SOURCE: “Molière and Marx: Prospects for a New Century,” in L'Esprit Createur, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, Spring, 1996, pp. 21-30.

In the following essay, Gaines delineates the connection between Marx and Molière.

Of all the avatars of structuralism that fueled the critical imagination during the third quarter of this century, none now seems more doomed than Marxism. The social-philosophical colossus that once commanded respect from worldwide scholars (in many cases, all too literally) finds itself banned in Russia, micro-miniaturized in Western Europe, and forgotten like a dimestore turtle in Asia, as Deng Chaiao-Ping uses his last breath to revive the merchant class and Castro holds photo-ops with the Chevaliers du taste-vin. The former reverend fathers of leftist thought, like Louis Althusser, and their fellow travelers, including Sartre and Foucault, are bespattered with the shame of little murders, club-footed deceptions, and careless propagation not of revolution, but of the...