Marxist literary criticism

Marxism aims to revolutionize the concept of work through creating a classless society built on control and ownership of the means of production.

Marx believed that economic determinism, dialectical materialism and class struggle were the three principles that explained his theories.

Marx and Engels collaborated to produce a range of publications based on capitalism, class struggles, and socialist movements.

[5] In contrast to the Manifesto, Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and Capital (1867) focus on the unfolding logic of a system, rather than class struggle.

These provide an alternative account of historical development and emphasize the self-destructive contradictions and law of motion of specific modes of production.

[6] Preface argues that society's economic organization consists of a distinctive pattern of forces and relations of productions.

The thought behind Marxist criticism is that works of literature are mere products of history that can be analyzed by looking at the social and material conditions in which they were constructed.

[11] While these ideals developed, socialist realism was accepted as the highest form of literature – a theory based on an art movement that depicted and glorified the proletariat's struggle towards societal progress.

[16] The brewing social conflict amongst classes is well represented within Lu Xun's An Incident, where Xun describes his ''ill tempered'' experience within the capital Peking (pinyin Beijing) during the winter of 1917; he begins by talking about how an old woman who is dressed in ''ragged clothing'' got caught in the shaft due to the strong winds ''fluttering'' her ''unbuttoned and tattered jacket''.

Towards the end of the incident, in an attempt to quench his feelings of shame and guilt, he gives the policeman a ''handful of coppers'' to be given to the rickshaw man as a form of ''reward'' for his Samaritan behavior.