Marxism is ideas developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-nineteenth century. The economic world becomes the base for the rest of the world or the “superstructure produced by the base” (Parker 221). This concept of economics being the cause for everything else is called “economic determinism or economism” (221). To Marx, this concept began with what he called “division of labor” that led into the development of different classes, which included capitalist merchants and workers. These classes were defined by Marx as “the proletariat” and “the bourgeoisie” (221). Marx identified the ongoing disagreements and conflicts between the two classes as “dialectic,” which he supposed would eventually lead to a “socialist future” (222-223).
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However, Marxist criticism evolved with the involvement of “Marxist theoreticians,” Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci (226). Lukács focused on “the social meaning of literary form” and Marx’s idea of “reification” (226). Reification refers back to commodification and how it intensifies alienation by diminishing social relations, ideas, and people into things. Lukács pointed out the lack of social representation by modernist, who he thought were instead “writing for form and technique” (226). Instead, Lukács upheld advocated bourgeois writers who represented “the totality of society” which could lead to a revolution of class consciousness and beyond reification (226). Gramsci focused on the criticism of economic determinism and questioning the reasons why “the proletariat had not revolted,” “the masses…supported the far right,” and “why the massed do not overthrow capitalism” in order to achieve a socialist system (227-228). Gramsci’s conclusion concentrated on hegemony and the consent of the masses affected by cultural leadership. The Frankfurt School, which included Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, and Walter Benjamin, also revolutionized Marxist criticism as they reinterpreted “the relation among reason, art, modernism, and public debate” and focus on how these become commodities
However, Marxist criticism evolved with the involvement of “Marxist theoreticians,” Georg Lukács and Antonio Gramsci (226). Lukács focused on “the social meaning of literary form” and Marx’s idea of “reification” (226). Reification refers back to commodification and how it intensifies alienation by diminishing social relations, ideas, and people into things. Lukács pointed out the lack of social representation by modernist, who he thought were instead “writing for form and technique” (226). Instead, Lukács upheld advocated bourgeois writers who represented “the totality of society” which could lead to a revolution of class consciousness and beyond reification (226). Gramsci focused on the criticism of economic determinism and questioning the reasons why “the proletariat had not revolted,” “the masses…supported the far right,” and “why the massed do not overthrow capitalism” in order to achieve a socialist system (227-228). Gramsci’s conclusion concentrated on hegemony and the consent of the masses affected by cultural leadership. The Frankfurt School, which included Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, and Walter Benjamin, also revolutionized Marxist criticism as they reinterpreted “the relation among reason, art, modernism, and public debate” and focus on how these become commodities