ng. In the "Assumptions" he says, "most Marxists adhere to a similar understanding of the world" (218). This is true, yet in the "Methodology" he states, "there can be no single Marxist approach to literary analysis" (220). He bases this statement on his brief history of significant Marxists of the past (and present.) Yet, when defining each critic's approach, he fails to articulate the distinctions. The difference between Georg Lukacs' "job to show how the characters within the text are typical of their historical, socioeconomic setting and the author's worldview" (215) and Walter Benjamin's idea that "a text reveals a culture's fragmentation and not a wholeness is a useful notion for promoting socialist ideas" (215) is minimal. Both are slightly different approaches; one is looking within the text at the internal characters and the other looks at the external forces, yet they both revolve around the same general belief. Obviously every mode of thought and analysis is going to differ slightly from one person to another, but as long as they cling to the same ideals, it is not fair to claim that, "there can be no single approach" to any theory. This is a given.When writing about Russian Marxism, Bressler fails to show the hypocrisy and irony in Stalin and Lenin's rule. He states, "Lenin amended his literary theory and argued that the Communist Party could not accept or support literary works that blatantly defied established party policies" (214). Also that Stalin's "union decreed that all literature must glorify party actions and decisions" (215). Bressler claims that Russia became the first country to promote Marxism, and though this is true in most respects, Lenin and Stalin both took the role of the bourgeois by trying to limit and shape what was being written. The irony of this is not shown. Stalin and Lenin may have been communists, but not true Marxists. Bressler states that Leon Trotsky is the founding father of Ma...
