The presentation is about the Marxism and many aspects related to it. The presentation can help you in literary theory and practice field.

1. Marxism
Ideological And Political Struggle
By Tahreem Akhter
National University Of Modern Languages

2. DEFINIGN IT
• Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of
historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations
and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation.
• In Marxism, we believe that society and its structure is the result of its inner and outer conflicts
between social classes.
• Marxism says that everything exists dynamic historical process. Marx and Engels called relation
‘VARHALTNISSE’.

3. MAJOR MARXIST THEORISTS
• Karl Marx
• Friedrich Engels
• George Lukács
• Antonio Gramsci
• Louis Althusser
• Frederic Jameson and Terry Eagleton

4. Karl Marx
• Karl Marx was born in Trier in 1818 and died as a political exile in London, 1883.
• When he had completed his studies at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, and
served his first political apprenticeship as an editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in
Cologne, 1842-43.
• “In Germany there is now nothing I can do,” Marx wrote to Ruge in January 1843.
“In Germany one can only be false to oneself.”
• He tried in vain to earn a living for his growing family by journalistic work and was
saved from starvation only by the untiring services of his lifelong friend and
collaborator.

5. FRIEDRICH ENGELS
• Friedrich Engels, who devoted the next eighteen years of his life to the hateful drudgery of “doggish
commerce,” mainly to help his friend to complete his great scientific work, Capital.
• When finally he was able to retire from business with enough money to secure freedom from financial
worries both for himself and Marx, it was almost too late.
• Though the main results of Marx’s ever widening and deepening studies had taken final shape in the first
volume published in 1867, the remaining parts of Capital were never completed.
• The incessant struggles and miseries inseparable from the life of an inflexible political emigrant had by 1873
finally worn out even that tremendous mental productivity which had been embodied in Marx, although he
went on for a further decade to pile up excerpts and notes for the future completion of his work and now
and then displayed the full vigour of the old days in such fully matured pieces of workmanship as the
Marginal Notes to the Gotha programmed of the German workers’ party in 1875 and the recently published
critical notes on the economic work of Adolf Wagner dated 1881-82.

6. George Lukacs
• The first major branch of Marxist theory to appear outside the Russia was
developed by Hungarian George Lukacs.
• He and His followers amended and borrowed Russian formalism. It reveals that the
text and books including images, symbols, and other literary devices carry class
struggle. And exposed relation between economic system of country with
superstructure.
• Reflect theory is coined by them which says that literary analysis declares that text
directly reflects society’s consciousness.
• VULGUR Marxism is introduced by Lukas where he said that the negative effect
of capitalism is on society. For example.. Alienation of society.

7. Antonio Gramsci
• Unlike George Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci said that the complex structure and
its relation are present between superstructure and base.
• Bourgeoise maintain their hegemony that is the assumption, value and
meaning that shape meaning and define reality for majority of people in a
given culture.
• It is because Bourgeoise maintain the economy base and establish all that
comprise the structure including music, literature, art and so on..

8. • HEGEMONY: For Gramsci Hegemony is the assumptions, values and meanings
that shape meaning and define reality for majority of people in a given culture.
• Italian Communist thinker, activist, and political leader Antonio Gramsci (1891-
1937) is perhaps the theorist most closely associated with the concept of hegemony.
• Gramsci’s “hegemony” refers to a process of moral and intellectual leadership
through which dominated or subordinate classes of post-1870 industrial Western
European nations consent to their own domination by ruling classes, As opposed to
being simply forced or coerced into accepting inferior positions.

9. • It is important to note that, although Gramsci’s prison writings typically avoid using Marxist terms such as
“class,” “bourgeoisie,” and “proletariat” (because his work was read by a Fascist censor), Gramsci defines
hegemony as a form of control exercised by a dominant class, in the Marxist sense of a group controlling the
means of production;
• Gramsci uses “fundamental group” to stand in euphemistically for “class” (SPN 5 n1).
• BOURSEOIE: For Gramsci, the dominant class of a Western Europe nation of his time was the
bourgeoisie, defined in the Communist Manifesto as “the class of modern Capitalists, owners of the means of
social production and employers of wage-labour,”
• PROLETARIAT: while the crucial (because potentially revolution-leading) subordinate class was the
proletariat, “the class of modern wage-labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are
reduced to selling their labour-power in order to live” (SPN 473 n5).
• Gramsci’s use of hegemony cannot be understood apart from other concepts he develops, including those
of “state” and “civil society” (see Caste in India).

10. Louis Althusser
• He is the one who rejects the assumption of reflection theory i.e., the
superstructure directly reflects the base.
• Production Theory he known for his statement, asserts that literature should
not be strictly relegated to the superstructure.
• Althusser believes dominated hegemony or prevailing ideology forms the
attitudes of people through a process he calls interpellation Or hailing the
subject.

11. Assumptions
• Marxism is not primary not a literary theory that uses to interpret the text critically.
• It is a cultural theory that embodies a set of social economic and political ideas that
its followers more importantly believe will enable them interpret and more
important, change their world.
• Marxism is material not spiritual. Its all limits and interpretations fall into the roots
of material world. Human all activities are related to development of society and
cultures but not to any ideal world. Ultimately answers of the human problems have
material causes but not any spiritual causes.

12. • Marxism asserts that the relation between the Superstructure and base will be
clear when we consider the capitalist United states.
• The capitalist United states have purse of string that provides power to
capitalisms or dominant class of society to hold the base or working class of
the society.

13. METHODOLOGY
• Marxism methodology is a dynamic process that maintains the proper
critique of a text can not exist without discussing the class struggle and the
hegemonic ideas of the society.
• The text is not the isolated material. It do reflects the assets of society and
what ever is going on in the society.
• The text do evolve the transition of culture and its political scenarios.
• The study of literature and society and its aspects are closely intrinsic and
bound to each other.