Bom in Trier in 1818 into an assimilated Jewish family that soon converted to Protestantism, Marx attended the local Gymnasium (college preparatory high school) and in 1835 the University of Bonn, where he was supposed to follow in the footsteps of his father Heinrich and study law. The following year he secretly became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, whom he married in 1943; of their four children, only two survived their childhood years. In 1836 Marx transferred to Berlin, where he soon became interested in Hegelian philosophy. After his dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus was accepted at the University of Jena in 1841, he turned to journalism, editing for a time the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne until it was banned in 1843. Radicalized by his tenure as editor, Marx was forced to leave Germany and take up residence in Paris in 1843. Here he met Friedrich Engels, the son of a wealthy north German businessman, who had just returned from an extended stay in England. Marx moved to Brussels in 1845, but returned to Germany briefly during the revolutionary years of 1848–9, when he edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Expelled in the aftermath of the unsuccessful revolution in 1849, Marx and his family settled in London, where he spent the rest of his life in poverty researching and writing on various topics, mostly on current events or issues pertaining to political economy, and contributing to the organizational efforts of the communist movement. Adversely affected by the death of his wife Jenny and his oldest daughter in the early 1880s, and already in ill health due to years of hardship, Marx died in 1883.

Marx's earliest writings revolve around a critique of religion, which he initially conceived as the preliminary task of any radical philosophy. In the first and only issue of the Deutsch- französische Jahrbücher in 1844, he tackled the thorny issue of Jewish emancipation in the notorious essay ‘On the Jewish Question’. Although the essay has been frequently controversial because of Marx's derogatory remarks about Jewish business practices, his central argument is that emancipation is incomplete if it entails only religious or political and not a total human emancipation: for Marx genuine emancipation is not achieved with the extension of rights to certain religious groups, but only with a radical refashioning of the total social order. He argues along the same lines in his famous ‘Critique of a Hegelian Philosophy of Right’, the second essay he included in the Deutsch- französische Jahrbücher.In the celebrated comparison between religion and opium, he claims that our concern with the afterlife diverts our attention from the pursuit of happiness in this world. Religion represents the self-alienation of human beings, and just as the critique of religion reveals the true character of belief, so too philosophy should set itself the task of clarifying the obfuscatory aspects of the real world. The trajectory in this important essay starts from a critique of religion and proceeds through philosophy to politics and revolution. Already at this stage in his development Marx had determined that negation in the realm of thought was insufficient: if historical progress is going to occur, there has to be a real struggle involving a historical agent that will propel history forward. The proletariat, as the only class that could represent society as a whole, is appointed the task of redeeming society. Philosophy and the working class hold the hope for the future: the essential task is not just the interpretation of the world, but its wholesale transformation.

In his writings prior to the Communist Manifesto Marx often resorted to concepts adopted from his predecessors in order to analyse the economic predicament of the proletariat. A case in point is the notion of ‘alienation’, which figures prominently in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, composed in Parisian exile in 1844. The term is appropriated from G. W. F. Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach. Hegel admitted nature into his system as the self- alienation of Spirit; thus he maintains that man as a natural being is the self-alienation of the Absolute or of God. Feuerbach holds precisely the opposite position, with which Marx largely concurred: God is self-alienated man, the essence of man abstracted and made alien or strange. In the 1844 Manuscripts, however, Marx conceives alienation as the key to a critique of political economy. The basis for his analysis is the observation that under capitalist forms of production the product of labour does not belong to the labourer. Not only is the product thus alienated from the worker, appearing to him as an object belonging to another, it is also the source of wealth for another (the capitalist) and therefore contributes to the bondage of the worker in the production process. The more the worker produces, the more enslaved he is by the alienated products of his labour. This most general and primary form of alienation is in turn the origin of supplemental types that extend into the anthropological realm: the worker is also alienated from the production process, from the essence of the human species (since its essence lies in production), from nature, from other human beings and from himself. The capitalist mode of production, which deprives the worker of the product of his labour, is thus the root cause of all generalized manifestations of social alienation.

Obviously dissatisfied with the anthropological assumptions contained in his discussion of alienation in the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx avoided the term in his subsequent writings, referring at one point derisively to ‘alienation’ as a term he employs so that philosophers will understand him. The notion of alienated labour, however, survives and becomes a cornerstone of Marx's theory in Capital, where it is discussed under a somewhat altered label: the fetishism of commodities. Proceeding from an analysis of the commodity form, Marx argues that the fetishism of commodities arises from a specific social arrangement, when commodities are taken to the marketplace and acquire exchange value. If we can decipher the mysterious notion of value, a social hieroglyph, then we can understand what is occurring under conditions of capitalist production. In exposing the production process, however, Marx does not seek to return us to a pristine state prior to alienation, but rather to provide a general methodological principle for modern social phenomena. His central point is that our reflections on social life are necessarily distorted by the confusion wrought by commodity fetishism. The notion of commodities as natural products of human society and development has led us to confound nature and history. The result is a series of false and misleading starting points for political economists, who repeatedly consider derivative phenomena (money, prices) as essential, while regarding the essential as natural. Fetishism of commodities is thus associated with false consciousness, as well as with epistemological inadequacies in bourgeois ideology, and this field of association contributed to its centrality in Georg Lukács' History and Class Consciousness, where it reappears as reification or in the notion of an ‘administered society’ in the writings of the Frankfurt School.

A second central notion in the early writings of Marx is ‘ideology’. At issue in the 1840s was a clarification of Marx's views in contrast to the convictions of other left Hegelians and socialists of the times, and Marx, along with Engels, who began collaborating with Marx during the mid 1840s, devoted two longer treatises to this task: The Holy Family and The German Ideology.Although these works do not explicitly define ideology, it is apparent that Marx associated this notion in the first instance with the abstraction and idealism that is ultimately derived from Hegelian thought. Marx himself had developed from Hegelian philosophy, so in a sense these writings were both a self-critique and an endeavour to carve out a position different from those of his former associates. Hegelians, he argues, remain in the realm of a religious critique, not because they concentrate solely on religious matters, but because they reduce the various critiques they make - of politics, law, morals - to a religious essence. They want to combat deficiencies in the real world by opposing the phrases associated with these deficiencies, and therein they remain entrapped in a particularly German ideology. They propose changing consciousness, but only in so far as this change entails interpreting reality differently - not, as Marx will suggest, by changing reality. By contrast, Marx advocates in The German Ideology a materialist basis for analysis. Eschewing ideological explanations for political and social problems, he explains even consciousness and language as dependent on a material basis. Ideology is thus opposed here and elsewhere to ‘science’ or to views that originate in a materialist analysis of the social order. Ultimately ideology, ideals and ideas are based in the interests of a class seeking to maintain or to gain hegemony, and to the extent that literature contains ideological material, it too participates in class struggle.

The culmination of Marx's early theoretical development and his practical activities in organization appears in the Manifesto of the Communist Party.Commissioned by the Communist League as a set of foundational principles, the Manifesto contains much spirited writing, but is an uneven document. The third section incorporates Marx and Engels's criticism of other socialist and communist movements, while the second section, betraying the original catechism form in which Engels sketched the initial draft, answers hypothetical questions and corrects widespread misconceptions about communism. Most interesting is the discussion of the role of the bourgeoisie in the first part of the work. Marx considers the bourgeoisie to be a unique and essentially revolutionary class: all previous ruling classes have taken a conservative stance toward production, attempting to limit it and thereby preserve their hegemonic social position. By contrast, the bourgeoisie needs to revolutionize production constantly, introducing more efficient means to increase productivity. Thus the bourgeoisie, which was once a revolutionary class in the historical sense that it opposed and overthrew the feudal order, retains an aspect of its revolutionary promise even after it has gained power. In imposing a rational order on production, however, the bourgeoisie has also revolutionized the ideological sphere. Gone are the feudal superstitions and traditional notions that fettered individuals to a medieval hierarchy. The bourgeois era has not eliminated exploitation and misery; it has merely lifted the veil of religious and political guises that formerly legitimated oppression of the lower classes, and substituted brute force and the cash nexus. Thus despite its despotic role in contemporary society the bourgeoisie has propelled history forward, simplifying class conflict, introducing a new ideological structure, and paving the way for its own downfall by introducing its own grave-diggers: the proletariat.

By the time of the Manifesto the place of culture and literature was defined by its role in class struggle. Marx conceived of cultural phenomena as secondary and dependent on a more basic economic order, and the classical and most concise statement of this relationship is contained in the ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859. Marx begins by defining what he means by the economic base, introducing two important notions: relations of production and productive forces. In other texts Marx explains that the productive forces consist of raw materials and the instruments of production, which together are called the means of production, as well as labour power. Means of production and labour power exist in any epoch, in any human society; changes in productivity, however, are implemented by modifications of one or more factors: technological advances, for example, may increase productive potential, but production can also be augmented by an increase in the work week. What defines an economic mode of production, however, is not the amount produced, but the relationship human beings have to the productive forces, determined largely by ownership of, or effective control over, the productive forces. In slave-holding societies, for example, the ruling classes own both the means of production and the labour power of individuals, while the slaves own nothing. Under capitalism, the proletariat owns only its labour power, which it is compelled to sell on the marketplace in order to survive. Although there is no precise relationship, certain types of relations of production correspond to the development of productive forces. In general slave-based societies are agricultural, while industrial economies are capitalist.

The real foundation of a society is its economic base. But arising from this base is a superstructure, which Marx defines in terms of legal and political matters: despite the insistence of most commentators, Marx does not connect the superstructure with cultural phenomena; instead it appears to contain institutional elements of governmental and judicial significance. However, corresponding to the economic base are also forms of ‘social consciousness’: the ideas, ideals and ideologies of a social order, which presumably include its philosophy, religion, literature and art. Marx makes it clear that the mode of production determines the social and intellectual sphere: the real social being is located in the economic structure, while consciousness is an epiphenomenon, dependent on the more fundamental realm of production and the relations of production. The struggles and conflicts that occur in this superstructural realm are ultimately derived from a primary arena of contradictions in the base. We must therefore distinguish carefully between the self-consciousness of a given epoch, what it thinks of itself and how it portrays itself, and what this consciousness really represents in objective terms. With this theoretical perspective Marx advocates what Paul Ricoeur would later call a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’: in order to accomplish a Marxist interpretation the critic must recognize that the foregrounded ideology is a subterfuge, and that the real meaning of ideas and forms in literature and art is derived from their role in a more fundamental sphere. While the contradictions in the economic realm can be determined with scientific precision, Marx suggests that the legal, political, religious, philosophical and aesthetic struggles, which are no more than the way in which individuals become conscious of contradictions and fight them out, are often more elusive and ambivalent.

Indeed, Marx recognizes in other writings that the relationship between artistic production and economic production is neither simple nor direct. Progress in the economic sphere, which is easily measured in terms of increased productivity, does not necessarily mean a concomitant advance in art. The times of great art do not necessarily correspond at all to what is occurring at the material foundation of society. What we can say, however, is that certain types of artistic products correspond to definite modes of production. The Greek epics, for example, are obvious products of an undeveloped society. Since they are based on Greek mythology and employ a different relationship to natural phenomena, we cannot imagine the production of similar epics in industrial societies, where we encounter steam engines, trains, and telegraphs. Achilles’ heroism cannot be reproduced in the same fashion in an age of gunpowder, and the oral nature of the epic seems in doubt with the advent of the printing press. In short, the conditions under which the heroic epic prospered no longer obtain. Explaining the way in which art belongs to its own times, however, is much easier than trying to understand why we enjoy art from the past. Marx asks why we can still appreciate Greek art, now that we are living under enormously changed circumstances. His tentative answer, that we recognize in the Greeks the childhood of humanity, indicates that Marx was not able to integrate all aspects of aesthetics into his historical schema.

The theoretical considerations that Marx sketched for the history and interpretation of literary texts was supplemented in his work only occasionally by concrete case studies. Although Marx exhibits a thorough knowledge of the classics, of Shakespeare and of modern literature in general, only twice does he comment at any length on a particular novel or play, and in both cases the works are known more for Marx's criticisms than for their own literary merit. The first occasion occurred in the 1840s, when Marx discussed Eugène Sue's popular novel Mysteries of Paris in The Holy Family.Like most of this polemical text, the sections on Sue's novel deal harshly with a work that seems at first glance very close to the socialist and philosophical concerns of Marx and Engels. The novel champions the working class, and Sue evidences obvious sympathy for the proletarian cause. Marx, however, felt that the work was trite and contrived, and that Sue himself was a sentimental, petty-bourgeois, social fantast. In the extended discussion Marx actually writes less about Sue and his work than he does about a particular piece of criticism of the novel, written under the pseudonym Szeliga (Franz Zychlin von Zychlinski), which praises its artistic and ideological merits. In the context of The Holy Family Szeliga is portrayed as the typical speculative idealist of the Hegelian school, who was unable to penetrate to the economic realities of the capitalist world, remaining instead on the level of conceptual abstraction that precluded effective critique.

The second longer commentary occurred in 1859, when Ferdinand Lassalle, a leader of the socialist movement in Germany, composed a historical drama entitled Franz von Sickingen.The play was written to capture in literary form the experiences of the failed revolution of 1848, but Lassalle chose to project backward and selected for his hero a knight whose revolutionary aspirations during the peasant revolts had similarly ended in defeat. In a letter to Lassalle Marx notes aesthetic deficiencies in the text: the characters are too abstract and not sketched in as full and interesting a fashion as they could be. But his main criticism involves the inaccuracy in depicting the class struggle. For Marx, Sickingen, a free knight struggling to retain the privileges and rights of his class, represents a declining social order; his failure, although tied to the historical predicament of his age, cannot be separated from his position in the social hierarchy, and his campaign against the emperor and the princes, however much this campaign coincides with the interests of the peasants, is undertaken to restore a reactionary system, not to advance history. The real tragedy of the revolution, therefore, is not represented by Sickingen's demise, but by the defeat of progressive elements in the cities and the peasants, who never play an active role in Lassalle's drama. As a consequence of his misconstrual of the class situation, Marx accuses Lassalle of idealistic representation: Sickingen is a mere mouthpiece for progressive views, which he may have held in reality, but which do not legitimately belong to him historically as a member of a declining class. In Marx's critique we encounter the foundation for class-based criticism: implicit in his remarks is the demand that fictional or fictionalized figures represent the views of their class.

The dominant style of fiction in the nineteenth century was realism, and Marx's theory, as well as his comments on specific works, validates a class-conscious variant of realist portrayal. Among the most important remarks on realism, however, were those made by Engels a few years after Marx's death in letters to the novelists Minna Kautsky and Margaret Harkness. Although Engels praises the work of both writers, he suggests their novels may not be realistic enough. He explains that when he speaks of realism he means typical characters in typical situations, not simply the accurate mirroring of historical detail. In Harkness's novel, for example, Engels criticizes the passivity of the proletariat: all help for the working class comes from above; the workers appear unable to organize themselves, which may have been the case earlier in the century, but now is simply incorrect. With regard to Kautsky's work Engels claims that she has not always succeeded in producing types, which he defines as a figure that retains individuality while representing more general dimensions of social relevance. His main concern, however, is that these engaged novelists do not degenerate into tendentiousness. The question of the appropriateness of ‘tendency’ in art was a frequently discussed topic among committed writers of the mid and late nineteenth century, and both Marx and Engels seem to advocate that authors refrain from injecting their personal sentiments or ideologies into their fiction. They favoured epic narratives in which the writer and her/his views recede into the background. In his letter to Kautsky Engels states that tendency is not in itself inappropriate, but that it must originate in the situation and plot, and not be something added from the outside. And writing to Harkness, Engels maintains that the true realist, which is synonymous with the genuine artist, may represent a progressive view of reality even if the author him/herself has no sympathy with radical causes. Balzac, a favourite author of both Marx and Engels, is the best illustration of someone whose politics were regressive, but whose adherence to realism compelled him to portray the aristocracy, whose views he shared, with bitter satire, and the republicans, whom he disliked, with admiration. The lesson is that tendentiousness is artistically undesirable and unnecessary if a perspicacious writer comprehends and captures social reality dispassionately.

The legacy of Marx's views on literature parallels to a degree his general reception. Among the social democrats Franz Mehring applied basic tenets from Marx and Engels in his numerous contributions to early socialist literary criticism. In the twentieth century Marx's works were fruitfully developed by various critics. Writers such as Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, associated with the Frankfurt school, emphasized the dialectical and creative quality of literary criticism; they were equally adept at close reading and ideological criticism, but they recognized that Marx had to be brought into play with twentieth-century concerns if he was to be relevant. Structuralist marxists, such as Lucien Goldman, Louis Althusser and Pierre Macherey, focused their attention on ideology and consciousness, advancing our understanding of how form and content unite in an uneasy totality. Georg Lukács, perhaps the most prolific marxist critique of the twentieth century, was influential for philosophically based criticism of the Frankfurt School, but he also contributed many works that advanced a more dogmatic stance toward Marx, especially in Eastern Europe. In the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries, one often encountered a version of marxist criticism that elevated Marx's occasional and historically conditioned remarks to inviolable doctrine. Socialist realism, at its best a continuation of nineteenth-century realism, at its worst an artificial and mechanical application of realist features to socialist content, was promulgated in the 1934 Party Congress of the Soviet Union by Andrey Zhdanov, and thereafter Zhdanovism became synonymous with Stalinist cultural politics. Although the ideological strictures on criticism loosened gradually during the 1970s and 1980s, in many communist circles socialist realism and its attendant restrictions remained official policy until just a few years before the decline of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe.