ABSTRACT
Marxist theories, along with semiotic theory, psychoanalytic theory, and sociological theory, are the basic theories which inform the field of cultural studies. Marxist theories offer a powerful tool for analyzing the way the ruling classes, those who control the economic institutions of society, shape the consciousness of the masses what Marx called the proletariat. The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas that are the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time the dominant intellectual force. The Marxist method, recently in varying degrees of combination with structuralism and semiology, has provided an incisive analytic tool for studying the political signification in every facet of contemporary culture. In contrast to liberal feminists, socialist feminists, as Marxists, assume that the class system under capitalism is fundamentally responsible for women's oppression.
