Marxist Literary Theory

Although there is really no direct address of literary criticism contained in the passages of The Communist Manifesto, it is clear that Marxist theory was in part forecasting the unmitigated influence that mass market production of literature would have upon both the creative and critical aspects of the art and that, furthermore, the effects would be ruinous to thought that it is out of step with bourgeois interests. As Marx correctly points out, creating a world in its own image is the ultimate purpose of the capitalist system. Anyone who disagrees with that statement need only look at the quagmire the US finds itself in in Iraq in its single-minded devotion to opening the closed market in the Middle East for Coke and Levi’s. Forget about WMDs, what the US really considers dangerous are economies closed to consumer products that people have been very happily living without.

The writer created under twentieth-century capitalism ceases to be an artist, and becomes instead only a laborer creating product to be exploited for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. If the writer doesn’t create a product that the publishers believe can sell in mass quantities, his work will never be accepted for publication. Because the publishers control the means of production, of course, it is in their interest to make sure that literary ideas which question the economic value under which they operate never get the chance to become massively popular, further controlling the propagation of dissent. One manner of control is to block mass publication of dissident thought and another is to mass produce literature that satirizes dissent, causes confusion about the dissent, or even outright lies about the dissent. Critical opinion voicing support for what meager supply of dissenting views exists are, likewise, at the mercy of the very same publishers. And since, as Marx writes, capitalist thought cannot survive without being in business everywhere and establishing networks of producers and consumers everywhere, homogenization of thought becomes a global enterprise.

This disastrous desire for homogenization of thought is further cultivated through the capitalist brainwashing technique that equates success with unbridled accumulation of wealth. By convincing that writer, that laborer, that his success depends solely upon how many books he sells and how much money he creates, the capitalist system subtly influences literary thought by manipulating writers into a far more dangerous form of mimesis than Plato ever thought possible: imitating the most commercially successful writers regardless of their literary value. By thoroughly controlling the means of production, the bourgeois owners of publishing houses are in complete control of almost all thought expressed in both mass-produced literature and in the choice of which critical voices of that literature are going to be heard.