Friday, March 26, 2010

Marxism: It's all about class

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This week in English 464 my peers and I were responsible for properly defining the Marxist terms: labor, capital, means of production, and surplus value. For Marx, all these terms are related because none of them would be possible without the common worker. More simply, without someone to provide the labor to create production than society would have no means of creating capital, or surplus value, that the ruling class uses to enjoy an opulent lifestyle. For Marx that means that labor is a commodity, like soap or sugar, it is being traded for a predetermined wage that is agreed upon by the employer and employee. The capital, which is any aspect of the product that is used to generate more money (which can also include money previously earned), could not exist without the initial labor put into the product by the worker. Thus, the worker, not the market, generates the value of the product. Marx felt that meant that these workers should unite against the ruling class, because the power of the world's economy was truly in their hands.

So what does these mean to an English major? Frankly, Marx influenced culture and even world politics in such a way that the impact is felt directly on the literature that was created after he introduced his rhetoric. Looking at a text with Marxism in mind means looking for discrepancies in class, or inequities between the division of labor (who gets the good jobs versus who gets the factory work) that lead to class distinctions. For instance, Grapes of Wrath could be analyzed from a Marxist perspective to discover many layers of meaning that might elude a simple formalist reading.

The characters in Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, are all sent to California from Oklahoma because of a failure of American capitalism, over production of crops. They have to rally together to try and get work anywhere they can find, but the ruling class, the farmers and ranch owners who are already well established in California, do not want them to earn fair wages so that they can turn out the most product with the least cost. Essentially, they want legal slaves. When the men from the camps and farms try to organize themselves they are met with strict opposition by the local law enforcement who is paid off by the large corporation farmers. Some men even lose their lives simply because they want fair wages. They want what Marx claimed was their right, a claim at the some of the value of the product that they are producing. There are many more texts that contain a Marxist lean or influence and that makes learning about Marxism crucial for anyone studying literature.