MARXIST CRITICISM

A. Notion of Marxist
Marxist is regarded as the most unique theory for analyzing literary work since it does not only discuss the literary work as a text but also relate the context in analyzing literary work.
Marxist criticism is one kind of criticism which regards a literary work as the author’s product and focuses on the social class problems. Text is considered as having some hidden meanings that the authors want to convey through their work. Further, in Marxist, text is a material product that can be understood in broadly historical terms.

B. Historical Development of Marxist
In nineteenth century, Marxism appeared as the reactions of the injustice, human exploitation, and class discrimination based on their social class such as labor class. Marx saw that the conditions and technique possibilities had developed and changed industrial productions; the organization of production process and the society structure were determined by the higher class. So, there were many people who must work but they had limited access to control production process and get the benefits from it. Even, there was alienation between the workers and their products. They were demanded to work hardly but they could not get the benefits from what they have made. Thus, Marx appeared with his theory in order to eliminate the alienation in the production process. He was interested to change the working relationship become fun and enjoyable. In addition, through Marxist theory, he intended to make the workers could get the benefit from their own products. By having those views, the existence of alienation would disappear and the working relationship itself became enjoyable and fun.

C. Major Issues of Marxist
There are some issues that explain in Marxist theory such as economic power, religion, revolution, etc. While, the major issue of Marxist theory is economic determinism. According to Marxist, ideology is determined by economics. Marxist has different theory about economic with the other critics. The capitalist economic system is designed to keep the upper classes wealthy. As in the theory, economic determinism according to Marxist states that since capitalism is based on private owner ship, this implies that the minimum amount of property someone own is zero.
Thus, there were some principles of Marxist; those are dialect materialism, historical materialism, alienation, social stratification, and class struggle. The first term of Marxist’s principle is dialectic materialism. The term dialect itself was derived from Hegel’s philosophy about dialectic as a changing process. According to Marx, the second one term is historical materialism that described as Marx’s view about society development law, a view that states the production matter determines historical and social development. This view is called materialism since the ultimate determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. It shows the factors that determine the history.
Thirdly, alienation as the most basic level includes education, philosophy, religion, government, arts, science, technology, the media, etc. According to Marx, the laboring man is subject to a triple alienation: first, he alienates himself into the object he produces; second, he alienates himself through the art of production itself; and the third, he alienates himself from the human race.
Fourthly, social class stratification and class struggle. It is so real that there is social class stratification in capitalist system. There are two divisions; the first class is the superior, the bourgeois, the owner of the capital and means of production and the second one is the proletariats who have to use all of what they have such as their power, skill, or ability in order to survive. There is an exploitation done by the bourgeois toward the proletariats who can get the benefit from the proletariats have produced. It causes the emergence of social class stratification and class struggle.

D. Basic assumptions
Marxist criticism is influenced by the philosophy of materialism-dialectic as his criticism toward Hegel’s “idealism” thought and Feuerbach’s “materialism” thought. Marx agrees that the world dialectic consists of process, relation, dynamics, conflict and contradictions. It becomes his main philosophy but he rejects Hegel’s “idealism” that considers “thought” or “idea” as primary factor while “material” as secondary factor. Dialectic itself means knowledge about laws that concerns in the “material” not in the Hegel’s “idea”. Finally, economy that has been Marx’s corpus in his research is regarded as a part of materialism-dialectic (the dialectic that relates with material).
Marxism is the way of thinking to make a change in the ‘concrete’ world, in the “materialism” world. Hegel with his “idealist dialectic” is considered that not be able to follow the development era like the increasing of industrial revolution’s effect. Therefore, Marx tends to focus on “materialism-dialectic”. Then, the movement from feudalism to bourgeoisie as the consequence of capitalism becomes the turning point for Marxist. Further, Marx decided to change these contradictions into the contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat based on their own production. The contradiction of production makes the rich one becomes richer and the poor one becomes poorer.

E. Theoretical application
In analyzing some literary works, there are some appropriate literary theories can be used. As it has been explained above, it is about Marxist theory. The one thing that should be emphasized before analyzing a literary work using Marxist theory, that is mastering about dialectic materialism, historical materialism, alienation, social stratification, and also class struggle in the work. Initially, the structural elements of literary work that depicted by the author through her/his work are analyzed firstly. The structural elements itself can be characters, plot, setting, style, point of view, etc. Thus, we can analyze the problem depicted in the literary work relates to Marxist theory such as problem of class struggle or social class stratification. At the end of the analysis, it can be concluded based on those two kinds of analysis, analysis of its structural elements and the literary work itself. In the conclusion of our analysis, it can be known whether the intrinsic elements of literary work are appropriate with the major theme views from Marxist theory or not.