Marxism In Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley writes in his text Brave New World of the pitfalls of a society based on classes with those in the upper classes holding more power than those in the lower classes having virtually no power. He describes this system as the caste system. Throughout the novel Huxley utilizes many examples of class struggle, power vs. powerless, and going against the status quo, which portrays the basic principles of the Marxist Theory. Donald Hall defines Marxist principles in his article Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications when he states “According to Marx, society is stratified into three primary classes-the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat…”(Hall 74). Marxist theory about social classes …show more content…
An example used by Huxley that relates going against the status quo is when he writes “History is Bunk.”(Huxley 34). What Huxley means is that everyone in Brave New World should not have knowledge towards the past but instead they should have knowledge of the present. He wants his perfect society for the future and history from the past can ruin that. Those same people ignore history because if they appreciated what came before all of this technology, they would probably be less willing to put their trust into development and science. If an individual does not have emotions towards the human involvement than there is no point of them being a part of a society built on happiness. In other words, if people decided to look back into the past and see what type of things they did then they would probably not have that same faith in science and would revolutionize the way society. On the other hand, there are people who would challenge the status quo. In Donald Hall’s article he argues “Class conflict is necessary and inevitable from a Marxist standpoint, even if individual have been taught to accept the status quo.”(Hall 77). What Hall means is that challenging something such as the status quo is necessary because without class engagement nothing would ever change. What that does is it makes it seem like there is no room for improvement but in reality there is always room …show more content…
All classes are treated differently because of their income and their intelligence. One basic principle Huxley uses is when he writes “Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone. Even Epsilons…”(Huxley 91). Huxley is trying to say that in his society everyone is useful. Without the lower class it slows down production which makes it harder for everyone to work. High alphas would have to keep track of all productivity and low betas would probably be working with the low deltas and gammas. Even though everyone works for everyone alphas take all the credit and they assume they are working for everyone else but in reality the epsilons are doing all the work. So all the credit Alphas get should go to the lowest class because they are the one breaking a sweat just to keep the Alphas looking like the top dogs in society. In the same direction, in the article Karl Marx and Informal Education by Barry Burke it states “The history of all existing society is a history of class struggle.”(Burke). What Burke argues in this article is that the Alphas and high Betas have control of all production while the lower class works to barely survive. It is like when society pays people minimum wage to make products for billion dollar companies. Without those folks not working for the billion dollar companies, it makes the companies look bad because in reality it is not those doing all the hard work but those people making