background. Thus, in Eagleton’s words, “consciousness does not determine life, life determines consciousness” 1976: 4.
According to Tyson 2006: 54, for the Marxist critic, all human events, either personal or political, and human productions such as nuclear submarines
and television shows can only be understood through the scrutiny of the specific materialhistorical circumstances in which those events and productions occur. An
accurate understanding of human affairs cannot be obtained by the use of abstract conceptions, it should be based on the concrete conditions in the world instead.
Hence, to understand human events and productions, marxist analysis focuses on relationships among socioeconomic classes and the distribution of power in the
society Tyson, 2006: 54.
b. Relation of Dominance and Exploitation among Classes
The second marxist world view as Marx and Engels in Ferretter, 2006: 18 argue in their book, The Communist Manifesto, is that the society that we
know today is the result of relation of dominance and exploitation among socioeconomic classes. The world, including its modern society and the cultural
progresses, is formed by the ongoing relation of dominance of one class by another. This is the crucial fact of human life, in which everything in the
superstructure is based. The developed nations are the result of class struggle in the past. For instance, the superior status of Britain today is the result of the
domination of the working class British in the eighteenth century. The relations of
dominance and exploitation practiced by the ruling class towards the working class was the determining factors of this nation’s glory.
As explained by Tyson 2006: 54, according to Marxist criticism, the most significant element that divide the society is differences in socioeconomic
class. The differences is sharply drawn between the bourgeoisie, or those who control “natural, economic, and human resources”, and the proletariat, or “the
majority of the global population who live in substandard conditions” and who always “perform the manual labor” such as mining, factory work, ditch digging,
railroad bulding, which eventually benefitted the rich Tyson, 2006: 54. The working class is oblivious to this material conditions of dominance and
exploitation which disadvantages them by allowing themselves to be divided into warring factions based on gender, races, or ethnicity. This separation prevents
them into raising and uniting under the common banner against the injustice imposed by the ruling class which will radically alter the power structure and
culminate into a classless society Tyson, 2006: 54.
c. Base and Superstructure
Marx and Engels in Ferretter, 2006: 15 explains the second fundamental principle of their world view which is the concept of base and superstructure.
Base, or infrastructure, is the foundation of reality, formed by the combination of forces and relations of production. Resulted from the base is superstructure,
comprised of legal institutions in the social structure, such as constitution, forms of government, and other basic political institutions in a nation; and every kinds of
cultural products such as philosophy, arts, and literature. These cultural products resulted from the consciousness of the people are ideology. Ideology is further
explained by Marx in Ferretter, 2006: 16 as “the forms of conciousness in which its members represent their lives to one another in a way determined by that
society’s production relations”. These are values, ideas, and images bind individuals to their social functions and, in doing so, prevent them to understand
the material reality as a whole Eagleton, 1976: 16-17. Thus, ideology of a person in a society cannot be separated from the forces and relations of production where
that person lives. This is depicted by cultural products of the postmodern period, in which the marxist critic Fredric Jameson in Ferretter, 2006: 17 expounds
them as the cultural representation of complex network of economic relationships that formed global capitalism in the twenty first century.
2. Ideology
According to Terry Eagleton 1976: viii, Marxist criticism is a part of theoretical analysis which aims to understand “the ideas, values, and feelings by
which men experience their societies at various times”, or ideologies. Ideologies are part of the superstructure. They take the forms of social consciousness which
function to legitimate the ruling class’ power in society. It is also believed that, in consequence, the dominant ideas in the society is the ideas of its ruling class
Eagleton, 1976: 5. There are many definitions of ideology in Eagleton’s Ideology: an
Introduction. However, in relation to literature, ideology in Marxist’s sense is “not
