The Marxist Ananlysis

Williams’ text, Gramsci's “The Intellectuals”, the Marxist criticisms of Rudolph, Dickens and Kincaid: the one most prominent message I found being repeated throughout all these readings was the same one found in Marx and Engel’s The German Ideology, that class distinction would be the downfall of society.

Williams and Gramsci basically paraphrase Marx’s ideas in their individual pieces. The former (Williams) makes sure to reiterate the points brought up in The German Ideology. He brings back to us the idea of how division of labor established by the upper class is the root of the problem. Gramsci takes a slightly different approach, stating that society is divided as it is because we, the people, treat others with higher praise and esteem than others, the intellects and philosophers for instance, when such distinctions are not only unnecessary but problematic. His mention of history and its part (that of passing on the separation of classes from generation to generation) in this scheme is another notion found in the Marx and Engel writing.

What really caught my attention were the story critiques, viewing them with a Marxist eye. This held especially true for the Communistic translation of “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”. As a child, I grew up watching this cartoon quite often, almost ritualistically, during the holiday seasons. Alongside “Frosty the Snowman”, it had been a Christmas favorite of mine. So, understandably, this completely different outlook on it particularly interests me. I would never have thought of the socio-economic subplot within the story, and yet, reading this article, it seems almost too obvious. Particularly when it came to comparing the elves to third world country factory workers or identifying the Abominable Snow monster as “a worker to generate surplus value”. We come across more examples of the cons of a capitalist economy in the Dickens analysis in the form of Pip and his attempt to climb up in the social ladder even though “he cannot transcend the limitations put on him by the class he was born into.”