how to write marxist critical analysis

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, marxist criticism.

Marxist Criticism refers to a method you'll encounter in literary and cultural analysis. It breaks down texts and societal structures using foundational concepts like class, alienation, base, and superstructure. By understanding this, you'll gain insights into how power dynamics and socio-economic factors influence narratives and cultural perspectives

What is Marxist Criticism?

Marxist Criticism refers to both

an interpretive framework
a genre of discourse .

Marxist Criticism as both a theoretical approach and a conversational genre within academic discourse . Critics using this framework analyze literature and other cultural forms through the lens of Marxist theory, which includes an exploration of how economic and social structures influence ideology and culture. For example, a Marxist reading of a novel might explore how the narrative reinforces or challenges the existing social hierarchy and economic inequalities.

Marxist Criticism prioritizes four foundational Marxist concepts:

class struggle
the alienation of the individual under capitalism
the relationship between a society’s economic base and
its cultural superstructure.

Key Terms: Dialectic ; Hermeneutics ; Literary Criticism ; Semiotics ; Textual Research Methods

Why Does Marxist Criticism Matter?

Marxist criticism thus emphasizes class, socioeconomic status, power relations among various segments of society, and the representation of those segments. Marxist literary criticism is valuable because it enables readers to see the role that class plays in the plot of a text.

What Are the Four Primary Perspectives of Marxism?

Did karl marx create marxist criticism.

Karl Marx himself did not create Marxist criticism as a literary or cultural methodology . He was a philosopher, economist, and sociologist, and his works laid the foundation for Marxist theory in the context of social and economic analysis. The key concepts that Marx developed—such as class struggle, the theory of surplus value, and historical materialism—are central to understanding the mechanisms of capitalism and class relations.

Marxist criticism as a distinct approach to literature and culture developed later, as thinkers in the 20th century began to apply Marx’s ideas to the arts and humanities. It is a product of various scholars and theorists who found Marx’s social theories to be useful tools for analyzing and critiquing literature and culture. These include figures such as György Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, and later the Frankfurt School, among others, who expanded Marxist theory into the realms of ideology, consciousness, and cultural production.

So, while Marx provided the ideological framework, it was later theorists who adapted his ideas into what is now known as Marxist criticism.

Who Are the Key Figures in Marxist Theory?

Bressler notes that “Marxist theory has its roots in the nineteenth-century writings of Karl Heinrich Marx, though his ideas did not fully develop until the twentieth century” (183).

Key figures in Marxist theory include Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács, and Louis Althusser. Although these figures have shaped the concepts and path of Marxist theory, Marxist literary criticism did not specifically develop from Marxism itself. One who approaches a literary text from a Marxist perspective may not necessarily support Marxist ideology.

For example, a Marxist approach to Langston Hughes’s poem “ Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria ” might examine how the socioeconomic status of the speaker and other citizens of New York City affect the speaker’s perspective. The Waldorf Astoria opened during the midst of the Great Depression. Thus, the poem’s speaker uses sarcasm to declare, “Fine living . . . a la carte? / Come to the Waldorf-Astoria! / LISTEN HUNGRY ONES! / Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the / new Waldorf-Astoria” (lines 1-5). The speaker further expresses how class contributes to the conflict described in the poem by contrasting the targeted audience of the hotel with the citizens of its surrounding area: “So when you’ve no place else to go, homeless and hungry / ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags” (lines 15-16). Hughes’s poem invites readers to consider how class restricts particular segments of society.

What are the Foundational Questions of Marxist Criticism?

What classes, or socioeconomic statuses, are represented in the text?
Are all the segments of society accounted for, or does the text exclude a particular class?
Does class restrict or empower the characters in the text?
How does the text depict a struggle between classes, or how does class contribute to the conflict of the text?
How does the text depict the relationship between the individual and the state? Does the state view individuals as a means of production, or as ends in themselves?

Example of Marxist Criticism

The Working Class Beats: a Marxist analysis of Beat Writing and (studylib.net)

Discussion Questions and Activities: Marxist Criticism

Define class, alienation, base, and superstructure in your own words.
Explain why a base determines its superstructure.
Choose the lines or stanzas that you think most markedly represent a struggle between classes in Langston Hughes’s “ Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria .” Hughes’s poem also addresses racial issues; consider referring to the relationship between race and class in your written response.
Contrast the lines that appear in quotation marks and parentheses in Hughes’s poem. How do these lines differ? Does it seem like the lines in parentheses respond to the lines in quotation marks, the latter of which represent excerpts from an advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria published in Vanity Fair? How does this contrast illustrate a struggle between classes?
What is Hughes’s purpose for writing “ Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria ?” Defend your interpretation with evidence from the poem.

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Home » Language » English Language » Literature » How to Apply Marxist Theory to Literature

How to Apply Marxist Theory to Literature

What is marxist theory in literature .

Marxist theory or Marxist criticism is one of the theories that can be used in literary criticism . This theory is based on the ideologies of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who criticized the inherent injustice in the European class/ capitalist system of economics operating in the 19 th Century. Marx viewed history as a series of struggles between classes, in other words, the oppressed and the oppressors.

In Marxist literary criticism, literary works are viewed as a reflection of the social institutions from which they originate. In fact, the work itself is considered as a social institution that has a specific ideological function based on the ideology and the background of the writer.

According to Terry Eagleton, a leading British literary theorist, Marxist criticism is concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class”. It also pays sensitive attention to form, style, and meanings.

The basic goal of this literary criticism is to assess the political tendency of a literary work and determine whether its social content or literary forms are progressive. Marxist criticism pays special attention to the division of class, class struggle, oppression, and political background of the story. In other words, this criticism focuses more on the social and political elements of a work than its aesthetic (artistic and visual) value.

Now, let’s see how to apply Marxist theory to literature.

As explained above, class , oppression, power, economy and politics are some of the main elements that should be considered in a Marxist literary criticism. Asking the following questions and analyzing the information that is found from answering these questions will help you to apply the Marxist theory to literature.

What role does class play in the literary work?
How does the author analyze class relations?
What does the author say about oppression?
Are class conflicts ignored or blamed?
How do characters overcome oppression?
Does the work support the economic and social status quo, or does it advocate change?
Does the work serve as propaganda for the status quo? If so, in what way does it attempt to serve as propaganda?
Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the problems encountered in the work?
How has the author’s ideologies and background affect the way he views the economy, politics or society?
How do the time period, social background and culture in which the work was written affect the portrayal of the political, economic, and social forces?
The Marxist theory is more concerned with social and political elements of a work than its aesthetic value.
Marxist theory can be applied to literature by analyzing the social, economic and political elements such as class division, class struggle, and oppression.

T Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, Berkeley, U of California P, 1976

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Marxism by Wendy Lynne Lee LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0031

Marxism encompasses a wide range of both scholarly and popular work. It spans from the early, more philosophically oriented, Karl Marx of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the German Ideology , to later economic works like Das Kapital , to specifically polemical works like The Communist Manifesto . While our focus is not Marx’s own contributions to philosophy or political economy, per se, it is important to note that the sheer breadth of scholarship rightly regarded as “Marxist” or “Marxian,” owes itself to engagement with texts ranging across the works of a younger, more explicitly Hegelian, “philosophical Marx” to those of the more astute, if perhaps more cynical, thinker of his later work, to the revolutionary of the Manifesto’s “Workers unite!” Hence, while it is not surprising to see an expansive literature that includes feminist, anti-racist, and environmental appropriations of Marx, it is also not unexpected to see considerable conflict and variation as a salient characteristic of any such compilation. Indeed, it is difficult to capture the full range of what “Marxism” includes, and it is thus important to acknowledge that to some extent the choice of organizing category is destined to be arbitrary. But this may be more a virtue than a deficit since not only have few thinkers had more significant global impact, few have seen their work applied to a broader range of issues, philosophic, economic, geopolitical, environmental, and social. Marx’s conviction that the point of philosophy is not merely to know the world but to change it for the good continues to infuse the essential bone marrow of virtually every major movement for economic, social, and now environmental justice on the beleaguered planet. Although his principle focus may have been the emancipation of workers, the model he articulates for understanding the systemic injustices inherent to capitalism is echoed in Marxist analyses of oppression across disciplines as otherwise diverse as political economy, feminist theory, anti-slavery analyses, aesthetic experience, liberation theology, and environmental philosophy. To be sure, Marxism is not Marx; it is not necessarily even a reflection of Marx’s own convictions. But however far flung from Marx’s efforts to turn G. F. W. Hegel on his head, Marxism has remained largely true to its central objective, namely, to demonstrate the dehumanizing character of an economic system whose voracious quest for capital accumulation is inconsistent not only with virtually any vision of the good life, but with the necessary conditions of life itself.

For a general overview of Karl Marx, look to Sidney Hook’s Toward the Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation (1933), Isaiah Berlin’s Karl Marx (1963), Louis Dupré’s The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism (1966), Frederic Bender’s Karl Marx: The Essential Writings (1972), or David Mc’Lellan’s Karl Marx: Selected Writings (1977). General overviews of Marxism present, however, a more daunting challenge. These range not only over an expansive array of subject matter, but also across a wide and diverse span of application. A distinctive feature of Marxist scholarship is the effort to include interpretation of Marx’s original arguments and their application to a range of issues. Georg Lukacs offers an example of this strategy in History and Class Consciousness ( Lukacs 1966 ). Louis Althusser takes a similar tack in Reading Kapital ( Althusser 1998 ) and For Marx ( Althusser 2006 ) arguing for an important philosophical transition between the young Marx and the Marx of Kapital —that Marxism should reflect this “epistemological break.” Throughout a career which included Marx and Literary Criticism ( Eagleton 1976 ), Why Marx was Right ( Eagleton 2011 ), and Marx and Freedom ( Eagleton 1997 ), Terry Eagleton demonstrates why Marx and Marxism remain relevant to our reading of literature. In On Marx ( Lee 2002 ), Wendy Lynne Lee endeavors to bridge the gap between general introduction and application via contemporary examples relevant to Marxist scholars and civic activists across a range of disciplines and accessibility. John Sitton’s Marx Today ( Sitton 2010 ) takes a historically contextualized approach to contemporary socialist theorizing via The Communist Manifesto . Through a diverse selection including Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?,” John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney’s “Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation,” and Terry Eagleton’s “Where Do Postmodernists Come From?,” Sitton demonstrates the continuing relevance of the Marxist commitment to make philosophy speak to real world issues. One of the best general works, however, is Kevin M. Brien’s Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom ( Brien 2006 ). Brien argues that Marxism can and should proceed from the assumption that, contrary to Althusser, Marx can be read as a coherent whole. As Marx Wartofsky puts it, Brien’s reading of Marx creates opportunities to theorize an internally consistent Marxism, but also incites “lively criticism.” Lastly, though perhaps less a general introduction to Marxism than to a Marxist view of political/economic revolution, the Norton Critical Edition of The Communist Manifesto ( Bender 2013 ) includes essays situating Marx’s incendiary pamphlet in the history of Marxist scholarship. It includes a rich selection of pieces devoted to themes including the revolutionary potential of Marx’s critique of capitalism (Mihailo Markoviç), his theory of wage labor (Ernest Mandel), Marxist ethics (Howard Selsam), and the applicability of Marxist analyses to contemporary dilemmas (Slavoj Zizek, Joe Bender).

Althusser, Louis. Reading Kapital . London: New Left Review/Verso, 1998.

In Reading Kapital Althusser argues for an epistemological break between the young Marx and the Marx of Kapital . Marxist analyses, according to Althusser, should not only reflect this maturation in Marx’s thinking, but should seek to understand and capitalize on the important changes in Marx’s view of capitalism.

Althusser, Louis. For Marx . London: New Left Review/Verso, 2006.

In For Marx Althusser continues his argument for an epistemological break between the young Marx and the Marx of Kapital utilizing specifically Freudian and Structuralist concepts to support his analysis. The focus here is on the “scientific” Marx as opposed to the younger, more Hegelian thinker. But, as Althusserlater acknowledged, more attention needed to be paid to class struggle.

Bender, Frederic, ed. The Communist Manifesto: A Norton Critical Edition . New York: Norton, 2013.

The Norton Critical Edition of The Communist Manifesto includes essays situating Marx’s incendiary pamphlet in the history of Marxist scholarship. It includes a rich selection of pieces devoted to themes including the revolutionary potential of Marx’s critique of capitalism (Mihailo Markoviç), his theory of wage labor (Ernest Mandel), a socialist feminist interpretation (Wendy Lynne Lee), a Marxist-inspired ethics (Howard Selsam), and an analysis of the applicability of Marxist work to contemporary dilemmas (Slavoj Zizek, Joe Bender).

Brien, Kevin M. Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom . Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2006.

In Marx, Reason, and the Art of Freedom Brien argues that Marxism can and should proceed from the assumption that Marx can be read as a coherent whole, that is, that there’s no “epistemological break” as identified by Althusser. As Marx scholar Marx Wartofsky puts it, Brien’s reading of Marx creates opportunities to theorize an internally consistent Marxism, but also incites “lively criticism.”

Eagleton, Terry. Marx and Literary Criticism . Oakland: University of California Press, 1976.

In Marx and Literary Criticism , Eagleton’s seminal work, he shows how and why it is that Marx is relevant to our reading not only of political economy, but to a wide array of literature. Among other topics, he offers an analysis of the relationship of literature to its historical context, and of literature to political activity. He also situates Marxist critique in the larger context of understanding the human relationship to society and civilization.

Eagleton, Terry. Marx and Freedom . London: Phoenix House, 1997.

In Marx and Freedom , Eagleton continues his critique of capitalism, arguing that freedom means not only liberation from material constraints to more creative praxis, but emancipation from capitalist labor as a variety of alienation. Eagleton incorporates a very rich account of individual perception and activity as key to realizing freedom.

Eagleton, Terry. Why Marx Was Right . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.

In Why Marx Was Right Eagleton adopts a more combative tone, defending against the claim that Marxism has outlived its usefulness. He takes on a number of common objections to Marxism, including that it leads to tyranny, or that it’s ideologically reductionistic.

Lee, Wendy Lynne. On Marx . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002.

Lee’s aim is to offer an introduction to Marx and to Marxism accessible to a wide range of disciplines and audiences. On Marx also provides concise possible applications of Marxist themes for use in environmental philosophy and feminist theory with an emphasis on bridging the gap between philosophical comprehension and activist application—theory and praxis.

Lukacs, Georg. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics . Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1966.

History and Class Consciousness offers a classic example of a strategy common in Marx scholarship, namely, an interpretation of Marx’s work (particularly the concept of alienation), the influence of G. W. F. Hegel on Marx, and an application of Marx to contemporary themes, in Lukacs’s case, the defense of Bolshevism.

Sitton, John. Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230117457

Marx Today takes a historically contextualized approach to contemporary socialist theorizing via The Communist Manifesto , among other Marx’s works. Aimed at a broad audience, this anthology includes both sympathetic and critical readings. Sitton’s selections demonstrate the relevance of the Marxist commitment to make philosophy speak to real world issues.

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12 Texts for Introducing Marxist Criticism

Instructional and Assessment Strategies , Reading Instruction

When my students study literary criticism , I usually introduce Marxist criticism after feminist criticism . In part, I introduce these two lenses in close order because they are both political lenses. They’re not political in the sense of partisan politics. But they both deal with how literature navigates issues of power and privilege.

However, I usually introduce Marxist criticism after feminist criticism because students stumble over the “Marxist” title. Students know Karl Marx from their social studies classes. And they know about communism from reading The Crucible . Sometimes that leads students to believe that Marxist criticism is all about communism. So I spend a lot of time upfront addressing this misunderstanding.

From that point forward, we apply Marxist criticism by evaluating how social class and privilege intersect. At the high school level, I work to keep criticism as straightforward as possible. In other words, we’re asking these questions over and over:

First, what social classes or hierarchies appear in the text?
Second, which characters have privilege? What does privilege look like in the text? How does access to or distance from privilege affect a character?
Similarly, how does the text treat characters from various social classes? How does membership in a particular social class affect a character’s actions and/or how they are treated by other characters?

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Introducing Marxist Criticism

At the high school level, students don’t need all the vocabulary of Marxist criticism. However, the concept of “privilege” is so closely related to Marxist criticism that we always explore this term. Most of my students are at least familiar with the concept of privilege even if they can’t define it. For this reason, the essay “ Privileged ” by Kyle Korver can be a good text for introducing and unpacking this term.

Oftentimes, I find short works to be useful in exploring a new concept. The brevity of poetry can make it ideal for exploring a new idea. To practice applying Marxist criticism, teachers might consider “ Richard Cory ” by Edwin Arlington Robinson. This poem has a straightforward “plot.” The content of the poem is also high interest, so students will be engaged. Then, students can practice applying Marxist criticism to explore the relationship between Richard Cory and the speaker. Grab “Richard Cory” and two more of Robinson’s most-famous poems in this great bundle !

Additionally, a short story like “ A Worn Path ” by Eudora Welty is a good tool for practicing Marxist criticism. For one, this is a short short story, and the plot is clear and easy to follow. Furthermore, social class plays a clear role in how the main character is treated and how she interacts with the white, urban world. Read it here .

Short Stories

Short stories are the primary way that I teach students to apply literary criticism. These three short stories provide readers with plenty of opportunities to evaluate how social class and privilege affect a text’s meaning.

First, “ A White Heron ” by Sarah Orne Jewett is straightforward enough that students can usually read the story independently. Then, students can apply literary criticism with a partner or small group. Read it here .
Second, “ Berenice ” by Edgar Allan Poe may seem like an unusual suggestion. However, this text is high interest, and the main character’s life would be wildly different if he didn’t have privilege. He simply could not have gotten away with his crimes if his social class didn’t protect him. Read it here .
Finally, “ Winter Dreams ” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the longest short story on this list. My students usually enjoy this story because the main characters are so infuriating! The social classes of the main characters play a clear part in their interactions. Of the texts mentioned so far, this is the only one with a character actively working to advance his social class. This text also lends itself to feminist criticism . Read it here .

Grab all my lesson plans for these short stories plus “A Worn Path” and lessons for 5 other short stories in the 9-12 Short Stories Bundle !

Longer Works

Longer texts take more time to read, so I usually incorporate longer works after we have tried different critical lenses. I also like to choose texts that lend themselves to a variety of critical lenses. All the longer works on this list would be good candidates for historical criticism , too! Exploring the intersection of history and literature also adds another layer of complexity to Marxist criticism.

First, The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an ideal candidate for applying several critical lenses. The allegory for McCarthyism lends itself to historical criticism. Also, Miller makes it clear that social class plays an important part in the Salem Witch Trials. Check out my favorite activities for teaching The Crucible .
Similarly, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the first texts I think of when discussing Marxist criticism. The symbolism of East and West Egg and the Valley of Ashes lends itself beautifully to evaluating the role of social class and privilege in the text. These are my favorite activities for teaching The Great Gatsby .
Additionally, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is not a text I usually associate with literary criticism. However, social class is an unavoidable part of teaching and reading this novel. The text also covers issues related to race and gender, so it suits a variety of critical lenses. I also pair To Kill a Mockingbird with a variety of related texts that provide a richer view of Maycomb.
Finally, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a text that clearly lends itself to Marxist criticism. Because social class plays such an important part in this novel, I usually start students with this primer about class in the Victorian Era. I also love this collection of activities for helping students engage with Pride and Prejudice .

Honorable Mentions

These two texts lend themselves to Marxist criticism although they are not my first choices.

First, the poem “ The Last of the Light Brigade ” by Rudyard Kipling focuses on the lives of the brave survivors of “ The Light Brigade .” Because this premise of this poem is based on another poem, it takes a little more time to get students to the Marxist criticism. That being said, this poem also connects well with Pride and Prejudice because it emphasizes the hardship of life in Victorian England. Read it here .

Finally, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare is one of my favorite plays to read with students! While this play more closely aligns with archetypal criticism, social class also plays a role in the drama. The citizens in the play are cast as a moronic, gullible mob. That they come from the plebian class and not from the patrician class of the main characters suits Marxist criticism. Julius Caesar also goes well with these unexpected text pairings !

What other texts would you recommend for teaching Marxist criticism?

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Literary Research: Marxist Literary Criticism

What is marxist literary criticism.

"A form of cultural criticism that applies Marxist theory to the interpretation of cultural texts, using the key concepts of historical materialism, political economy, and ideology."

Brief Overviews:

" Marxist Criticism ." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.
" Marxist Criticism ." A Dictionary of Critical Theory .
" Marxist Theory and Criticism ." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism.

Notable Scholars:

Theodor Adorno

(With Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács)

Walter Benjamin

The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin , 2004.

Terry Eagleton

Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology: a Study in Marxist Literary Theory . NLB, 1976.

Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism . University of California Press, 1976.

Antonio Gramsci

Forgacs, David, et al. Antonio Gramsci: Selections From Cultural Writings . Lawrence & Wishart, 2012.

Gramsci, Antonio, et al. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci . Edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Lawrence & Wishart, 2003. Further Selections .

Fredric Jameson

Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act . Cornell University Press, 1981.

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature . Princeton University Press, 1972.

György Lukács

Lukács, György. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics . Translated by Rodney Livingstone, MIT Press, 1971.

German edition, Geschichte und klassenbewusstsein: studien über marxistische dialektik

Pierre Macherey

Althusser, Louis, et al. Reading Capital: the Complete Edition . Verso, the imprint of New Left Books, 2015.

French edition, Lire le Capital

French edition, Pour une théorie de la production littéraire

Introductions & Anthologies

Also see other recent books discussing or using Marxist criticism in literature and scholar-recommended sources on Marxism via Oxford Bibliographies.

Buchanan, Ian. "Marxist Criticism." In A Dictionary of Critical Theory . Oxford University Press, 2010. Foley, Barbara. Marxist Literary Criticism Today , Pluto Press, 2019, p. 122.

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Spring 2019

ENGL 308 A: Marxism and Literary Theory

Syllabus Description:

Marxism and Marxist Literary Theory

This course introduces several key works by Marx and his collaborator, Engels, and the debates that have grown up around them. At the center of the course is the question of how 19th century writings about political economy, history, and philosophy were taken up by 20th century literary scholars, and how a distinct tradition of interpreting literature and culture from a Marxist perspective, using Marxist tools, developed over time and endures into the present. By contrast to other models of literary and cultural criticism which often seek to find in literary texts transcendent messages and universal meanings, Marxist theory has sought to situate literary and cultural texts within their historical contexts of production and reception, to understand the power dynamics (including those informed by race, gender, and class conflict) that shape textual meaning, and to explore how such conflicts impact meaning, message, genre, style, and form.

Our study of Marxist theory will involve us in close, intensive reading of dense philosophical texts. We seek to understand how a materialist method indebted to Marxism emerged as a dominant method within contemporary scholarship, and how diverse critical practices (often given labels such as “critical theory,” “feminist theory,” “critical race theory,” and “cultural studies”) are situated within a Marxist analytical tradition. Over the course of the quarter we will engage two cultural texts--one filmic and one literary. We will consider how our understanding of each is shaped by the Marxist frameworks that the course explores, and how each, in turn, may be used to reveal the (in)adequacy of Marxist methodologies.

Course organization

This course is organized into three units that treat several of the issues and concepts repeatedly returned to by Marx's interpreters: I) History and Class; II) Capitalism and Ideology; and III) Ideology, Literature and Culture. In Unit I, we focus on the idea of “class,” paying special attention to how social and economic classes function as motors for historical transformation (historical materialism), and how class has been articulated with race and gender in the United States and globally. In Unit II, we explore the concept of ideology as it was first developed by Marx, and then by later theorists who sought to describe the violence of “idea systems” that obscure the realities of human exploitation. In Unit III, we examine how ideas of historical materialism and ideology can be used to study literature and culture more broadly.

Course goals and learning objectives

To read and understand dense theoretical texts.
To write about these texts with clarity and nuance.
To write about a range of cultural texts using the theories examined in this course.
To understand how Marxist theory develops out of intensive dialogue among philosophers, economists and theorists.
To understand how cultural texts can be used to explore the limitations of Marxism.
To evaluate the usefulness of Marxist theory as a distinct critical practice.
To evaluate the limitations of Marxist approaches to literature and culture and to understand what such approaches may obscure.
To be able to talk about theoretical and cultural texts in informed and nuanced ways.

Course requirements

Active, prepared, and informed participation time the class meets.

7 reader responses due in class, as specified

Final paper (5 pages)

Possible in-class quiz week 5

Participation in its many forms

You are expected to actively participate in this course by engaging with the course materials, with your colleague’s ideas, and by regularly taking part in class discussion. It is not possible to do well in this course if you are not present to participate and if you do not use more than one of the evaluated venues (reader responses, in-class discussion, final paper). Oral participation must be backed by written engagement.

Final Paper

This paper is an exercise in concision; therefore, the 5-page limit is absolute.

All papers must be double spaced with 1-inch margins (all sides) and printed in a readable 12-point font . Endnotes should not exceed one page. All citations to texts used in the class should be given parenthetically. Outside sources are not to be used in writing papers for this class (see plagiarism policy). Final paper prompts will be distributed in advance; you will have numerous options from which to choose.

Reader responses

Responses to the readings should raise questions about the readings that relate to the issues treated in discussions and lectures. All responses must stick close to the assigned texts. The best responses will treat individual passages and analyze these in order to raise larger issues and questions. At least three responses must be comparative.

The class will be divided into two groups (A and B); responses will be due on the specified dates, as indicated on the syllabus. All response must be precisely then number of pages indicated in length, double-spaced with one inch margins (all sides). Your name and the date should appear on the back of your response.

The overall quality of responses will be assigned a single letter grade. If you wish to have a response graded prior to the end of the quarter, you must come to office hours with a copy of the response you wish to have graded in hand. Late responses will not be accepted.

Final Portfolio

At the end of the quarter you will submit a portfolio that includes all 7 responses ; you may indicate the 3 responses you consider strongest. Your portfolio must also contain your final paper .

Your grade is based on a combination of class participation, the overall quality of your reader responses (the set is assigned a single letter grade), and the letter grade on your final paper. Responses amount to 70% of your grade, your final paper to 30%. To achieve a top grade in this class you must complete all the written work. If you have turned in a complete portfolio and have actively and regularly participated in class discussion, your final grade will be bumped-up to the numerical grade that represents the top of the letter grade averaged in your written work.

Failure to accurately or fully acknowledge all sources, to provide accurate citations for quoted and paraphrased material, and/or submission of a sentence, essay, or an idea written or conceived of by someone else as your own constitutes plagiarism. Written work that contains plagiarism, however minor, will be excluded from consideration toward your grade and immediately reported to appropriate authorities.

Texts available at University Bookstore

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto , Oxford edition will be used for pagination

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Unit I: History and Class

Tuesday, April 2

Introduction to the course

Thursday, April 4

Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (1848), Sections I and II (pp. 1-26)

Prefaces to the English (1888), German (1890), and Polish (1892) editions

Manifesto (Preface begin on p. 40) Reader response 1A

Tuesday, April 9

Communist Manifesto , Section III

Karl Marx, “Theses Concerning Feuerbach” (1845)

________, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859) Reader response 1B

Thursday, April 11

Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Ideological Tensions of Capitalism: Universalism versus Racism and Sexism” and “Class Conflict in Capitalist World Economy”

Reader response 2A

Tuesday, April 16

Zillah Eisenstein, “Developing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism”

Silvia Federici, "Wages Against Housework" and "Why Sexuality is Work"

Reader response 2B

Thursday, April 18

No Class (or office hours)

Tuesday, April 23

Melissa Wright, “The Dialectics of a Still Life: Murder, Women and Disposability”

Reader response 3A

Thursday, April 25

Kimberly Kay Hoang, "Economies of Emotion, Familiarity, Fantasy, and Desire: Emotional Labor in Ho Chi Minh City's Sex Industry"

Reader response 3B

Unit 2: Capitalism and Ideology

Tuesday, April 30

Marx, Capital Volume One , Chapter 1, pp. 125-163

Thursday, May 2

Completion of Chapter 1, pp. 163-177

Reader response 4A and B

Tuesday, May 7

Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”

Reader response 5A and B (on ISA essay)

Thursday, May 9

Althusser, “A Letter on Art”

Unit 3: Ideology, Literature and Culture

Week 7

Tuesday, May 14

"Exit Through the Gift Shop" or "Sorry to Bother You"

(Please watch film prior to class; bring viewing notes to class)

Thursday, May 16

Continue film discussion

Reader response 6A and B

(This response must be comparative and must treat Althusser and the film)

Tuesday, May 21

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproduction”

Thursday, May 23

Raymond Williams, “Introduction” to Keywords and select keyword entries on

“Art,” “Class,” and “Literature”

Reader response 7A

Tuesday, May 28

Raymond Williams, Chapters 6, 8, and 9 from Marxism and Literature

Reader response 7B

Thursday, May 30

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (read half of the novel)

Tuesday, June 4

Never Let Me Go (complete the novel)

Final paper assignment distributed in-class only

Thursday, June 6

Final discussion of novel

Herbert Marcuse, “Liberation from the Affluent Society”

Final portfolios are Due Monday, June 10th, 10am

Drop portfolios in the box outside Padelford Hall 408B

Professor Weinbaum’s Reader Response Guidelines

Preparation

Read text carefully and make marginal notes as you go.
Don’t just underline; note your ideas and/or questions as they arise.
Reexamine marginal notes after completing your reading.
What are some of the main ideas addressed in this piece?Summarize 3-5 of these for yourself in as many sentences before you begin writing your response.

Writing your response

Bellow I list several types of reader response. The best responses stick close to the text(s) in hand and often focus in on a single passage that allows you to illuminate key ideas or a wider set of issues raised. Summaries should include a brief summation of major points, and should raise specific questions and observations based on your interests or concerns. Questions and concerns should emerge from specific passages that are either quoted directly or paraphrased, depending on length. Always include page numbers parenthetically. Long quotes should be avoided. Quote salient bits and assume I know the rest.

Editing your response

To get the response into the correct format (margins, page length) you will need to write and then edit . The key to good editing is organization. Systematically consider the following: Does each paragraph have a topic and clearly articulated focus? Is there extra wordiness that can be eliminated? Are there sentences that are not yet clear? Are there ideas that need to be expanded with an additional sentence or two? All quotes must be introduced and interpreted. Never assume that anything reads the same to you as to your reader!

As you write your responses over the quarter you should try out the different approaches outlined below. As the course unfolds you should become comfortable doing comparative responses --those that take up one reading and consider it in relation to a previous one.

Questions about meaning and new ideas

This kind of response focuses on a new and/or perplexing idea. What ideas stood out to you as ones you had not thought about prior or by which you were perplexed? Explain why by first describing this idea fully (citing the text), and then explaining what was interesting, important, or consequential about it. If the idea raised a question for you, articulate this question as fully as possible. Is there a conceptual term that is being used in a special way by the author to get at the idea upon which you are focusing? If so, define this term and examine its various uses so as to generate a nuanced understanding of it.

Questions about argument

If you think you have understood the overall argument (and thus its various parts), give a précis or summary of that argument in a paragraph or two. After you have done this raise a question about the argument or one of its parts. You might consider seeming contradictions in the argument. Are there aspects of the argument that appear counter-intuitive or contradictory? You might also consider the philosophical or political implications of the argument. What do you want to take away from this argument for future use? What is suggestive or illuminating about this argument in relation to other ideas/readings we have discussed in class?

Questions about politics

If you think you have understood the bulk of the argument, give a précis of it in a paragraph or two. What is this argument’s main political purpose? Who is the implied audience? What is at stake in advancing this argument? How does this argument imply or constitute an audience? To what end?

Questions about form and style

If you think you have understood the bulk of the argument, give a précis of it in a paragraph or two. Can you discern a relationship between the form in which the argument is made and its meaning? How do form and/or authorial tone and style contribute to the meaning of this argument and the effectivity of its expression and elaboration?

Comparative questions

Once you have discerned the political implications of an argument you may wish to place it into dialogue with a related argument with which it is explicitly or implicitly engaged. You will want to explore overlaps, differences, and how one argument supplements or points out the gaps in the other in some way. How does one text build on the other? How do these texts overlap? How do they departfrom each other? If they are completely at odds, formulate a few sentences and/or develop a question that gets at the differences. How do these differences point towards the different political positions advanced in these texts? Is one argument more effective than the other? Explain why.

Setting theory to work

If the text that we have read seems directly relevant to something going on in your/our world, write a reader response that explains this relationship. Begin by summarizing the main argument of the text in hand and pulling out a specific part of the argument that resonates for you. Then explain how this reading has allowed you to think about your world in new ways, or made you see something you were not able to see prior. You must have a firm grasp on the argument and an ability to succinctly summarize it in order to effectively set it to work in relationship to the real world. This is one of the hardest types of reader response!

A few notes on writing about literary fiction and film in relation to theory:

It is common in English classes to read theory and “apply” it to literary fiction or film--to use it as road map of sorts, a lens through which the text becomes intelligible. In this class we will do this sometimes . And you may write a reader response that applies theory if you wish.

This said, the aim of this course is to disrupt the assumed distinctions between literature/film and theory. To this end, we will read literature/film as offering theoretical ideas; and, we will read theory as a form of writing that is itself literary and can be “read” or interpreted using the skills of close reading that we will hone over the course of the quarter.

Reader responses that place literature/film into conversation with theory might not only apply theory but also might examine how the fictional text in question reveals something new about the theoretical text --something about its explanatory power or limitations. What can theory teach us that literature/film cannot, or does not? What can literature/film teach us that theory misses or dismisses?

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Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide

2019, Historical Materialism

Appeared online here: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/index.php/reading-guides/marxist-literary-criticism-introductory-reading-guide?fbclid=IwAR2vioz8HnlwSHpgoUdnH6cnwFNE7D2gb7juShyG0-z2LxNmyzYevqJLH8I

Related Papers

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

An attempt to dispel the notion that Marxist literary criticism is nothing but the sociology of literature. On the contrary, the joint yardstick of the historical and the aesthetic is of essence.

Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature

Aditya Kumar Panda

In 20th century, literary criticism has witnessed influences from many schools of critical inquiries. One of the major schools is Marxist literary criticism. This paper highlights the major tenets of Marxist literary criticism. In other words, it studies the Marxist approach to literature.

complex, more than Shakespeare because we know more about the lives of women—Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf included. Both the victimization and the anger experienced by women are real, and have real sources, everywhere in the environment, built into society, language, the structures of thought. They will go on being tapped and explored by poets, among others. We can neither deny them, nor will we rest there. A new generation of women poets is already working out of the psychic energy released when women begin to move out towards what the feminist philosopher Mary Daly has described as the "new space" on the boundaries of patriarchy. 8 Women are speaking to and of women in these poems, out of a newly released courage to name, to love each other, to share risk and grief and celebration. To the eye of a feminist, the work of Western male poets now writing reveals a deep, fatalistic pessimism as to the possibilities of change, whether societal or personal, along with a familiar and threadbare use of women (and nature) as redemptive on the one hand, threatening on the other; and a new tide of phallocentric sadism and overt woman-hating which matches the sexual brutality of recent films. "Political" poetry by men remains stranded amid the struggles for power among male groups; in condemning U.S. imperialism or the Chilean junta the poet can claim to speak for the oppressed while remaining, as male, part of a system of sexual oppression. The enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else. The mood of isolation, self-pity, and self-imitation that pervades "nonpolitical" poetry suggests that a profound change in masculine consciousness will have to precede any new male poetic—or other—inspiration. The creative energy of patri-archy is fast running out; what remains is its self-generating energy for destruction. As women, we have our work cut out for us. 1976 In the preface to his book, Eagleton writes ironically: "No aoubt we shall soon see Marxist criticism comfortably wedged between Freudian and mythological approaches to literature, as yet one more stimulating academic 'approach,' one more well-tilled field of inquiry for students to tramp." He, urges against such an attitude, believing it "dangerous" to the centrality of Marxism as an agent of social change. Despite his warning, however, and because of his claims for the significance of Marxist criticism, Eagleton's opening chapters, dealing with tuo topics central to literary criticism, are here presented for some thoughtful "tramping." "Marxism," which in some quarters remains a pejorative term, is in fact an indispensable concern in modern intellectual history. Developed primarily as a way of examining historical, economic, and social issues, Marxist doctrine does not deal explicitly with theories of literature; consequently, there is no one orthodox Marxist school (as there is an orthodox Freudianism), but rather a diversity of Marxist readings. Eagleton's own discussion partly illustrates this diversity: he uses the familiar derogatory term "vulgar Marxism" to refe-to the simplistic deterministic notion that a literary work is nothing more than the direct product of its socioeconomic base. Aware also of how Marxist theory can be perverted, Eagleton in another chapter 's scorn-" ful of such politically motivated corruptions as the Stalinist doctrine From Marxism and Literary Criticism;

Modern Language Review, 78, 632-4

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Wan Anayati

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Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide

"Marxism" by rdesign812 is licensed under CC BY NC ND-2.0

Daniel Hartley

(First published in French at: http://revueperiode.net/guide-de-lecture-critique-litteraire-marxiste/ )

Marxist literary criticism investigates literature’s role in the class struggle. The best general introductions in English remain Terry Eagleton’s Marxism and Literary Criticism (Routledge, 2002 [1976]) and, a more difficult but foundational book, Fredric Jameson’s Marxism and Form (Princeton UP, 1971). The best anthology in English remains Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Blackwell, 1996). The bibliographic essay that follows does not aim to be exhaustive; because it is quite long, I have indicated what I take to be the major texts of the tradition with a double asterisk and bold font: ** .

From Marx to Stalinist Russia

It is well-known that Marx himself was a voracious reader across multiple languages and that, as a young man, he composed poetry as well as an unfinished novel and fragments of a play. S.S. Prawer’s Karl Marx and World Literature (Verso, 2011 [1976]) is the definitive guide to all literary aspects of Marx’s writings. Marx and Engels also expressed views on specific literary works or authors in various contexts. Three in particular are well known: in The Holy Family (1845), Marx and Engels submit Eugène Sue’s global bestseller The Mysteries of Paris to a rigorous literary and ideological critique, which became important for Louis Althusser’s theory of melodrama (see ‘The “Piccolo Teatro”: Bertolazzi and Brecht’ in For Marx (Verso, 2005 [1965])); both Marx and Engels sent letters to Ferdinand Lassalle, a German lawyer and socialist, expressing reservations about his play Franz von Sickingen (1858-9), which they felt had downplayed the historical role of plebeian and peasant elements in the 1522-3 uprising of the Swabian and Rheinland nobility, thereby diminishing the tragic scope of his drama and causing his characters to be two-dimensional mouthpieces of history; finally, Marx planned but never actually wrote a whole volume on Balzac’s La Comédie humaine , of which Engels said that he had ‘learned more [from it] than from all the professed historians, economists, and statisticians of the period together.’ Marx and Engels’ interest in Balzac is particularly important since it suggests that literary prowess and a capacity to represent the fundamental social dynamics of a given historical period are not dependent upon an author’s self-avowed political positions (Balzac was a royalist). This point would become important for theories of realism developed by György Lukács [1] and Fredric Jameson. Various fragments of Marx and Engels’ writings on art and literature have been collected by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski in Marx and Engels on Literature and Art: A Selection of Writings (Telos Press, 1973). Marx and Engels’ ultimate influence on what became ‘Marxist literary criticism’ is less a result of these isolated fragments than the historical materialist method as such.

A useful, if overly simplistic, periodisation of Marxist literary criticism has been proposed by Terry Eagleton in the introduction to his and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (Blackwell, 1996). Eagleton divides Marxist criticism into four kinds: anthropological, political, ideological, and economic (I shall focus on the first three). ‘Anthropological’ criticism, which he claims predominated during the period of the Second International (1889-1916), asks such fundamental questions as: what is the function of art within social evolution? What are the relations between art and human labour? What are the social functions of art and what is its relation to myth? This approach obtained (partially) in such works as G.V. Plekhanov’s Art and Social Life (Foreign Languages Press, 1957 [1912]) and Christopher Caudwell’s Illusion and Reality (Macmillan, 1937). ‘Political’ criticism dates to the Bolsheviks and their preparation for – and defence of – the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and, especially, 1917. Lenin’s essays on Tolstoy from 1908-11, collected in On Literature and Art (Progress Publishers, 1970), argue that the contradictions in Tolstoy’s work between advanced anti-capitalist critique and patriarchal, moralistic Christianity are a ‘mirror’ of late nineteenth-century Russian life and the weakness of residually feudal peasant elements of the 1905 revolution. (This argument was famously revisited by Pierre Macherey in his major Althusserian work of literary theory, Towards a Theory of Literary Production (Routledge Classics, 2006 [1966])). The most important text of this period, however, is almost certainly Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution** (Haymarket, 2005 [1925]). A landmark survey of the entire Russian literary terrain, it provides a unique record of the literary and stylistic upheavals brought about by social revolution. The book locates in literary forms and styles the ambiguous political tendencies of their authors, and is driven by the ultimate goal of producing a culture and collective subjectivity adequate to the construction of socialism.

This period of revolutionary ferment also gave rise to one of the most powerful and sophisticated intellectual schools in the history of Marxist literary criticism: the Bakhtin Circle. Led by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (whose own relation to the Marxist tradition is ambiguous), the Circle produced subtle philosophical analyses of the social and cultural issues posed by the Russian Revolution and its degeneration into Stalinist dictatorship. Centred around the key idea of dialogism , which holds that language and literature are formed in a dynamic, conflictual process of social interaction, the Circle distinguished between monologic forms such as epic and poetry (associated with the monologism of Stalinism itself), and the novel whose heteroglossia (a polyphonic combination of social and literary idioms) and dialogism imbue it with a critical, popular resistance. Key works include Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (University of Minnesota Press, 1984 [1929/ 2 nd revised edition 1963]), his four key articles on the novel (anthologised in English as The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays** (University of Texas Press, 1981 [1934-41])), and Rabelais and His World (MIT Press, 1968 [1965]). Often overshadowed by Bakhtin, but of equal importance, are P.N. Medvedev’s masterly book-length Marxist critique of Russian formalism (which is also a social theory of literature in its own right), The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship** (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978 [1928]), and V.N. Voloshinov’s Marxist theory of language: Marxism and the Philosophy of Language** (Harvard UP, 1986 [1929]). The latter was important to Raymond Williams’ later work (he discovered it by chance on a library shelf at Cambridge) and has informed Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s seminal A Marxist Philosophy of Language (Haymarket, 2004).

‘Western Marxism’ and Beyond

Eagleton dates his third category, ‘ideological criticism,’ to the period of ‘Western Marxism.’ The latter is a much-contested notion that became influential in the Anglophone world following the publication of Perry Anderson’s Considerations on Western Marxism (Verso, 1976), a study of intellectuals including György Lukács, Karl Korsch, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, Galvano Della Volpe, and Lucio Colletti. Anderson claims that, in contradistinction to previous generations of Marxists, Western Marxism is characterised by a period of political defeat (to fascism in the 1930s), a structural divorce of Marxist intellectuals from the masses, and – consequently – a written style that is often complex, obscure or antithetical to practical political action. Whether or not one endorses Anderson’s account, it is a useful periodising category.

If Lenin and Trotsky were concerned with literature primarily as an extension of immediate political struggles, critics of the mid-century were far closer to the preoccupations of the Bakhtin Circle, understanding literature as indirectly political – not least through the ideology of form . If Soviet socialist realism, the definitive study of which is Régine Robin’s Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic (Stanford UP, 1992 [1986]), was largely indifferent to form and style and fixated on ‘transparent’ heroic-proletarian content, critics such as Adorno and Lukács focused far more on literary form and the manner in which it crystallises ideologies. In many works, this attention to form is coextensive with a dialectical approach to criticism, partly inspired by the Hegelianised Marxism of Lukács and Korsch. Such an approach is characterised by an emphasis on reflexivity and totality: it stresses the way in which ‘the [critic’s] mind must deal with its own thought process just as much as with the material it works on’ (Fredric Jameson); it holds that literary works internalise social forms, situations and structures, yet simultaneously refuse them (thereby generating a critical negativity that resists vulgar economic or political reductionism); and it takes the mediated (not external or abstract) social totality as its ultimate critical purview. As Adorno put it in an introductory lecture on the dialectic in 1958:

on the one hand, we should not be content, as rigid specialists, to concentrate exclusively on the given individual phenomena but strive to understand these phenomena in the totality within which they function in the first place and receive their meaning; and, on the other hand, we should not hypostatize this totality, this whole, in which we stand, should not introduce the whole dogmatically from without, but always attempt to effect this transition from the individual phenomenon to the whole with constant reference to the matter itself.

The pinnacle of such dialectical criticism is to be found in the work of Adorno himself. See especially: Prisms (MIT Press, 1955) and Notes to Literature I & II** (Columbia UP, 1991 & 1992 [1958 & 1961]), which contain a range of extraordinary essays, as well as the posthumously published Aesthetic Theory (Continuum, 1997 [1970]) – the definitive philosophical statement on art and the aesthetic in the immediate postwar period.

Adorno was profoundly influenced by Walter Benjamin, eleven years his senior. The pair first met in Vienna in 1923 and continued a lifelong friendship of lively intellectual debate (thoroughly analysed by Susan Buck-Morss in The Origin of Negative Dialectics (Free Press, 1977)). Benjamin’s profoundly original and essayistic work, which combines historical materialism with Jewish mysticism, ranges across a multitude of topics, with highlights including: a Kantian yet Kabbalist-influenced theory of cognition, Baroque drama and allegory, Baudelaire (a pivotal figure in Benjamin’s lifelong obsession with Paris as ‘Capital of the Nineteenth Century’), Kafka, Proust (whose mémoire involontaire he associates with surrealist shocks), Brecht (with whom he also shared a lifelong friendship), surrealism, language, and translation. In English, readers new to Benjamin might wish to consult the relevant essays in Illuminations** (Fontana, 1970) and Reflections (Schocken, 1978) as well as the theory of Baroque drama and allegory in The Origins of German Tragic Drama (Verso, 1998 [1928]). Those with a taste for completism may also wish to take on Benjamin’s enormous study of nineteenth-century Paris, consisting solely of fragments: The Arcades Project (Harvard UP, 2002 [1982]). Harvard University Press have published 4 volumes of Benjamin’s Selected Writings (2004-6).

Another towering figure of twentieth-century Marxist criticism is the Hungarian philosopher György Lukács. His 1923 work History and Class Consciousness (Merlin Press, 1971 [1923]) was hugely influential: it broke with the Second International emphasis on Marxism as a doctrine, stressing instead that Marxism is a dialectical method premised upon the category of totality, and made ‘reification’ a fundamental Marxist concept. Prior to his Marxist radicalisation, Lukács wrote two major works of literary criticism: the first, Soul and Form (Columbia UP, 2010 [1910]), is a (criminally) neglected set of passionate, tormented essays on the relation between art and life, the perfect abstractions of form versus the myriad imperfect minutiae of the human soul. These oppositions become connected to larger social contradictions between life and work, concrete and abstract, artistic fulfilment and bourgeois vocation; what Lukács is clearly seeking is a way of mediating or overcoming these oppositions, yet the tormented style is a sign that he has not yet located it. He continued these reflections in one of the truly great literary-critical works of the twentieth century: The Theory of the Novel** (MIT Press, 1971 [1920]). Contrasting the novel with the epic, Lukács argues that where the latter is the form that organically corresponds to an ‘integrated’ (i.e., non-alienated, non-reified) civilisation in which the social totality is immanently reconciled and sensually present, the novel is ‘the epic of an age in which the extensive totality of life is no longer directly given, in which the immanence of meaning in life has become a problem, yet which still thinks in terms of totality.’ The second half of the book expounds a typology of the novel, concluding with a vaguely hopeful sign that Dostoevsky may offer a way out of the impasses of bourgeois modernity.

Through the experience of World War I and the Russian Revolution, Lukács ultimately arrived at the Marxist positions of History and Class Consciousness . Crucially, his later highly influential theory of realism should be read in the context of this book’s central essay on reification, since realism for Lukács is in many ways the narrative equivalent of the de-reified (and potentially dereifying) standpoint of the proletariat. In Studies in European Realism ** (Merlin Press, 1972) and Writer and Critic (Merlin Press, 1978) (see especially the essay ‘Narrate or Describe?’), Lukács argues that the great realists (Balzac, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann) penetrate beneath the epiphenomena of daily life to reveal the hidden objective laws at work which constitute society as such. In other works, however, this attachment to realism descends into anti-modernist literary-critical dogmatism (see, e.g., The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (Merlin Press, 1963 [1958])). The other major critical work by Lukács is The Historical Novel ** (Penguin, 1969 [1937/1954]), a foundational study of the genre of the historical novel from its explosion in Walter Scott to its twentieth-century inheritors such as Heinrich Mann.

In France, the work of Sartre on committed literature is well-known. Situations I (Gallimard, 1947) collects his early texts on Faulkner, Dos Passos, Nabokov and others (recently translated as Critical Essays: Situations 1 (University of Chicago Press, 2017)). Notable here is the manner in which Sartre deduces an entire personal metaphysics from the styles and forms of these works, which he then judges against his own existentialist phenomenology of freedom and what Fredric Jameson has called his ‘linguistic optimism’ (for Sartre, everything is sayable – a position the French philosopher Alain Badiou would radicalise and mathematise). Styles like Faulkner’s, which implicitly deny this freedom, are held up for censure. The masterpiece of this period and approach is What Is Literature?** (Routledge Classics 2001, [1947]), which includes not only the well-known (and much criticised) passages on the supposed transparency of prose versus the potentially apolitical opaqueness of poetry, but also a rich and subtle history of French writers’ relations to their (virtual or actual) publics: a relation which, after the failed revolution of 1848, becomes one of denial. It concludes with a rallying cry for a ‘actual literature’ [ littérature en acte ] that would strive for a classless society in which ‘there is no difference of any kind between [a writer’s] subject and his public .’ Sartre’s work came under criticism in Roland Barthes’ Writing Degree Zero (Hill & Wang, 2012 [1953]); for Barthes, commitment occurs not at the level of content but at that of ‘writing’ [ écriture ] (or form) – though one might contest the simplistic understanding of Sartre’s argument on which this is based. More recently, these problematics have been resurrected – and challenged – by Jacques Rancière in The Politics of Literature (Polity, 2010 [2007]), which argues that the politics of literature has nothing to do with the personal political proclivities of the author; rather, literature is political because as literature it ‘intervenes into this relationship between practices and forms of visibility and modes of saying that carves up one or more common worlds .’ Readers might also consult Sartre’s major studies of individual writers, including Baudelaire (Gallimard, 1946), Saint Genet (Gallimard, 1952), and – a three-tome magnum opus – L’Idiot de la Famille (Gallimard, 1971-2).

Lucien Goldmann, a Romanian-born French critic, developed an approach that became known as ‘genetic structuralism.’ He examined the structure of literary texts to discover the degree to which it embodied the ‘world vision’ of the class to which the writer belonged. For Goldmann literary works are the product, not of individuals, but of the ‘transindividual mental structures’ of specific social groups. These ‘mental structures’ or ‘world visions’ are themselves understood as ideological constructions produced by specific historical conjunctures. In his best-known work, The Hidden God (Verso, 2016 [1955]), he connects recurring categories in the plays of Racine (God, World, Man) to the religious movement known as Jansenism, which is itself understood as the world vision of the noblesse de robe , a class fraction who find themselves dependent upon the monarchy (the ‘robe’) but, since they are recruited from the bourgeoisie, politically opposed to it. The danger of Goldmann’s work is that the ‘homologies’ he draws between work, world vision and class, are premised upon a simplistic ‘expressive causality’.

Such expressive theories of causality were, famously, one of Louis Althusser’s philosophical and political targets. Proposing a theory of the social totality as decentred, consisting of multiple discontinuous practices and temporalities (in For Marx (Verso, 2005 [1965]) and Reading Capital (Verso, 2016 [1965])), Althusser’s fragmentary writings on art and literature unsurprisingly emphasise art’s discontinuous relation to ideology and the social totality. In his 1966 ‘Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre,’ Althusser argues that art is not simply an ideology like any other but neither is it a theoretical science: it makes us see ideology, makes it perceivable, thereby performing an ‘internal distanciation’ on ideology itself. Pierre Macherey developed this insight into an entire, extremely sophisticated theory of literary production in Towards a Theory of Literary Production** (Routledge, 2006 [1966]). For Macherey, ideology is both inscribed in and ‘redoubled’ or ‘made visible’ by literary texts just as much by what they do not say as by what they overtly proclaim: they are structured by eloquent silences . As Warren Montag has written of Macherey and Étienne Balibar’s work of this time: ‘these texts are intelligible, that is, become the objects of an adequate knowledge, only on the basis of contradictions that may be understood as their immanent cause.’ Alain Badiou published an important critique and further development of Macherey’s argument in ‘The Autonomy of the Aesthetic Process’ (1966) (appears in Badiou’s The Age of Poets (Verso, 2014)), and Terry Eagleton’s Criticism and Ideology (New Left Books, 1976) – a major Althusserian intervention in the British literary critical scene – was strongly influenced by Macherey’s work. For Badiou’s later writings on literature, see Handbook of Inaesthetics (Stanford UP, 2004 [1998]), On Beckett (Clinamen Press, 2002), and The Age of the Poets (Verso, 2014); Jean-Jacques Lecercle has traced these developments in Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2012). Macherey continued his own literary critical trajectory in À quoi pense la littérature? (PUF, 1990), Proust. Entre littérature et philosophie (Éditions Amsterdam, 2013), and Études de philosophie littéraire (De l’incidence éditeur, 2014).

British and US-American Marxist Literary Criticism: Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson

Raymond Williams was perhaps the most important British literary critic of the twentieth century. For a sense of his entire career, see the book-length interviews conducted by the editorial board of the New Left Review in Politics and Letters (Verso, 2015 [1979]). Of the vast range of his writings on literature, Marxism and Literature** (Oxford UP, 1977) is the most important from the perspective of literary criticism. It is the culmination of Williams’ increasing engagement, through the rise of the New Left from the mid-1950s, with the whole range of ‘Western Marxist’ texts discussed above, many of which were slowly being translated into English throughout the 1960s and 70s. Williams’ consistent manoeuvre in this book is to suggest the ways in which traditionally ‘Marxist’ theories of culture and literature remain residually idealist. Williams here formulates his mature positions on several of his key conceptual innovations: selective tradition, ‘dominant, residual and emergent’ (the three-fold temporality of the historical present), structure of feeling, and alignment. Yet the book must also be read in the context of the previous ground-breaking literary critical works that made it possible: The Long Revolution (Chatto & Windus, 1961), a theory of modernity as viewed from the perspective of the sociology of literature and artistic production; Modern Tragedy (Verso, 1979 [1966]), which combines a Marxist theory of tragedy with a powerful justification of revolution as our modern tragic horizon; Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (Penguin, 1973 [1952/ 1964]), a materialist theory of modern drama; The English Novel From Dickens to Lawrence (Chatto & Windus, 1970), a social history of the English novel (designed, in part, to challenge the hegemony of F. R. Leavis’ The Great Tradition (Chatto & Windus, 1948)); and – most importantly – The Country and the City ** (Oxford UP, 1973), a majestic literary and social history of urbanisation and the capitalist development of town and country relations. In his later work, Williams also wrote much to challenge prevailing idealist theories of modernism: see The Politics of Modernism (Verso, 1989).

Terry Eagleton was Williams’ student at Cambridge. Coming from a working-class Catholic background, Eagleton’s early writings were primarily concerned with Catholic theories of the body and language. A turning point came with the publication of Criticism and Ideology** (New Left Books, 1976), which signalled Eagleton’s conversion to Althusserianism and his intellectual break with Williams (it contains a now notorious chapter in which he accuses Williams of being a romantic, idealist, empiricist, populist!), though it had been preceded by the Goldmannian Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës (Palgrave, 2005 [1975]). In the 1980s, Eagleton became increasingly interested in the revolutionary potential of criticism itself, partly by way of Walter Benjamin’s readings of Brecht (see Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (Verso, 1981)), and partly via feminism ( The Rape of Clarissa: Writing, Sexuality, and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson (Blackwell, 1982)). He has written a wide-ranging trilogy on Irish cultural history, but his most important mid-to-late works are arguably The Ideology of the Aesthetic ** (Blackwell, 1990), a detailed critical history of the entire aesthetic tradition, and Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Blackwell, 2002), a major Marxist reconceptualisation of tragic theory and literature. An overview of his life and work can be found in the book-length interview The Task of the Critic: Terry Eagleton in Dialogue (Verso, 2009).

Fredric Jameson, perhaps best-known for his theory of postmodernism ( Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham UP, 1991), was integral in the dissemination of ‘Western Marxist’ ideas in the Anglophone world. As mentioned at the outset, Marxism and Form** (Princeton UP, 1971) is a key introduction to many of these ideas. It includes detailed chapters on Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Lukács, and Sartre, as well as a major methodological essay on ‘dialectical criticism’. Jameson tested many of these ideas in a highly unusual work of ideological recuperation: Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist (University of California Press, 1979). Perhaps Jameson’s most enduring work, however, is The Political Unconscious** (Cornell UP, 1981). Based on a modernised version of the medieval system of allegory, it develops a model of reading based on three levels: the text as symbolic act, the text as ‘ideologeme’ (‘the smallest intelligible unit of the essentially antagonistic collective discourses of social classes’) and the text as ‘ideology of form’. Its ultimate claim is that every literary text, via a system of (non-expressive) allegorical mediations, can be linked back to the non-transcendable horizon of History as class struggle. Jameson is also an important theorist of modernism, as witness his major work A Singular Modernity** (Verso, 2002) and the essay collection The Modernist Papers (Verso, 2007). His most important recent literary critical work is The Antinomies of Realism (Verso, 2013). Jameson also published a highly controversial article, ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’ ( Social Text , 1986), which alone has given rise to a vast secondary literature (the best-known critique of it being Aijaz Ahmad’s in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (Verso, 1992)). Jameson is undoubtedly the most important cultural critic of the late twentieth century.

Contemporary Criticism

It is impossible to do justice to the range and richness of contemporary Marxist criticism, so I can only hope to indicate a few important works. Franco Moretti has been an influential figure in the field. His work on the Bildungsroman foregrounded the way in which the symbolic form of ‘youth’ mediated the contradictions of modernity and effected the transition from the heroic subjectivities of the Age of Revolution to the mundane and unheroic normality of everyday bourgeois life ( The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture** (Verso, 1987)). His study of the ‘modern epic,’ meanwhile, focused on such texts as Goethe’s Faust , Melville’s Moby Dick and Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude , arguing that they are ‘ world texts, whose geographical frame of reference is no longer the nation-state, but a broader entity – a continent, or the world-system as a whole’ ( The Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to García Márquez (Verso, 1996)). In a move that would prove influential for materialist theories of ‘world literature’ (including his own), Moretti employs the categories of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis to suggest that such ‘world texts’ or ‘modern epics,’ whilst unknown to the relatively homogeneous states of the core are typical of the semi-periphery where combined development prevails. [2] Moretti has since extended this ‘geography of literary forms’ in ‘Conjectures on World Literature’** ( New Left Review , 2000). Taking its cue from Goethe and Marx’s remarks on Weltliteratur , and combining these with insights drawn from the Brazilian Marxist critic Roberto Schwarz, ‘Conjectures’ holds that world literature is ‘[o]ne, and unequal: one literature … or perhaps, better, one world literary system (of inter-related literatures); but a system which is different from what Goethe and Marx had hoped for, because it’s profoundly unequal.’ Moretti’s most important work, though, is arguably his most recent publication: The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature** (Verso, 2013), a socio-literary study of the figure of the bourgeois, whose true ‘hero’ is the rise of literary prose.

The most significant of Moretti’s inheritors is the Warwick Research Collective (WReC), whose book Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature (Liverpool UP, 2015) aims to ‘resituate the problem of “world literature,” considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development.’ Fusing Fredric Jameson’s ‘singular modernity’ thesis with a Moretti-inflected world-systems analysis and Trotsky’s theory of combined and uneven development, the Warwick Research Collective defines world-literature as ‘ the literature of the world-system ’. World-literature (with a hyphen to show its fidelity to Wallersteinian world-systems analysis) is that literature which ‘registers’ in form and content the modern capitalist world-system. The book is also an intervention into debates on the definition of modernism. If ‘modernisation’ is understood as the ‘imposition’ of capitalist social relations on ‘cultures and societies hitherto un- or only sectorally capitalised’, and ‘modernity’ names ‘the way in which capitalist social relations are “lived”’, then ‘modernism’ is that literature which ‘encodes’ the lived experience of the ‘capitalisation of the world’ produced by modernisation.

Individual members of the Warwick Research Collective have also made important contributions to what might (problematically) be termed ‘Marxist postcolonial theory’. Benita Parry’s Postcolonial Studies: A Materialist Critique (Routledge, 2004) brings together a series of sophisticated essays which, whilst recognising the significance of much work done under the emblem of postcolonial studies, suggest that the material impulses of colonialism – its appropriation of physical resources, exploitation of human labour and institutional repression – have been omitted from mainstream postcolonial work (by Subaltern Studies, Edward Saïd, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakracorty Spivak). Neil Lazarus’ The Postcolonial Unconscious (Cambridge UP, 2011) not only extends this critique but attempts to reconstruct the entire field of postcolonial studies by developing new Marxist concepts attentive to the insights of postcolonial theory. Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee has likewise charted new terrain for Marxist postcolonial studies, but has done so with increased sensitivity to ecology (see Postcolonial Environments Nature: Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English (Palgrave, 2010)). This approach has been strengthened by Sharae Deckard’s ambitious research project on ‘world-ecological literature’ (for a programmatic summary, see her forthcoming ‘Mapping Planetary Nature: Conjectures on World-Ecological Fiction’).

In other recent work:

Alex Woloch has developed a theory of minor characters and protagonists in the realist novel that connects the ‘asymmetric structure of characterization – in which many are represented but attention flows to a delimited center’ to the ‘competing pull of inequality and democracy within the nineteenth-century bourgeois imagination’ ( The One vs. the Many , Princeton UP, 2003).
Anna Kornbluh has offered a nuanced materialist account of realism’s formal mediations and ‘realisations’ of finance in Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form (Fordham University Press, 2014).
Joshua Clover has argued that the period from the 1970s to the economic crisis of 2007-8 should be understood as the (Braudelian) ‘Autumn of the system.’ His fundamental thesis is ‘that an organizing trope of Autumnal literature is the conversion of the temporal to the spatial ’. It is this conversion that non -narrative forms such as poetry are better able to grasp and figure forth’ (‘Autumn of the System: Poetry and Financial Capital.’ JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory , 2011).
In The Matter of Capital (Harvard UP, 2011) Christopher Nealon emphasises the ubiquity and variety of thematic, formal and intertextual poetic reflections upon capitalism across poetry of the ‘American century.’ He shows that poets as diverse as Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Jack Spicer, the Language poets, Claudia Rankine and Kevin Davies ‘have at the center of their literary projects an attempt to understand the relationship between poetry and capitalism, most often worked out as an attempt to understand the relationship of texts to historical crisis’.
Ruth Jennison’s The Zukofsky Era (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012), argues that ‘the Objectivists of the Zukofsky Era inherit the first [modernist] generation’s experimentalist break with prior systems of representation, and ... strive to adequate this break to a futurally pointed content of revolutionary politics.’
Sarah Brouillette has published a range of important work on the history of the book market and creative industries. See especially, Literature and the Creative Economy (Stanford UP, 2014).
My own book, The Politics of Style: Towards a Marxist Poetics (Brill/ Haymarket, 2017), develops a materialist theory of style through an immanent critique of the work of Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson.

[1] Sometimes rendered in English as ‘Georg Lukács’.

[2] For explanations of these complex terms (world-systems analysis, core, semi-periphery), see Wallerstein’s World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Duke UP, 2004).

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Literary Theory and Criticism

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Marxism and Literary Theory

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on April 12, 2016 • ( 27 )

Marxism is a materialist philosophy which tried to interpret the world based on the concrete, natural world around us and the society we live in. It is opposed to idealist philosophy which conceptualizes a spiritual world elsewhere that influences and controls the material world. In one sense it tried to put people’s thought into reverse gear as it was a total deviation from the philosophies that came before it. Karl Marx himself has commented on this revolutionary nature of Marxism, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” It is true that while other philosophies tried to understand the world, Marxism tried to change it.

Classical Marxism: Basic Principles

According to Marxism, society progresses through the struggle between opposing forces. It is this struggle between opposing classes that result in social transformation. History progresses through this class struggle. Class struggle originates out of the exploitation of one class by another throughout history. During the feudal period the tension was between the feudal lords and the peasants, and in the Industrial age the struggle was between the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) and the industrial working class (the proletariat). Classes have common interests. In a capitalist system the proletariat is always in conflict with the capitalist class. This confrontation, according to Marx, will finally result in replacing the system by socialism.

Take the case of the novels of Mulk Raj Anand which address the life of the untouchables, coolies and ordinary workers struggling for their rights and self esteem. It is true that they can be traced back to the class conflict prevalent in the Indian society M.T. Vasudevan Nair , a noted Malayalam novelist wrote about the breaking up of the feudal tharavads in Kerala. But in the final analysis his stories reveal the filtering of the bourgeois modernity in Kerala society and how it enters into a conflictual relationship with the values of feudalism. Thus traces of this connection can be identified in various forms of cultural production.

Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism took shape as the official aesthetic principle of the new communist society. It was mainly informed by the 19th century aesthetics and revolutionary politics. Raymond Williams identifies three principles as the founding principles of Socialist realism. They are Partinost or commitment to the working class cause of the party, Narodnost of popularity and Klassovost or writer’s commitment to the class interests. The idea of Partinost is based on Vladmir Lenin ‘s essay, Party Organisation and Party Literature (1905) which reiterates the commitment of the writer to the aim of the party to liberate the working class from exploitation. Narodnost refers to the popular simplicity of the work of art. Marx, in Paris Manuscripts , refers to the alienation that originates out of the separation of the mental and manual in the capitalist society. Earlier under feudalism the workers engaged in cottage industries produced various items on their own, all activities related to the production happening at the same place under the supervision of the same people. But under capitalism the workers lost control over their products they were engaged in the production of various parts and were alienated from their own work. So, only folk art survived as people’s art. The concept Narodnost reiterates this quality of popular art which is accessible to the masses and wanted to restore their lost wholeness of being. Klassovost refers to the commitment of the writer to the interests of the working class. It is not related to the explicit allegiance of a writer to a particular class but the writer’s inherent ability to portray the social transformation.

For example, Balzac , a supporter of Bourbon dynasty, provides a penetrating account of the French society than all the historians. Though Tolstoy , the Russian novelist, was an aristocrat by birth and had no affiliation to the revolutionary movements in Russia, Lenin called Tolstoy the “mirror of Russian revolution” as he was successful in revealing the transformation in Russian society that led to the revolution through his novels. Lenin’s position regarding art and literature was harder than that of Marx and Friedrich Engels . He argued that literature must become an instrument of the party. In the 1934 congress of Soviet Writers , Socialist Realism was accepted as the official aesthetic principle of Soviet Union. It was accepted as a dogma by communists all over the world.

Thus with the declaration of official literary policy by Soviet Union the “Moscow Line” was popularized and got international acceptance among communists. As a result, a direct cause-effect relationship between literature and economics was assumed, with all writers seen as trapped within the intellectual limit of their class position. One of the examples of this rigid Marxist literary criticism is Illusion and Reality by Christopher Caudwell . However establishing a one to one relationship between base and superstructure as some “vulgar Marxists” may attempt, is opposed by the Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton . According to him, “each element of a society’s superstructure, art, law, politics, and religion has its own tempo of development, its own internal evolution, which is not reducible to a mere expression of the class struggle or the state of the economy.” Yet classical Marxists claim that in the last analysis the superstructure is determined by that mode of production. The Hungarian Marxist critic Georg Lukacs represented this type of political orthodoxy. Lukacs considered the 19th century realist fiction as a model and believed that a realist work must reveal the underlying pattern of contradictions in a social order. His debate with Bertolt Brecht on the whole questions of realism and expressionism discussed in detail the importance of form and the concept of form in Marxisi criticism. The debate was handed over to the Formalists who developed new directions in the development of Marxist criticism.

Further developments in Marxist Aesthetics

Marxist criticism flourished outside the official line in various European countries. Russian Formalism emerged as a new perspective informed by Marxism in the 1920s. It was disbanded by the Communist party as it did not conform to the official theoretical perspective of the party. The prominent members of this group were Victor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky and Boris Eichenbaum, who published their ideas originally in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays , edited by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J Reis.

Though suppressed in Soviet Union, the Formalists emerged in various forms in the USA, Germany and Prague. One of the members of this group, Mikhail Bakhtin remained in Soviet Union and continued his critical practice. His concept of Dialogism affirmed plurality and variety. It was an argument against the hegemony of absolute authorial control. He affirmed the need to take others and otherness into account. In one sense, it was an argument against the increasing homogenization of cultural and political life in Soviet Union.

Many others belonging to the same perspective went into exile and continued their work abroad. It was the beginning of a new form of Marxist criticism. Roman Jakobson founded the Prague Linguistic Circle along with Rene Wellek and a few others. In Germany the Frankfurt School of Marxist aesthetics was founded in 1923 as a political research institute attached to the University of Frankfurt. Walter Benjamin , Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were some of the important figures attached with this school. They tried to combine aspects of Formalism with the theories of Marx and Freud. They produced for the first time studies on mass culture and communication and their role in social reproduction and domination. The Frankfurt School also generated one of the first models of a critical cultural studies that analyzes the processes of cultural production and political economy, the politics of cultural texts, and audience reception and use of cultural artifacts.

Marxist scholars like Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht considered art as a social production. Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Author as Producer (1934) addresses the question, “What is the literary work’s position within the relations of production of its time?” Benjamin tries to argue that artistic production depends upon certain techniques of production which are part of the productive forces of art like the publishing, theatrical presentation and so on. A revolutionary artist should not uncritically accept the existing forces of artistic production, but should develop and revolutionize those forces. It helps in the creation of new social relations between artist and audience. In this process, authors, readers and spectators become collaborators. The experimental theatre developed by Brecht is a realization of Benjamin’s concept.

The French Marxist thinker, Louis Althusser further developed the Marxist approach through the introduction of various concepts like overdetermination , Ideology etc. Overdetermination refers to an effect which arises from various causes rather than from a single factor. This concept undercuts simplistic notions of one to one correspondence between base and superstructure. Ideology is another term modified by Althusser. According to him “ideology is a system of representations endowed with an existence and an historical role at the heart of a given society.” It obscures social reality by naturalizing beliefs and by promoting values that support it. The civil society spreads ideology through the law, textbooks, religious rituals and norms so that the people imbibe them even without their knowledge. Ideology is instituted by the state through two apparatuses, Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA) and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA). The RSA includes law courts, prison, police, army etc and the ISA include political parties, schools, media, churches, family, art etc. Althusser imported structuralism to Marxism. In his view, society is a structural whole which consists of relatively autonomous levels: legal, political and cultural whose mode of articulation is only determined by the economy.

The founder of Italian communist Party, Antonio Gramsci was a politician, political theorist, linguist and philosopher. Known as an original thinker among Marxist scholars, Gramsci introduced the concepts like Hegemony and the Subaltern . Hegemony is the domination of particular section of the society by the powerful classes. Most often it works through consent rather than by power. It is the moral and intellectual leadership of the upper class in a particular society. The term subaltern was originally used by Gramsci as a collective description for a variety of different and exploited groups who lack class consciousness. But now it is being used to represent all marginalized sections like Dalits, women, minorities etc.

An influential figure among the New Left was Raymond Williams . His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature are a significant contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Williams was interested in the relationship between language, literature and society. He coined the critical method, Cultural Materialism which has four characteristics, Historical context, Theoretical method, Political /commitment and Textual analysis. Cultural materialism gives us different perspectives based on what we choose to suppress or reveal in reading from the past.

Cultural Materialism argues that culture is a constitutive s social progress which actively creates different ways of life. Similarly creation of meaning is viewed as a practical material activity which cannot be consigned to a secondary level. Another important concept in Williams thought is Structures of feeling. They are values that are changing and being formed as we live and react to the material world around us. They subject to change. Williams contributed much for the development of Marxist aesthetics through his studies on culture. His most important works include The Country and the City (1973), in which chapters about literature alternate with chapters on social history. His tightly written Marxism and Literature (1977) is mainly for specialists, but it also sets out his own approach to cultural studies which he called cultural materialism.

Fredric Jameson , an American Marxist intellectual focused on critical theory and was influence by Kenneth Burke , Gyorgy Lukacs , Ernst Bloch , Theodor Adorno , Frankfurt School , Louis Althusser and Sartre . He viewed cultural criticism as an integral feature of Marxist theory. This position represented a break with more orthodox Marxism, which held a narrow view of historical materialism. In some ways Jameson has been concerned, along with other Marxist cultural critics such as Terry Eagleton to articulate Marxism’s relevance in respect to current philosophical and literary trends. In 1969, Jameson co-founded the Marxist Literary Group with a number of his graduate students at the University of California. His major works include Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (1971) and The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972). History came to play an increasingly central role in Jameson’s interpretation of both the reading (consumption) and writing (production) of literary texts. Jameson marked his full-fledged commitment to Hegelian-Marxist philosophy with the publication of The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), the opening slogan of which is “always historicize” .

Apart from Jameson, contemporary Marxist critics like Terry Eagleton , Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, England and Aijaz Ahmad , a well known Marxist thinker and political commentator from India have significant contributions in the field of Marxist theory and aesthetics. Aijaz Ahmad’s famous work, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992) contained Marxist analysis of the concepts like Third World Literature and Orientalism . Eagleton on the other hand published more than 40 books which include Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996). Marxist thought have undergone huge transformation over the years befitting to the claim of Marx that change is the only unchanging phenomena in this world. It has been the backbone of almost all modern theories of culture and criticism. It may be a paradox that while Marxist practices have received set backs in recent years Marxist theory has been widely accepted all over the world.

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Analytical Marxism

Analytical Marxism is a predominantly Anglophone variety of Marxism that emerged in the late 1970s, and whose leading proponents are located in philosophy and social science departments in US and European universities. It can be distinguished from certain classical forms of Marxism by its openness to analytical methods, its critical attitude to certain substantive Marxist claims, its acknowledgement of its own normative commitments, and its assertion of the need for socialist design.

1.1 Components

1.2 structure, 1.3 bullshit, 1.4 further disambiguation, 2.1 origins, 2.2 september group, 3.1. methods, 3.2. methodological individualism, 3.3. functional explanation, 3.4. dialectic, 4.1 marxist substance, 4.2 history, 4.4 exploitation, 5.1 embracing design, 5.2 “coupon socialism”, 5.3 basic income, 5.4 transition, 6. overarching criticisms, other internet resources, related entries, 1. analytical marxism.

The arrival of analytical Marxism is often dated by the appearance, in 1978, of Karl Marx’s Theory of History. A Defence by G.A. Cohen (1941–2009). This particular label seems to have been coined by Jon Elster (1940–), and first appears in print as the title of a collection published in 1986 and edited by John Roemer (1945–). Those three figures—Cohen, Elster, and Roemer—are plausibly seen as the founders of analytical Marxism as a self-conscious intellectual current.

The label “analytical Marxism” requires some unpacking. Its component terms obviously get used in a wide variety of ways, and the combination looks an unnatural one to some.

Analytical Marxism often describes itself as the self-conscious product of Marxist and non-Marxist traditions, and the “analytical” modifier is provided by the latter. “Non-Marxist” is intended as a neutral descriptive term. It is not, for instance, equivalent to the pejorative use of “un-Marxist” by what—equally pejoratively—might be called “true believers”.

This dual inheritance takes a very particular form. Analytical Marxism is not a miscellaneous assembly of Marxist and non-Marxist elements, but rather embodies a distinctive division of labour between these two.

The division of labour internal to analytical Marxism runs between, on the one hand, its (non-Marxist) analytical methods (the plural is important), and, on the other, its (Marxist) substantive concerns and normative commitments .

Perhaps the only methodological commitment that analytical Marxists share is a negative one. They deny that there exists a distinctive and valuable Marxist method, one which is both useful and exclusive to Marxism (unavailable to non-Marxists). Analytical Marxists adopt non-Marxist mainstream methods whenever and wherever appropriate, and they maintain that, to the extent that, historically speaking, Marxism rejected a range of analytical methods—on the grounds of their putatively non-Marxist (“undialectical” or “individualistic”) character—this was to the detriment of Marxism’s engagement with its own substantive and normative concerns (G. Cohen 2000b: xviii).

The positive methodological commitments of analytical Marxism vary significantly, and some generalisations—about aspirations to precision, or rigour in argumentation, for instance—are not especially illuminating. That said, characteristic, if not constitutive, preferences, organised by discipline (and associated with Cohen, Elster, and Roemer, respectively) would include: in Philosophy, “those standards of clarity and rigour” associated with the techniques of logical and linguistic analysis that predominated in the Anglophone philosophical world in the twentieth century (G. Cohen 1978: ix); in Politics, political science treatments of action, choice, and strategy, and especially those which utilise decision theory or rational choice theory; and, in Economics, the major contributions of neoclassical economics, especially the mathematical modelling of general equilibrium and cooperative game theory (Roemer 1982). Whether these various methods have much in common is not certain. Erik Olin Wright suggests that they share: a commitment to conventional scientific norms; an emphasis on the importance of systematic conceptualisation; a concern with fine-grained specification of theoretical arguments; and a willingness to take the relationship between social processes and the intentional actions of individuals seriously (1994: 181–191).

The substantive concerns of analytical Marxism are broadly shared with classical forms of Marxism. They consequently range widely, but certainly include an interest in: historical explanation, class structure, and exploitation. What is potentially distinctive here is the analytical Marxist treatment of those, and other, classical Marxist topics.

The normative commitments of analytical Marxism are also broadly shared with classical forms of Marxism. The status and role of normative commitments in Marxist theory are much argued about, but it seems certain that—whatever their preferred self-descriptions—Marxists do have characteristic normative commitments. What is potentially distinctive here is that analytical Marxists acknowledge this, and see a need for further reflection on the relevant values and commitments. Analytical Marxists typically embrace values associated with socialism, such as equality and community, and endorse normative claims such as that existing capitalism is flawed, and that some non-capitalist alternative would be preferable.

More generally, this preliminary division of Marxism into elements—some of which can be rejected and others improved upon—reveals a further characteristic feature of the understanding and approach of analytical Marxism. In their various critical reflections on what is living, and what is dead, in classical Marxism (see, for instance, Elster 1985), analytical Marxists typically resist treating Marxism as a theoretical entity so systematic that it can only be swallowed, or rejected, as a whole.

In trying to characterise an intellectual current, it can help to identify those it is opposed to, or consciously contrasts itself with.

Cohen, Elster, and Roemer, all participated in an annual workshop usually known as the September Group. That Group initially also referred to itself as the “Non-Bullshit Marxism Group”. The label is intended both to be humorous—there was even a faux heraldic crest complete with cod Latin tag “ Marxismus sine stercore tauri [Marxism without the shit of the bull]” (G. Cohen 2013: 94)—and to convey some truth. It is also an aggressive characterisation, in that it implies that some kinds of Marxism are of the bullshit variety.

The best-known philosophical discussion of bullshit is, of course, that of Harry Frankfurt (2005). Cohen extended Frankfurt’s pioneering analysis to a variety of bullshit neglected in the latter’s original essay. A variety which: naturally inhabits the academy and not ordinary life; consists of the output (the bullshit) not the process (the bullshitting); is related to the ( OED ) dictionary definition of bullshit as “nonsense” or “rubbish”; and which further specifies the relevant nonsense as being by nature unclarifiable (G. Cohen 2013: 107 fn.27). It is the last of these characteristics—the “unclarifiable unclarity”—which appears central to this variety of bullshit, and which is purportedly celebrated by some of its producers and consumers.

Cohen goes on to affirm and defend the historical and empirical claim that “bullshit Marxism” flourishes in French intellectual culture. (He had judged this second part of his discussion as “too speculative”, and it was only published posthumously [G. Cohen 2013: viii].) In the 1960s, he read a great deal of French Marxism, especially work by Louis Althusser and his followers. At the time, Cohen found much of that material hard to understand, but located the blame for those difficulties entirely within himself. Moreover, whenever he finally managed to extract a reasonable idea from this Althusserian literature, he was inclined—precisely because of that effort and investment—to consider it more important and interesting than it actually was. This psychological mechanism—“a blend, perhaps” of “adaptive preference formation” and “cognitive dissonance reduction”—may be widespread (2013: 95). Despite this youthful attraction, Cohen did not succumb to Althusserianism, because, as he puts it:

I came to see that its reiterated affirmation of the value of conceptual rigour was not matched by conceptual rigour in its intellectual practices. (2013: 95)

And Cohen explicitly identifies this youthful “misguided Althusserian dalliance” as lying behind his own subsequent and fierce intolerance of bullshit (2013: 95).

The same phenomenon—the Althusserian promise of theoretical rigour, and the purported failure to deliver it in practice—may also have found biographical expression in Elster’s early graduate career. Not feeling at home with the Althusserian Marxists at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Elster ended up writing his dissertation under Raymond Aron.

In a distinct but related account, Erik Olin Wright characterises “full-blown” bullshit Marxism as beset by three intellectual “sins”. First, “obfuscation”, understood as offering arguments and analyses which sound profound, but which are resistant to clarification. The objection here is not to the use of technical, or quasi-technical, vocabulary as such, but rather to its use to obscure. Second, “intellectual dishonesty”, understood as the refusal variously: to clarify arguments in ways that are open to challenge; to acknowledge gaps in one’s understanding or knowledge; or to concede that there exist reasonable grounds for disagreement. This can take the form of what might be characterised as sincere dogmatism, but more often involves something closer to “bad faith”, in which authors repress their genuine doubts and qualifications when presenting their own views in public. The third is an “ideological style of argumentation” in which “a correct understanding of a subject” is conflated with “Marx’s understanding of that subject”; that Marx endorsed such and such a claim being treated as a conclusive argument in its favour (Kirby unpublished: 24–25 in Other Internet Resources ). Wright’s account of bullshit is more expansive than Cohen’s—not least, in venturing into the character of the bullshitter—but the idea of “obfuscation” looks to be a close relative of “unclarifiable unclarity”.

Note that the distinction between bullshit Marxism and non-bullshit Marxism is not an exhaustive one; that is, there are varieties of Marxism which are neither analytical nor bullshit. However, Cohen does provocatively suggest that, once analytical Marxism has a clear presence in the world, what might be called “pre-analytical Marxism” is no longer a stable outcome—it must tend to “either become analytical or become bullshit” as the case may be (G. Cohen 2000b: xxvi ).

Analytical Marxism, so understood, is not to be confused with adjacent intellectual movements that have shared the same, or a closely related, label, and with which they may have some affinity. Two earlier and non-Anglophone examples might be noted here.

First, a Japanese school of Marxist economics, also known as “analytical Marxism”, developed in the 1930s and was associated with the work of Shibata Kei and others based at Kyoto University. Shibata pioneered the critical use of tools of modern neoclassical economics to the problems of Marxist economics; in particular, contributing to a mathematical theorem which maintains that viable innovations in production methods will only increase or maintain the equilibrium rate of profit (Howard & King 1992; Negishi 2004; Rieu 2009).

Second, is a Polish school of “analytical-linguistic Marxism”, associated with the work of Adam Schaff and Władysław Krajewski in the 1960s. It is said to have resulted from a “collision” between Marxism and the Polish tradition of analytic philosophy (Skolimowski 1967), and involved, in particular, attempts to incorporate analytical tools into Marxist treatments of semantics and epistemology (Woźniak 2022).

These, and other, adjacent movements are not discussed further in this entry.

This is not the place for a thorough historical account of analytical Marxism. However, it might be helpful to say something about its origins and relation to the annual workshop of the September Group.

Analytical Marxism is sometimes conflated with participation in the September Group. This is both understandable and unfortunate. It is understandable because of the close overlap between the two; many of the best-known analytical Marxists (including the founding trio) were participants in the Group. And it is unfortunate because the two entities are distinct; their fates may often have overlapped but they are not synonymous.

First, analytical Marxism existed prior to, and independently of, the September Group. Each of the three founding figures had put “analytic methods” and Marxism together in their own work before they met the other two (see G. Cohen 1978, Elster 1978, and Roemer 1977), and before the formation of the Group.

(Biographically speaking—in understanding their positive response to analytical methods—it may also be significant that those three founding figures learnt their Marxism independently of, and prior to, their exposure to the analytical methods of their respective academic disciplines. Thus Cohen and Roemer were independently raised in North America by pro-Soviet parents, whilst Elster came from “an intellectual left-wing family” associated with the Norwegian Labour Party (G. Cohen 2000b: xx; Roemer 2019b [ Other Internet Resources ]; and Elster 2018: 201).)

Second, much analytical Marxist work is by individuals who are not participants in the September Group. A list of some of these, drawn from assorted secondary literature, might include: Alan Carling, Norman Geras, Andrew Levine, Daniel Little, Richard Miller, Charles W. Mills, Richard Norman, Jeffrey Reiman, Debra Satz, David Schweickart, William Shaw, Tommie Shelby, Elliot Sober, Ian Steedman, Nicholas Vrousalis, Robert Paul Wolff, and Allen Wood. All of those have been characterised as producing work, at some point, in the analytical Marxist mode, albeit that the list includes individuals who would not identify themselves as analytical Marxists, and others who have themselves criticised narrower versions of the tradition, such as rational choice Marxism (Wolff 1990)).

Some will also think the relevant conflation mistaken because the September Group is a diverse grouping of analytical Marxists and fellow travellers. “Fellow travellers” is intended here, non-pejoratively, to refer to individuals sympathetic to, and intellectually cooperating with, but not themselves identifying, either as analytical Marxists, or, indeed, as Marxists of any stripe. It might appear counterintuitive to characterise these fellow travellers as analytical Marxists, but the present entry operates on the basis of an expansive notion of analytical Marxism which includes all those working in the relevant mode—both “fellow travellers” in the September Group, and non-participants in the September Group—and attaches no special weight to self-identification.

Despite those caveats, the September Group did provide an institutional focus and momentum that was crucial to the early evolution of analytical Marxism.

The “prehistory” of the September Group centred on two London meetings of Marxist and Marxist ant scholars working on exploitation—convened at the initiative of Elster, and with the support of Cohen—in September 1979 and 1980. It was then decided to meet annually but no longer limit the discussion to exploitation. Consequently, the third meeting might be identified as the point at which the September Group had properly formed. It was attended by “the most dedicated” of those who had attended the first two meetings, plus “one or two” new invitees (G. Cohen 2000b: xix).

Between 1981 and 2002, membership of the Group was “remarkably stable” (G. Cohen 2000b: xix). These annual early meetings—usually, but not always, held in London—are remembered as intense and rewarding occasions, at which half of the group would pre-circulate papers, which were then introduced and commented on by someone other than the author (Wright 2005a, 343–344).

In 2000 the Group included (with then current academic affiliations in parenthesis): the economist Pranab Bardhan (Berkeley); the economist Samuel Bowles (Amherst); the historian Robert Brenner (Los Angeles); the political philosopher G.A. Cohen (Oxford); the political philosopher Joshua Cohen (Cambridge, Mass.); the political philosopher Philippe van Parijs (Louvain-la Neuve); the economist John Roemer (Yale); the political philosopher Hillel Steiner (Manchester); the political philosopher Robert Jan van der Veen (Amsterdam); the social scientist Erik Wright (Madison). Only two of that list had not been participants in 1982: Bowles had joined in 1987 and Joshua Cohen in 1996 (G. Cohen 2000b: xix).

The academic location of analytical Marxism is often noted, and sometimes linked with its purported distance from practical, real world, concerns. One critic refers to “the donnish remoteness of the whole project” (Roberts 1996: 219), and another maintains that its “standards of judgement” and “sense of proportion” are “derived not from the political arena but from the Senior Common Room” (E. Wood 1989: 88). The gender composition of the September Group is also sometimes raised as a concern, and its early practices would certainly appear to have reproduced, rather than challenged, the contemporary marginalisation of women in the relevant academic disciplines (Wright 2005a: 344).

There is also critical interest in the ideological composition of the Group. Descriptions of the Group as involving “a set of Marxists, or semi-Marxists” (G. Cohen 2013: 95), and as composed of scholars of “Marxist or quasi-Marxist stripe” (G. Cohen 2000b: xix), might be thought not to capture, either its early diversity, or the direction of its subsequent evolution. Wright characterises the politics of participants as ranging:

from fairly traditional commitments to revolutionary democratic socialism to the Greens to what might be termed left-wing libertarianism. (1994: 181)

Amongst proponents of the latter, Steiner characterises his own views as “[b]asically left-wing, though in a sense which has been largely unfashionable for most of this century” (Ricciardi 1997: 38), whilst Van Parijs describes himself as a person emphatically of the left, but as someone who has “never defined myself as a Marxist”, adding that he had always felt “extremely comfortable” within the September Group precisely “because it included fellow travellers and not just analytical Marxists” (1997: 17). At one point, the possibility of “political-ideological criteria for “membership” in the annual meeting” was discussed, but the Group agreed that what really mattered was not a commitment to a particular set of political positions, but rather “the possibility of constructive dialogue among the participants” (Wright 1994: 181 fn4).

The biggest internal disruption in the Group’s early history consisted in the dramatic departure, in 1993, of Elster (the original convener) and the political scientist Adam Przeworski (who had joined in the second year). Its causes remain uncertain. The “leavers” expressed criticisms of the evolving intellectual character of the group, and Przeworski suggested that insofar as its original purpose was the critical evaluation of Marxism, that task had been completed, and that “[w]e ultimately found that not much of Marxism is left and there really wasn’t much more to learn” (2007: 490). Indeed, Elster would subsequently characterise analytical Marxism as a rare case of “intellectual autophagy”, which had succeeded in revealing that “non-bullshit Marxism” was largely “an empty set” (2011: 163). Marx’s only remaining contribution of value was now said to concern, not his substantive views, but “his normative conception of the good life as one of active and joint self-realization” (2011: 163). In contrast, some “remainers” viewed these departures as reflecting external factors, especially the complex impact of the demise of the Soviet Union on a certain generation of leftists. “Complex”, not least, in that its demise was seen as involving both the removal of a hideous regime and the loss of a non-capitalist space (G. Cohen 2009b: 352).

Those contemporary tendencies—the perceived waning of both the value of Marxist ideas, and the availability of non-capitalist alternatives—perhaps impacted more widely on the dynamism and focus of the Group. In 2000 participants debated whether to continue. Some thought the decision to carry on (meeting biannually) was motivated as much by fellowship as strictly intellectual pay-offs (Wright 2005a: 345). Others affirmed the continuing intellectual benefits of a group of “people from different academic disciplines who have a radical orientation and who can fertilize each other’s thoughts” (G. Cohen 2009b: 352).

The September Group is now widely seen to have evolved away from a primarily Marxist orientation and towards other concerns. Wright suggested that whilst the group still shared an egalitarian approach to social justice:

the specific preoccupation with Marxism as a source of ideas and debates for advancing that normative agenda was no longer so important. (2005a: 345)

That tendential evolution was reflected in, and perhaps amplified by, the arrival of new participants (with then current academic affiliations in parenthesis), including the political scientist Stathis Kalyvas (Yale) and the philosopher Seana Shiffrin (UCLA). Even those who identified as Marxists were less likely to think of Marxism as “a comprehensive theoretical paradigm capable of constituting a general theory of history and society” (Wright 2005a: 342). The simple passage of time also left its mark on the composition and character of the Group (G. A. Cohen died in 2009, and Wright in 2019). This evolution remains tendential, in that there may be exceptions, perhaps including Brenner’s work on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and on the nature of contemporary capitalism (1993, and 2002). However, Roemer has recently confirmed that, although the Group continues to meet, “most of us no longer identify as Marxists” (Roemer 2019b in Other Internet Resources ). That “most” appears to include Roemer himself:

I tend not to call myself a Marxist anymore because I do not credit many of the ideas that Marx believed were at the center of his view: the labour theory of value, the falling rate of profit, and the claim that dialectical materialism is a special kind of logic. (Roemer 2020b: 135)

Of course, it is not certain that Roemer had previously subscribed to those particular Marxist ideas either (see 1981), but the changing self-identification says something nonetheless.

Whilst the September Group provided an institutional focus and momentum that was crucial to the early evolution of analytical Marxism, neither the past, nor the future, of these two entities is identical.

In considering the non-Marxist methods adopted by analytical Marxists, it is important to emphasise the plural. The variety of methods and approaches that analytical Marxists have adopted is striking. Nor is this merely a question of the disciplinary divides mentioned above (between Philosophy, Politics, and Economics). Once we move beyond generalisations about clarity and precision, there is no clear consensus within analytical Marxism about the merits of particular “analytical” methods and approaches.

Two examples of methodological disagreement within analytical Marxism are sketched here.

The enthusiasm of many analytical Marxists—including Elster, Przeworski, and Roemer—for the doctrine of methodological individualism is widely known. Perhaps as a result, it is sometimes thought that all analytical Marxists are committed to methodological individualism, and that this doctrine forms a fault line between analytical and other forms of Marxism. Both of these claims look questionable.

The proper characterisation of “methodological individualism” is contested (see entry on methodological individualism ). It is understood here as a methodological position which maintains that all macro-level social phenomena—political states, economic classes, social processes, group norms, and so on—are in principle reducible to micro-level explanation involving only individuals and their properties (Elster 1985: 5).

So understood, methodological individualism may have fewer implications than sometimes thought. For instance, there is no necessary connection with rational choice explanations (see Wolff 1990). One might think of the two theories as playing different roles: the first arguing for explanations at the level of individuals; and the second adopting a particular model of rational action at that level (Wright, Levine, & Sober 1992: 126). Similarly, there is no necessary connection between methodological individualism and what is sometimes called “atomism”; namely, the claim that only non-relational entities are explanatory (Wright, Levine, & Sober 1992: 110). Methodological individualists can allow that the individual characteristics considered explanatory include inherently relational properties (being an “employer”, for example).

Even so, methodological individualism remains a demanding doctrine. In particular, its proponents insist on the indispensability of micro-level explanations, and the desirability of dispensing with “holist” accounts. Elster, for one, characterises it as “a form of reductionism”, recommending the move from the aggregate to the less aggregate level of phenomena (1985: 5).

Methodological individualism also looks to have an historically uneasy, if not downright antagonistic, relation with Marxism. First, many of the most enthusiastic proponents of the former were fierce critics of the latter (including Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Popper). Second, if pre-analytical Marxists had expressed a view about methodological individualism, then it would probably have been to reject it (perhaps encouraged by Marx’s emphasis on the importance of social totalities, and his scepticism about explanations based on “abstract individuals”). Third, analytical Marxists have often raised methodological individualist concerns about Marx’s own attempts at social explanation; suggesting, for instance, that Marx substituted “wishful thinking” for “social analysis” in his account of the dynamics of communist revolution (Elster 1988: 225).

However, analytical Marxists have also held that, whilst Marx often (implicitly) denied methodological individualism, he was also “at least intermittently” committed to it. That more positive attitude is said to be evident, for instance, in some of his anti-teleological remarks in the German Ideology manuscripts (Elster 1985: 109). At a time when Elster insisted that “most of the views” that he himself held to be “true and important” could be traced back to Marx, he explicitly included methodological views in that category, alongside substantive views and values (1985: 531).

Other analytical Marxists—including Wright, Levine, and Sober—have sought to resist the reductive ambitions of methodological individualism, without embracing the position they call “radical holism” (which seeks to eliminate the individual level of analysis). Broadly speaking, the central issue here—between Elster on the one hand, and Wright, Levine, and Sober on the other—is whether the only good social explanations are what J.W.N. Watkins calls “rock-bottom” explanations in terms of individual actions, or whether “half-way” explanations might not also be meaningful and useful (Watkins 1957: 106). For the methodological individualist, to explain a social phenomenon just is to provide an account of the individual level mechanism that produces it. In the absence of such an account, the phenomenon remains unexplained. However, Wright, Levine, and Sober embrace a position they call “anti-reductionism”, which denies that all “macro-level” social explanations are in principle reducible to “micro-level” accounts in terms of individuals and their properties (1992: 115).

This line of response draws on a distinction between two distinct threads in the methodological individualist position: its ontological claim that all macro-level social entities are constituted by individuals; and its explanatory claim that all macro-level social entities are ultimately explicable in terms of facts about individuals. Accepting the truth of the former does not require one to endorse the distinctive “reductive” ambitions of the latter. And there might be good reasons for resisting the latter, including: the possibility of regularities at the macro-level which are not derivable from regularities at the micro-level; and (more pragmatically) in the existence of cases where, although it might in principle be possible to perform the derivation, the benefits of doing so might be extremely limited. In both cases, there are good reasons to preserve the “explanatory autonomy” of the social (Little 1991: 183–195).

One kind of case which resists reduction is where there is no single relation between the social phenomenon and individual properties, because the relevant macro-level phenomenon can be realised in multiple ways at the micro-level. Examples might include the idea of “fittingness” in evolutionary biology, or of “economic survival” (of capitalist firms) in economics (Wright, Levine, & Sober 1992: 119). In such circumstances, no particular micro-level account can be identified as explaining the macro-level phenomenon, because the latter can be realised in multiple combinations of the former. The provision of a micro-level account might still be desirable—for instance, identifying a possible micro-foundation might improve our confidence in the macro-level explanation—but here it offers no support for a general project of reduction (1992: 122). In short, Wright, Levine, and Sober recognise that facts about social phenomenon might supervene on facts about individuals and their interaction, without it being the case that all social phenomenon can be explained in individualistic terms alone. The question of how many social phenomenon are irreducible to individual level properties looks to be an open empirical matter (List & Spiekermann 2013).

There are complex issues in the philosophy of social science raised here, but—irrespective of one’s considered judgement about the balance of argument—these disagreements confirm that a commitment to analytical methods does not require endorsement of methodological individualism. Wright, Levine, and Sober, for example, have all produced work within the analytical Marxist tradition and yet reject elements of this particular methodological doctrine.

The methodological diversity of analytical Marxism is also apparent in disagreements about the legitimacy of functional explanation in the social sciences. The initial context of this disagreement is provided by Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History. A Defence (1978).

Cohen and Elster had independently come to see that Marx, in his theory of history, was, in some sense, committed to functional explanation. They differ in that, whereas Elster deplores that commitment and recommends an alternative game theoretic account, Cohen defends this role for functional explanation and expresses scepticism about the suitability of Elster’s alternative (G. Cohen 2014: 284). (Note that only some elements of their debate are covered here.)

Cohen identifies a number of explanatory connections between the “ensembles” that appear in Marx’s “1859 Preface”: the productive forces; the relations of production; and the superstructure. Consider an example involving the first two of those ensembles. The productive forces are those facilities and devices—means of production (including tools, raw materials, and premisses) and labour power (including strength, skill, and technical knowledge)—used to productive effect in the process of production. They are said, on this account, to grow in power over the course of human history. And the relations of production—the sum total of which are said to constitute the economic structure (or “base”) of a given society—are the relations of power that people enjoy, or lack, over those forces, over means of production and labour power (G. Cohen 1988: 4).

In the context of the relationship between those growing forces and the relations of production (the economic structure), Marx propounds two claims which might look to be in tension with each other. First, that the productive forces have explanatory primacy over the relations; that is, that the level of development of the productive forces explains the nature of the economic structure. And second, that the economic structure has considerable effect on the forces; not least, that the economic structure controls (facilitates or frustrates) the development of the productive forces. It is this combination of claims which confirms that the “first primacy thesis”—that “the level of development of the productive forces in a society explains the nature of its economic structure” (G. Cohen 2014: 289)—is best understood as functional in form.

A functional explanation is one in which something that has an effect, is explained in terms of its effect. Cohen often uses an example from evolutionary biology to illustrate this; namely, that “birds have hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate flight”. Here, something (birds having hollow bones) which has a certain effect (facilitating flight) is explained by the fact that it has that effect (“birds have hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate flight”; G. Cohen 1988: 8). In short, where e is a cause and f is its effect, functional explanations maintain that: e occurred because it would cause f . Or, more properly, functional explanations maintain that: e occurred because the situation was such that an event like e would cause an event like f (G. Cohen 1988: 8).

Functional explanation, so understood, renders these two claims—namely, that the relations of production are explained by the forces of production, and that the relations of production control the development of the forces of production—consistent. For instance, where relations of production endure (that is, exist in a stable fashion), they do so because they promote the development of the productive forces. And, where relations of production are revolutionised (that is, where old relations are abandoned for new ones), old relations cease to exist because they no longer favour the forces, and the new relations come into being (and/or come to preponderate) because they do favour the forces. On this reading, the impact of the relations on the forces is no embarrassment to Marx’s theory of history because of the functional manner in which it explains economic structures in terms of productive forces. Economic structures rise and fall according to whether they sustain or frustrate the development of the productive forces. To be clear, the suggestion is not, strictly speaking, that Marx propounds functional explanations, but rather that the claims which he does propound put severe constraints on the kind of explanation that is required, and that functional explanation is the most plausible candidate meeting those constraints.

Elster takes issue with Cohen’s twofold claim that, historical materialism “cannot shed its commitment to functional explanation”, and that “there is nothing inherently suspect in it” (G. Cohen 2014: 294). Elster maintains that the conditions that justify the use of functional explanation in evolutionary biology do not obtain in social theory, and especially not in the context of historical materialism.

Elster insists that functional explanations of macro-phenomena are methodologically acceptable only where it is possible to indicate, at least schematically, the mechanisms at the level of individual behaviour through which the aggregate behaviour emerges. That is, macro-explanations require what he calls “microfoundations” at the level of the processes of individual choice and action. Indeed, it seems that “holist” social explanations are not really considered explanations at all. They involve—in this figuratively mechanistic account—a black box whose internal workings are hidden, when to explain just:

is to provide a mechanism, to open up the black box and show the nuts and bolts, the cogs and wheels, the desires and beliefs that generate the aggregate outcomes. (Elster 1985: 5)

In this context, Elster recommends that Marxism abandon (insufficiently supported) functional explanation and utilise game theoretic explanation in its place.

In response, Cohen makes two broad points.

First, Cohen maintains that, whilst providing “microfoundations”—what he prefers to call “elaborations” of a functional mechanism—would improve a functional explanation, their absence does not necessarily invalidate it. The nineteenth-century Darwinian claim that birds have hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate flight, for example, was already an “excellent” explanation, which was subsequently rendered “even better” through twentieth-century developments in the science of genetics (G. Cohen 1988: 12). Marx’s theory of history might be figuratively located at an analogous position to that not-yet-fully-elaborated Darwinian stage.

Second, Cohen judges the proposal to replace functional explanation with game theoretic accounts as an unpromising one. Whilst game theory can provide imaginative accounts of aspects of class struggle—of alliances and revolution, for instance—class struggle is not the most basic of the phenomena that historical materialism is trying to explain. For Marxists, “class struggle has primary political significance, but the political dimension of society is not itself primary” (G. Cohen 1988: 17). Game theory might help explain the immediate outcome of various political struggles, but whether those outcomes stick, or not, is explained by the material conditions in which they take place.

Again, there are complex issues in the philosophy of social science raised here, but—irrespective of one’s considered judgement about the balance of argument—this dispute confirms that analytical Marxism is home to disagreement and debate about particular methods.

Commentators sometimes claim that analytical Marxism holds an unremittingly negative view of “dialectic”, with one suggesting that:

a good test to follow if in doubt whether a particular writer supports the analytic school is to see whether he mentions dialectics with favour. If he does, he must immediately be crossed off the list. Even to cite the word at all counts against membership in the analytic school. (Gordon 1990: 22–3.)

Both that claim and this test are rejected here. (This section draws on Leopold 2008.)

Analytical Marxists share the negative methodological view that there is no distinctive Marxist method, no valuable tools and approaches which are available only to Marxists. That view is perhaps most likely to be resisted by “Hegelian Marxists” who identify the Marxist method with some variety of dialectic. However, it does not follow that analytical Marxists have to reject all talk of dialectic. (There is, of course, also a potential irony in the hostility of Hegelian Marxists to the embrace of non-Marxist methods by analytical Marxists, given that their own preferred method presumably owes much to its eponymous “bourgeois” source.)

Many of the best-known analytical Marxists are proponents of what can be called modest conceptions of dialectic. Consider, for example, Elster’s account of three dialectical strands in Marx’s work, of which two are judged valuable (Elster 1978: chapters 3–5; Elster 1985: 37–48; and Elster 1986a: 34–39).

The first, and wholly unpromising, strand concerns dialectic as a method of presentation. In parts of the Grundrisse (1986–87 [1857–58]) and Capital (1996 [1867]), for instance, Marx appears to adopt a “quasi-deductive procedure”, presenting certain results of his economic analysis in a manner analogous to the developing categorical system of Hegel’s science of logic. Elster is deeply unsympathetic to this method of presentation, purporting to find, both the relevant passages, and their underlying motivation, scarcely intelligible (1985: 37). (For a more positive account, see Arthur 2004.)

The second, and modestly promising, strand concerns the “dialectical laws”, associated with Friedrich Engels, but also found in Marx’s own work. In Engels’ famous formulations, these “laws” include: the “negation of the negation”; the “transformation of quantity into quality”; and the “interpenetration of opposites”. Elster scales down the status and explanatory reach of Engels’ account, suggesting that, rather than indicating laws of nature, we think of these terms as describing “not infrequent patterns of change” sometimes found in nature, society, and consciousness (1985: 40). There is no suggestion that all developments, in those various contexts, follow such patterns, and their extent is treated as an open empirical question. However, with those, and other, cautions in place, Elster suggests that these imprecise but suggestive ideas can be illuminating.

For example, the “negation of the negation” describes the third step of a triadic development from a stage of “undifferentiated unity” (where some subject is undivided from some object), through a stage of “differentiated disunity” (where that subject is divided from the object in a manner which creates discord), to a stage of “differentiated unity” (where the distinction between subject and object remains but harmony between them is restored). Analytical Marxists are happy to allow that certain social and individual developments exhibit this dialectical pattern. Cohen, for instance, describes a historical development from pre-capitalist society, where collective structures and consciousness inhibit individualism (a stage of undifferentiated unity), through the divisions of capitalism, which stimulate an unbridled individualism and undermine community (a stage of differentiated disunity), to a communist future, which will preserve (aspects of) individuality in a context of regained community (a stage of differentiated unity). Note that society is said to undergo a dialectical transformation here simply by virtue of experiencing the relevant stages in turn. There is no suggestion of the development being a necessary one, of each stage having to generate the next (G. Cohen 1988: 185).

The third, and most promising, of the three dialectical strands is a theory of social contradictions. Elster sees Marx as a pioneer in the study of “real contradictions”; that is, situations in (psychological or social) reality which can only be described in terms of logical contradiction. The core idea here involves a contrast between the local and the global, between what is possible for a particular social agent and what is possible for all agents in that social position. This core idea is judged both clear (impervious to some standard “analytical” objections to dialectical talk) and fertile (operationalizable and capable of generating substantive social scientific results).

Elster outlines two variants of social contradiction: “counterfinality” and “suboptimality”. Only the former is discussed here. Broadly speaking, counterfinality refers to the discrepancy between individual intentions and actual results which obtains when each individual acts upon non-universalizable beliefs about the behaviour of others (see Van Parijs 1982, 592). In what Elster calls “condensed jargon”, counterfinality can be described as “the embodiment of the fallacy of composition” (1985: 44). Consider the following example of the contradictory character of capitalist behaviour. In response, say, to some exogenously induced fall in demand, each individual capitalist reduces their own workers’ wages in order to maintain profits. The aggregative result, contrary to that intention, is a further reduction of workers’ buying power (and thus a further reduction also of profits). Any capitalist might have succeeded were they the only one to act, but when they all act in this way they fail (Elster 1985: 46). These desires taken together are contradictory, in the sense that there is no possible world in which all capitalists can have that desire satisfied. Given certain structural contexts, those social contradictions can cause social change; for instance, in certain cases, generating collective action (perhaps including state intervention) designed to overcome or mitigate those contradictions.

There is no suggestion that only Marxists can identify or appreciate these two kinds of modest dialectic. For instance, there is an interesting parallel of “the negation of the negation” in Alexis de Tocqueville’s account of three “distinct and often successive” stages in the relation between an individual and religious belief (see Tocqueville 1835–40 [1994: 187]). And Elster (1978: 106) notes that the concept of counterfinality was developed by an intellectually highly diverse group of, both early proponents (Bossuet, Mandeville, Vico, Adam Smith, Hegel, and Marx), and more recent defenders (Oskar Morgenstern, Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert Nozick, and Trygve Haavelmo).

Finally, no support is offered here to those insisting on the existence of a radical gulf between “dialectical” and “analytical” reasoning. The explicit assumption is that dialectical talk can make analytic sense. Indeed, as Cohen remarks, in a slightly more aggressive formulation, the idea that belief in dialectic is a rival to analysis “thrives only in an atmosphere of unclear thought” (G. Cohen 2000b: xxiii).

These modest conceptions will, of course, be too modest for some, but they confirm that analytical Marxism does not reject the very idea of dialectic.

It is the substantive concerns of analytical Marxism which—along with its normative commitments—are said to embody its Marxist heritage (by comparison with its adoption of non-Marxist methods).

This section outlines some aspects of analytical Marxist treatments of: historical explanation; class structure; and exploitation.

The present section sketches some aspects of Cohen’s account of historical materialism (1978), and of his subsequent reflections on the explanatory scope of that theory (1988: 155–179).

Marx is said to understand history as, fundamentally, the growth of human productive power, maintaining that forms of society, which are organised around economic structures, “rise and fall according as they enable and promote, or prevent and discourage, that growth” (G. Cohen 1988: 3). The canonical text for this interpretation being Marx’s “1859 Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , which is treated not as one piece of evidence amongst many, but as the text providing the clearest theoretical statement of historical materialism.

Cohen presents Marx as committed to the following claims, amongst others:

First, the Development Thesis: which claims that the productive forces have an autonomous tendency to develop throughout history. The productive forces are those facilities and devices—means of production (including tools, raw materials, and premisses) and labour power (including strength, skill, and technical knowledge)—used to productive effect in the process of production. Growth here can be measured by the decreasing amount of labour it takes with given forces to produce what is necessary to satisfy the basic physical needs of the immediate producers.
Second, the First Primacy Thesis: which claims that the level of development of the productive forces in a given society explains the economic structure (the set of relations of production) that obtain in that society. The relations of production—the sum total of which are said to constitute the economic structure (or “base”) of a given society—are the relations of power that people enjoy, or lack, over the productive forces, over means of production and labour power (G. Cohen 1988: 4).
Third, the Second Primacy Thesis: which claims that the “base”, understood as the economic structure of a given society, explains the legal and political “superstructure” in that society.
Fourth, the claim that the kind of explanation involved in both of these two Primacy Theses is functional explanation (see section 3.3 ).

To put a little flesh on those abstract bones, consider the following elaboration of the First Primacy Thesis (Wright, Levine, & Sober 1992: 19). A given level of development of the productive forces is only compatible with a certain type (or with limited types) of economic structure. Since forces of production tend to develop over time (see the “Development Thesis”), the forces eventually reach a level where they are no longer compatible with the relations of production under which they had previously developed. When such incompatibilities arise, the relations are said to “fetter” the development of the forces of production (G. Cohen 1988: 109–123). This fettering leads to revolution, in which social actors (classes) with the capacity to bring new relations into effect emerge, and revolutionise the economic structure in ways that restores growth in the productive forces.

This model of growing levels of productive power, and their associated forms of society, is said to generate a four-stage periodisation of progressive epochs in human history (G. Cohen 1978: 197–201). In the first stage, the material position involves an absence of surplus, and the corresponding social form is a primitive classless society (productive power being too low to enable a class of non-producers to live off the labour of producers). In the second stage, the material position is a surplus large enough to support an exploiting class, but too small to sustain capitalist accumulation, and the corresponding social form is a pre-capitalist class society. In the third stage, the material surplus is moderately high—high enough to support capitalist accumulation—and the corresponding social form is capitalist class society. Capitalism subsequently generates a growing surplus such that it becomes itself unsustainable (for contested reasons), leading to a fourth and final stage, where, on the basis of a precondition of a massive surplus, a modern classless society emerges.

Such an abbreviated summary ignores many interesting complexities and changes in Cohen’s views, but hopefully give some sense of its character as a defence of a “traditional”, even “old-fashioned”, conception of historical materialism attaching explanatory primacy to the forces of production (G. Cohen 1978: x).

There is a huge critical literature on Cohen’s reading of Marx’s theory of history. A thorough survey is scarcely possible here, but most criticisms tend to cluster around three main kinds of concern.

First, there are criticisms based on Cohen’s treatment of what might be called textual issues. For example, there is some suspicion of what is seen as his over -reliance on the “1859 Preface” (critics sometimes utilising Printz 1969). Or, to give another example, there are appeals to the lack of fit between Cohen’s interpretation and some of the more concrete accounts of historical development found elsewhere in Marx’s own writings (Miller 1984: 188–195).

Second, there are criticisms pressing on coherence issues arising from Cohen’s reconstruction of Marx’s theory. For example, there is some scepticism about whether the “base” can be distinguished from the “superstructure” in the way that he requires (F. Cohen & Acton 1970; Lukes 1982). Or, to give another example, whether Cohen’s distinction between social and material properties is conceptually flawed in ways that undermine his claims about the primacy of the productive forces (Coram 1989).

Third, there are criticisms examining the empirical truth of this account of Marx’s theory. For example, there are doubts about whether the historical record of pre-capitalist societies—especially given cases such as the “long period” in Chinese history, or the “second serfdom” in Poland—offer support for the claim that there is little productive regression in history (J. Cohen 1982: 266–268). In addition, some historians are sceptical of whether, given pre-capitalist relations, economic actors have the relevant incentives to act in the ways—especially, in transforming property relations—that Cohen’s theory seems to require (Brenner 1985a, 1985b, and 1986). Or, to give a final empirical example, as part of a wider insistence that Cohen’s early work is flawed by its lack of gender awareness, Paula Casal argues that his four-stage periodisation of epochs (and associated producers) cannot survive serious reflection on the economic position of women (2020).

These, and many other, critical questions are not pursued further here. Instead, the remainder of the section considers the explanatory scope of historical materialism.

Cohen accepts that Marx’s theory makes some large and controversial claims, but comes to think that these may be less demanding than is often thought. Cohen distinguishes two interpretations of historical materialism. On an inclusive reading, the theory claims that material and economic developments explain the principal features of other, non-economic developments. However, on a restricted reading, the theory commits itself to explaining non-economic phenomena only when, if they weren’t so explained, they would seem to control material development. The theory, on this “restricted” reading, limits itself to explaining non-economic phenomena which possess “economic relevance” (G. Cohen 1988: 173). It seems likely that Marx and Engels—perhaps under the influence of Hegel’s philosophy of history—assumed an inclusive reading, but Cohen suggests that the restricted reading is consistent with the “1859 Preface”, and may offer a better fit with historical evidence.

An example can illuminate the difference between these two readings (G. Cohen 1988: 160–165). Assume that the following increasingly Weberian-looking claims are all true: first, that Protestantism took hold and persisted for non-economic reasons; second, that Protestantism had important consequences for European religious life; and, third, that Protestantism had important consequence for European economic life. Note that inclusive historical materialism is challenged by both the conjunction of the first two claims, and the third claim; whereas restricted historical materialism is challenged only by the addition of the third claim to the first two. Moreover, on Cohen’s functionalist account, the latter can meet that challenge:

if the features of Protestantism in virtue of which it had economic effects arose because of their tendency to have such effects. (1988: 176)

Cohen was subsequently persuaded (by Wright) that this distinction between restricted and inclusive historical materialism is better understood in the light of a “prior distinction” between Marxist theory of history and Marxist sociology (G. Cohen 1988: 176–177). Marxist theory of history is identified with the restricted variant, and the familiar Marxist claims that the latter refrained from affirming (about the economic explaining the principal features of non-economic life) are now allocated to Marxist sociology. Where Marxist theory of history is concerned with the issue of how social formations succeed one another, Marxist sociology is concerned with how the elements within a social formation are related. The latter, but not the former, insists that non-economic structures and modes of consciousness are, in their broad outlines, explained by material and economic factors. The two theories are often conflated, but they are sufficiently distinct that they require independent assessment (G. Cohen 1988: 178).

The concept of class is central to the Marxist tradition. Of course, many non-Marxist thinkers—including Ricardo, Weber, Durkheim, and Bourdieu—also utilise some idea of class, but it is typically conceptualised differently, and allocated a less important role in their social theory. For Marxists, class is standardly defined in an “objective” manner, and designates the social position occupied by individuals within a network of relations of production. Indeed, an objective account is necessary if certain Marxist claims about the ways in which class conditions and shapes “consciousness, culture, or politics” are to be sustained (G. Cohen 1978: 73). And class, so understood, typically plays a crucial explanatory part in Marxist accounts of, variously: the character of, and development between, historical epochs; the institutional form, and behaviour, of the state; and many of the beliefs, and actions, of individual and collective agents.

Class is a recurring topic in analytical Marxist writings. Examples include: Wright’s account of the “middle class ”; Przeworski’s analysis of the class basis of social democracy (1985); Roemer’s discussion of the relationship between class position and exploitation status (1982); and Alan Carling’s game theoretic portrayal of relations between men and women as class relations (1991: 253–299). This section outlines some aspects of the first of those examples.

Wright has written at least five books on the subject, changed his views over time, and collaborated in extensive empirical work using modern sample survey methodology and multivariate statistical techniques across countries (Wright 1989). This section only touches on: the Marxist character of Wright’s view of class structure; his early response to the problem of “the middle class”; and his revised understanding of the relation between exploitation and class.

Wright identifies six “conceptual constraints” that diverse Marxist approaches to class—including his own—typically respect (1985: 26–37). First, that the class structure of a society is the “basic” determinant (1985: 28) of the limits of possible variation in class formations, class consciousness, and class struggle. Second, that class structures constitute the central organising principle of societies, shaping the possible variations of “the state, ethnic relations, gender relations, etc.”, and offering the best way of identifying historical epochs (1985: 31). Third, that the concept of class is a relational one, classes are defined within social relations, and especially by their relation to other classes (to be a feudal serf, for instance, is to stand in a certain relation to a feudal lord). Fourth, that the social relations which define classes are intrinsically antagonistic; that is, classes have conflicting interests, between which compromise or accommodation—but not harmony—is possible. Fifth, that the objective basis of those antagonistic relations is exploitation (Marxists do not, for instance, merely claim that lords are rich and serfs are poor, but insist rather that the former are rich because they appropriate a surplus produced by the latter). Sixth, and finally, that the fundamental basis of exploitation is located in the social organisation of production, notwithstanding disagreements about how to locate classes within relations of production (whether, for instance, ideology, property, control, or something else, are crucial). The last four of these constraints can be said to elaborate the structural properties of the Marxist concept of class.

Wright’s best-known early contribution to class analysis—his model of “contradictory class locations”—is preoccupied with theorising the class character of “the middle class” within a Marxist framework. The context here is the seeming tension between modern historical developments and the classical Marxist idea of capitalist society as increasingly composed of two hostile camps (capitalists and proletarians) with any third class (the “petit-bourgeoisie”) as “transitional” in nature (on its way to being squeezed out by the other two). That claim about a pervasive tendency towards class polarisation would appear to conflict with the huge growth of professional, managerial, technical, and bureaucratic positions, in both modern corporations and modern states (Wright 1985: 7–9). The resulting “problem of the middle class” raises issues, not only about the accuracy of received Marxist accounts of class structure, but also about the sociological plausibility of their associated accounts of class formation, class consciousness, and class struggle (since these newer groups do not obviously share the interests and attitudes of traditional proletarians).

Wright rejects Marxist responses which either deny the gap between the polarisation account and empirical reality, or assimilate these new social groups to the petit-bourgeoisie. Instead, his own early approach abandons the assumption that the class locations of individuals are mapped in a one-to-one relation to the actual class structure of capitalism. Rather than assuming that individuals are only ever capitalist, petit-bourgeois, or proletarian, Wright suggests that some occupy positions that have “a multiple class character; they may be in more than one class simultaneously” (1985: 43). Those individuals occupy “contradictory class locations”; or, more precisely, “contradictory locations within contradictory class relations”.

Wright’s earliest attempts to operationalise this increasingly differentiated account of the class structure of contemporary capitalism focuses on whether individuals are self-employed, and whether they supervise the labour of others. This resulted in a simplified typology which added “managers” to the three original Marxist classes (capitalists, petit-bourgeoisie, and proletariat). His subsequent work further differentiated these new social groups on the basis of the extent of individual control (full, partial, minimal, or none) over money capital, physical capital, and labour within production. The resulting contradictory class locations now included: managers (simultaneously bourgeois and proletarian); non-managerial technical/professional staff (simultaneously petty-bourgeois and proletarian); and small employers (simultaneously bourgeois and petty-bourgeois). By 1979, Wright had a schematic typology that added five contradictory class locations to the three original Marxist classes (Wright 1985: 48 figure 2.2).

After 1979, Wright’s account evolved significantly in response to criticisms, especially from Roemer. Wright now criticised his own earlier view for emphasising domination, and downplaying exploitation. Exploitation is understood here as diagnosing the ways in which income inequalities are generated by inequalities in rights and powers over productive resources; that is, the ways in which:

exploiters, by virtue of their exclusionary rights and powers over resources, are able to appropriate surplus generated by the efforts of the exploited. (Wright 2005b: 17)

This new account resulted in a typology in which ownership and non-ownership of means of production are complicated by effective control of “organisation assets” and “credential assets”, both of which can constitute a strategic basis for generating higher incomes. Some of the resulting class locations are occupied by individuals who are both exploited in one dimension (because they don’t own or control capital), and exploiters in another (because they can leverage their organisational and credential assets in the relevant ways). Wright’s new typology of class locations has twelve categories: three types of owner of means of production (differentiated by their amount of capital); and nine varieties of wage-earner (differentiated by organisation and credential assets). The latter group contains a wide range of class locations distinct from proletarians proper, including expert managers, expert non-managers, semi-credentialled supervisors, and more (Wright 1985: 88 table 3.3).

Critics have acknowledged Wright’s theoretical ingenuity, but sometimes identified a gradational neo-Weberian account of stratification as really doing the work here, only partially concealed behind Marxist rhetoric about exploitation (Mayer 1994: 137). Wright concedes the similarity of appearances here—in particular, the shared focus on the ways in which class determines “life chances”—but insists on the distinctiveness of the two theoretical frameworks. The Marxist character of his own account is said to rest on the central role of exploitation—and the distribution of the rights and powers of individuals over productive resources—in determining the distribution of income and economic activities (Wright 2005b: 16–19).

Finally, Wright also identifies possible continuities with his earlier views. The idea of the “middle classes” occupying “contradictory locations” is perhaps preserved in the idea of those individuals having interests that conflict with both capital and labour (Wright 1985: 87). The relevant groups are like workers in that they are excluded from ownership of the means of production, but they also have interests opposed to workers because of their effective control of organisational and credential assets.

Exploitation is a highly contested concept. This section is intended only to introduce some aspects of its treatment by analytical Marxism, and not to rule out alternative usages.

The basic concept of exploitation involves some agent benefitting from social interaction with another by taking advantage of that other, sometimes (interestingly) in ways that are both mutually beneficial and consensual (A. Wood 1995: 151). Of course, not all kinds of “taking advantage” are morally problematic. To give a standard example: there may be nothing wrong with a chess grandmaster exploiting a weakness in their opponent’s endgame. Consequently, we might want to avoid “moralised” definitions of “exploitation” which make it wrongful or unjust by definition. That said, cases of “wrongful exploitation” are of particular significance in the Marxist tradition, often being treated as providing a reason for seeking to replace capitalist economic arrangements with non-exploitative alternatives.

Marxist claims about exploitation are often said—by both Marxists and their critics—to depend on the labour theory of value. This is denied by Cohen who, in a well-known article, argues that the relation between the two, despite their long historical association, is one of mutual irrelevance (1988: 209). The labour theory of value is understood here as a theory of equilibrium price, whose central claim is that magnitude of value is determined by socially necessary labour time. Cohen suggests that those Marxists who have insisted on the labour theory as the basis of exploitation have confused the idea of producers creating value with the idea of producers creating that which has value (the product). This latter, somewhat simpler, idea is the real basis of the charge of exploitation. What matters for exploitation is not that capitalists appropriate value created by workers, but rather that they appropriate (part of) the value of what the worker produces.

In the place of arguments that make exploitation claims depend on the labour theory of value, Cohen endorses the “Plain Argument” (1988: 228):

The labourer is the person who creates the product, that which has value.
The capitalist appropriates some of the value of the product.
The labourer receives less value than the value of what she creates,
The capitalist appropriates some of the value of what the labourer creates.
The labourer is exploited by the capitalist.

It is this Plain Argument which is said typically to motivate Marxists, whatever their official view of the labour theory of value.

Note that the claim that the capitalist appropriates part of the value of the worker’s product (step 4) is not (as it stands) a normative one. For that appropriation to constitute wrongful exploitation the normative dimensions of the step from 4 to 5 in the Plain Argument would need to be fleshed out. The present section outlines three candidate explanations of the relevant wrongfulness—involving the ideas of unfairness, instrumentalising vulnerability, and domination, respectively—which have found support within analytical Marxism.

The first, and best-known, analytical Marxist account maintains that wrongful exploitation rests on the capitalist benefitting from prior unfairness , in particular, benefitting from the injustice of property relations. (This account is associated with Roemer, amongst others, but note that many additional issues raised by the latter’s innovative work on exploitation—for instance, his account of socialist exploitation resting on unequal ownership of productive skills—are not discussed here (see Roemer 1982, 1986b, 1986c, 1988).)

Roemer develops a general theory of exploitation; “general”, not least, in aiming to capture both Marxist and neoclassical accounts within the same framework. He proposes that a group is exploited “if it has some conditionally feasible alternative under which its members would be better off” (1986c: 103). Formally this involves specifying a game played by coalitions of agents in an economy, and specifying payoffs if they withdraw.

We can say that capitalist exploitation obtains when capitalists are made better off by the existence of workers, but workers are made worse off by the existence of capitalists (Roemer 1996: 40). More precisely, capitalists exploit workers if and only if the following three conditions obtain. First, if workers were to withdraw from the society, endowed with their per capita share of society’s alienable property (including means of production) then workers would be better off (in terms of income and leisure) than they are at the present allocation. Second, if capitalists were to withdraw under the same conditions, then capitalists would be worse off (in terms of income and leisure) than they are at present (because some of their current share would go to workers). Third, if workers were to withdraw from society with their own endowments (not their per capita share), then capitalists would be worse off than at present (because they would no longer be able to benefit from the workers’ labour).

For Roemer, exploitation as such is not morally objectionable. In an adjacent context (1988: 129–130), he describes a two-person economy where a fair initial distribution of resources, but differing preferences for work and leisure: X prefers to work hard and defer consumption while Y prefers leisure and immediate consumption, which results in X being able to hire Y under conditions such that (a) X is made better off by this arrangement, (b) Y is not made worse off by this arrangement; (c) Y could have freely chosen not to enter into this arrangement; and (d) Y is exploited by X in that X appropriates some of the labour time of Y . In examples like these, Roemer maintains, exploitation exists but does not appear morally objectionable or unjust.

For Roemer, exploitation is best understood as the distributive result of inequalities in the distribution of productive assets and resources. It is unjust only where it results from a prior injustice in the underlying distribution of those assets and resources (Roemer 1996: 96). He consequently recommends that Marxists should drop their traditional focus on the micro level of the relationship between classes in production, and attend rather to the macro level of the distribution of property in society. It is unjust distribution—specifically, the unjust capitalist monopoly of effective control of the means of production—that generates (the secondary phenomenon of) unjust capitalist exploitation, and which should be the primary locus of any normative concern.

One critical concern about this account is that, although the existing capitalist monopoly over the means of production may have come about in a morally problematic way (not least, through violence and theft), we can at least imagine (perhaps having read Nozick 1974) a capitalism with a morally clean origin story, where the same inequalities emerge from a just starting point and just subsequent steps (involving, perhaps, voluntary choices and the right kind of luck). In such circumstances, Roemer’s three conditions might be met, but, on his own account, there looks to be nothing wrongful about the result. This might appear a surprising result in a Marxist account of exploitation, and is perhaps indicative of a wider problem.

In this context, consider the paradigmatic example of exploitation suggested by Nicholas Vrousalis (2013: 148); namely “the pit case”:

A finds B in a pit that B cannot exit unaided. A can get B out at little cost or difficulty. A offers to get B out, but only if B agrees to pay a million euros, or to sign a sweatshop contract with A . B signs the contract.

We do not seem to require to know how B came to be in the pit—whether, for instance, it was through just or unjust steps—in order to assess the offer as wrongfully exploitative. It seems enough to notice that A could easily rescue B without asking for anything, but instead takes advantage of B ’s vulnerability in order to improve their own lot (Vrousalis 2013: 149). By analogy, asset injustice does not look to be a necessary condition for wrongful exploitation.

A second analytical Marxist account maintains that wrongful exploitation rests on capitalists enriching themselves by taking advantage of the vulnerability of workers. (This model is suggested by some of Wood’s writings on exploitation (see especially 1995).)

Wood maintains that exploitation in general “consists in the exploiter”s using something about the person for the exploiter’s ends by playing on some weakness or vulnerability in that person’ (1995: 147). And he acknowledges that, so understood, exploitation is not always wrongful (as, for instance, in cases like the previously mentioned chess grandmaster).

Exploitation is wrongful, on this account, when exploiters enrich themselves by taking advantage of the vulnerability of the exploited. The wrongfulness here seems to involve the instrumental treatment of others in ways which are humiliating or disrespectful. Wood maintains that:

Proper respect for others is violated when we treat their vulnerabilities as opportunities to advance our own interests or projects. It is degrading to have your weaknesses taken advantage of, and dishonourable to use the weakness of others for your ends. (1995: 150–151)

The relation between capitalist and worker would appear to exemplify this account of wrongful exploitation. The vulnerability here arises from the workers’ propertyless condition, which compels them to sell their labour power in terms advantageous to the capitalist. This structural feature of the capitalist economy is not fundamentally altered, and only lightly mitigated, by the existence of some collective bargaining and government regulation (A. Wood 1995: 155). (Note that “wrongful exploitation” here might, or might not, constitute an injustice on Wood’s account.)

One critical concern about this pure vulnerability account is that it might look too expansive; that is, it might look liable to indicate falsely that exploitation is present in particular cases. It might, for example, seem committed to the claim that a cancer doctor, who makes a very comfortable living out of treating the seriously ill, necessarily exploits their patients (Arneson 2016: 10). Those who hesitate to endorse that claim may seek to resist such implications.

A third analytical Marxist account treats the instrumentalization of vulnerability as a necessary but not sufficient condition for wrongful exploitation. The additional condition for exploitation to obtain is that this instrumentalization of vulnerability occurs in a manner which involves domination . (This model is suggested in some of Wood’s writings on exploitation (1972, 2014), as well as in work by Vrousalis (2013, 2016).)

On this domination account, it is the abuse of power that is the real wrong-making feature of exploitation; exploitation is paradigmatically “domination for self-enrichment” (Vrousalis 2013: 131). The relevant kind of domination obtains when the exploiter either inflicts some “power-induced injury” to the status of the exploited, or imposes some “servitude” on the part of the exploited (Vrousalis 2016: 3). This refinement appears to address the critical concern about the expansiveness of the pure vulnerability account; for instance, domination looks to be missing in the case of the cancer doctor and patient, but present in the relation between A and B in the case of the pit.

To be clear, the present account is intended to give some introductory sense of an ongoing debate about whether unfairness, the instrumentalization of vulnerability, or domination, are at the heart of wrongful exploitation. There is no suggestion here that any consensus about the precise character of exploitation has emerged within analytical Marxism.

5. Socialism

Analytical Marxists have typically broken with Marx’s “utopophobia”, rejecting his view that providing detailed descriptions of the socialist future is undemocratic, impossible, and unnecessary (Leopold 2016). Instead, analytical Marxists have embraced the need for socialist design, and explicitly sought to develop coherent and credible accounts: first, of the values of socialism; second, of the institutional, and other, arrangements which might best embody and promote those values; and third, of the forms that a transition to those alternatives to capitalism might take (Elster & Moene 1989).

The values endorsed by analytical Marxism are familiar from the wider socialist tradition (see entry on socialism, §3.1 ). They include: equality; community; democracy; individual freedom; and self-realization. Within analytical Marxism, there is no general agreement about the character, weight, or potential to conflict, of these. However some examples of their elaboration by analytical Marxists can be given.

Equality is understood by Cohen as “socialist equality of opportunity” (distinct from bourgeois and left-liberal variants of equality of opportunity). He construes this in a luck egalitarian way, as seeking to correct for all unchosen disadvantage, disadvantage for which the agent herself cannot be held responsible, whether it reflects social or natural misfortune (2009a: 10–11). Community , on Cohen’s account, requires “that people care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one another, and, too, care that they care about one another” (2009a: 34–35). Meaningful community is put under strain when large inequalities obtain, and so this principle limits certain inequalities that the egalitarian principle alone would permit. Democracy can be understood as extending beyond the political, narrowly construed, to require that people have “broadly equal access to the necessary means to participate meaningfully in decisions” affecting their lives as members of society (Wright 2010: 12). Individual freedom is defended in a variety of increasingly demanding ways, from negative liberty, though non-domination, to the “real freedom” of having security, self-ownership, and the greatest possible opportunity to do whatever you might want to do (Van Parijs 1995: ch. 1). And self-realisation is seen as valuable (for reasons involving welfare and autonomy), even if considerations of feasibility and desirability require some scaling down of the classic Marxist requirement of “the full and free actualization and externalization of the powers and the abilities of the individual” (Elster 1989: 131).

Turning to the kind of institutions that might best embody and promote these, and other, values, it might be said that analytical Marxists typically proceed with a certain humility. In particular, they often acknowledge the inhuman and irrational dimensions of many twentieth-century varieties of actually-existing-socialism. Wright figuratively warns that, rather than having detailed maps with clear destinations and identifiable routes, contemporary socialists are in the position of early explorers with a “compass” and some sense of the direction in which they want to go (2006). And Cohen wryly cautions that, although we have a reasonably clear sense of socialist values “we now know that we do not now know” how to design the social institutions that might best embody and promote those goods (2009a: 81).

Two institutional examples of alternatives to capitalism—market socialism and basic income—associated with analytical Marxism are sketched here (see also Arneson 1992).

Market socialism can take many different forms. John Roemer has developed, and serially refined, a particular variant referred to here as “coupon socialism” (1994a, 1994b, 1996). Coupon socialism is an example of a kind of market socialism sometimes called “shareholder socialism”; that is, a type of economic model which combines a stock market with public ownership of firms (Corneo 2017: 184–197). Sceptics might characterise the result as “capitalism without capitalists”, but Roemer defends it as a feasible and desirable attempt to combine: efficient market mechanisms; some state planning over broad investment priorities; an egalitarian distribution of property rights; and an egalitarian distribution of profits.

Roemer is keen not to rerun earlier battles between socialism and the market. Socialists, he insists, cannot afford to neglect the importance of efficiency and innovation in generating sustainable prosperity. He variously: allows that Soviet-style command economies failed; presents Friedrich Hayek as winning the “socialist calculation debate”; and recommends learning from the real-world institutional “experiments” of contemporary capitalisms (where ownership and control are already differentiated, and diverse mechanisms—involving figurative “carrots” and “sticks”—have been developed to tackle principal-agent problems). A strong public sector is likely to be a central ingredient of a socialist society, but socialists are admonished to stop “fetishizing” public ownership, and to be open-minded about possible ownership relations, judging them only by their effects on equality and efficiency (Roemer 1994b: 454–457). Roemer’s own earlier work on exploitation had convinced him that property relations and asset inequalities—not markets as such—are the real problems.

Coupon socialism aims to distribute the profits of firms equally amongst citizens without unacceptable losses in efficiency compared to contemporary capitalism. The model eliminates capitalist class relations whilst retaining market mechanisms. Ownership is distributed equally through arrangements which involve a stock market and decentralised decision making. Its most striking institutional feature is perhaps the creation of two kinds of money—call them “dollars” and “coupons”—which are not convertible by individuals (who cannot legally exchange coupons for dollars or transfer coupons as gifts or bequests). Dollars are used to buy all the commodities that you might currently purchase (including labour power and consumption goods) except that they cannot be used to buy ownership rights in listed companies. The latter can only be purchased by individuals with coupons, and coupons are distributed to individuals in an egalitarian manner. The shares are priced in coupons but any subsequent dividend would be in dollars. At the legal age of maturity, individuals receive their per capita share of the total coupon value of the economy. It is assumed that most individuals will invest their coupons in shares through mutual funds rather than directly. A share of a firm entitles the mutual fund to a share of the relevant firm’s profits, and a share of a mutual fund entitles the individual to a share in the fund’s revenues (Roemer 1996: 20). The model effectively endows citizens at adulthood with a modest income stream during their lives, generated from the profits of public companies that are not directly owned by the state. The various restrictions on the relevant property rights ensure that the scope for accumulating wealth in means of production is limited. Differentials in coupon wealth would exist, but the main causes of inequality would be differential wages and savings behaviour.

Such a brief sketch of coupon socialism raises many questions (see Wright 1995, and Veneziani 2021, for further discussion). These include questions about its feasibility and desirability.

Feasibility worries often concern the economic details of the model. Critics wonder variously about: the place of small private capitalist firms (shops, restaurants, small manufacturers); the modesty of the coupon-driven income stream; and the structures needed for raising investment funds (through credit markets and other mechanisms which allow companies to convert coupons into dollars subject to regulation) (Corneo 2017: 184–197).

Desirability worries often concern the socialist credentials of the model. Critics wonder variously about: the extent to which these institutional arrangements might embody and promote an individualism corrosive of community; or how far these arrangements might fail to embody and promote the kind of control over work arrangements that socialists have historically endorsed and sought to realise (Wright 1995).

More generally, much seems to depends on the intended aim of the model. Should we think of coupon socialism as: an imaginative theoretical demonstration that economic efficiency can be conceptualised outside of capitalist private ownership; a deliberately modest and accessible first step away from capitalist society towards a more egalitarian future; or as the very best socialist arrangements that are feasible? (These alternatives are not intended to be exhaustive.)

Roemer has continued to work on issues of socialist design, focussing more recently on the modelling of individual economic behaviour (Roemer 2019a). Any coherent socio-economic system, he suggests, requires “three pillars”: a set of property relations and institutions that organise the allocation of resources; a distributive ethic that identifies a fair or just pattern of income and resources; and a behavioural ethos that specifies how economic actors make decisions. These three should work together, in that if economic agents act according to the relevant ethos, then the relevant institutional arrangements should implement the relevant just distribution. Roemer now insists that the behavioural ethos is as important as the other two pillars, and criticises earlier models of market socialism—including coupon socialism—for having changed the institutional arrangements of capitalism but kept its behavioural ethos (Roemer 2019a: 179; see Carens 1981 for a possible exception).

In capitalism, the behavioural ethos is said to be “individualism” (the individual “goes it alone”), where each actor is conceived as “being in competition with all other actors, and the actions of all are constrained by nature”. In socialism, in contrast, the behavioural ethos is cooperation, where citizens of a socialist society are engaged in a cooperative enterprise to transform nature in order to improve the lives of everyone (Roemer 2020a: 10–11).

More precisely, Roemer recommends a socialist model of cooperation that he calls “Kantian optimisation”. Kantian optimisation challenges both the standard economic picture of individuals as utility maximisers, and in the standard ways in which that standard picture is adjusted for other-regarding motivations (Roemer rejects the idea that Nash optimisation is the uniquely rational way to optimise). In Kantian optimisation, individuals choose the action that maximises their payoff, assuming that all other agents take the same action. Very roughly, cooperation depends, not on altruism (which is implausibly demanding), but on solidarity (the idea that we are “all in the same boat”) and trust (the idea that if we take the cooperative action, enough others will do so as well). This socialist model of cooperation is said to be realistic, in that it respects certain behavioural results in both the laboratory and real life (recycling and tipping, for instance (Roemer 2019a: 14–16)).

Roemer uses formal models—general competitive equilibrium and game theory—to demonstrate some surprising payoffs for socialist design once this model of cooperation is integrated into it. Not least, he demonstrates that, under some fairly uncontroversial assumptions, market socialist economies can rectify the unequal income distribution of capitalism without paying a price in efficiency or market failures (Roemer 2019a: 206–207, and Veneziani 2021). In short, given Kantian optimisation, certain familiar problems in socialist design may be less serious than were once thought (Roemer 2015: 107).

The idea of basic income has a long history (early forerunners include Thomas Spence 1797 [2004] and Joseph Charlier 1848 [2004]), and some confusingly close relatives (including basic endowment and a negative income tax). Its most recent revival owes much to Philippe Van Parijs. The core idea is deceptively simple and seductive. Basic income consists in:

a regular income paid in cash to every individual member of a society, irrespective of income from other sources and with no strings attached. (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 4)

The proposal assumes a territorially defined political community, and that recipients are fiscal residents. The regular payment is in cash and not in kind (food, shelter, clothes, etc.). It is paid to each individual, irrespective of their domestic arrangements (not, for instance, only to “heads of households”). It is universal, involving no means test, but paid, at the same rate, to rich and poor alike. And it is an obligation-free payment, carrying no requirement, in particular, for beneficiaries to work or be available to work.

Beyond that core idea, particular basic income schemes differ considerably; not least concerning the level at which the basic income is to be paid. To help calibrate alternatives, Van Parijs suggests that an amount corresponding to a quarter of current GDP per capita—which, in 2015, would have corresponded to $1163 per month in the United States—would sit between “modest” and “generous” versions of the idea (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 11).

Since the model apparently assumes an economy dominated by appropriately regulated capitalist markets, enthusiasm for a basic income might be thought to sit uneasily with the normative commitments of analytical Marxism. One response is to emphasise the ways in which a basic income scheme might reduce our dependence on that market. It could variously: strengthen the bargaining position of workers (against their employers and others); effect a partial decommodification of labour power (reducing the economic compulsion to sell the latter); and make engagement in socially useful but unpaid activities much easier (Wright 2005c). So understood, basic income answers questions about both socialist transition and socialist design; a basic income scheme might help us move away from a capitalist society, and form part of the institutional structure of the non-capitalist alternative.

In a set of delightfully provocative essays written with Robert van der Veen, Van Parijs took that suggestion—that a basic income scheme might transform capitalism in a progressive direction—and ran with it (Van der Veen & Van Parijs 1986a, 1986b, 2006). They laid out the possibility of “a capitalist road to communism”; arguing that welfare state capitalisms have the potential to move smoothly, if slowly, towards Marx’s own communist ideal. The communist “realm of freedom”—understood here as involving widespread material abundance, voluntary productive contributions according to ability, and distribution according to need—is now reached via the introduction of, and gradual increase in, a basic income scheme in capitalist societies. It is not reached by the traditional “transitional”, or “strictly socialist”, stage involving state or social ownership of means of production. On this account, that “strictly socialist” stage is redundant, and can be skipped entirely (for critical comment, see Wright 1994: 157–172).

Framed in this way, the case for basic income seems to rest on controversial perfectionist assumptions; for instance, about the disvalue of wage labour and value of unalienated activities (see Kandiyali 2022). This might make it a hard sell in liberal pluralistic societies committed to respecting a diversity of conceptions of the good life, and Van Parijs has subsequently sought to reposition the proposal.

The appeal of basic income is now said to rest on its emancipatory potential, its ability to deliver “real freedom”—the “genuine capacity” of individuals to act on their own life plans free from certain debilitating pressures (including unemployment and employment traps)—to all. Freedom considerations also, of course, play a role in determining the form of basic income; for instance, helping to justify its being a cash payment with no restriction on what is purchased or when. The tightness of the connection between basic income and this real libertarian foundation might be doubted, but this is now Van Parijs’ preferred grounding.

So understood, basic income rests on a conception of social justice which is both liberal, in not privileging particular contested conceptions of the good, and egalitarian, in requiring justifications for any derivation from a baseline equal distribution. Freedom is treated not as a constraint on what justice requires, but as “the very stuff that justice consists in distributing fairly” (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 104). Basic income is justified as a way of maximising the level of real freedom to those with the least of it (“maximin real freedom”), or rather “maximining” the “gifts” that form the “material substratum” of such real freedom. “Gifts” here refer to the immense stock of wealth for which none of us are individually responsible, and which should be treated as our common inheritance (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 104–109).

Criticisms of basic income are sufficiently many and varied to make meaningful summary impractical. However, two familiar worries might be noted.

First, a familiar desirability worry is that basic income involves an apparent unfairness. In advocating unconditional benefits it violates some conception of “reciprocity”, allowing individuals to receive a share of their society’s income without making a productive contribution in return (White 2003). Elster provocatively describes basic income as a recipe for the “exploitation of the industrious by the lazy” (1986b: 719). A number of responses are available, including: conceding the validity of the concern, but seeing it as outweighed by the practical difficulties of enacting conditionality; or allowing that reciprocity considerations are persuasive in the context of certain cooperative ventures, but denying their relevance in the context of distributive justice.

Second, a familiar feasibility worry is that basic income schemes might be unaffordable. In facilitating a move away from paid productive activities, basic income risks undermining the very source of funding on which it depends. Again, a number of responses are available, including: claiming that perverse labour supply effects might be reduced by taxing things other than individual income (natural resources, financial transactions, consumption, and so on); or stressing that the weight of this objection depends on the level at which the basic income is set (uncertainty perhaps recommending that we start low and introduce increases experimentally).

The lack of agreement about the shape of a desirable and feasible post-capitalist future, might make discussion of how to reach that goal look premature. However, preliminary reflection on the issue of socialist transition—of how to get from “here” to “there”—might still be useful. The many examples of such reflection from within analytical Marxism include: Cohen’s discussion of the proletariat as a collective agent (2000a: 101–115); Adam Przeworski’s account of the electoral dilemmas of social democracy (1985); and Erik Olin Wright’s reflections on socialist strategy. An outline of the latter is provided here.

Wright’s ambition—looking both “behind” and “ahead”—is to move beyond the tired and limited contrast between “reform” and “revolution”. He offers a conceptual map of socialist—and, more broadly, anti-capitalist—strategies that have been historically important, as well as suggesting how they might be combined in a strategic vision for those seeking to escape the harms of contemporary capitalism (2010: 273–365).

Wright (2019: 38–53) identifies five “strategic logics” embodied in anti-capitalist struggles (historical examples of movements adopting them are in parentheses). The initial pair of examples share a revolutionary goal—replacing capitalism with a very different kind of economic structure—but have competing accounts of how that might be accomplished. First, smashing capitalism: according to which “a decisive, ruptural break” with a system that is, at root, unreformable is necessary (see early twentieth-century revolutionary communism). Second, dismantling capitalism: according to which democratic politics facilitate state-directed reforms gradually replacing capitalist elements with alternatives (see “democratic socialism”). Third, taming capitalism: which typically uses state policies of regulation and redistribution in order to “neutralise” the harms of capitalism, without trying to destroy their underlying causes (see post-war social democracy). Those last two strategies rely heavily on the exercise of state power, and in this respect differ from Wright’s final two models. Fourth, resisting capitalism: which involves more or less organised attempts within civil society—and not primarily the state—to alleviate the harms of capitalism (see trade unions, boycotts, consumer movements, and anarchist-inflected social movements). And fifth, escaping capitalism: which pursues a more separatist strategy, not tackling capitalism directly, but rather seeking to isolate a group from its harms (see intentional communities, communes, and certain religious communities).

Wright locates these five “strategic logics” within a schematic typology with two dimensions (2019: 53–58). The first dimension differentiates between “neutralising harms” and “transcending structures”. The “taming” and “resistance” models aim to neutralise harms; and the “smashing”, “dismantling”, and “escaping”, models aim to transcend structures. The second dimension differentiates between three “transformative logics” using the metaphor of a “game”. The “ruptural” strategy seeks to change the game being played, and is exemplified by the “smashing” model. The “symbiotic” strategy seeks to change the rules of the game being played, and is exemplified by the “taming” and “dismantling” models. And the “interstitial” strategy seeks to change the way in which one plays within a given set of rules, and is exemplified by the “resisting” and “escaping” models. Anyone seeking to visualise a grid with these two dimensions will realise that one of the six resulting cells is empty. No-one presumably uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut, or, a little less figuratively, no-one thinking that the most effective way of neutralising harms is to change the game itself.

Wright’s evaluation of these historical movements is broadly negative; they all seem to have either failed at the time, or to have only limited current purchase. From the political vantagepoint of developed capitalist countries: revolutionary communism and democratic socialism have largely disappeared; social democracy has declined, and lost its connection with labour militancy; and, whilst “anarchist inflected social movements” survive as perhaps the most dynamic form of anti-capitalism, they often remain disconnected from political projects and parties. Wright appears most critical of the ruptural strategy, doubting that democratic support for a sharp break and rapid transition is sustainable given the nature of the “transition trough”—a concept adopted from Przeworski—faced by the middle classes, in particular (2010: 308–320). (A “transition trough” refers to the initial decline in production and living standards that is likely to follow a ruptural break with capitalism. Depending on the depth and extent of these troughs, it might not be in the material interests of individuals to support a ruptural path to socialism even where they plausibly believe that the material conditions of life under socialism will eventually come to exceed those of previously-existing capitalism.)

Looking forwards, Wright recommends the strategy of eroding capitalism (2019: 59–64). Existing economic systems are said to combine capitalism with other economic arrangements, including what we might call proto-socialist alternatives (embodying democracy, equality, and community). The eroding strategy combines elements of interstitial and symbiotic approaches. In the former mode, it involves a “bottom-up” strategy focused on civil society, participating in various marginal alternative economic activities. In the latter mode, it involves a “top-down” strategy focused on the state, seeking to secure and expand those alternatives through law and public policy. The ambition of this mixed approach is gradually to allow proto-socialist economic relations and practices to succeed and displace their capitalist counterparts.

The strategic vision of eroding capitalism corresponds only uncertainly to real world movements, but Wright suggests that certain movements in Latin America and Southern Europe (including Podemos in Spain) may capture something of its spirit. He also portrays it as analogous to the process by which capitalism itself historically displaced feudalism. Proto-capitalist forms of economic life emerged in the niches of feudalism, and slowly grew to the point where they displaced the dominant feudal structures. Political upheavals occurred as part of this process, but they typically served to consolidate and rationalise socioeconomic changes that had already taken place (Wright 2019: 61).

This entry already contains many examples of criticisms of particular authors and particular arguments within analytical Marxism. However, these were not typically targeted at the intellectual current as a whole. Indeed, some were advanced from perspectives sympathetic to the approaches, concerns, and commitments, of analytical Marxism. However, there are also less sympathetic critics willing to move beyond specific authors and arguments, and issue a negative verdict on analytical Marxism as such. These comprehensive criticisms are varied, but might be grouped roughly according to which of the three sources and component parts of analytical Marxism forms their central target.

A first group of comprehensive criticisms focus on the methodological claims of analytical Marxism. The diversity of positive methodological approaches amongst analytical Marxists has been emphasised here, but there remains a shared (negative) premise; namely, that there is no distinct and valuable Marxist method. And there are critics who—holding that there is such a method, and that it is superior to the “bourgeois” tools adopted by analytical Marxism—reject that premise. For example, they might maintain that Marxism is necessarily committed to a “dialectical” approach—sometimes based on a wider philosophy of “internal relations”—which analytical Marxists are bound to reject (Sayers 1984, 2015). Or, they might suggest that “analytical” and “Marxist” are rival methodologies embodying a tension that can only be resolved fully by one side routing the other; on this account, some September Group participants are portrayed as remaining true to their analytical methods by slowly abandoning their Marxism (Roberts 1996: 14).

A second group of comprehensive criticisms focus on the substantive concerns of analytical Marxism. The critical suggestion here is typically that in translating the substantive concerns of traditional Marxism into the language and frameworks of “mainstream social science”, analytical Marxism has lost what was valuable about them (Levine 2003: 123). For instance, it is suggested that analytical Marxism’s treatment of exploitation, class, and history, involves an abstract, individualistic, and ahistorical, framework that makes its conclusions hard to distinguish, in many respects, from the theories of “bourgeois social science” (E. Wood 1989: 55). Or, in an another variant, that analytical Marxists seem to have lost sight of, or never really appreciated, the centrality of the “system of labour” to Marx’s substantive account of human society (Chitty 1998: 40).

A third, and final, group of comprehensive criticisms focus on the “normative turn” of analytical Marxism, reacting against the suggestion that the predictive failures of classical Marxism might have amplified the need for normative clarification and argument (G. Cohen 2000a: 103–4). One variant insists that Marxism neither has, nor needs, a normative theory. Marx is rather to be commended for holding that normative theory is pointless because it is motivationally ineffective or unnecessary (Leiter 2002, 2015). Another variant criticises the content, rather than the fact, of analytical Marxist commitment to normative theory. For instance, normatively speaking, it suggests that analytical Marxism has increasingly “fused and interpenetrated” with left-liberalism, to a point where it is difficult to tell them apart (Bertram 2007: 137).

These comprehensive criticisms are not directly challenged here. However, there are reasons, at least, to hesitate before endorsing them.

First, it might simply be too early for comprehensive criticism. Attempts at the latter sometimes fail to consider that only a very provisional assessment of analytical Marxism as a research programme might be appropriate at this point. After all, many participants in the first wave of analytical Marxism—including Brenner, Roemer, and Van Parijs—continue to produce significant and interesting work. In addition, there are more recent contributions which offer the possibility of a constructive future development of the paradigm. Consider, for example, the “Afro-analytical Marxism” outlined and endorsed by Tommie Shelby (2021). Very roughly, Shelby approves of analytical Marxism’s methodological combination of analytical and empirical rigour, together with its substantive interest in exploitation and ideology, but regrets—and seeks to make good—its failure, both to theorise racism and racial hierarchy, and to examine the place of the black radical resistance in the fight for social justice and a “post-capitalist” future (2021, and Mills 2003: 155). More generally, the future of analytical Marxism looks open; its research programme does not appear closed to future development, nor has it been replaced decisively by a competitor. The intellectual merits of intellectual traditions—think of utilitarianism, for instance—are not always exhausted by one’s judgement of the first group of authors with whom they are associated. Simply put, it might be better to leave the full autopsy until the death of the patient is more certain.

Second, some of these comprehensive criticisms might appear to be unproductively preoccupied with the Marxist credentials of analytical Marxism. “Marxism” is treated stipulatively as an honorific, and then this analytical variant is located beyond the pale—exposed as not Marxist, or not Marxist enough, or not Marxist in the right kind of way, or even “anti-Marxist” (Lebowitz 1988: 195; Hunt 1992: 105).) Of course, this issue—of whether, and to what extent, analytical Marxism is Marxist—can take a legitimate form. It might, for instance, form a step in a more substantive argument, or the context might be one in which proper labelling is an appropriate concern (intellectual history, for instance). However, in the absence of further argument, these criticisms can appear to adopt an inappropriately “religious” approach to the evaluation of an ongoing research programme. Cohen expresses regret that, historically, it was the label “Marxism”—rather than, say, that of “scientific socialism”—that came to be associated with the relevant concerns and commitments. After all, it is typically religions, rather than sciences, which are named after their founders. Progressive disciplines are not expected to preserve the theses of their founders (G. Cohen 2000b: xxvii). We do not, for instance, ask physicists whether they are still sufficiently Galilean (assuming, for the sake of the example, that Galileo founded physics)?

Third, and finally, some of these comprehensive criticisms look ungenerous and one-sided, making little effort to consider the potential achievements here. More positively, analytical Marxism might be said to have established itself as an intelligent and valuable form of “Enlightenment Marxism”. Its enthusiasm for clarity in, careful elaboration of, and honesty about, arguments, constitute contextually-important reminders of significant intellectual virtues. Substantively, its evolving treatment of core Marxist concerns—including historical development, class, and exploitation—reflect and confirm an openness to science, reason, and empirical evidence. As such, analytical Marxism recognises and continues certain valuable, and often neglected, elements of Marx’s own thought (Little 1986). In addition, analytical Marxism aspires to advance our understanding of the social world without abandoning, or obscuring, or disparaging, the role of normative theory. Finally, its rejection of Marx’s “utopophobia” is well-founded, and its corresponding efforts to explore and promote alternatives to capitalism, in ways which balance the concerns of desirability and feasibility, are imaginative and thought-provoking. Analytical Marxism, it might be suggested, rightly takes its place as one current of thought, in a wider radical stream, striving to understand social oppression, and to contribute to its reduction and elimination (G. Cohen 2001: 14).

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Kirby Mark, unpublished, “An Interview with Erik Olin Wright”, written 2001, [ Kirby 2001 available online ].
Roemer, John E., 2019b, “‘Exploitation, Cooperation, and Distributive Justice’ Interview by Maya Adereth and Jerome Hodges”, in Phenomenal World , 24 October 2019. [ Roemer 2019b available online ]

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The Chinese Reception of Western Marxism: From Wary Onlookers to Confident Participants on the World Stage

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Published: 05 September 2023
Volume 17 , pages 1–22, ( 2024 )

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Roland Boer ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8355-2737 1

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This study presents an analytic overview of forty years of study of Western Marxism by Chinese scholars. Organised into four main sections, it begins with an emphasis on the wider institutional context of this Chinese research. Here, I deal with the beginnings of research on Western Marxism in China and outline the two main periods of this research, which turn on the important educational reforms of 2005. The next section focuses on the initial period of research on Western Marxism, from the early 1980s to the education reforms, which may be characterised in terms of the work of “wary onlookers” writing introductions and surveys of Western Marxist scholars. The following section covers the last two decades after the 2005 education reforms. This period is of most interest, so more attention is devoted to developments during this time. It has been a time of increasingly confident participants on the world stage, who focus on core issues, realistic demands, and problem-based research. The final section concerns assessments of the limitations of Western Marxism, which have been identified through the in-depth research of the second period. In conclusion, while Western Marxism may be seen as a legitimate development of Marxism in a capitalist context, it is a tributary from the mainstream.

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The statement had been preceded by a number of opinion papers by the CPC Central Committee ( 2004a , 2004b ).

While Western Marxism continues to be a dominant interest, one also finds consistent interest in Japanese Marxism, which is seen as superior to Western Marxism (Zhang 2009 ), as well as Russian Marxism in post-Soviet times and in Latin America and Africa.

Although it also created new problems that needed to be resolved, especially in terms of the place and role of “Foreign Marxism Studies” in relation to the other sub-disciplines (Zheng 2008 ; Wang 2010 ).

Among many examples, see He Weiping’s ( 1987 ) criticism of Western Marxism’s tendency to separate Lenin from Marx, and Zhang Yibing’s ( 1999 ) point that many dismissals were “unscientific” and did not engage in in-depth research.

Notably, later studies of Althusser became more comprehensive and increasingly identified the shortcomings of his thought (Wu M. 2009 ; Wang Xingfu 2015 ; see also Guo and Chen 2021 ).

A search on the “China Knowledge Net” (cnki.net) produces more than 100 articles in the last 15 years with Foster’s name in the title.

At the same time, Foster’s earlier work at least has been criticised for being too much focused on a single issue, and thus not comprehensive enough in terms of the combination of dialectical and historical materialism, and more specifically the question of the complex relations between human beings and the natural environment of which they are part (Li B. 2009 ).

I would add here that one of the core journals in the sciences has the title Research on the Dialectics of Nature (自然辩证法研究).

The question arises as to whether Foster’s focus on Engels and the dialectics of nature puts him outside the ideological structure of “Western” Marxism (Boer 2023c ).

Zhou Fan’s ( 2015a ; 2015b ) detailed study of the arguments between Allen Wood and Allen Buchanan finds both trapped within problems arising from their contexts.

As Perry Anderson’s ( 1976 ) influential booklet suggested many years ago.

In the process, Western Marxism loses the ability to see the results of actual practice in many other parts of the world. For example, see Gu Yanfeng et al. ( 2022 ), Lu and Yan ( 2022 ), Tang H. and Wang ( 2020 ), Yao ( 2022 ).

A curious line is suggested by Chen Xueming ( 2008 a), who proposes that even its most abstruse form Western Marxism can be seen as a response to and can offer guidelines for practice.

This rift took some time to develop, as the incident with Maximilian Rubel’s conference paper from 1970 indicates. Rubel submitted a paper to a conference in Wuppertal that was to commemorate 150 years since the birth of Engels in the very same town. Rubel wanted to suggest that Engels was the founder of “Marxism” and did so in a way that distorted Marx’s legacy. The Soviet and East German participants objected strongly and Rubel’s paper was not presented, but merely left for some discussion. Rubel’s subsequent publication of the paper in Marxist Studies of 1972 was seen as highly provocative, with East-European and Soviet Marxists speaking of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois Western Marxism (Lu 2007 , 96).

Korsch’s erratic and increasingly ultra-leftist path may explain the relative lack of interest. During an intense period in the 1920s, Korsch successively fell out with the CPSU(b) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), spending the rest of his life in complete isolation in a Cold-War era USA.

Specifically, the claim that Lukács was a “founder” was based almost entirely on a footnote in the essay on orthodox Marxism in which Lukács suggested that “Engels’ account of dialectics can in the main be put down to the fact that Engels—following Hegel’s mistaken lead—extended the method to apply also to nature” (Lukács [ 1923 ] 1977, 191, n. 1; [ 1923 ] 1988, 24, n. 6).

On the shortcomings of Lukács earlier obsession with subjectivity, see Gao Anqi ( 2003 ).

Lukács continued to see his influential development of the theory of reification as an abiding contribution, but see Zhang Yibing’s ( 2000 ) critical assessment that the theory was still infused with too many confusing Weberian concepts in Lukács’s earlier period.

For example, in Selected Readings from the Original Works of Western Marxism , we find chapters devoted to this “classical period”, with selections concerning origins (Lukács), humanistic Marxism (Ernst Bloch), political philosophy (Gramsci), cultural criticism (Walter Benjamin), Anti-“Stalinism” (Henri Lefebvre), critique of Western modernity (Adorno and Horkheimer), the individual freelance intellectual (Sartre), structural Marxism (Althusser), and the “logical termination” of Western Marxism (Adorno’s Negative Dialectics ) (Zhang Liang et al. 2010 ).

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Boer, R. The Chinese Reception of Western Marxism: From Wary Onlookers to Confident Participants on the World Stage. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 17 , 1–22 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-023-00389-7

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Satellite photo showing a container ship entangled with the wreckage of a bridge.

Baltimore bridge collapse: a bridge engineer explains what happened, and what needs to change

Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Monash University

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Colin Caprani receives funding from the Department of Transport (Victoria) and the Level Crossing Removal Project. He is also Chair of the Confidential Reporting Scheme for Safer Structures - Australasia, Chair of the Australian Regional Group of the Institution of Structural Engineers, and Australian National Delegate for the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering.

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When the container ship MV Dali, 300 metres long and massing around 100,000 tonnes, lost power and slammed into one of the support piers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the bridge collapsed in moments . Six people are presumed dead, several others injured, and the city and region are expecting a months-long logistical nightmare in the absence of a crucial transport link.

It was a shocking event, not only for the public but for bridge engineers like me. We work very hard to ensure bridges are safe, and overall the probability of being injured or worse in a bridge collapse remains even lower than the chance of being struck by lightning.

However, the images from Baltimore are a reminder that safety can’t be taken for granted. We need to remain vigilant.

So why did this bridge collapse? And, just as importantly, how might we make other bridges more safe against such collapse?

A 20th century bridge meets a 21st century ship

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built through the mid 1970s and opened in 1977. The main structure over the navigation channel is a “continuous truss bridge” in three sections or spans.

The bridge rests on four supports, two of which sit each side of the navigable waterway. It is these two piers that are critical to protect against ship impacts.

And indeed, there were two layers of protection: a so-called “dolphin” structure made from concrete, and a fender. The dolphins are in the water about 100 metres upstream and downstream of the piers. They are intended to be sacrificed in the event of a wayward ship, absorbing its energy and being deformed in the process but keeping the ship from hitting the bridge itself.

The fender is the last layer of protection. It is a structure made of timber and reinforced concrete placed around the main piers. Again, it is intended to absorb the energy of any impact.

Fenders are not intended to absorb impacts from very large vessels . And so when the MV Dali, weighing more than 100,000 tonnes, made it past the protective dolphins, it was simply far too massive for the fender to withstand.

Read more: I've captained ships into tight ports like Baltimore, and this is how captains like me work with harbor pilots to avoid deadly collisions

Video recordings show a cloud of dust appearing just before the bridge collapsed, which may well have been the fender disintegrating as it was crushed by the ship.

Once the massive ship had made it past both the dolphin and the fender, the pier – one of the bridge’s four main supports – was simply incapable of resisting the impact. Given the size of the vessel and its likely speed of around 8 knots (15 kilometres per hour), the impact force would have been around 20,000 tonnes .

Bridges are getting safer

This was not the first time a ship hit the Francis Scott Bridge. There was another collision in 1980 , damaging a fender badly enough that it had to be replaced.

Around the world, 35 major bridge collapses resulting in fatalities were caused by collisions between 1960 and 2015, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure. Collisions between ships and bridges in the 1970s and early 1980s led to a significant improvement in the design rules for protecting bridges from impact.

A greenish book cover with the title Ship Collision With Bridges.

Further impacts in the 1970s and early 1980s instigated significant improvements in the design rules for impact.

The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering’s Ship Collision with Bridges guide, published in 1993, and the American Association of State Highway and Transporation Officials’ Guide Specification and Commentary for Vessel Collision Design of Highway Bridges (1991) changed how bridges were designed.

In Australia, the Australian Standard for Bridge Design (published in 2017) requires designers to think about the biggest vessel likely to come along in the next 100 years, and what would happen if it were heading for any bridge pier at full speed. Designers need to consider the result of both head-on collisions and side-on, glancing blows. As a result, many newer bridges protect their piers with entire human-made islands.

Of course, these improvements came too late to influence the design of the Francis Scott Key Bridge itself.

Lessons from disaster

So what are the lessons apparent at this early stage?

First, it’s clear the protection measures in place for this bridge were not enough to handle this ship impact. Today’s cargo ships are much bigger than those of the 1970s, and it seems likely the Francis Scott Key Bridge was not designed with a collision like this in mind.

So one lesson is that we need to consider how the vessels near our bridges are changing. This means we cannot just accept the structure as it was built, but ensure the protection measures around our bridges are evolving alongside the ships around them.

Photo shows US Coast Guard boat sailing towards a container ship entangled in the wreckage of a large bridge.

Second, and more generally, we must remain vigilant in managing our bridges. I’ve written previously about the current level of safety of Australian bridges, but also about how we can do better.

This tragic event only emphasises the need to spend more on maintaining our ageing infrastructure. This is the only way to ensure it remains safe and functional for the demands we put on it today.

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Marxist Criticism
Marxist Criticism. Marxist Criticism refers to a method you'll encounter in literary and cultural analysis. It breaks down texts and societal structures using foundational concepts like class, alienation, base, and superstructure. By understanding this, you'll gain insights into how power dynamics and socio-economic factors influence narratives ...
Marxist Criticism
Mar-ks-hist Kri-tuh-siz-uhm. Marxist criticism is based on the theory of Marxism, which stands against the capitalistic model of society and class discrimination. E.g. Marxist literary criticism is an approach to reading, writing, and studying literature, while Marxism is a theory of history and social change based on class struggle.
WRITING a MARXIST ANALYSIS by cristian silva on Prezi
WRITING a MARXIST ANALYSIS The English literary critic and cultural theorist, Terry Eagleton, defines Marxist criticism this way: Marxist literary criticism Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate. According to.
How to Apply Marxist Theory to Literature
Marxist theory or Marxist criticism is one of the theories that can be used in literary criticism. This theory is based on the ideologies of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who criticized the inherent injustice in the European class/ capitalist system of economics operating in the 19 th Century. Marx viewed history as a series of struggles ...
Marxist Criticism Critical Essays
Based on the socialist and dialectical theories of Karl Marx, Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions out of which they are born. According to Marxists ...
Marxist Criticism
Marxist criticism has been influential for critical theory.Critical theory addresses power relationships. One of its tenets is that institutions, practices, and rules that disadvantage some groups ...
Marxist Literary Criticism: An Overview
German Marxist theory found a further advocate in Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), whose preeminence endured till around 1915. A propagandist for the Social Democratic Party, he founded in 1883 a prestigious Marxist journal, Die Neue Zeit, which offered a forum for the elaboration of Marx's economic and political thought.His works included Karl Marx's Economic Teachings (1887) and The ...
Marxism
Marx and Literary Criticism. Oakland: University of California Press, 1976. In Marx and Literary Criticism, Eagleton's seminal work, he shows how and why it is that Marx is relevant to our reading not only of political economy, but to a wide array of literature. Among other topics, he offers an analysis of the relationship of literature to ...
Marxist literary criticism
v. t. e. Marxist literary criticism is a theory of literary criticism based on the historical materialism set down by philosopher and economist Karl Marx. Marxist critics argue that even art and literature themselves form social institutions and have specific ideological functions, based on the background and ideology of their authors.
Marxist Criticism
A cogent summary of the major areas of present-day Marxist criticism. Includes a new preface by the author. First published 1976. Eagleton, Terry, and Drew Milne, eds. Marxist Literary Theory: A ...
12 Texts for Introducing Marxist Criticism
Introducing Marxist Criticism . At the high school level, students don't need all the vocabulary of Marxist criticism. However, the concept of "privilege" is so closely related to Marxist criticism that we always explore this term. Most of my students are at least familiar with the concept of privilege even if they can't define it.
Marxist Literary Criticism
"A form of cultural criticism that applies Marxist theory to the interpretation of cultural texts, using the key concepts of historical materialism, political economy, and ideology." Brief Overviews: "Marxist Criticism." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. "Marxist Criticism." A Dictionary of Critical Theory. "Marxist Theory and Criticism."
PDF Marxist Theory
Today, what is known as "New Marxist Criticism" is quite popular among a number of critical theorists. Contemporary Marxist theoretical approaches, to some measure, part ways with formal and traditional modes of strict Marxist theory and consider how Marxism (and Marxist theory itself) functions in terms of other modes of literary theory.
Marxist Criticism
Marxist Criticism. According to Marxists, and to other scholars in fact, literature reflects those social institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological function. Literature reflects class struggle and materialism: think how often the quest for wealth traditionally defines characters.
ENGL 308 A: Marxism and Literary Theory
Marxism and Marxist Literary Theory. This course introduces several key works by Marx and his collaborator, Engels, and the debates that have grown up around them. At the center of the course is the question of how 19th century writings about political economy, history, and philosophy were taken up by 20th century literary scholars, and how a ...
Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide
In 20th century, literary criticism has witnessed influences from many schools of critical inquiries. One of the major schools is Marxist literary criticism. This paper highlights the major tenets of Marxist literary criticism. In other words, it studies the Marxist approach to literature. Download Free PDF.
Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide
Marxist literary criticism investigates literature's role in the class struggle. The best general introductions in English remain Terry Eagleton's Marxism and Literary Criticism (Routledge, 2002 [1976]) and, a more difficult but foundational book, Fredric Jameson's Marxism and Form (Princeton UP, 1971). The best anthology in English ...
Marxism and Literary Theory
Marxism is a materialist philosophy which tried to interpret the world based on the concrete, natural world around us and the society we live in. It is opposed to idealist philosophy which conceptualizes a spiritual world elsewhere that influences and controls the material world. In one sense it tried to put people's thought into reverse….
Analytical Marxism
Analytical Marxism is a predominantly Anglophone variety of Marxism that emerged in the late 1970s, and whose leading proponents are located in philosophy and social science departments in US and European universities. It can be distinguished from certain classical forms of Marxism by its openness to analytical methods, its critical attitude to certain substantive Marxist claims, its ...
Encyclopedia of Marxism: Writing Guidelines
1.) First paragraph. Concise and clear explanation of the word, possibly only one sentence for a term, up to at most around five sentences for an event. This is absolutely essential to good writing, not only because it serves to provide a generalized outline of everything to follow, but simplicity provides the reader with an easy and solid ...
Critical Theory (Chapter 7)
Summary. Although Critical Theory represents a reconstruction of historical materialism in general, it is particularly focused on reactivating the legacy of Frankfurt School Marxism, albeit under dramatically altered historical and intellectual circumstances. This situation has mandated a thorough critique of their predecessors, so that despite ...
Literary Criticism through the Lens of MARXIST APPROACH
MELC 20: Critique a literary selection based on the followingapproaches: Power struggles of characters- (Marxist) DISCLAIMER: Borrowed materials (i.e., songs...
PDF QC Writing Center Guide to Writing Critical Lens Essays
Crafting a critical lens essay. 1) Understand the critical lens and what it is asking of you. Remember that a critical lens is a certain viewpoint that you should look through as you analyze your target text. 2) Analyze the piece of literature. The best thing is to reread it, if possible, with your critical lens in mind.
The Chinese Reception of Western Marxism: From Wary ...
The next section focuses on the initial period of research on Western Marxism, from the early 1980s to the education reforms, which may be characterised in terms of the work of "wary onlookers" writing introductions and surveys of Western Marxist scholars. The following section covers the last two decades after the 2005 education reforms.
Baltimore bridge collapse: a bridge engineer explains what happened
The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built through the mid 1970s and opened in 1977. The main structure over the navigation channel is a "continuous truss bridge" in three sections or spans. The ...

Table of Contents

What is Marxist Criticism?

Why Does Marxist Criticism Matter?

What Are the Four Primary Perspectives of Marxism?

Who Are the Key Figures in Marxist Theory?

What are the Foundational Questions of Marxist Criticism?

Example of Marxist Criticism

Discussion Questions and Activities: Marxist Criticism

Brevity - Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence - How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow - How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity - Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style - The DNA of Powerful Writing

Suggested Edits

Other Topics:

Citation - Definition - Introduction to Citation in Academic & Professional Writing

Collaboration - What is the Role of Collaboration in Academic & Professional Writing?

Information Literacy - Discerning Quality Information from Noise

Rhetoric: Exploring Its Definition and Impact on Modern Communication

The Writing Process - Research on Composing

Writing Studies

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Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Authority – How to Establish Credibility in Speech & Writing

How to Apply Marxist Theory to Literature

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Marxism by Wendy Lynne Lee LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0031

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