ABSTRACT
I have spoken so far of literature in terms of form, politics, ideology, consciousness. But all this overlooks a simple fact which is obvious to everyone, and not least to a Marxist. Literature may be an artefact, a product of social consciousness, a world vision; but it is also an industry. Books are not just structures of meaning, they are also commodities produced by publishers and sold on the market at a profit. Drama is not just a collection of literary texts; it is a capitalist business which employs certain men (authors, directors, actors, stage-hands) to produce a commodity to be consumed by an audience at a profit. Critics are not just analysts of texts; they are also (usually) academics hired by the state to prepare students ideologically for their functions within capitalist society. 56Writers are not just transposers of trans-individual mental structures, they are also workers hired by publishing houses to produce commodities which will sell. ‘A writer’, Marx comments in Theories of Surplus Value, ‘is a worker not in so far as he produces ideas, but in so far as he enriches the publisher, in so far as he is working for a wage.’
