A Critical Look at Marxism Marxism is a political and economic philosophy originating with one, Karl Marx. Karl Marx was a German philosopher who lived in the nineteenth century. Marx outlined that the capitalist economic system is designed to keep the upper classes (the bourgeoisie) wealthy, while at the same time the lower classes (the proletariat) remain trapped at the bottom of a biased construct. "Marx defined ideology as 'the ruling ideas of the ruling …showed first 75 words of 1138 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1138 total…few and far between, but they existed. Marxism only leaves room to say that the bourgeoisie allow the proletariat to do these things so that they continue to believe that they are free, when they are not. Works Cited Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism. New Jersey:Prentice Hall. Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory. New York: Oxford, 2000. Rivkin, Julie, ed. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. Stevenson, Leslie. The Study of Human Nature. New York: Oxford, 2000.