What is Marxist Horror?

‘What the hell is Marxist Horror?’ is one of the most common questions people ask me. I’m not really surprised. There is no ‘Marxist Horror’ section at your local book store and I dare say you’d struggle to find another member of this genre – though a lot horror is left-wing and possibly Marxist, and a lot of literature by Marxists tell horrific tales.

I define Marxist horror as essential horror fiction from a Marxist perspective. It’s not literature about how horrible Marxism is. Essentially, as a Marxist, the things I see in the real world that fill me with a sense of horror inform that kind of stories I tell through the metaphor of the horror genre. I write horror stories about the evils of capitalism.

I believe capitalism is a violent, unequal, dehumanising and oppressive society and I think this is best expressed through the metaphor of horror where I shine a spotlight and bring out these abhorrent aspects of our society, hoping that these stories connect with readers and their everyday experiences under capitalism.

The Horror Writer and the Socialist cannot be separated

When I began writing (at around the same time I became interested in left-wing politics) I was conscious of a paradox in my ideas. On the one hand I enjoyed horror films and books, enjoyed writing my own gruesome stories but on the other hand, I identified as a human rights activist and pacifist (before becoming exposed to Marxist ideas).

I saw my political opposition to violence and my cultural interest in horror as contradictory. This spawned the title of my first self-published collection Sanity Juxtaposed, arising from a sense of the two colliding and affecting my mental state.

But as my political ideas developed and the themes in my writing emerged it became impossible to keep the two separated. The violence and horrors of my writing quickly became the things I was most horrified by in real life. My interest in horror was not that I loved violence but it’s an accurate metaphor for the way I see the world.

The two cannot be separated and so my Marxist ideas will always influence my fiction and my interest in horror colours the way I express my political ideas.

Capitalism is Evil

Some of the things in the world today horrify me so much, are so dark, so violent that they belong in a horror movie.

As a Marxist I see the root of all of society’s problems arising out of capitalism and the drive for profit. Our ruling elite are almost possessed for this quest for profit that all other concerns for humanity are subordinate to this motive.

Some of the everyday things about capitalism that horrify me are:

• In the US, the top 20% households control 83% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 80% control only about 17%.
• More than a third of the world population (just under 3 Billion) lives on less than $2 a day whilst the world’s three richest people are worth as much as the poorest 600 million
• Workers, whilst not technically enslaved, are forced to work in jobs for most of their lives and enslaved by the fact that workers are forced to sell their labour power to make a living unless they want to starve or if you’re lucky, receive a paltry income from welfare
• The horrible conditions workers have to work in. Whilst fighting back has improved it somewhat since the horrors of child labour and low life expectancy during the industrial revolution, many workers work in dangerous or soul-destroying conditions that destroy bodies and minds
• Workers are killed and injured at work at a high rate as a result of poor safety conditions. In Australia, between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009, 151 workers were killed at work (which is on the rise) and workers are injured in their tens of thousands every year.
• War and imperialism is constant feature of our world today where in last couple of decades there has barely been a day where some war was not being waged somewhere in the world resulting in millions of men, women and children killed, permanently damaged or injured.
• There are over 7 million Palestinian refugees, the world’s biggest refugee population, as a result of their expulsion from the original land of Palestine and the creation of the apartheid state of Israel. Those that are left in the West Bank and Gaza live in barbaric conditions and subjected to torture and violence daily at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force.
• The continuation of racist, sexist and homophobic ideology means people are killed or assaulted everyday for being black, Muslim, female or homosexual among other oppressed groups.
• In the US, 1 in every 20 black men are in prison and in Australia, Indigenous people are 24% of the prison population (and 30% of deaths in custody) whilst only 2.4% of the general population.
• After the attacks on September 11, 2001, there were over 500 hate-crimes recorded against either Arabs, Muslims or Sikhs in the US up until 2004. Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism are a feature of all Western countries today.
• In the US, 1 in 6 women have been the victim of rape or attempt rape and the majority of sexual assaults and violence against women are committed by a male known to them.
• Most youth that identify as gay, lesbian, transgender or intersex have reported verbal and physical abuse, particularly at school whilst in most states in the US you can still be fired for being LGBTI. LGBTI youth are also up to 6 times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers.
• The UN predicts that by 2050, 150 million environmental refugees will be created as a result of rising sea levels.
• In Australia, men, women and children who flee war-torn countries and enter Australia to seek asylum are locked up in detention centres surrounded by barbed wire and have been kept there for years or indefinite detention.
• The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986 is expected to have caused up to 4,000 deaths
• More than 200,000 people were killed in an instant when two nuclear bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the United States, who still have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over.

Influences

What are some of the writers/works (Marxist, horror and literary) that have influenced Marxist Horror?

Stephen King – It’s rare that any writer in the horror field has not been influenced or affect by King’s work, even if they like him or not. I found King’s writing and stories amazing but also useful to see his working class origins and how they affect his work.

Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – This is probably the number one novel about the horrors of capitalism. Set in the Great Depression, Steinbeck describes in poignant detail the class divide, exploitation and poverty all for the interest of profit.

Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk – Though this novel is Nihilistic and very masculine, I think Fight Club accurately portrays alienation in a raw and powerful way and resonated with my own experiences at work.

The works of Karl Marx and Fredereich Engels – This goes almost without need of a mention but the work of both Marx and Engels has influenced me not just politically but in language and aesthetically. Engels describes the horrible conditions in England during the industrial revolution in Conditions of the Working-Class in England. But the most notable quotes are in Capital: Volume 1, “Capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” and “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”

The Junius Pamphlet – Rosa Luxemburg – Rosa Luxemburg’s evocative descriptions in this pamphlet about World War I and the collapse of the social-democratic parties have resonated with me.

“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.”

“Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”… the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery…In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.”

China Miéville – Both a socialist and a speculative fiction writer, Miéville has made an enormous contribution to the genre and the politics within it and is said to be from the ‘New Weird’ sub-genre. He’s spoken at a Marxist conference on ‘Marxism and Monsters’ and co-edited a book called Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction.