Christopher Craig’s Super Marxist Essay!

Today after class I read Prof. Craig’s piece on Marxist theory . His piece started off by explaining examples of Marxism incorrectly interpreted, like the backwards logic of the McCarthy hearings and the placement of Marx’s Communist Manifesto in a trendy clothing store. Not being able to tell whether the store put the book on display as a sort of tongue-in-cheek joke, or as a symbol of capitalist triumph, he eventually deduced that it was actually there because the book was still a legitimate threat. And in a typical capitalist fashion, such threats are in a position where, “It commodifies them and mystifies their meaning, while also potentially taming the subversive behaviors that might result from them.” Craig goes on to explain how the Manifesto, as well as other cultural icons of communism like the image of Che Guevara, have been twisted by the evil that is capitalism to not only diffuse their original threat, but actually work for the benefit of capitalist endeavours. Craig goes even further to compare the Communist Manifesto to the stylish jeans it is next to by saying that the juxtaposition of these two images not only makes the jeans look more edgy and radical like the book, the book is almost self-destructively used to remove the idea of the actual plighted workers who no doubt made the jeans. I, on the other hand, would probably look at the display of trendy jeans with the Communist Manifesto and immediately think of it as ironic in that the retail store is clearly not practicing what it preaches (which brings up the question again of why is the book in the store in the first place?). In class today, when we first started talking about the article together, the idea of whether or not the advertising people who decided to put the book on display with the “edgy” jeans was brought up. According to Craig, who says in his essay, “For most of us, learning to read texts this way helps us to see through the ever-present ruling class ideology that exists in everything from the literature we read to displays in trendy clothing stores to the nightly news,” the answer is probably yes. But that may not be so; he may argue that the advertisers for the clothing store (who I would bet none of which had ever read the book nor will they even in the future) are subconsciously reinforcing the ideologies of the dominant class that they are a part of, maintaining their level of control even if they don’t necessarily know what they’re doing. It brings up a lot of questions as to the motives of people, specifically in relation to the creation and interpretation of texts. Craig also comments that, “American ruling class ideology continuously spins narratives that attempt to limit the working class’s ability to recognize and respond to its own subjugation,” which in my opinion, is true.