Marxist Literary Theory

Marxist Literary Theory

Lecture 3.

Prof. Dr. Visam Mansur

Philosophical Overview

In the humanities discourses there emerged two main basic assumptions as far as human existence is concerned:

1. Consciousness comes before existence

2. Consciousness comes after existence.

The basic assumption of Marxism is that Consciousness follows existence.

Now, you may ask, What is consciousness? And what is existence? Consciousness, simply, is about human beings knowledge and awareness of themselves. It constitutes the social, cultural, spiritual and economic conditions they either create or are created in. It is these elements and more that constantly shape and mediate humans perception of themselves; and we call consciousness. Existence, on the other hand, in its initial form is the materialization of the body in the universe. In simple words, it is about the act of being in the world or the universe at large.

The relationship between existence and consciousness and the nature of both have been, since a very long time in history, the subject of intensive debate among philosophers, scientist, scholars, intellectuals and laymen. To simplify the relationship in very minimal terms, I want you to think of your desktop computer, digital camera or any electronic gadget you use in your daily existence. The devices I mentioned are like human beings in two ways: 1. They have concrete physical dimensions through which they can be identified as what they are; 2. They have some thing in them called program or software because of which they do what they are supposed to do. The object you call a computer is made of various concrete elements that have mass and dimensionality. This mass and dimensionality on its own exists on your table, another object with mass and dimensionality, too. This existing combination of concrete mass and physical dimensionality, we call a computer, will not be able to function properly without something else that has no visible mass and physical dimensionality, we call software or a program. In fact, for the computer to be aware of itself as a computer, for it to be able to communicate with you, with other computers and other applications on your desk or in remote locations it needs to be conscious of itself and of the purpose of its existence. This level of consciousness is no less than what we call software. Thus, the mass that indicates the existence of the computer is dead without the software; the same thing goes for the software that has no mass to fit in.

The epistemological polemics of existence revolve round what comes first. Is it the hardware or the software? For Marxism HARDWARE comes first, followed by SOFTWARE. The more advanced and developed the hardware, the more advanced and sophisticated forms of software it would require and generate. The opposite goes for idealistic philosophers who believe that software is made before the hardware.

To step out of this analogy and turn back to the human dimension, Marxism advocates, in line with Darwinism and all materialistic thinking, that peoples material existence and concrete physical environment determine the course of their consciousness; i. e., their identity, language, literature, belief, mode of expression, economy and politics.

From a Marxist point of view, people whose physical or material conditions of existence are primitive generate primitive forms of consciousness: primitive language, primitive systems of belief and primitive vision of the world at large. If those people strive to better their material existence through work and struggle, their consciousness will improve, too.

Marxism: History and Economy

Marxism regards history as a series of conflicts between the dominated majority and the dominating minority to gain power over the means and excess of production. After people have exited from their first state of nature, where they have been equal by default; they have found themselves cast into two main categories. The category of those who spend all their lives laboring in the fields and other places of production; and the category of those who usurp the labor of the working class to increase their capital. If we examine history carefully, we see how the economies of ancient and modern societies are based on slavery and exploitation.

All through human history, the masters made their wealth on the expense of the labor of their subjects. The subject works hard in the field or in the factory. The subject, whether aided by machinery or not, generates commodities through his labor. These commodities are valued according to their market price and not according to any intrinsic value in them. Their value is automatically turned into money in the hands of the master. The master gives little money to cover the minimum basic needs of the subjects; and the rest of the money turns into capital. By doing so, the capitalists ensure that their capital grows bigger and bigger, while their subjects conditions remain at the minimal level possible.

To keep this state of affairs current, the capitalists rely on a network of oppressive tools. And they die hard to keep their tools live and constantly upgraded. Religion, traditions, rigid patriarchal order, high culture, literature, philosophy are among these tools. However, Marxism sees that the capitalist culture is inherently unstable because of the insidious contradictions and conflicts it generates between the classes. Therefore, capitalist culture will come to an end altogether once the workers and the oppressed realize their potential and begin the struggle to own the means of production. Then a new phase in history, without contradictions, will begin and bring everlasting peace.

Marxism and Literature

Literature is one of the major constituents of consciousness, and should be studied within the framework of history. As much as literature can be used as an oppressive tool to maintain and enforce the master-capitalist hegemony, it can also be used to undermine this hegemony. For Marxism, literature can be viewed in two main ways, regardless of the difference in opinion and practice among various Marxist thinkers and critics such as Lucaks, Brecht, Adorno, Raymond, Jameson and others:

1. As reactionary narrative that aims at marketing, devoting and enforcing the ruling classes ideology; yet not without contradictions, that can undermine its basic thematic assumption(s).

2. As a progressive narrative that champions the oppressed in their long and bitter struggle against the decadent bourgeois order.

Some traditional Marxist critics including Lukacs stressed the importance of realism in writing and denigrated other modes of narrative like naturalism, post/modernism as less, if at all, representative of class struggle. In defense of their theoretical position, they claim that modernist writers, like Eliot, Joyce, Wolf among others dwell usually in their writings on the personal experiences of demented characters that can hardly be taken to represent the suffering and struggle of the oppressed at large. Traditional Marxists favored realism because of its total representation of people in real situations trying to improve their social conditions by engaging with the repressive forces in the bourgeois world. They favored narratives that compromise inherited bourgeois obsolete ethics and values. Other thinkers and writers like Brecht, Adorno, Althusser among others considered all forms and schools of narrativity suitable for exposing human suffering, class conflict and the various ideologies that dominate the world of the text and shape consciousness of the generations.

Applied Marxist Criticism: Case Study

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet letter, in short, is a narrative about a poor young married woman who leaves her oppressive homeland in Britain to settle in America. In her new home, separated from the husband she had to marry out of need and poverty, she encounters a charming young priest in a Puritan land. Ironically enough, she secretly falls in love with the priest, and gives birth to a lovely baby girl. The priest does not take any responsibility upon himself to protect her, or to confess to his sin. As a result she alone suffers humiliation, imprisonment and all sorts of hardships from the city authorities and her fellow citizens. This young woman resists all the pressures put on her: she refuses to disclose the identity of her lover; resists all temptations to go astray again; raises her child to the best of her capacity; absorbs and neutralizes the wrath and malice of her husband and immediate community. Through her dedicated struggle and hard work, she asserts her identity and regains her place in her community. Not only this, but also she exposes the hypocrisy and double standards of her society at large.

If you carefully examine the paragraph in which I presented the summary of this novel you will observe the following points:

1. The summery stresses the fact that the woman is an oppressed working-class woman.

2. A person from another class has exploited the woman. The priest belongs to the class of oppressors.

3. The woman resists the norms of her society and struggles to prove their inadequacies.

4. The woman single-handed wins the day.

All these points indicate a Marxist tendency to show that Hawthorns narrative, though born from the womb of bourgeois culture, carries in it the seeds of celebrating revolution and change. By presenting a working-class woman, defying courageously the decadent bourgeois values in the locale she finds herself entrapped, Hawthorne champions the Marxist values of labor, struggle, and the need to free the oppressed. He also exposes the inhuman methods and practices of mainstream bourgeois culture in stifling any opposing voices.

If you want to expand more in your critique of the narrative, you have the option of writing about how the environment in its materiality defines the main characters consciousness of themselves and others. The new strong identity the young woman acquired through out the narrative is not a God given one determined before birth. It is an identity on the move born out of the change in the physical, concrete world she inhabits. You may go on writing about the dialectical relationship between environment and consciousness conflating various theoretical stands that range from traditional Marxists positions to postmodernists.

You also, in a narrative like this, can write about the methods bourgeois mainstream alienates

the subjects and ensures their full compliance with the system. Religion, law, traditions, utter ignorance are among the weapons used by the magistrates and towns people to legitimize their onslaught on the progressive woman who refuses to bow to the norms of the Puritan world she finds herself in.

Summary

Regardless of your belief and ideology, if you want to view a text from a Marxist point of view, you have to rest on one or more of the following propositions:

1. Existence comes before consciousness

2. Consciousness, in broader terms, is our history, economy, philosophy, religion, psychology, literature and culture

3. Existence, that is to say, the material conditions we find ourselves in determine our consciousness.

4. Our existence is marked by an on going struggle between the classes in a given society. It is a struggle between the haves and have-nots. In a precise term, it is a struggle between capitalists and workers (the proletariat)

5. Capitalists consciousness of the world is impaired. As consumers, who only manipulate the commodities, they cannot see through the process of reification. They have no knowledge of the details of production.

6. The proletarian through his direct contact with the commodity is a producer, a revolutionary, and a positive member of a society seen as contiguous and total.

7. The capitalists maintain their hegemony and status quo by using certain oppressive devices labeled as ideological state apparatus and repressive state apparatus. These include: schools and educational institutions, churches, official culture, military and police force

8. The above apparatuses are aimed at coercing the subjects into accepting the capitalists vision of reality.

9. The capitalist society, by its nature is a fragmented, unlike the proletarian society which is contiguous and total, as all belong to one class.

10. The capitalist society bears the following traits:

* Alienation: The workers detachment from the commodity he produces generates further detachment from various members and groups in the society.

* Oppression: the subjects identity is under constant pressure and erasure from the various state apparatuses.

* Commodification: the subjects feelings, emotions and ethical values are like other commodities; acquire their value in the marketplace.

* Fragmentation: a quality akin to alienation and Commodification results in producing incongruent and fragmented society

Test:

* Read Harold Pinters The Birthday Party in the light of the above assumptions and see how much you can write about Stanleys identity and consciousness of himself and the world around him. Is it possible to look at Goldberg and Mccann as representing the so-called repressive state apparatuses? What is the nature of the society inhabiting the text? How much does it represent totally fragmented, disillusioned societies in the real world we inhabit?

* Read Henrik Ibsens a Dolls House and comment on the nature of the struggle in the text. Does the struggle reflect class-consciousness or just points to the contradictions inherent within the bourgeois societies? Is it possible to identify Nora in her rebellion against her husband, and the social and cultural institutions he stands for, as a progressive act that constitutes the coming of a new order?

* What does Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe tell us about bourgeois ideology and their vision of the world? What techniques and methods does Robinson Crusoe use in his newfound land? How did he treat Friday and other inhabitants of the island? And from what personal and cultural assumptions?

* Look at any narrative of your own choice, even if it belongs to the so-called postmodern school of narrativity where fragmentation and collage are dominant features, and ask similar questions about the nature of the text. You may choose any narrative by Cathy Acker, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Walter Abish, Paul Auster, etc. Try first, to formulate your questions on the above-mentioned Marxist assumptions, and then proceed to answer your questions in the same spirit.

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