Marxist criticism examines literature in terms of its ideological content, focusing on issues such as power, class, race, and culture. It analyzes characters’ social hierarchy, work, leisure, and government’s role. Literature is seen as a social institution with an identifiable ideological function, and the writer’s background and ideology are considered the foundation of their work. Literature is viewed as a product of labor, with writers producing, work being sold, and readers consuming.
In the area of language and the humanities, Marxist criticism is an approach to literary criticism that arises out of the economic, social and political ideologies originally developed by Karl Marx during the 19th century and as a result focuses on the ideological content of a work of literature. Marxist criticism examines a literary endeavor in terms of the assumptions it makes and the values it exhibits regarding issues such as power, class, race, and culture rather than elements of artistic style, form, quality of writing, texture, or other more commonly used in literary criticism. Although Marxist literary criticism uses more traditional techniques of literary analysis, concerns about the aesthetics of a piece of literature are secondary to the exploration of the ultimate political and social meanings it contains.
In addition to the more traditional techniques of literary criticism, Marxist criticism looks at how characters relate to each other. Of particular interest are the interactions that show the social hierarchy and individual mannerisms of the characters that can be related to different social classes. Marxist criticism is particularly interested in the type of work characters do to place them within the class or economic system. How much they have to work and the level of luxury they live in will often be part of the analysis.
Interesting use of free time by the characters. Leisure reflects the individual’s free choice and degree of conformity to society. The role government plays in the literary work is analyzed to identify how it played a role, what tools it used, and how successful it was with the public.
For Marxist criticism, the analysis of literature from a political or social point of view is a natural consequence of Marx’s theories. Seen from a Marxist, the foundation of literature is the writer’s ideology and background. Literature is considered a social institution with an identifiable ideological function.
Marxist criticism looks at a work of literature and does not see it as the result of divine or human inspiration or as the purely artistic endeavor of a writer. Instead, literature is believed to come from the ideological and economic circumstances in which the writer was immersed. For Marxist criticism, the ultimate and most important source of a person’s experience is the socioeconomic system of which he is a part. The Marxist critic sees literature as just another product of labour. Writers produce, work is sold on the market, and readers consume: it’s all about economics.
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