History, Mode of Production. Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Alienation Theory Capitalism

1. Irliany
Marwah Dwipa
16 SAS C
MARXISM AND
NEO MARXISM

2. • Marxism is an understanding that follows the
views of Karl Marx. Marx compiled a great
theory relating to economic systems, social
systems, and political systems. Followers of
this theory are called Marxists. This theory is
the basis of the theory of modern
communism.
• Marxism is Marx’s form of protest against
capitalism. He assumed that the capital
accumulated money at the expense of the
proletariat.

3. • Class struggle originates out of the exploitation of one class
by another throughout history. During the industrial age the
struggle was between the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie)
and the industrial working class (the proletariat).
• In a capitalist system, the proletariat is always in conflict
with the capitalist class. This confrontation, according to
Marx, will finally result in replacing the system by socialism.
• One of fundamental concepts of classical Marxist thought
is the concept of base and superstructure which refers to
the relationship between the material means of production
and the cultural world of art and ideas.
• There is a straightforward deterministic relation in this
concepts between base and superstructure, so that literary
texts are seen as causally determined by the economic base.

4. • Marxism's theory is the basis of the theory of modern
communism originates from the works of 19th
century German Philosophers Karl Marx and his
friend Friedrich Engels.
• Marxist literary theory starts from the assumption that
literature must be understood in relation to historical
and social reality as interpreted from a Marxist
standpoint.
• Marxism tries to interpret the world based on the
concrete, natural world around us and the society we
live in (class struggle).
Marxism
(economic
determinism)
• Neo-Marxism is based on ideas initially projected by
Karl Marx. Marx believed that economic power led to
political power and that this is the key to
understanding societies..
• Neo-Marxists believe the economic system creates a
wealthy class of owners and a poor class of workers.
They also believe that certain social institutions such as
churches, prisons and schools have been created to
maintain the division between the powerful and the
powerless.
Neo -
Marxism
(working-class)

5. Karl Marx was a German
philosopher, economist,
historian, sociologist, political
theorist, journalist and socialist
revolutionary. Marx was born
on 5 May 1818 at Brückengasse
664 in Trier, a town then part
of the Kingdom of Prussia's
Province of the Lower Rhine.
Was died on 14 March 1883
(aged 64) London, England,
United Kingdom. Marx was
ethnically Jewish.
KARL MARX

6. 28 November 1820 - 5
August 1895. Was a
German philosopher,
communist, social
scientist, journalist and
businessman.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

7. • According to Marxists, literature reflects social
institutions out of which it emerges. Therefore,
literature also reflects an author’s own class or
analysis of class relations.
• Literature itself is a social institution with a particular
ideological function.
• The Marxist critic regards literature as the product of
material/historical conditions. A text reflects the
existing ideology of the certain society. It also shows
the relationship between the ideology and people.
MARXISM ON LITERATURE

8. • To Marxism, ‘ideology is the ruling ideas
of the ruling class’ or the belief system,
and all belief systems are the products of
cultural conditioning.
• For example, capitalism, communism,
religion, etc. are not ‘innocent’ but are
‘determined’ (shaped) by the nature of the
economic base known as economic
determinism.

9. ● In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature,
but also upon one another. They produce only by working together in a
specified manner and reciprocally exchanging their activities.
● In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to
one another, and only within these social connections and relations does
their influence upon nature operate (where production take place).
● Classes emerge only at a certain stage in the development of the
productive forces and the social division of labour. Marx distinguishes the
classes in society into Bourgeoisie, Proletariat, Lumpenproletariat,
Landlords, and Peasantry and Farmers.
CLASSES

10. A. Bourgeoisie
The class of people in bourgeois society who own the social means of production and buy
labour power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat. Petite bourgeoisie are
those who work and can afford to buy little labour power.
B. 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.
C. Lumpen proletariat
The outcasts of society such as the criminals, vagabonds, beggars, or prostitutes
without any political or class consciousness.
D. Landlords
A historically important social class who retain some wealth and power.
E. Peasantry and Farmers
A scattered class incapable of organizing and affecting socio-economic change, most of
whom would enter the proletariat while some would become landlords.

11. ● The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary
labour contained in it or by the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent
in producing it from start to finish. By socially necessary is meant the amount
needed to produce, and reproduce, a commodity under average working
conditions.
● For Marx, the labour theory of value is a form of consciousness which is
“natural” on the basis of social relations founded on commodity production.
● Example: Nike shoes, produced by sweated labour in “free trade zones” by
people who do not earn enough in a week to buy one pair of the shoes they
produce in five minutes, while Michael Jordan (whose name is used for
product name in the brand) is paid more than the entire Indonesian labour
force for lending his name to the product.
LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE

12. ● Alienation is the process whereby people become foreign to the world they
are living in.
● Marx had a specific understanding of the very sharp experience of
alienation which is found in modern bourgeois society.
● Marx insisted that it was human labour which created culture and history, not
the other way around.
● Marx went on to show that the specific form of labour characteristic of
bourgeois society, wage labour, corresponds to the most profound form of
alienation.
● Since wage workers sell their labour power to earn a living, and the capitalist
owns the labour process, the product of the workers’ labour is in a very real
sense alien to the worker. It is not her product but the product of the capitalist.
The worker makes a rod for her own back.
ALIENATION

13. 1. From the Product
The labourers are not able to purchase the product they make
for their company/employer. Company hires labourers, or
employees, to craft or assemble products for them. In exchange
for the labour lent by the employees, the company would pay
wages. But the amount of nett wages paid to the employees are
not the same value as the products made during the work, so
the employees are still not able to consume the product they
make at work.
KINDS OF ALIENATION OF LABOURERS

14. 2. From Labouring
This happens when labourers do not work willingly, or hate their job. They
work only because they have only two options: work there or starve.
3. From Other Labourers
Labourers would see other labourers as their competitor in the working
society, because they are “lending” their labour power for the same thing:
wages. Labourers would compete with other labourers for higher wages,
in order to fulfill their need of commodities.
4. From Gattungswesen (species-essence)
This happens when labourers are unable to do what they want to achieve
what they want. Labourers work to generate value for their employers, not
for themselves, and they do works assigned to them, not the works , that
they want to do. In short, labourers are alienated from their logic of
intentions.

15. • Marx identifies production as essential for human
existence, because production is a social activity.
• He articulated the concept of mode of production:
“The mode of production in material life determines
the general character of the social, political, and
spiritual processes of life”
• “modes” of production = different type of society
• The system of class division is dependent on mode
of production.
Mode of Production

16. Marx considered that the way
people relate to the physical
world and the way people
relate to each other socially
are bound up together in
specific and necessary ways:
“men [who] produce cloth,
linen, silk...also produce the
‘social relations’ amid which
they prepare cloth and linen”.
People must consume to
survive, but to consume they
must produce and in
producing they necessarily
enter into relations which
exist independently of their
will.

17. In the writings of Karl Marx and the Marxist theory of
historical materialism, a mode of production is a
specific combination of the following:
• Productive forces: these include human labour power and
means of production (e.g. tools, productive machinery,
commercial and industrial buildings, other infrastructure,
technical knowledge, materials, plants, animals and
exploitable land).
• Social and technical relations of production: these
include the property, power and control relations governing
society's productive assets (often codified in law),
cooperative work relations and forms of association,
relations between people and the objects of their work and
the relations between social classes.

18. Base
Base refers to the forces and relations of production—to all the
people, relationships between them, the roles that they play, and the
materials and resources involved in producing the things needed by
society.
Superstructure
Superstructure, quite simply and expansively, refers to all other
aspects of society. It includes culture, ideology (world views, ideas,
values, and beliefs), norms and expectations, identities that people
inhabit, social institutions (education, religion, media, family, among
others), the political structure, and the state (the political apparatus
that governs society). Marx argued that the superstructure grows out
of the base, and reflects the interests of the ruling class that controls
the base (called the “bourgeoisie”).
The Social Superstructure

19. From a sociological
standpoint, it’s important to
recognize that neither the
base nor the superstructure is
naturally occurring, nor are
they static. They are both
social creations (created by
people in a society), and both
are the accumulation of social
processes and interactions
between people that are
constantly playing out,
shifting, and evolving.
So, base shapes the social
Superstructures and
controlled by ruling class

20. Type of Mode of Production
1. Primitive Communism
• Marx and Engels often referred
to the "first" mode of production
as primitive communism that can
be defined as a concept where
all hunter-gatherer societies are
traditionally based on social
relations and shared ownership.
• In Marx's model of
socioeconomic structures,
societies with primitive
communism had no hierarchical
social class structures or capital
accumulation.

21. • In a primitive communist society,
all able bodied persons would
have engaged in obtaining food,
and everyone would share in what
was produced by hunting and
gathering.
• There would be no private
property, which is distinguished
from personal property such as
articles of clothing and similar
personal items, because primitive
society produced no surplus; what
was produced was quickly
consumed.
• All work together for common
good.

22. • The Asiatic mode of production first used to explain pre-
slave and pre-feudal large earthwork constructions in
India, the Euphrates and Nile river valleys (and named on
this basis of the primary evidence coming from greater
"Asia").
• The Asiatic mode of production is said to be the initial form
of class society, where a small group extracts social
surplus through violence aimed at settled or unsettled
band and village communities within a domain.
• The ruling class of this society is generally a semi-
theocratic aristocracy which claims to be the incarnation of
Gods on earth.
• The forces of production associated with this society
include basic agricultural techniques, massive
construction, irrigation, and storage of goods for social
benefit (granaries).
2. The Asiatic Mode of Production

23. The primary property form of this mode is the
direct religious possession of communities
(villages, bands, and hamlets, and all those
within them) by the gods: in a typical
example, three-quarters of the property would
be allotted to individual families, while the
remaining quarter would be worked for the
theocracy

24. 3. Ancient (slave) Mode of Production
Classical Greek and Roman societies are the most typical
examples of this antique mode of production. The forces of
production associated with this mode include advanced (two field)
agriculture, the extensive use of animals in agriculture, industry
(mining and pottery), and advanced trade networks. It is differentiated
from the Asiatic mode, in that property forms included the direct
possession of individual human beings(slavery); while the ruling class
usually avoids the more outlandish claims of being the direct
incarnation of a God and prefers to be the descendants of Gods, or
seeks other justifications for its rule, including varying degrees of
popular participation in politics.
It was, however, not democracy but rather the universalising
of its citizenship that eventually enabled Rome to set up a
Mediterranean-wide urbanised empire, knit together by roads,
harbours, lighthouses, aqueducts, and bridges, and with engineers,
architects, traders and industrialists fostering interprovincial trade
between a growing set of urban centres with Slaves do most of work.

25. 4. Feudal Mode of Production (Feudalism)
• The fall of the Western Roman Empire
returned most of Western Europe to
emerged the Feudal production mode
which characterized by the production of
material goods by exploited peasants.
Between the 9th and 15th centuries, during
the Middle Ages, feudalism was developed
in Western Europe as a social, political
and economic system. It expanded to
Eastern Europe when the Modern Age
arrived, between the fifteenth and
eighteenth centuries.
• These goods were produced by serfs and
peasants, who were exploited by their
masters and owners of the lands. The
feudal system was characterized by
decentralizing the political power of the
king or emperor. The aristocratic class
became autonomous and thus the nobility
was founded.

26. Economic Base :
• Forces of production
Agricultural Production
• Relations of production
Landlords and peasants
For Marx, what defined feudalism
was the power of the ruling class
(the aristocracy) in their control of
arable land, leading to a class
society based upon the
exploitation of the peasants who
farm these lands, typically under
serfdom and principally by
means of labour, produce and
money rents. Marx thus defined
feudalism primarily by its
economic characteristics.

27. 5. Capitalist Mode of Production
• Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the feudal system was
increasingly punctuated by the growth of free cities, the
change of money from slave labor, the replacement of feudal
hosts by mercenaries, and the divorce of ownership of land
tenure.
• The capitalist mode of production refers to the systems of
organizing production and distribution within capitalist
societies. Private money-making in various forms (renting,
banking, merchant trade, production for profit and so on)
preceded the development of the capitalist mode of
production as such. The capitalist mode of production
proper, based on wage-labour and private ownership of the
means of production and on industrial technology, began to
grow rapidly in Western Europe from the Industrial
Revolution, later extending to most of the world

28. Under the capitalist mode of production:
• Both the inputs and outputs of production are mainly privately
owned, priced goods and services purchased in the market.
• Production is carried out for exchange and circulation in the
market, aiming to obtain a net profit income from it.
• The owners of the means of production (capitalists) are the
dominant class (bourgeoisie) who derive their income from
the surplus product produced by the workers and
appropriated freely by the capitalists.
• A defining feature of capitalism is the dependency on wage-
labor for a large segment of the population; specifically, the
working class (proletariat) do not own capital and must live by
selling their labour power in exchange for a wage
• Capitalism’s Economic Base
Force of Production Relations of productions
- Industrialism - Capitalist and proletarians

29. The Marxist definition of socialism is a mode of production
where the sole criterion for production is use-value and
therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity.
Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious
economic planning, while distribution of economic output is
based on the principle of to each according to his
contribution. The social relations of socialism are
characterized by the working class effectively owning the
means of production and the means of their livelihood,
through one or a combination of cooperative enterprises,
common ownership, or worker's self-management.
6. Socialist Mode of Production
No classes : Equality

30. 7. Communist Mode of Production
• Socialism is the mode of production which Marx considered
will succeed capitalism, and which will itself ultimately be
succeeded by communism - the words socialism and
communism both predate Marx and have many definitions
other than those he used, however - once the forces of
production outgrew the capitalist framework.
• Communism is the final mode of production that happened
based on the conflict between the working class and the
capitalist class as the root of all problems in society; and
that this situation will ultimately be resolved through a
social revolution.
• The revolution will put the working class in power and in
turn establish social ownership of the means of production,
which according to Marx, is the primary element in the
transformation of society towards communism.
• Ways of thinking: the end of ideologies, truth emerges

31. From capitalism to communism: Revolution
• The forces of production develop, this leads to a change in
relations of production
• Capitalism riddled with contradictions
• The proletariat come to know that they are exploited, they
organize themselves and overthrow the bourgeois class and
the capitalist system in a revolution
Economical Base in Communism
o Forces of production
 Highly developed
 Machine doing a lots of work
 Humane working freely and creatively together
o Relation of production
 Classes abolished
 All work together in cooperation
 All contribute to society, everyone gets what they need

32. DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

33. ● Dialectics means two or more things are constantly affecting each other, back
and forth, until they reach a culmination of some sort. In idealism, this
culmination is the synthesis of a thesis and antithesis. In materialism, this
culmination is revolution as a result of contradictions in the means and relations
of production.
● Revolution occurs when internal contradictions within a society’s base create
“dissenting forces” within the superstructure. When these dissenting forces
reach critical mass, they will destroy the old base and replace it with a new
one.
● This is why social movements and ideologies that challenge the base are often
crushed the dominant powers of the superstructure. For example, the hippie
movement, Black Lives Matter, etc.
● This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must continue: there will
always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working) classes. This
conflict will be reflected in literature and other forms of expression: art, music,
movies, etc.

34. ● Marxist follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic.
This belief system maintains that what drives historical change are
the material realities of the economic base of society, rather than the
ideological superstructure of politics, law, philosophy, religion, and art
that is built upon that economic base.
● Materialism in this sense means that the world and human society is
made up of material things. This was Marx’s alternative to Hegel’s
Idealism, which holds that things are the way they are because of
our ideas. Idealism holds that there is no “objective reality” and that
reality is in some way dependent on the human mind.

35. ● For example, idealists might posit that Europeans were able
to colonize the rest of the world because Europeans are
somehow inherently superior, or ordained by God to do so.
That is a form of idealism as it is based on “ideas” about the
world, and about people.
● The materialist explanation for European imperial/colonial
domination is that European cultures, due to their close
proximity to each other which facilitated trade, exchange, and
competition, reached higher levels of technological
achievement than most other parts of the world, which they
then leveraged into military domination.

36. REIFICATION AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS.
(13 April 1885 - 4 June 1971)

37. ● Lukács sees literature as reflecting socio-economic reality, but
he rejected the view that there was a simple deterministic
relationship between the two. He argues that the greatest literary
works do not merely reproduce the dominant ideologies of their
time but include in their form a critique of these ideologies.
● Like other Marxist, Lukács was concerned with all the people. He
didn't want novels about one person's petty problems; he
wanted novels that explored big social, political, and economic
issues.
● Lukacs also focused on some of the nitty gritty issues in
Marxism, such as the alienation of people in a capitalist society,
the class struggle, and other pet subjects.

38. ● “Reification” is a process in which social relations are
considered as inherent attributes of the people
involved, or attributes of some products of the
relationship, such as commodities traded.
● Reification occurs when human creation is specifically
misunderstood as "natural facts, the results of cosmic
law, or manifestations of divine will.”
REIFICATION

39. • Lukács commenced with the Marxian concept of commodity
fetishism, which he characterized as “the central, structural
problem of capitalist society”.
• A commodity is at base a relation among people that, they come
to believe, takes on the character of a thing and develops an
objective form. People in their interaction with nature in
capitalist society produce various products, or commodities (for
example, bread, automobiles, motion pictures).
• Commodity fetishism is a perception of social relations involved
in production not as a relationship between people, but as an
economic relationship between money and commodities
exchanged in market trade. Thus, commodity fetishism changes
subjective aspects, abstracts from economic values ​​into
objectives, real things that people believe have intrinsic value.
• The crucial difference between the fetishism of commodities and
reification lies in the extensiveness of the two concepts.
Whereas the former is restricted to the economic institution, the latter
is applied by Lukács to all of society—the state, the law, and the
economic sector.

40. The same dynamics apply in all sectors of capitalist
society:
People become convinced that social structures have
their own lives, and as a result the structure finally has
an objective character. Lukács describes this process:
• Man in capitalist society confronts a reality “made”
by himself (as a class) which appears to him to be a
natural phenomenon alien to himself; he is wholly at
the mercy of its “laws”; his activity is confined to the
exploitation of the inexorable fulfillment of certain
individual laws for his own (egoistic) interests.

41. ● As he saw it, Bourgeoisie only cared about economic
comforts. They could only understand the world through
their own limited perspective, which means that they saw
the proletariat only through middle-class eyes, which
made the working class not people with imaginations and
perspectives of their own but "reified" objects.
● For the bourgeoisie, the workers were just makers of
things, entities who were valued to the extent that they
were able to produce commodities and make the rich
richer. In fact, the bourgeoisie saw everything as an
object and a commodity.

42. ● In 1923, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist
Dialectics made Lukács career that is talk about how each
social class has its own consciousness to which it aspires.
● Every class has a false consciousness opposed to class
consciousness. If you're a member of the bourgeoisie, this
probably means that you're all into the idea of having two kids,
some nice furniture, and a nicer car than the Joneses.
● Class consciousness is what happens when you get rid of this
false consciousness and come to an understanding of your
class's place in the overall process of history.
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

43. • If you are not born with class consciousness—you
have to struggle to achieve it. The proletariat was
lucky because it had a how-to guide with the
Communist Manifesto, which could guide them to a
life opposed to capitalism and help them understand
their place in history. As for the bourgeoisie—they
were on their own, with their false ideals and
illusions.

44. THE AUTHOR AS PRODUCER
Walter Benjamin
15 July 1892 - 26 Sept 1940

45. • Benjamin argues that a truly revolutionary art must break
radically with traditional forms since even works which use
conventional techniques to attack capitalism will tend merely
to be consumed by a bourgeois audience.
• In “”The Author as Producer”,” Walter Benjamin seeks to
define the role of the author as a member of a society who
inexorably must address class struggle.
• To Benjamin, the concept of the author must be rethought
since s/he is part of an industry whose framework is defined
by mode of production. Unable to escape the class conflict
that circumscribes the writing process, the author, whether
s/he is aware of it, chooses sides.

46. • Benjamin clearly calls for the author to choose
one side
• “[The author’s decision], made on the basis of a
class struggle, is to side with the proletariat”
(220). In its totality, Benjamin’s essay
underscores the ways in which the author can
successfully side with proletariat without
compromising his/her intentions.

47. ILLUSION AND REALITY
Christopher Caudwell
1907 - 1937

48. • The subject of his theory is poetry
• The development of class society breaks down the
old collectivity and the artist becomes differentiated
from the group. Individual artists replace group art.
Art is divorced from the nitty-gritty of everyday
economic concerns
• Caudwell thinks it is because the economic base of
developing capitalism which the first group
represents (the bourgeois foundation) is reflected in
their works. They are spokesmen of their times
when the feudal world view was under attack by a
new economic class whose outlook they reflected.

49. To sum up, while Benjamin thinks that writers have
to produce a work that the audience, the bourgeois,
would enjoy, Caudwell thinks that writers can
produce a work to what they desire; based on what
they currently feeling or thinking. This rather makes
his argument a writer-oriented one.

50. Louis Althusser
(16 October 1918 - 22 October 1990)

51. ● He combined Marxism with the scientifically oriented
methods of Structuralism in his essay, Ideology and
the Ideological State Apparatuses (1970) and
analysed how the dominant systems enforce their
control by subtly forming their subjects through
ideology.
● Althusser did not agree with Engels concept of Ideology
as “false consciousness”. He defines ideology as
“representation of the imaginary relationship of
individuals to their real conditions of existence.”
● He adds that a great work of literature is not merely a
product or reflection of ideology; it creates for the
reader a distance from which to recognise and expose
“the ideology from which it is born… from which it
detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes.

52. ●In Althusser’s opinion, the social structure is not
monolithic, but consists of a variety of
“nonsynchronous” social formations or “Ideological
State Apparatuses” (ISAs), various of institutions in
ideological practice including religious, political,
educational, media, legal and literary institutions and
agents which our values, desires, and preferences
are embedded in people.
●The ISAs function in a concealed and a symbolic
manner. No single ISA produces the belief in people
that they are self-conscious agents; instead, they gain
this belief in the learning process of what it means to
be a daughter, a schoolchild, a black and so forth.

53. ISAs foster an ideology that will be sympathetic to the
desires of the state and conducive to the political
status quo. Thus, the power of the state is
maintained by the ISA in a very subtle manner
through the internal aggreement or ‘willing
compliance’ of the citizens.
In contrast to ISA, there are the working of RSAs
(“Repressive State Apparatuses”) or “repressive
structures” which produce involuntary compliance by
direct external force. An example of RSA are
institutions as the Police force and the army.

54. ● The RSA functions as a unified entity, an organized
whole, as opposed to the ISA which is diverse and
plural even when they are united by the fact that
they are ultimately controlled by the ruling ideology. .
● The most distinguishable difference between ISA and
RSA is that the RSA functions predominantly by
means of repression and violence and secondarily
by ideology whereas the ISA functions predominantly
by ideology and secondarily by repression and
violence.

55. TOWARDS A SCIENCE OF THE TEXT
Terry Eagleton
February 22, 1943

56. • Terry Eagleton is a Marxist critic of long standing but his more
recent work has engaged with Althusserian Marxism and post-
structuralism without rejecting traditional Marxian concepts.
• Thus, he retains the Marxian concept of ideology but modifies
traditional Marxian formulations and argues that the relation of the
literary text to ideology should be seen in terms of
'overdetermination'.
• Terry Eagleton brought out a Marxist account of Emily Bronte‘s
Wuthering Heights in his book, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study
of the Brontes. In Criticism and Ideology (1976), he argues that a
literary text is not merely an expression of ideology, but the
production of ideology.
• By “ideology”, he does not necessarily mean political or Marxist
ideology, but the whole systems and theories of representation that
would make up the picture of a person’s experiences. Also, he
examines various ideologies outside the text and the particular
ideology of a text.