The Unconscious Struggle for Human Existence

According to philosopher Karl Marx, humans are "slaves to historical necessity and their thought and thinking are rigidly determined by the mode of production" (Beer xxii). This view of historical materialism asserts that the culture, political, and government systems of a given people derive from the material conditions of their existence. Thus, "life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life"(Reader 155). In the short story, "The Boarding House", James Joyce uses Mrs. Mooney …

…no longer represent the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. The ultimate gain in this process! will be a free association "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (32). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography** Beer, Samuel H. ed. The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels. Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc. 1955. Xxii,xxiii,27,30,32. The German Ideology 14,179. Joyce, James. "The Boarding House." Dubliners. New York: Viking Penguin, 1967. 71,72,74,75,76,77,78,79. The Marx-Engles Reader 155