A Critical Analysis of Fight Club

According to Marxist doctrine, the rich prevent the working class from becoming aware of their oppression and latent power by imposing their ideology on society. The ruling class uses ideology to persuade the poor that their miserable condition is either inevitable or compensated by future events. Marx identified the primary ideology as religion, the opiate of the masses, which justifies the misery of the workers by promising eternal benefits in heaven.

Instead of religion, Fight Club identifies consumerism as the modern worker’s opiate. For example, the narrator (i.e. Jack) says, "the people who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue." In other words, the pursuit of the next best product is the current generation’s pornography. Workers pore over magazines because they believe that the accumulation of material possessions exemplifies the good life. Let us suppose that you buy furniture and tell yourself: this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Then for a couple years you are satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you have resolved your sofa issue. Next, you buy the right set of dishes, the perfect bed, the perfect rug, etc. There is no end to the pursuit of material possessions, and in the process, the things you own end up owning you.

The second pernicious effect of consumerism is the emptiness and the lack of meaning in a life spent in pursuit of material possessions. Jack had all sorts of possessions that symbolized success and the idyllic American lifestyle, but they do not mean anything and therefore left him empty, without a true identity, and in desperate need of a community. Fight Club identifies the taming of consumerism as the first step toward revolution. The destruction of Jack's apartment opens his eyes to his need for a savior. Jack ends up reaching out to Tyler Durden for salvation from his addiction to consumerism. This acts as a metaphor for the working class to awaken from their bondage and seek salvation in a community of like-minded individuals.

For Marx, salvation laid in class struggle and social revolution; for Jack, salvation lies in the idealized version of himself (i.e. Tyler) and the community formed by fighting. The concept of empowerment through struggle is prevalent in Fight Club, and struggle enables the characters to stand up to the powerful and initiate the revolution via Project Mayhem. Once Jack becomes involved in fight club, he is empowered by the struggle and is able to take action against his boss. According to Jack, the key benefit to fight club is that "after a few fights, you’re afraid a lot less." Fight club takes away the working class' fear of adverse consequences and empowers them to take action and revolt against oppression.

The key takeaway from this is that struggle is a beneficial process, regardless of its success or failure, because it empowers people to be free. Now I leave you with the most poignant quotation in Fight Club: "We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war…our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off."