SOURCE: Fokkema, Douwe, and Elrud Ibsch. “Marxist Theories of Literature.” In Theories of Literature in the Twentieth Century: Structuralism, Marxism, Aesthetics of Reception, Semiotics, pp. 81-135. London: C. Hurst & Company/New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978.

In the following essay, Fokkema and Ibsch analyze Marxist literary theory from a metatheoretical point of view.

Marxism is a philosophy of contradictions, and any attempt to explain Marxist theory in a rational way will encounter apparent inconsistencies. The belief in the primacy of material conditions and the simultaneous effort to emphasize the human role in changing these conditions is one of the most characteristic contradictions of Marxism. How can materialism and heroic revolt be considered as compatible?

If one were to accept that this contradiction can be solved by resorting to the dialectical method, a new problem arises, namely the question whether any criticism of the dialectical method is possible at all...