Marxism

-Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

•Notion that whoever owns the means of production in a society controls society itself.

•Forces of production shape a society à in owning the means of production, one dictates what society is.

•Society is basically divided into two groups: the BOURGEOISIE and the PROLETARIAT.

-In a capitalist society, there will always be a class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

•What kind of social commentary does Of Mice and Men make about the situation in America?

•How do the characters in Of Mice and Men represent different social classes in accordance to Marxism?

•How do certain characters express their power?

•What does the ‘dream of the farm’ represent in accordance to a Marxist framework? Do other characters have other ‘dreams’?

•Alienation = capitalist process whereby the worker feels detached, ‘foreign’ to the products of his/her labor. Results from selling one’s labor-power for a wage, as if it were a property.

•Commodity = “an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind” and is then exchanged for something else.

•Use-value VS Exchange-value = usefulness of a commodity VS worth of the commodity in the market, where it is compared

  - use-value: related to the physical properties of the commodity; material uses that fulfill human needs

  - exchange-value: capitalist deformation of use-value through the mediation of market money (which itself commercializes with labor power – the more labor it takes to produce a product, the greater its exchange-value)

•Proletariat = lower/working classes that under capitalism must sell their labor to earn a living, thus becoming alienated.

•Ideology = the ideas, values and feelings by which men experience their societies and cultures at various times

•Base and superstructure

•Capitalism = socio-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of labor force.

•Historical materialism = based on idea that material condition and productive capacity of a society determine human consciousness and relations

•Private property = ownership of means of production (* not to confuse with personal property)

•Infrastructure = base: the economic structure of society, based on capitalist ‘forces’ and ‘relations’ of production

•Superstructure: certain forms of law and politics, a certain kind of state determined by the infrastructure, whose essential function is to legitimate the power of the social class which owns the means of economic production. 

  It also consists of certain ‘definite forms of social consciousness’ (political, religious, ethical, aesthetic, etc.), that is, IDEOLOGY

•Should not be conceived as a set of doctrines

•it signifies the way men live out their roles in class society

•it signifies the values, ideas and images which tie men to their social functions and so prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole

•in a way, it shows a man making sense of his experience in ways that prohibit a true understanding of his society, ways that are consequently false, (American Dream?)

GEORG LUKÀCS
•Importance of the sense of ‘totality’ in the literary piece

•Support of REALISM and its adherence to the TYPICALITY of character

•TYPICALITY:

-Also supported by Engels

-A ‘typical’ or ‘representative’ character represents historical forces without ceasing to be individualized

-Combination of typicality & individuality in character development

•PROGRESSIVE ART: whatever the writer’s political allegiance, it realizes the vital ‘world-historical’ forces of an epoch which make for change and growth, revealing their unfolding potential in the fullest complexity.

PIERRE MACHEREY

•Concept of ‘DECENTERED’ FORM

-a work is tied to ideology not so much by what it says as by what it does not say. It is in the significant silences of a text, in its gaps and absences, that the presence of ideology can be most positively felt.

-the author finds himself forced to reveal the limits of ideology within which he writes. à the writer produces gaps and silences, what it is unable to articulate

-The critic’s task is not to fill the work in à it is to seek the principle of the conflict and its meanings, and to show how this conflict is produced by the work’s relation to ideology. He is to make the silences ‘speak’.