Marxist
Who? Karl Marx, Louis Althusser and many others
When? 1850’s onwards
What?
This page follows from the Reading Practices and Resistant
Readings pages where the idea of a Reading is discussed. Read those first
before you read this one.
Elsewhere we have discussed terms such as Discourse,
Ideology or
Before Marx the general idea was that human beings were
essentially free. Our physical conditions may be sometimes limited – by our
wealth, our jobs, the places where we live – but
despite this we are at least always free in our minds and can see the world in
a clear, true and logically sensible way. This view is called Liberal Humanism
– because it gives power and freedom to human beings. It is important because
it is essentially the basis for our morality: we are free – so we can choose
not to commit crimes and so therefore we can be punished if we do. It also
justifies the capitalist ideas of free markets and competition: we all had an
equal chance of success – I just happened to be the winner so it’s not
something I should feel bad about if I am richer than you.
Against this view Marx argued that every aspect of the world
that we live in – including our minds and the way that we look at the world –
is determined by the socio-economic conditions in which we live. He called
those socio-economic conditions (e.g. whether we happen to live in feudal,
capitalist or communist society) the Base of a society and he believed
that the Base determined every other aspect of a society – education,
law, religion, politics, philosophy, art, literature and our consciousness. He
called all these other aspects of our society the Superstructure and his
point can be summed up by the phrase that the Base determines the Superstructure.
Naturally the schools we go to and the books we read then go on to support and
reinforce the base on which they rest.
Marx was concerned with the poor workers of his time and
wondered why they did not revolt against the factory owners and share all the
money equally. A Marxist answer to this is that we are fooled into accepting
inequalities and unfairness by our way of looking at the world, our ideology.
For example the ‘illusion’ that we are all free makes the rich not feel bad
about having so much money and the poor believe that working hard, not
revolution, is way to get a better life. It’s important to realise that
Marxists don’t believe that the rich people in power are somehow trying to fool
all of the rest of the workers into doing what they want. The rich are just
fooled as the rest of us, except this time the fooling works in their favour.
So, how does this affect the way we read? Marxists are
always on the look out for ways in which texts are trying to keep us fooled
into accepting the way the world is. By exposing them
Marxists hope that we can begin to see that world as it really is and do
something about all the inequalities. Elements of texts that they often pick
out are:
Families
Marxists believe that families are the first place where we
learn to obey rules, follow orders and respect power figures. The family is
where ordinary working people learn to ignore what they want and instead to do
what powerful figures, e.g. fathers or factory owners, want
Religion
Marxists attack religion on two fronts. The first is similar
to the above: in a church we learn to obey power figures (priests, bishops,
God) and do what they want instead of what we want. The second is that religion
fools the workers into putting up with an awful life now by promising them a
much better life in heaven afterwards … but only if they are good! This is
where the famous phrase that ‘Religion is the opium of the masses.’ comes from.
The myth that working
hard will lead to success
Essentially this is another form of opium for the masses.
The idea that by working very hard the poor can make a better life for
themselves is an illusion that makes the poor put up the bad life that they
have in the hope of a better life to come. Poor characters in texts who eventually succeed and attain wealth and social status
support this illusion. Needless to say, in real life this almost never happens.
The illusion of
ownership
Capitalism is based on the idea that people can privately
own land, objects and factories and that this idea even makes sense. This is an
assumption that does not necessarily have to be true; the aborigines for
example do not traditionally have a system of land ownership. A Marxist might
point out how a text supports this illusion of ownership by perhaps punishing
those who steal or by presenting those who defend their land against a threat
as heroic.