Marxist Criticism of the Great Gatsby

Gatsby

Marx and the Great Gatsby

In the 1920s, the United States was enjoyed a new and unprecedented period of industriousness and growth. Within this period, its advancement as a production society would seen one of its most torrid phases of expansion. But just as this time would prove the economic merits of capitalism, it would begin to demonstrate the considerable dangers that also accompany this system. This dichotomy is captured best in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. In the title character and his surrounding culture, we are given a compelling critique of the materialism and inequality which are the ultimate ends of capitalist greed. Approaching the text through the lens of social theorist Karl Marx, one comes face-to-face with the culturally, socially and ethically destructive mores of unrestrained capitalism.

We initiate the discussion with a perspective offered by Marx. The innovator of Communism warned that in any production-based society, there is a fine line between the achievement of economic prolificacy for the greater good and the exploitation of production labor for the enrichment of the select few. Unfortunately, according to Marx, capitalism inherently benefits the select few at the expense of the laboring majority and with stultifying effects on social progress. According to Trainer (2010), "At first the relation between new forces of production and new relations of production is progressive or beneficial to society in general. Marx stressed the great increase in human welfare that economic growth under capitalism had brought. However as time goes on the situation becomes less and less beneficial. The new social relations of production begin to hinder the full development and application of the new forces of production." (p. 1)

This denotes that in the eventuality, capitalist growth produces less in the way of economic progress and more in the way of the individual acquisition for the wealthy elite. These wealthy elite drive the action and thematic impulses of The Great Gatsby, especially in the old money society where the self-made bootlegger attempts to gain acceptance. Daisy is a particularly demonstrative figure, a lazy socialite with tremendous personal wealth and little sense of the society around her. On this point, Gatsby observes that Daisy's voice was 'full of money,' and Nick's characterization of this condition is important: "I'd never understood before. It was full of money -- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals song of it" (Fitzgerald, 120) Here, the romanticizing of this quality speaks directly to what Marx would call the skewed values of the society in Gatsby.

For Marx, figures like Daisy were the consequence of production society gone amok. The importance of material production as a force for the advancement of civilization has been supplanted at this point in America's history with a senseless embrace of the superficial. In fact, Marx would likely argue that Gatsby is, himself, the ultimate manifestation of a society whose values have been undermined by the quest for material gain and the importance of conveying one's wealth.