obscures the fact that labour is the ultimate source of value. Since workers produce commodities for capitalists (instead of for themselves), these commodities and markets take on an independent existence. This process, the fetishism of commodities , allows for the exploitation of labourers.” This brings us to another recurrent concept in Marx’s theory: Surplus Value. This basically refers to the profit made by the factory owners (Surplus Value= Revenue - [Salary Paid + Fixed and Variable Operating Costs]). Surplus value can be defined as “the difference between the value of the product when it is sold (its exchange value) and the value of the elements, especially labour, consumed in the formation of the product.” According to Marx, in a capitalist society, the work done or invested by the labour power

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary,

their social being that determines their consciousness.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to

change it.

Legal systems, for example, are not the pure manifestations of human or divine

reason, but ultimately reflect the interests of the dominant class in particular historical

periods

In one account, Marx described this view in terms of an architectural metaphor: the

‘superstructure’ (ideology, politics) rests upon the ‘base’ (socio-economic relations). To

say ‘rests upon’ is not quite the same as saying ‘is caused by’. Marx was arguing that

what we call ‘culture’ is not an independent reality but is inseparable from the

historical conditions in which human beings create their material lives; the relations of

exploitation and domination which govern the social and economic order of a

particular phase of human history will in some sense ‘determine’ the whole cultural life

of the society.

Check Peter Barry for Mraxist literary criticism, Leninst Literary Criticism and Englsian

criticism

In his most influential essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1970), Althusser analyzes how controlling social systems shape human subjects through ideology, believing that both the base and superstructure are intertwined. He asserts that our desires, choices, intentions, preferences, judgments and so forth are the consequences of social practices, so it is necessary to realize how society makes the individual in its own image. Like Marx, he thinks that our values are inculcated in us by ideological practice, thus constituting individuals as subjects. So, to him, the human individual in capitalist societies is regarded as being able to see himself as a conscious responsible agent. Yet, as a matter of fact, this is, definitely, not an innate property, but is rather acquired or even imposed on him within the structure of established social practices. To shed more light on this perspective, Althusser explains how capitalism reproduces the labor power it needs through not only wages but also outside production by the capitalist education system, and by other instances and institutions.

To Althusser, what children learn at school is a number of techniques "of 'scientific' or

'literary culture', which are directly useful in the different jobs in production" (Leitch

1485). In other words, the education system, as well as other ideological

‘apparatuses’ such as the church and the army, devised by the ruling class, teaches

subjects how to be morally and professionally useful to this system through "rules of

respect for sociotechnical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order

established by class domination" (1485).

This simply means subjugation to the rules of the established order and sincere

performance of their duty towards the system. All these institutions generate

ideologies, which we as individuals then internalize and act in accordance with,

having the illusion that we are in control, and that we are free to believe the things

we believe

Perhaps the best work in which Althusser's explains the relationship between literature and ideology is "A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre' Daspre" (1966). Admitting that this is a very complicated and difficult relationship, he sees that this necessitates an understanding of hegemony. Suggesting that ideology and hegemony, like literature, reconstruct reality without necessarily reflecting the actual conditions of life, he believes that literature may be located within ideology, but it can also be kept at bay from it, allowing the reader to gain an awareness of the ideology on which it is based. So a novel may present the world in a way that seems to support dominant ideologies, but, as a work of fiction, it may also reveal those ideologies. Thus, literature neither merely reflects ideology, nor can it be reduced to it. In other words, Althusser rejects the notion that art works are wholly determined by socio-economic forces, arguing that they have a relative autonomy determined by a complex set of factors

FREDRIC JAMESON

Influenced by several other Marxist thinkers, Jameson is best known for the analysis of contemporary cultural trends, viewing cultural criticism as an integral feature of Marxist theory. He has been concerned to show Marxism's relevance to current philosophical and literary trends, thus his involvement in Western Marxism, which, unlike the vulgar Marxist view of ideology, sees that the culture "superstructure" is not totally determined by the economic base. Using the Hegelian concept of immanent critique, new Western Marxists believe that the best way to analyze and criticize a philosophical or cultural text is to employ the same terms used by the text itself. Jameson believes that cultural objects must be understood according to cultural rules, arguing that careful and detailed analysis of cultural practices would reveal the interrelation between culture and economic realities. Believing that mainstream in literary and academic life is tending toward detachment from reality, he agrees on neither studying the work of art separated from the context of its production, nor restrictively using the structuralist method and the anti-historical formalism. So he insists that the work of art should be seen in terms of historical literary practices and norms, not merely in purely aesthetic terms