“Definition of Marxist Criticism” “Marxist Views of Literature” Marxists believe that economic and social conditions determine religious beliefs, legal systems and cultural frameworks. Art should not only represent such conditions truthfully, but seek to improve them. Marxist aesthetics is not flourishing in today's consumerist society, but continues to ask responsible questions. Introduction Karl Marx (1818-83) turned Hegelism on its head.
Far from making thought govern the world, and seeing history as the gradual unfolding of Reason, Marx argued that all mental systems (ideologies) were the products of social and economic realities. But revolution did not come where the flaws in capitalism were most evident, in Germany or Britain, but in Russia: an agrarian, perhaps even medieval country bankrupted by war and economic mismanagement. Theorists in Communist Regimes Lukács also adopted the Hegelian dialectic in stressing the contradictions of class struggle. Bertolt Brecht, in contrast, was a maverick. The Frankfurt School European Structuralist Marxists. New Left Review.