Every theory has its pet names. What does Marxism think of literature, authors, and readers?
What is literature?
Man or woman on the street: "Literature—it's books, right? Stories and poems and plays? Maybe good stories and poems and plays?"
For Marxists, this is only the beginning of the answer. They ask: How did fiction become separated from other kinds of books, like history? How did we separate the good books from the bad ones, and who decided which was which? Why are some books taught in school and others not?
According to Marxists, literature is what powerful institutions—like schools, the government, the New York Times, and Amazon.com—say it is. Literature is the books people study and teach, not to mention the books rich corporations decide to sell.
Above all, literature is the way our society tells itself it is doing the right thing. Marxists argue that most stories, poems, and plays aim to make us feel good about our behavior. In their lingo, it is the way that "bourgeois ideology" (capitalism and everything that goes with it) maintains its dominance. Its sneakiest trick is to make something very specific—a way of maximizing private profit—seem the most natural thing in the world.
What is an author?
For Marxists, an author is not a genius churning out inspired masterpieces in isolation. He or she is simply channeling the class struggle, whether he or she knows it or not. Some authors know it—they are "committed" (see "Buzzwords"). Most authors don't, though—they are more or less hypocritical.
It doesn't always matter. Authors can reveal a lot about the world in their stories unconsciously, without realizing it. That, according to Marxists, is because literature is a product of society as much as an individual.
What is a reader?
A reader is a representative of his or her class. If deconstruction is all about free play, then Marxism is all about how what we get out of a text is predetermined. In other words, how we read has everything to do with who we are, and what our socioeconomic background is.
The point of Marxism is that readers are not who they think they are—or, not only who they think they are. Most of us aren't aware of our biases, prejudices, and received ideas; we take things for granted without noticing them.
Marxists claim to make each of us a better reader. Instead of just getting out of a text what we put in (our subjective reading), Marxism says that it gives us a way to do an objective reading. According to Marxists, once you know where you are coming from, you can be less single-minded.