Marxist Literary Criticism

Marxist criticism reads literature through the lens of class, economics, and power. It asks: how does literature reflect the economic conditions of the society that produced it? Whose interests does it serve? How does it reinforce — or challenge — the dominant ideology? For A-Level, Marxist criticism is particularly useful for analysing texts that deal with class, money, labour, and social inequality.

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Key Concepts

1. Base and Superstructure

Marx argued that society is structured in two layers:

Layer	Content
Base (economic)	The material conditions of production — who owns what, who works for whom, how wealth is created and distributed
Superstructure (cultural)	Everything built on the economic base — law, politics, religion, philosophy, art, literature

The base determines the superstructure. Literature, from a Marxist perspective, is not a free expression of individual genius but a product of specific economic and social conditions.