This book is intended as a structured presentation of the major ideas of the most important trends of thought in the Marxist theory of art and is constructed as a map of the field of Marxist aesthetics.

Art and Value is the first comprehensive analysis of art's political economy throughout classical, neoclassical and Marxist economics. It provides a critical-historical survey of the theories of art's economic exceptionalism, of art as a merit good, and of the theories of art's commodification, the culture industry and real subsumption. Key debates on the economics of art, from the high prices artworks fetch at auction, to the controversies over public subsidy of the arts, the 'cost disease' of artistic production, and neoliberal and post-Marxist theories of art's incorporation into capitalism, are examined in detail. Subjecting mainstream and Marxist theories of art's economics to an exacting critique, the book concludes with a new Marxist theory of art's economic exceptionalism.

Marxism and Art is a collection of basic readings in Marxist criticism and aesthetics.

To the question of &lquo;what is art?&rquo;, it is often simply responded that art is whatever is produced by the artist. For John Molyneux, this clearly circular answer is deeply unsatisfying. In a tour de force spanning renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic to contemporary leading figures, The Dialectics of Art instead approaches its subject matter as a distinct field of creative human labour that emerges alongside and in opposition to the alienation and commodification brought about by capitalism. The pieces and individuals Molyneux examines — from Michelangelo’s Slaves to Rembrandts Jewish Bride to the vast drip paintings of Jackson Pollock – are presented as embodying the social contradictions of their times, giving art an inherently political relevance. In its relationship of creative and dialectical tension to prevailing social relationships and norms, such art points beyond the existing order of things, hinting at a potential future society not based on alienated labour in which creative production becomes the property and practice of all.

Althusser and Art offers a reading of Althusserianism as a meta-mediation on the question concerning the aesthetics of theory. Fardy shows that Althusserian theory is part of a larger genealogy of thought, stretching from Korsch through Laruelle, that has been primarily concerned with the search for a form of theory, an aesthetic of theorizing, capable of transcending the theory-practice dialectic.

Terry Eagleton is one of the most important-and most radical-theorists writing today. His witty and acerbic attacks on contemporary culture and society are read and enjoyed by many, and his studies of literature are regarded as classics of contemporary criticism. In this new edition of his groundbreaking treatise on literary theory, Eagleton seeks to develop a sophisticated relationship between Marxism and literary criticism. Ranging across the key works of Raymond Williams, Lenin, Trotsky, Brecht, Adorno, Benjamin, Lukacs and Sartre, he develops a nuanced critique of traditional literary criticism while producing a compelling theoretical account of ideology. Eagleton uses this perspective to offer fascinating analyses of canonical writers, including George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence. The new introduction sets this classic book in the context of its first appearance and Eagleton provides illuminating reflections on the progress of literary study over the years.