What do you need to believe or at least acknowledge to do Marxist literary analysis?

1.    That reality is understandable and definable (in other words, its not some abstract idea or something one can define in lots of different ways) and that our reality (our place in society, position in our family, economic reality, etc.) shapes our consciousness (this is the exact opposite of capitalist ideology, which suggests the individual can transcend their reality and make their own consciousness (reality). You should look closely at character backgrounds, their jobs, their familial indoctrination/reality, their social class.

2.    Accordingly, our social and particularly economic realities very much shape our beliefs and values (as opposed to freely defining our beliefs and values).

3.    That a class-based society is necessarily exploitative (some group of people must be exploited others; these exploiters are exploited by those richer and more powerful than they are, etc. etc.) A capitalist society absolutely requires “wage slaves” – workers in low-level service positions that offer no opportunity for advancement or cultural capital (many literary analyses examine and explain where exploitation is occurring in which situations and articulate the consequences of said exploitation.

4.    “As an approach to literary analysis, Marxism’s methodology is a dynamic process that maintains that a proper critique (proper defined as that which aggress with socialistic or Marxist beliefs) of a text cannot exist in isolation from the cultural situation in which the text involved” (Bressler). A text, then, cannot be divorced from its historical reality, the culture into which it was written, the dominant values and assumptions of the culture of the text’s “birth”. For example, the play Oleanna cannot be considered outside the early 1990s’ social and political dramas (like the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill sexual harassment case, new and morphing policies on sexual harassment in the workplace, etc.)

5.    The writer cannot write “outside” his or her consciousness/reality. By necessity, the literary text will reflect the author’s (maybe implicitly, but it will be there) economic and social realities, his/her lived experience. While that writer may explicitly support OR reject a particular value, practice, or assumption, their own experience heavily colors such support or critique (even if the author actively tries to write outside personal reality and experience). Thus, David Mamet, writing Oleanna, is revealing his views, his beliefs, his assumptions (in some way or another).

6.    “Whatever method the critic chooses, a Marxist approach exposes the dominant class, demonstrates how the bourgeoisie’s ideology controls and oppresses the working class, and highlights elements of society most affected by such oppression” (Bressler).