1st Quarter Discipline and Ideas in the Social

Sciences Week 3
Lesson: Marxism

I. Preliminaries
A. Content Standards:
The learner demonstrates understanding of key concepts and approaches in the
Social Science.

B. Performance Standards
The learner is able to interpret personal and social experiences using relevant
approaches in the Social Sciences; and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of
the approach.

C. Most Essential Learning Competencies

MARXISM
1. Analyze social inequalities in terms of class conflict

II. Content:

Marxism
 Concept Notes
Marxism

Begins in the 19th century as a pragmatic view of history that offered the working classes of
society an opportunity to change the world. It offered humanity a social, political, economic,
and cultural understanding of the nature of reality, society and the individual.
Karl Marx is the root of Marxist literary theory; born in tier, Germany in 1818; his
writings became the basis of Marxism Approach. According to Marxism:
• our place in the determine our consciousness
• study the relationship between a text and the society that reads it
• focuses on class relations and social conflict
• people’s experiences are responsible for shaping and developing an individual
personal’s consciousness

Marx articulates his views on the nature of reality in his works such as German Ideology,
The communist Manifesto and Des Capital.
A. The German Ideology (1845)
• Marx declares that consciousness does not determine life; life determines consciousness
• Humans define themselves
• He said that our ideas and concepts about ourselves fashioned in everyday discourse in
the language of real life
• Dialectical Materialism is the core belief of Marxism, were he believed that society had
progressed from one economic system to another. As society progresses from a feudal
system to a more market-based economy, the actual process from producing,
distributing and consuming goods becomes more complex. People’s functions within the
economic system become differentiated.
• There are two economic means of production within a society: base (engenders and
controls all human institutions and ideologies) and superstructure (all social and legal
institutions, political and educational systems, religions and art)
• There are four historical periods of Marxism: Feudalism (social system), Capitalism
(production for profit), Socialism (social ownership), and Communism (society’s
ultimate goal the worker’s paradise)

B. The Communist manifesto (1848) (Marx and Engels further develop Marxism ideas)
• Proletariat (class of society which does not have ownership of the means of production)
and Bourgeoisie (wealthy class that rules society)
• States that the history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle
• They declare that the capitalists, or the bourgeoisie, had successfully enslaved the
working class or the
proletariat through economic policies and production of goods
C. Des capital (1867)
• History became the basis for 20th century Marxism, socialism and communism
• History, an understanding of people and their actions and beliefs is determined by economic
conditions
• Marx maintains that an intricate web of social relationships emerges when any group of
people engage in the production of goods
• The ideology of a society such as the beliefs, values and culture is determined by the upper
class
• The rich become richer, while the poor become poorer

Russia and Marxism

• G.K. – Translated “The communist Manifesto”
• Russia – first country to promote Marxist principles
• Leon Trotsky – became the founding father of Marxist literary criticism as he authored
Literature and Revolution (1925)
• Georg Lukacs – believed that a detailed analysis of symbols, images and other literary
devices (formalism) would expose class conflict and expose the relationship between the
superstructure and the base
• Reflectionism is an approach to literary analysis declaring the texts directly reflect a
society’s consciousness and emphasizing negative effects of capitalism such as alienation
• The Frankfurt School is a Neo-Marxist group devoted to developing western Marxist
principles and a text reveals a culture’s fragmentation and not its wholeness
• Antonio Gramsci – he said that there is a complex relationship between the base and the
superstructure; the bourgeoisie establish and maintain what he calls hegemony; a
sustainers of the economic base, the dominant class thus enjoys the prestige of the
masses and controls the ideology that shapes individual consciousness; literature actually
concerns itself with the bourgeoisie
• Louis Althusser – developed the Production theory (the superstructure can and does
influence the base); he believes that the prevailing ideology forms the attitudes of people
in society through a process he calls interpellation or hailing the subject; the people’s
worldview is thus craftily shaped by a complex network of messages sent to them through
the elements contained in the superstructure, including the arts.
Activity 2: The Promoter
Get to know the most influential person who promoted communism.
Write a short biography about Karl Marx and understand how he came
to support the idea of communism as a variable form of leadership
structure.
 Concept Notes

Marxist Theorists Today

• Fredric Jameson believes that the function of literary analysis is to uncover the political
unconscious present in a text; he said that all critics must be aware of their own ideology
when analyzing a text and must therefore possess dialectical self-awareness
• Terry Eagleton believes that literature is neither a product of pure inspiration nor the product
of the author’s feelings; literature is a product of an ideology. This ideology is a result of the
social interactions that occur between people in definite times and locations; the critic’s
task is to reconstruct an author’s ideology

Assumptions
• Marxism is not a primarily a literary theory that can be used to interpret a text.
• It is a set of social, economic and political ideas that its followers believe will enable them
to interpret and more importantly, change the world
• Marxism is material, not spiritual
• All of our actions and responses to such activities are related in some way to our culture
• In order to understand ourselves and our world, we must first acknowledge the
interrelatedness of all our actions within the society
• It is our cultural and our social circumstances that determine who we are
• The structure of our society is built on a series of ongoing conflicts between social classes
• Capitalists control the society’s ideology or social consciousness (hegemony)
• The focus of literature is the relationship of as society’s superstructure tp other elements
and to the base.
• Marxism addresses the cry of working class

Methodology
• Marxism methodology are consists of Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat, Class Struggle
and Ideology expressed by an Author
• Concerns for the working classes and the individual
• Recognizing the interrelatedness of all human activities
• Deals with more than the conventional literary themes, matters of style, plot,
characterization and the usual emphasis on figures of speech and other literary devices

Concerns of Marxism
• Author’s life
• Time/period in which the text was written
• Cultural milieu
• Ideology expressed by the author

Ideology
• Expressed by the author, as evidenced through his/her fictional world, and how this
ideology interacts with the reader’s personal ideology
• Expose class conflict with the dominant class and its ideology being imposed
• The task of the critic is to uncover the ideology and show how such a destructive
ideology entraps the working classes and oppresses them in every area of their lives
• A critic may begin by showing how an author’s text reflects his/her ideology through an
examination of the fictional world’s characters
• It could also be by examining the history and the culture of the times reflected in the text

THINGS TO REMEMBER:
MARXISM – to define Marxism in simple terms, it’s political and economic theory
where a society has no classes. Every person within the society works for a
common good, and class struggle is theoretically gone
Activity 3: Pros and Cons
List five advantages and five disadvantages
of governing through communism and
answer the question below.
 Activity 4: Connect…Society…Myself

Directions: Answer the following questions

1. How clearly do narratives of disillusionment and defeat indicate that

bourgeoisie values are incompatible with human happiness?
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2. In portraying society, what approximation of totality does the author achieve? What
is emphasized? What is ignored?
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