MARXIST LITERARY CRITICISM: WHAT IT IS NOT

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

Indian students, maybe students of all underdeveloped countries (euphemistically called

‘developing countries’), seem to believe that whatever appears in print is true. There are

also others to whom Indian scholarship is suspect while they are ready to take anything

that emerges from the PC of a sahib, Anglo-Saxon or continental, as Caesar’s wife.

This is why I have elected to discuss Marxist literary criticism by first pointing out what

it is obviously not. And following the traditional way of brahmajijnasa, starting from

neti, neti (it is not), I propose to reach iti (it is so). For this purpose I have selected a text

which you may have read: a passage from Literary Criticism: A Practical Guide for

Students by Malcolm Hicks and Bill Hutchings (New Delhi: Universal Book Stall, 1998

(first published 1989)).

The learned authors present ‘the Marxist critic’ as follows:

Within a political framework which sees progress towards a classless society as

both inevitable and ideal, the Marxist critic rejects any notion that a text’s

excellence resides in its universality. To attribute value on those grounds is to

confirm a conservative world and the moral systems which support it. Rather, he

or she approves of the social and historical placing of texts as essential for

demonstrating their relevance to the political movement of their times. In a

propagandist sense, Marxist criticism assigns value according to the detection of

effective content in the political struggle towards the classless ideal: once it has

served its term, literature can be consigned to the dustbin of history. (p.8)

Every single statement in the passage is open to question. The very concept of

‘the Marxist critic’ is gross oversimplification. There are Marxist critics and critics and
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critics of Marxist critics. They do not constitute a homogenous group. And to the best of

my knowledge, no Marxist critic has ever claimed that once the classless society is

achieved, “literature can be consigned to the dustbin of history”. It is at best an honest

bloomer, and at worst an intentional misrepresentation.

These are some of the common misconceptions mostly due to inadequate

acquaintance with the basic texts, bedeviling interpretations of Marxism in the Guides,

Readers and Glossaries of Literary Terms. They are but partly due to deliberate

falsification. The facile equation of Marxism with the programme/s of some political

party/parties is an example of such misinterpretation. Marxism is not, as Lenin

emphasized, “a hide bound, petrified doctrine,” but an “integrated world outlook”. (“The

Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism”, Vol.1, Selected Works,

Moscow: Progress Publications, 1967, p.41). It “emerged as the direct and immediate

continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political

economy and socialism.” (Ibid.). ‘The greatest representatives,’ be it not forgotten,

include bourgeois philosophers and economists such as Hegel and Ricardo.

To narrow Marxism down to politics alone is to reduce its scope and trivialize

its content. Marx was the inheritor of the tradition of the German system-builders. Both

Kant and Hegel before him had written (or lectured) as much on aesthetics as on ethics,

logic, metaphysics, etc. They were out to create holistic systems of their own which

aimed at covering all aspects of nature and human activity.

We don’t know whether or not Marx had such a plan, but it is evident that a

world-outlook demands a view on aesthetics as well. Creativity is the very essence of

human endeavours. Man is endowed with a particular kind of creativity: he first

imagines, that is to say, creates something in his mind, and then translates it into practice,

that is, creates something in accordance with the preconceived plan. Even though a bee

or a beaver can excel man in engineering feats, such activity is programmed and built-in
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right from their birth. They cannot build the hive or the dam in any other way than what

is inherent in their instincts. Man alone can use his brain, imagine and plan in different

ways and embody his ideas in some recognizable form or other. (See Karl Marx, Capital,

Vol.1, Part III Ch.7 Section1, Moscow: Progress Publishers, n.d., pp.173-74.).

This is the crucial point of departure of Marxist aesthetics, and hence of Marxist

literary criticism, from other theories. Marx was never so sectarian or doctrinaire as to

think that the artistic excellence of any work of art is to be evaluated in relation to the

effectiveness of its content to the political movements of its time. On the other hand, he

asserted:

An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An

animal’s product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely

confronts his product. An animal forms things in accordance with the standard

and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce

in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply

everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms things in

accordance with the laws of beauty. (Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic

Manuscripts of 1844, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961,

pp.75-76.).

However, the fact remains that Marx never undertook to write a separate volume

on aesthetics or on the principles of literary criticism. He quoted from a wide range of

authors, ancient and contemporary, but almost always for the purpose of illustrating his

own theoretical formulations. But occasionally both Marx and Engels, the co-founder of

the Marxist system, displayed their awareness of the need for observing the norms of art

that Marx acknowledged as ‘the laws of beauty’. Engels, too, did not write exclusively

on literature. But some of his letters dealing with some contemporary novels and plays,

shed welcome light on his view on art and literature. The successors of Marx and Engels,
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V. I. Lenin, Mao Ze-Dong and others were all avid readers of literature but had neither

the time nor the inclination to formulate Marxist principles of literary criticism.

Yet, a more or less coherent approach to literature that may be called ‘Marxist’

did emerge in course of time and has now been accepted along with many literary

theories current in our time, namely structuralism, deconstruction criticism, feminism,

reader response, cultural materialism/new historicism and colonial and post-colonial

studies.

But we notice something very curious here. As any Reader or survey of literary

theories will show, Marxist literary theory begins not with Marx but with Georg Lukács

(1885-1971) and extends to such recent expositors as Terry Eagleton and Fredric

Jameson. Some editors cannot decide whether Mikhail Bakhtin and Theodore Adorno

should be classified as Marxists. (Some consider even Jaques Derrida to be a Marxist,

although, thank God, he has not so far been included among the Marxist literary critics).

The picture is rather hazy, particularly so because most of the editors of the Readers and

authors of glossaries and specialists in literary theory have no more than a nodding

acquaintance with the classics of Marxism and the works of a host of Marxist critics who

preceded Lukács and Adorno.

Marxist approach to literature (I would hesitate to call it a theory) can be gathered

from stray remarks and casual comments on some literary works found in Marx-Engels

correspondence and in their books on economics and philosophy. There are also a

number of memoirs by their friends and relatives which record Marx’s views on some

eminent authors, both German and non-German, and his dislike of some others. Marx

was, to use two fancy words, both polyglot and polymath, which means he knew several

languages and was well conversant with many branches of knowledge. A doctor of

philosophy from the University of Jena, he was reared in the prevailing atmosphere of

hellenomania in Germany. Aeschylus was his favourite author, so much so that he used
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to read all his seven plays every year as a matter of routine (N.B. Aeschylus was,

politically speaking, an arch reactionary, staunchly opposed to democracy). Among the

moderns, Marx’s most favourite author was Balzac. (N.B. Balzac was a monarchist and

seldom entertained any ‘politically correct’ idea).

Engels, on the contrary, never went to any University. He was a self-taught man

(those who prefer Latin to English may call him an autodidact). And yet like Marx, he,

too, was both polyglot and polymath. Never having the advantage of a classical

education, he developed a marked preference for German folk-poetry and folk-song.

Like Marx he, too, was an admirer of Goethe. Balzac was also his favourite, but he did

not think very highly of Zola, the naturalist.

If one collects all the observations made by Marx and Engels on literature in

general and on individual authors in particular, one may form an overall view of their

canons of judgement mostly delivered obiter dicta (said in passing). But that would be

confined to the assessment of two persons and their choice. It will not give any insight

into literary theory as such.

A more prudent way to reconstruct the Marxist approach to literature is to start

from Marx’s unfinished introduction to his Grundrisse (1858, published posthumously)

and his “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).

Together they provide the philosophical (materialist) position of Marx as applied to the

economic basis of society and the superstructure built on it. The basis represents being:

the superstructure, consciousness. That being precedes consciousness is a cardinal tenet

of materialist philosophy.

The metaphor, however, is rather misleading inasmuch as it encourages one to

imagine a multistoried building founded on a stable and unchanging base. Marx’s

attitude, on the contrary, is basically dialectical. The superstructure is not inert and

immutable: it can and does interact with the base – it is not a one-way affair. The
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economic life conditions expressions of art, a manifestation of the superstructure. But

that is not the whole story. The economic base is also modified by the world of

consciousness which more often than not lags behind and retards the economic process.

One of the charges brought against Marx is that

there is a contradiction in expecting a work of literature faithfully to represent the

society from which it has emerged, and at the same time demanding that it

radically take its part in moving the world onwards from the condition it describes

(Hicks and Hutchins, op. cit.).

Only a critic who is blind to the dialectical interaction between the worlds of being and

consciousness will find any contradiction in the Marxist approach. The art of any epoch,

like the civil and criminal codes, will reflect the existing socio-economic relations, and its

turn will also affect the relations themselves. This is the basic point to be remembered

about the Marxist approach.

Marx’s and Engels’s letters to Ferdinand Lassalle (dt. 19 April and 18 May 1859

respectively), provide another starting point. Lassalle had written a poetic drama and

sought the views of his two comrades. Neither Marx nor Engels really liked the play.

They detected many shortcomings in prosody, plotting and characterization. It was in

course of pointing out these faults that the idea of what Marx and Engels considered to be

literary excellence and the response it generates also comes out.

Marx, at the very outset, writes:

[I]t greatly excited me on first reading and it will therefore produce this effect in a

still higher degree on readers who are governed more by their feelings. (Marx-

Engels, On Literature and Art, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976, p.98).

So, you see, Marx finds nothing wrong in the excitement produced by a play. It is

the most natural reaction to be expected. It is all the more interesting in view of the fact

that Marx does not claim himself to be so much a man of feelings as of intellect. That the
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first duty of art is to move (Latin movere) has been acknowledged by critics since

“Longinus” (c. first century CE) and boldly proclaimed by Minturno (sixteenth

century) and Marx followed in their footsteps.

Engels concludes his letter as follows:

You see that I make very high, that is to say the very highest demands on your

work both from the aesthetic and historical points of view, and the fact that I

must do this to be able to make an objection here and there will be for you the

best proof of my approval. (Ibid., p.107. Italics in the original).

Both Marx and Engels were speaking tongue in cheek. They tried to balance their

adverse comments with some praise. But the point to be noted is that Marxist literary

criticism should have a sense of the historical context in which a work is produced as

well as aesthetic criteria.

These two, I venture to suggest, are the fundamentals of the Marxist approach to

literature. Let me now add a third.

In a letter to Margaret Harkness, a feminist novelist, Engels wrote in 1888:

I am far from finding fault with your not having written a point-blank socialist

novel, a “Tendenzroman” [problem novel], as we Germans call it, to glorify the

social and political views of the authors. That is not at all what I mean. The more

the opinion of the author remains hidden, the better for the work of art. The

realism I allude to may crop out even in spite of the author’s opinion. (Ibid., p.91).

Even such an a-historical attitude as ‘Art for Art’s sake’ and the theory of art as

‘significant form’ which privileges form over content arose out of a definite historical

context:

The ‘Art for Art’s sake’ attitude, which followed the Victorian vindication of

literature on so-called moral grounds, has held the stage in one form or another

ever since. It can be recognized as an evasion of the same issue that ate at the
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conscience of the Victorians, and it attempts to restore the issue by focussing on

the interest and excellencies of verbal and technical accomplishment, at the

expense of asserting the amount of worth-while endeavour which the novel

represents. … There is no scale of values applicable at all to those other qualities

of a novel that are indeed its justification in life. (Hyman Levy and Helen

Spalding, Literature for an Age of Science, London: Methuen, 1952, pp.138-39).

Therefore, to judge a work of art abstracted from its historical context is to go against the

grain of Marxist aesthetics.

Similarly, to exaggerate the importance of content over form and ignore the

aspect of pleasure, that is, its aesthetic appeal, amounts to vulgarizing Marxism. As

Arnold Kettle cautions the reader: “Any approach to literature that does not start from

the recognition of the pleasure we get from it must always be suspect.” (“Introduction”,

Shakespeare in a Changing World, ed. Arnold Kettle, London: Lawrence and Wishart,

1964, p.9).

You may grumble if I stop abruptly here. Constraints of time, however, forbid me from

proceeding further. Much remains unsaid. In any case, I will not dare to encapsulate all

the tenets of Marxist literary criticism in one lecture. I hope I have given you the starting

point. Now you may follow the course of development, choosing some British and

American Marxist critics before trying any continental writers. I would suggest that you

begin with Marxism and Poetry by George Thomson and Marxists on Literature. An

Anthology edited by David Craig. Then you may proceed to other British and American

Marxists (Arnold Kettle and Sidney Finkelstein, to name only two) and thereafter to

Georg Lukács and others. You may yourself judge then what Marxist literary criticism

is.
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Reading List:

1. Baxandall, Lee (ed.). Radical Perspectives in the Arts. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books, 1972.

2. Craig, David (ed.). Marxists on Literature. An Anthology. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books, 1975.

3. Finkelstein, Sidney. Who Needs Shakespeare? New York: International Publishers,

1975.

4. Fischer, Ernst. The Necessity of Art. A Marxist Approach. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books, 1963.

5. Kettle, Arnold. An Introduction to the English Novel. 2 vols. London: Hutchinson

University Library, 1951.

6. Prawer, S. S. Karl Marx and World Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1978.

7. Thomson, George. Marxism and Poetry. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House,

1962 (first published 1946).

8. West, Alick. ‘A Good Man Fallen Among Fabians’. London: Lawrence & Wishart,

1950.