ABSTRACT
As the most influential analysis of capitalism, Marx’s work is immensely useful for understanding literature. Marx’s Capital is a literary work, but he also used literature to shape his key ideas. Literature was central to the development of Marx’s political vision. His reading of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens was particularly important in his account of money, in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In reading Shakespeare closely, Marx saw that money is a destructive commodity that corrodes human relationships. Marx gives a more detailed literary criticism in an exchange of letters over a historical drama by Ferdinand Lassalle. Marx and Engels never produced a systematic theory of art, literature, or culture. Some Marxists suggest there could be a uniform approach to interpreting texts, while others argue that, because Marxist critique stresses critical responses to political and historical moments, no single theory could work.
