Dedicated to my wife – my co-conspirator, my always, the one who has always understood that the thread never truly frays.
Introduction: Two Witnesses to the Same Fire
Karl Marx and Charles Dickens were not contemporaries in the way we usually understand the word. Marx was born in 1818, Dickens in 1812. They died six years apart – Dickens in 1870, Marx in 1883. They lived in the same England, witnessed the same Industrial Revolution, and documented the same social catastrophes. (1) (2)
And yet, their legacies could not be more different.
Marx is attacked, vilified, reduced to a caricature – the bearded revolutionary whose name has become synonymous with state tyranny in the popular imagination. His works are banned in some places, dismissed in others. To mention his name in certain circles is to invite accusation.
Dickens is beloved. His books are adapted into feel-good films. His characters – Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge, David Copperfield – are cultural touchstones. His critique of Victorian poverty is sanitised, sentimentalised, and served up as entertainment. (7)
Why?
Because one wrote theory and the other wrote stories? Because one was German and the other English? Because one called for revolution and the other called for charity?
The answer is more uncomfortable than that.
The Social Reality They Both Described
Both Marx and Dickens observed the same phenomenon: the rise of industrial capitalism and the creation of a vast, impoverished underclass. (2) Victorian England was a time of extraordinary expansion and development – but also of grotesque inequality. (6)
The Industrial Revolution transformed England from an agrarian society into the world’s first industrial power. New technologies – the spinning jenny, the steam engine, the power loom – created immense wealth for a small class of factory owners. (6) But for the workers, the consequences were devastating:
- Long hours, low wages, and tyrannical working conditions
- Women and children compelled to work in factories and coal mines
- Rapid urbanization leading to overcrowded, unsanitary slums
- The dissolution of the Poor Law safety net, replaced by a punitive workhouse system. (2)(6)
Marx described this as the creation of a class system: the bourgeoisie, who owned the means of production, and the proletariat, who owned only their labour. He argued that this system was inherently exploitative – that the wealth of the capitalist depended on the unpaid labour of the worker.
Dickens described the same system through his fiction. Oliver Twist’s experience in the workhouse, David Copperfield’s brutal childhood labour, the plight of the Cratchit family in A Christmas Carol – these were not exaggerations. They were documentary. (2)(6)
Scholars have noted that Dickens’s novels “parallel the fundamental social theses in Marx’s writings”.5. As one analysis puts it, both men “had a number of parallels in the social reality they perceived” and “were writing at a similar time and place and looking at many of the same social problems in resonant ways.” (1)
The Difference: Theory vs. Story
The critical distinction lies not in what they saw, but in how they conveyed it.
Marx wrote theory. The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital are works of analysis – systematic, rigorous, unflinching. They identify the mechanisms of exploitation and argue for their overthrow. They offer a solution. (2)
Dickens wrote stories. His novels are embedded in a “way of seeing the world that had a genuineness that, at least for some readers, eluded Marx.” (1) Through “sarcasm and satire,” he demonstrated “his displeasure with classism and people’s poverty.” But his characters were often static – “formed with an absolute tendency to good or evil, and this propensity is unchanging.” (2)
For the establishment, the difference is clear:
Marx is dangerous because he names the system. He identifies class struggle as the engine of history. He calls for organization and revolution. He threatens the power structure directly. (2)
Dickens is safe because he names the symptoms – poverty, cruelty, injustice – but offers no systemic solution. His works can be read as sentimental moral tales, not as calls to action. His critique is contained within the narrative. (2)(7)
As one scholar notes, while “Dickens relies on Marxist concepts of class consciousness, sacrifice, revolution, social antitheses, and social injustice to weave his narratives,” he does so in a form that “presents Marx’s concepts as relevant and accessible within popular imagination.” (5) The fiction digests the critique, making it palatable.
The Legacy: Why One is Attacked, the Other Celebrated
Marx’s fate was sealed by the reception of his work. His ideas were claimed by revolutionary movements – the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Eastern Bloc states. These regimes weaponised his name and distorted his critique. (3)(7)
During the Soviet period, for example, “Dickens was perceived as a typical representative of the social novel and of critical realism… his novels were popular because of political and social implications; he was the most translated and celebrated of English authors as providing a critique of capitalist society.” (3)(7)
But this embrace proved toxic. “Since the Soviet regime was abhorrent to most people, they hated or at least looked with suspicion at everything that was praised and promoted in Soviet times.” (3) Marx’s association with Soviet tyranny – however distorted – tainted his legacy.
Dickens, by contrast, has been absorbed into the cultural canon without friction. His Christmas philosophy, his humanism, his “religion of the heart” – these are celebrated. (7) He is the great Victorian novelist, not the dangerous critic of capitalism.
The Temporary Respite: After WWII
The horrors of the First and Second World Wars created conditions for a temporary shift in power relations. (4)(8)
After 1945, the following occurred:
- The rise of the welfare state: In Britain, the NHS was established, social housing was expanded, and the welfare system was restructured. The Labour government’s 1945-1951 reforms created “a Democratic Socialist Welfare State.”
- Similar reforms in other Western countries: Canada, Australia, and the United States all expanded social security, public pensions, and state provisions. (4)
- A recognition of labour’s power: Millions of men had been trained in the use of arms. They had fought for their countries. They would not return to the old order quietly. The establishment needed to make concessions. (8)
As Page writes, the post-war welfare state was built on a consensus that the state had a responsibility to provide for its citizens. It was, in many ways, a response to the threat of revolutionary upheaval.
The Unfinished Struggle
But the struggle against the rentier class – against the system of extraction that Marx and Dickens described – never ended.
The welfare state is being dismantled. Neoliberalism has reversed many of the gains of the post-war era. (4)(8) The extractive system – the “reserve army of labour,” the exploitation of the vulnerable, the capture of the narrative – persists.
The pattern is inherent. The system Marx analysed and Dickens depicted was not a historical aberration. It was the logic of capitalism itself.
Conclusion: A Question for Our Time
Why do we celebrate Dickens and denigrate Marx?
Because Dickens entertains us while Marx confronts us. Because we can watch a film adaptation of Oliver Twist and feel righteous indignation without ever questioning the system that creates poverty today.
Because the narrative has been captured.
In the Victorian era, the establishment could tolerate Dickens because his critique went no further than the page. Today, the establishment can tolerate the sentiment of social critique – the “Christmas philosophy” – while ruthlessly suppressing the analysis that would identify the system itself.
Marx remains dangerous because he names the system.
Dickens remains safe because he names the symptoms.
And the struggle continues.
References
- Stearns, A. E., & Burns, T. J. (2011). About the Human Condition in the Works of Dickens and Marx. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 13(4).
Suffering of Poverty and Classism in David Copperfield and Oliver Twist (Doctoral dissertation). Shodhganga.
The Reception of Charles Dickens in Lithuanian Literary Criticism (Part III). Literatura, 54(4).
Karimi, S. (2017). Beyond the Welfare State: Postwar Social Settlement and Public Pension Policy in Canada and Australia. University of Toronto Press.
Victorian Period and Industrial Revolution (Doctoral dissertation). UIN Malang.
Noble, V. A. (2009). Inside the Welfare State: Foundations of Policy and Practice in Post-War Britain. Routledge.
The Reserve Army of Victorian Literature (Doctoral dissertation). University of Chicago.
Page, R. M. (2007). Revisiting the Welfare State. McGraw Hill/Open University Press.
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Last year I was lucky enough to visit both Dicken’s House in London and Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery.
Perhaps we love Dickens because they are compelling stories, but we can look back and say they are not happening today, even if they are in different forms.
Marx of course had his idea and term of “Communism” usurped by some horrible regimes. We should still evaluate what was good about Marx’s ideas.
Both Marx and Dickens shine a spotlight on societies of all ages.
Excellent critique.
Refering only to style, for me Dickens is the one writer who equals Marx in the production of stodge. I find it tolerable in Marx because, as the article says, he offered a solution to the problems he described; Dickens sentimentalised and exploited those issues.
“Marx’s … ideas were claimed by revolutionary movements – the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Eastern Bloc states. These regimes weaponised his name and distorted his critique.”
One of the greatest successes of liberal propaganda has been to fix in Western thought the belief that all the communist regimes were brutal to such an extent that they had no redeeming features.
This relentless flow of distortions (it continues to this day) conceals the fact that the revolutions that gave power to communist governments were popular revolutions.
In other words, the revolutions swept away regimes that were, in a word, intolerable.
They were far worse for ordinary folk than the communist governments that replaced them.
Assisting this distortion of history is the pressure that was put on communist governments by the West to ensure that economic, structural, and social development was restricted as much as possible.
With all of these governments starting from a very low base due to prior feudal and colonial/oligarchic mismanagement, it was not hard to paint a picture of “communist mismanagement”.
From that it was just a single step to communism being “doomed to fail” in the popular imagination.
Yet the opposite is the case.
During the formation of the Soviet Union, the very possibility of workers seizing the means of production and overthrowing their oppressors as happened in Russia, was a gravely serious possibility for the other Western nations.
So much so, that they all joined the Russian Civil War and attacked Lenin.
Even though they had been at war and in conflict against one another only months earlier, Germany, England, the United States, Japan, Canada, China, France, and others, all dropped what they were doing and found common cause to unite together in a fresh war against the fledgling Soviet Union, because a proletariat state even existing, is a very real challenge to their claims on power.
They all joined in on the global attack on the workers to prevent the Russian masses from liberating themselves — all long before any accusations of Soviet repression or tyranny could be made manifest.
Despite this, Lenin and Stalin took the USSR from a near-feudal state to a global super power within a generation, while holding off a two-front invasion from the Western powers after WW1, and saving Europe from fascism in WW2.
So much for communism being doomed to fail.
But the propaganda continues in an endless stream.
As the great Soviet general Marshal Zhukov stated after WW2 — “We liberated Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us.”
I have visited China myself and came away with a very different impression from the one often presented in Western media. What I saw was a highly advanced country with modern infrastructure, efficient public transport, impressive technological development, and a population that generally appeared optimistic about the future.
While no political system is perfect, it seems clear that China’s model has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, expanded education and healthcare, and transformed the country into a major economic power within a relatively short period. Many Chinese citizens appear to support their government because they have seen significant improvements in their living standards.
One aspect that interests me is their system of governance, where officials generally progress through various levels of responsibility before reaching senior positions. Whether people agree with that model or not, it raises an important question: if democracy is meant to serve the people, should it be judged by the voting process alone, or by the outcomes it delivers for ordinary citizens?
Looking at issues such as housing affordability, cost of living pressures, growing inequality, and declining trust in political institutions in Australia, I think it is reasonable to ask whether our own democratic system is performing as well as it could.
Ian, you’ve no doubt heard the groan-worthy suggestion that Marx’s grave was … wait for it … get your groaning chords ready … a communist plot.
Andrew asks Why do we celebrate Dickens and denigrate Marx? … Because the narrative has been captured.
Stephen Gowans explodes the myths of the narrative in “Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work?”
Advocates of a free enterprise economy would have you believe that public ownership and planning stifle innovation, while free enterprise encourages it. If that is the case, how do we explain:
That the Soviet Union beat the United States into space in the 1950s, piling up a record of firsts in space exploration, and consequently setting off a panic in Washington?
That most of the innovations in the United States, from the internet to Google’s search engine algorithm to advanced drugs and the i-Phone, are based, not on private investment, but government funding?
In fact, the truth about innovation is the exact opposite of what free-enterprise promoters would have us believe. It is not free enterprise, but planning and public funds, that drive it.
Soviet accomplishments in space, considered in light of the mistaken view that the USSR was always a poor second-best to the supposedly more dynamic United States, is truly startling. Soviet achievements include the first satellite, first animal in orbit, first human in orbit, first woman in orbit, first spacewalk, first moon impact, first image of the far side of the moon, first unmanned lunar soft landing, first space rover, first space station and first interplanetary probe. The panic created in Washington after the allegedly innovation-stifling Soviet economy allowed the USSR to beat its much richer ideological rival into space galvanized the United States to take a leaf from the Soviet book.
Just as the Soviets were doing, Washington would use public funds to power research into innovations. This would be done through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The DARPA would channel public money to scientists and engineers for military, space and other research. Many of the innovations to come out of the DARPA pipeline would eventually make their way to private investors, who would use them for private profit (Mazzucato, 2011). In this way, private investors were spared the trouble of risking their own capital, as free enterprise mythology would have us believe they do. In this myth, far-seeing and bold capitalists reap handsome profits as a reward for risking their capital on research that might never pay-off.
Except this is not how it works. It is far better for investors to invest their capital in ventures with less risk and quicker returns, while allowing the public to shoulder the burden of funding R&D with its many risks and uncertainties.
Using their wealth, influence and connections, investors have successfully pressed politicians into putting this pleasing arrangement in place. Free enterprise reality, then, is based on the sucker system: Risk is “socialized” (i.e., borne by the public, the suckers) while benefits are “privatized” (by investors who have manipulated politicians into shifting to the public the burden of funding R&D.)
A study by Block and Keller (2008) found that between 1971 and 2006, 77 out of R&D Magazine’s top 88 innovations had been fully funded by the US government.
Summarizing research by economist Mariana Mazzucato, Guardian columnist Seumas Milne (2012) points out that the Nuclear power, satellite and rocket technology, and the internet are other examples of innovations that were produced with public money, and have since been used for private profit.
US president Barack Obama acknowledged the nature of the swindle in his 2011 State of the Nation Address. “Our free-enterprise system,” began the president, “is what drives innovation.” However, he immediately contradicted himself by saying, “But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need.”
All of this points to two important facts. (1) The United States kick-started innovation in its economy by emulating the Soviet model of state-directed research because free enterprise was not up to the task. (2) Rather than emulate the Soviet model for public benefit, the United States channels public money into R&D for private profit.
From the second point can be inferred a third: The fact that the Soviets socialized the benefits that flow from socialized risk, while the United States privatizes them, reflects the antagonistic nature of the two societies: One, a mass-oriented society organized to benefit the masses; the other, a business society organized to benefit a minority of business owners.
Capitalism, as the US president acknowledges, does not promote innovation, because “it is not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research.”
On the other hand, state-directed funding is the source of innovation.
Clearly, then, a political agenda has nurtured two myths: (a) That a system of public ownership and planning stifles innovation; (b) That the profit system stimulates it.