Karl Marx introduced Marxism.
Most Marxist critics who wrote during what can be called early Marxist literary criticism adhered to what has come to be known as "vulgar Marxism."
A literary text can be viewed as one register of any society's superstructure based on that society's economic base.
Literature, therefore, reflects the economic base rather than the social institutions.
A society's economic base shapes its social institutions and relationships.
The theories of class struggle, politics, and economics formed the basis of Marxist literary criticism.
Marxist critics believe that works of literature are simply products of history that can be analyzed by examining the social and material conditions in which they were produced.
Marxist criticism posits that literature is ideological and can be analyzed through the Base-Superstructure model.
A literary work is analyzed from a Marxist perspective in the context of class and assumptions about class.
Marx's Capital states that "the mode of production of material life determines the social, political, and intellectual life processes altogether. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being, that determines their consciousness."
The author's social situation determines various text elements.
It includes characters that develop, the political ideas displayed, and the developed economic statements.
Marxists believe that even literature has an ideological function based on its author's background and ideology.
Terry Eagleton, an English literary critic and cultural theorist, defines Marxist criticism as follows: "Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and, meanings. But it also means grasping those forms styles and meanings as the product of a particular history."
The main instruments of Marxist criticism are class struggle and relations of production.
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