For Marxists in general, literature is one form taken by ideology. To understand a literary work, consequently, involves comprehending its socio-economic determinants, that is, those economic factors such as the means and forces of production and those social factors (the social relations of production [the class structure]). The question arises: what is the precise nature of the relation linking the economic and related elements of society to literary and artistic works in general? Two main answers to this question have predominated, derived from two different models of the social formation: the ‘base-superstructure’ model and the ‘expressive totality’ model. In the former schema, all the elements of the ideological and political superstructure (including literature) reflect the determinants found in the economic and social base. In the latter, all aspects of the social totality (including literature) are manifestations or expressions of a common economic essence.

There are two related emphases within Marxist critical theory: the expressive in which the dominant focus is on the relationship between the work and its author and which is for the most part informed, surprisingly, by the base-superstructure model of society (see explanation below), and the mimetic in which the focus is on the accuracy (or not) of the reality which the work represents and which is informed, again surprisingly, by the expressive totality model of society (see explanation below).

The difference between these two approaches, it should be noted, is one of emphasis largely in that both share a tendency to try to interpret texts in terms of or determined by its social and historical context. Those interested in the former tend to stress the socio-economic determinants which manifest themselves through a given writer’s work, while those in the latter tend to emphasise and, thus, evaluate what a literary work reflects or represents, raising questions such as: does a novel written in the twentieth century but about the Middle Ages accurately capture the historical period it is attempting to depict? Of course, these two emphases are not mutually exclusive but rather interdependent in that the determinants upon a writer will inevitably shape the accuracy (or not) of his / her representations. Moreover, both approaches share an emphasis on the source or origin of a work (given that a work is a form of ideology, what determines it in the Base is the crucial factor in interpretation) and tend to some degree to ignore the impact which works may be said to have in turn on the reader.

Many Marxist theorists such as Christopher Caudwell emphasise the expressive pole of criticism in that their focus is on the author and his / her social milieu. Such critics scrutinise a work in particular for an understanding of the way in which the author’s class and the degree, accordingly, to which (s)he is immersed in the dominant ideology play a decisive role in shaping the ideological nature of his/her work. The literary work is superstructural insofar as it is a form of ideology. Like any ideology, it may be said to be determined by the Base, that is, to reflect the Economic infrastructure of the society in question. It is, as such, an interpretation of the world that is largely not somehow peculiar to the author in question but which regurgitates, to a greater or less extent as the case may be, the dominant ideology of the socio-historical context in question and, thus, the values of the ruling class. The nature of the author’s relationship to the dominant ideology consequently determines whether the literary work in question contributes to the obfuscation and mystification of the relations of production specific to a particular place and time and, in so doing, legitimates and, thus, perpetuates the dominance of the ruling class, or whether it is an accurate reflection of their true nature. From this point of view, some writers and their works are reactionary or conservative while others are subversive.

The earliest and crudest form of Marxist criticism was that practised by the so-called Vulgar Marxists (the term ‘vulgar’ means not obscene but crude or simplistic). The most frequent and important accusation made against Vulgar Marxism is that of economic reductionism. That is, they tend to exhibit a naive tendency to reduce the work before them (and everything else in the superstructure) in too rigid a way to a simplistic reflection of the Base.

If many Marxist theorists emphasise the expressive pole of criticism, others like Georg Lukács adopt a more mimetic approach. The former, you might recall, tend to emphasise the determination of the work by the social and historical context of its production. In other words, the emphasis is on the milieu in which the author lived and its impact on the work, whether or not this milieu is the object of representation in the work. Indeed, sometimes the work at hand (e.g. a fairy tale) may seem to have precious little to do with politics or economics but the challenge for the expressive Marxist critic is to read the latter into an imaginative work which does not appear reducible to economics.

Like all adherents of mimesis, Marxist critics would certainly accept that literary works have meaning by virtue of the fact that they imitate or re-present in verbal form the natural and the social worlds. Plato, you might recall, defined art vaguely as a ‘mirror held up to nature’ while Aristotle contended more precisely that poetry depicted human actions. Mimetic Marxists would agree with the ‘Expressive’ Marxists that the literary work is superstructural insofar as it is a form of ideology. Like any ideology, it may be said to be determined by the Base, that is, to reflect the Economic infrastructure of the society in question. However, Mimetic Marxists tend to focus on the degree to which a literary work is (or is not) an accurate reflection of a particular period and place of human history. The time and place depicted may or may not be identical with those in which the author of the work actually lived and wrote. For example, a writer in nineteenth century England like Sir Walter Scott who wrote at a time when the Industrial Revolution was at its height may write a novel on a far-removed period of English history (e.g. Ivanhoe is a representation of English society during the late Middle Ages), while another nineteenth century writer like Elizabeth Gaskell may choose to depict the on-going class-struggle attendant upon the Industrial Revolution in her hometown of Manchester (North and South). The degree to which a work is an accurate representation or not of a particular place and time is usually explained by reference to the author’s relationship to the dominant ideology of his / her own socio-historical context, that is, whether s/he is able to transcend false consciousness and thus is likely to perpetuate or contest the point of view of the ruling class. Lukács was of the view that some bourgeois writers (like Scott) possessed insight for this reason into the world-historical forces peculiar to a particular place and time and were able to offer an objective representation of them.

Structuralist Marxist critical theorists have struggled to come to terms with the precise nature of the relationship between the ideological text and socio-economic reality. Their solution, as we shall see, represents a significant departure from the earlier Marxist emphasis on either determination (the expressive approach) or reflection (the mimetic approach). Whether expressive or mimetic in inclination and whatever the social metaphor which informs their views, earlier Marxist critics had in common the view that ideology is a form of false consciousness and that what matters in literature is accordingly what it overtly addresses. For earlier generations of critics, the said of a work may consist of illusory beliefs (ideology) but it is this explicit content which concerns the critic. By contrast, for Structuralist Marxist critics, given Althusser’s theory of ideology, it is the implicitly unsaid, that which is latent rather than manifest, that is the goal of criticism. The result has been a model of the text that is markedly more sophisticated than that of either Vulgar or Hegelian Marxism and the notion implicit therein of a simplistic, unmediated relationship of reflection between the work and a prior, objectively ascertainable historical reality. Althusser's emphasis is, you might recall, on the relative autonomy of the various practices (economic, political, ideological) comprising the social formation. As a result, while literary texts cannot be said to be completely divorced from all socio-material determinants, neither can they be simplistically reduced to them.