Marxism’s Effect On Works Of Art
Without doubt Karl Marx is the most remarkable and influential thinker in the 19th century. His philosophical treatises are still being read and investigated. In spite of the fact that he was ignored by scholars in his own time, his views and ideas became basic in the social movement after his death. He produced a lot of important political and economical documents. The followers of Carl Marx’s theories number a considerable portion of the world’s population. His greatest contribution to the society was the essay ‘Capitol’; it influenced people’s views about the society in all parts of the world. Marxism theory as art can be described as n intension of ideas and ideology on Marxism in general. ` Marx interprets social relations as a struggle between two opposite social classes. That is, if we conceive of society as a structure — with the superstructure on the top, the productive forces on the bottom, and the productive relations in the middle — then, according to orthodox historical materialism, the primary vector of social determination is from the bottom up. The superstructure and the relations of production take their shape in response to the developmental directions opened up by the productive forces (Marx cited Cain et al 776). This is not to say that the superstructure and the organization of production relations never exert downward pressure on the productive forces, but only that the most significant line of historical causation goes from the bottom up. In any given society, the productive forces are, it is said, always the agents of social change in the last instance. Historically, the Marxist tradition has exerted a great deal of influence on contemporary critics of ideology. For example, though feminists may wish to part company with Marx’s emphasis on class, they nevertheless continue to look back to the Marxist tradition for rough models for discussing oppression; for some feminists, sexism, as endorsed by women, is akin to false consciousness (Perry et al 2007).
The advantage of the philosophical defense of art is that it can bypass debates about particular cases. This advantage is especially important when, historically, one is interested in defending a mass art-form before it has produced any acknowledged masterpieces. And also, where a putative art-form abounds with substandard examples, the philosophical friend of mass art can wave them all aside and concentrate his argumentation on the possibilities of the practice. And even where a given medium or art-form has produced what are thought of as acknowledged masterpieces, the philosophical line of defense still has dialectical advantages over the critical approach, since skeptics can always dispute the status of any critical example Following Marx, art is tied to some classes and their needs. Art masks the interests of the dominant class, thereby encouraging everyone, including members of the dominant class, to mistake the ruling class’s perspective as the unvarnished truth
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