Marxism and Critical

Theory
WMSU
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND

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Where did Marxism came
from?
• Marxism arose from the ideas of Karl Marx, a
German radical philosopher and economist, with
significant contributions from his friend and
associate Friedrich Engels.

• The Communist Manifesto (1848) was written by

Marx and Engels, and it outlined their theory of
historical materialism and predicted the ultimate
defeat of capitalism by the industrial proletariat.
Both the second and third volumes of Marx's
study and critique of capitalism, Das Kapital,
were edited by Engels and released after Marx's
death.

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Marxism and Critical Theory

• Marxism is a corpus of ideology created in the mid-nineteenth century by Karl

Marx and, to a lesser degree, Friedrich Engels

• Marxism helped to consolidate, inspire, and radicalize elements of the labour and socialist
movements in Western Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and it later served as the
foundation for Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, the revolutionary doctrines developed by
Vladimir Lenin in Russia and Mao Zedong in China, respectively. It also influenced a more
moderate type of socialism in Germany, which served as the forerunner to modern social
democracy.

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 Notable Writings
WMSU

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• Marxism is a materialist philosophy that attempted to explain the universe through the physical, natural world around us
as well as the society in which we live. It contrasts with idealist philosophy, which imagines a spiritual realm beyond of
time and space that influences and directs the material world. In some ways, it attempted to shift people's thinking
backwards because it was such a departure from previous beliefs.

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Classical Marxism: Basic
Principles

• According to Marxism, society advances through

conflict between opposing forces. This conflict
between competing classes is what leads to
societal revolution. This class fight propels
history forward. Class conflict stems from the
exploitation of one class by another throughout
history. The feudal lords and peasants were at
odds throughout the feudal period, while the
capitalist class and the industrial working class
were at odds during the Industrial Age.

• The dialectic, which was devised by the 18th century

German philosopher Hegel, was another major term
employed by Marx. Hegel, an idealist philosopher,
introduced this phrase to describe the process by which
new ideas originate through the clash of competing
concepts.
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• Marxist dialectic may be defined as the science of the
general and abstract rules of nature, society, and
mental growth. It sees the cosmos as an integrated
totality in which everything is interrelated, rather than
as a collection of disparate objects.

The concept of base and superstructure, which refers to the

link between the material means of production and the cultural
realm of art and ideas, is one of the core conceptions of
traditional Marxist thinking. 8
 • Consider Mulk Raj Anand's works, which depict the lives of
untouchables, coolies, and regular labourers fighting for
their rights and self-esteem.

• In the end, his works demonstrate the filtering of bourgeois modernism in

Kerala culture and how it falls into a conflictual connection with feudal
beliefs. As a result, evidence of this link may be seen in different types of
cultural creation.
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Socialist Realism
• Socialist Realism emerged as the new communist
society's official aesthetic ideal. It was primarily
influenced by nineteenth-century aesthetics and
revolutionary politics.
• Raymond Williams identifies three
fundamental characteristics of
socialist realism.
These are Partinost, or the party's
dedication to the working-class cause,
Narodnost, or popularity, and
Klassovost, or the writer's loyalty to the
class interests.
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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.

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Further developments in
Marxist Aesthetics

• Outside of the mainstream, Marxist

critique grew in a number of European
nations. In the 1920s, Russian Formalism
arose as a fresh viewpoint influenced by
Marxism.

• Victor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky, and

Boris Eichenbaum were major members of
this group, and they published their
unique thoughts in Russian Formalist
Criticism: Four Essays, edited by Lee T.
Lemon and Marion J. Reis.

• The Illusions of Postmodernism (1990) and The Ideology of the Aesthetic

(1996). Marx asserted that change is the only constant phenomenon in our
universe.

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