I think I have achieved a partial understanding of Marxism. I have a vague idea of what he was saying, but I still find his writing to be complicated, I need some kind of “Marxism for Dummies” or something like that. The parts that I did understand about Marxism were his opinions on how religion is corrupt and how socialism could change the world for the better. I was amazed to find out that I agreed with most of his views. It is a shame how misconstrued his message has been over the years, then again, I may have it wrong myself. I don’t think Marx was against religion, he just viewed it as another way the government or at least the dominant class could suppress the lower class. The way a Marxist reads a story frightens me, I always tried to look for the subtext in a story, but the Marxist readings we had for the blog almost seemed like the thoughts of a paranoid delusional, what worries me is that I found myself agreeing with most of them.

What interested me the most about the unit on Marxism was Gramsci. The idea of hegemony and how it can be used for so much more than government amazed me. When writing the paper, I tried to think about how different the readings of a Marxist and Gramscian would be, while the two theories are similar, they differ in terms of the importance of economy versus the importance of culture. I found the paper to be harder than I thought it would. While its hard to read Marx, it’d even harder to write about him, case in point, I am having trouble right now writing about what I learned about him. I just tried to read each passage of “Anna Karenina” with an overly critical mindset. I tried to find the “hidden meaning.” I wouldn’t say I was proud of my work since I felt like there was still more to be said, but I just had no idea what that was. I did feel a sense of accomplishment since after writing the paper I felt like I understood Marx well. I guess it takes a Marxist to understand Marx and while doing a Marxist reading, I had to think like a Marxist.