Marxist Criticism (Lectures in Literary Theory)

[@Lotharia88]

I'm currently writing an essay about the book Momo by Michael Ende and this video was super helpful! I feel like I have a better understanding of the different concepts I'll be using when analysing the book, thanks so much! I'll be reffering alot to Eagletons book about literary criticism aswell.

[@TheRedReid]

As a young Marxist, it's invigorating to see our ideas reflected with such uncommon veracity. The only motes of disagreement I have are purely pedantic. For instance, Dr. Newman refers to Marx's vision of socialism/communism as "sort of utopian" around 12:06. However, I argue that said vision was explicitly non-utopian. Marx recognized that the early stage of communism-i.e., socialism-would necessarily be inequal. In his _Critique of the Gotha Programme,_ Marx states that "one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society." Further, as Lenin says in _The State and Revolution,_ "it has never entered the head of any socialist to 'promise' that the higher phase of the development of communism will arrive; as for the greatest socialists' forecast that it will arrive, it presupposes not the present ordinary run of people, who, like the seminary students in Pomyalovsky's stories, are capable of damaging the stocks of public wealth 'just for fun', and of demanding the impossible." Rather than utopian, Marx's vision of communism is fundamentally practicable. Nevertheless, as I said, this is pedantry-not to mention a matter of opinion-, and I am overall elated with how Dr. Newman has introduced the vast field of study that is Marxism. I'm also quite pleased to have learned some new information such as the etymology of fetish! Thank you, Dr. Newman. Your students are lucky to have you, and I hope we get to see you give more lectures on leftist thought/criticism and it's relation to literature.

[@IohannesRhetor]

I'm glad you enjoyed. What I hear you saying is that the dialectic of history does not require the socialist state to wither away into a truly classless society, but, that the venal and short-sighted nature of human beings is such that state authority may always be required to direct the socialist and discipline those who are attached to their property and personal gain. It is my opinion that such a state authority must be inevitably corrupted by its power and reproduce the inequities of capitalism if it's power is not constrained by liberal democracy. This is also why I don't identify as a Marxist, even if I'm sympathetic to many of his ideas, and I'm especially not a Marxist-Leninist. There is no way in which any kind of large society is not going break down into competing interest groups, and there will never be one group or party that can speak for the collective good, and so civil society needs to be organized in a way that can referee the competition between competing interests (class affinities) fairly, and ensure no one interest group can install itself as hegemonic. "The workers" is not and will never be a coherent collective identity, because labor conditions and practices are so varied. They only have a collective interest insofar as it is in conflict with asset owners and their managerial stewards, and when the latter is displaced, there is an inevitable installation of some group over others (in the case of what young Marxists sometimes call "actually existing socialst states", that hegemonic group preserving its own interests is called "The Party.". I'm just talking off the top of my head though, and really should read more Marx (the other reason I can't really call myself a Marxist-- y'all do the work!) Anyway, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I learned a lot from it, especially that I have a lot more reading to do.

[@SuperDrawBot]

Im not a super studied marxist, but I'm a working class dude who believes in building communism, lest we be subjected to the "The end of the world is easier than the fall of capitalism" dread that haunts us with the whole climate situation rigth now. And on that note, I was thought by my studied commie leaders that Leninist Comunism (my particular brand) is explicitly againts the notion of an utopia. As I understand, Marx was frustrated by his piers (I think it was on the school of Frankfurt...? Idunno...) and their constant idealisation of "It would be like this, dude! Just trust me!", so he applied what is called "praxis" in which action motivates study, wich again motivated action. The ideia being that we study capitalism (why it does what it does, the observed effects of if, etc), and develop countermeasures and attemps to improve the life of the working class. In so doing, we study the observed effects of THAT, and change the theory on the basis of what transpired. My commie teachers are particularly addamant about not answering questions like "How many brands of soap will we have on communism?", because they say "If I told you an awnser, I'd be lying, because we just don't know. We would have to have had a previous communist experience to be able to awnser that, and as far as we've gotten so far is a bunch of socialist experiences. And we learn things about socialism from those experiences, so we can implement them further, and make future socialist cases better ". Anyways. Wonderful video, @lohannesRhetor! Thank you so much for providing this material for free. Sorry for any spelling errors. English is not my main language, and I imagine that being an english teacher and reading some wild grammar can be quite annoying hahahah

[@SOVIETSOCIALISTDUCK]

As a history nerd this video is very interesting

[@MrDanihero]

Hello professor, I've come across your videos, and I love the whole structure of them, it really is a whole class. Would you be able to do any videos on Zionist Literature?

[@IohannesRhetor]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy. They're based on years of teaching. I appreciate the suggestion, but I'm afraid that Zionist literature is well outside my area of expertise. There are many better equipped than me.

[@aphinoo7262]

anotha banger

[@IohannesRhetor]

Thanks!