This week while I was reading the different texts I started thinking about the various other readings that we have covered till now and how these are different from the one that we have read earlier. One thing that is very interesting for me to note and relate with the previous reading is that they are all based on the society or that I have mentioned the word ‘society’ in every reading or every blog. How the various readings deal with problems of the society and interpret them from their point of view.

The readings of Karl Marx in the book Literary Theory: An Anthology is arranged in such a way that in the initial pages we see the introduction of various terminologies to define a country, such as, population, division of classes, annual production and consumption etc.  We see that these terms are economic terms and he relates them to define the society, much later we see how he relates these terms to politics. He says that the concrete terms are product of our thought of comprehension which has been influenced by Capitalism in our thought process and so our thought is also a product. So we see that we are now able to connect the economic terminologies with politics in given society. Further, he relates this ‘politico-economic’ relation with the history of the society and we see that the relation is not simple but extremely complex and that it has a history connected to it. He talks about the various forms of ownership that persist in the society, like tribal, communal, feudal etc and every form of ownership has given rise to class division ‘the dominant and the dominated’. However, he later introduces the relation of capital to labor power and he gives utmost importance to the labor power for the capital to multiply and here we are introduced to the terminology of exploitation.

But, what stroke me as the most important point of Marx is when he talks about the division of labor in the ruling class – one who has the ruling ideas ‘mental labor’ and the other the ‘material labor’. Hence we realize that the idea to rule is also constructed and has the tendency to universalize them. He says that there is always a chance to enter into conflict between the rulers of mental labor and the material labor which topples the structure of the society and a new form of society is created with new ruling ideas. But before the revolution the ruling ideas are being related to the entire society, the ideas are homogenized by the new dominant class. Here we can pay attention to the term ‘new ruling idea’ because a new class comes into being and a new structure of class is established.  It is interesting for me because the critics of the new terms today like globalization, neoliberalism etc keep saying that there is a homogenization of ideas, problems, and other issues but now we could trace back and see how old is this concept of universalizing everything. And probably that is why today history is detached from several issues so that one is not capable of tracing back to the past and finds its root …. Marx has given so much importance to history ….. was he aware of the contemporary situation that we are facing??