Marxist Criticism

Marxist Critics see literary works as representing the class struggle between the haves and the have nots.

Marxist Criticism is, not surprisingly, concerned with economic conditions.  Marxist Critics are often interested in social class (as feminist critics are interested in gender).  They see literature as a "product"--something produced by work, (compare an auto--something produced by factory workers and engineers) sold in a marketplace.  They thus can see readers as consumers of these products.

Marxist Critics are very concerned about the structures of a society.  They see a society's economic structures as its base--the foundation on which a society rests (think, "basement").  Societies are inherently conservative, so each society (especially those in it currently benefiting from whatever economic base is in place) wants to perpetuate or continually reproduce its base--those foundational economic structures.  Those foundational economic structures are often class interactions and power hierarchies.  
 

karl marx

Karl Marx

The superstructure which is a more effective social tool for perpetrating the base is a collection of "ideological state apparatuses" such as religion, schools, and art, including literature.  Marxist Critics see art as reproducing the economic and social foundations of their societies, OR as (with varying degrees of success and overtness) criticizing and attempting to overthrow said economic and social foundations. 

Thus a typical Marxist Critic looks at a literary work as both a product of work and as something which itself goes out and does work--the work of reinforcing and perpetuating its culture's dominant value system (or ideology).  The power of the dominant ideology to reproduce itself in art and through art (the dominant ideology both shapes the producing of art and is itself [re]produced by art) is called hegemony.

Literary texts are generally thought of as knowing nothing of the conditions of their own production.  Authors are blind to their being shaped by and to their reproducing a dominant ideology.

From: http://dsteinbe.intrasun.tcnj.edu/secondindex.html

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