on human behavior. Marxist social theory has at is core the thesis that the concentration of wealth and property creates a condition of inequitable distribution of social goods, hence unequal power relationships, with the result that humankind experiences social alienation. As Marx explains, for the wealthy and powerful alienation is positive and reinforcing, whereas for the proletariat the alienation is negative and destructive and shapes the structure of society.
The possessing class and the proletarian class represent one and the same human self-alienation. But the former feels satisfied and affirmed in this self-alienation, experiences the alienation as a sign of its own power, and possesses in it the appearance of a human existence. The latter, however, feels destroyed in this alienation, seeing . . . the contradiction between its human nature and its life-situation (Marx 133-4).
Everything in this description of humankind's existential experience implies a justification for the wholesale transformation of society that Marx envisioned. By no means does Crime and Punishment argue in favor of that revolution; however, in Raskolnikov's character the narrative does capture existential despair and confusion. He enacts his alienation as if he is satisfying himself and affirming himself, more or less in the manner of a contented capitalist, although his most keenly felt emotions are those of social marginalization, since he has failed as a student, is failing as intellectual and writer, and seems bound to poverty.
It has been noted that Crime and Punishment is not calling for Marxist revolution, which was to arrive in Russia more than 50 years after the initial publication of the novel. Nor can it be said that Crime and Punishment anticipates the revolution, even though it seems likely that Dostoevsky would have been aware of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. A credible case can also be made that Dostoevsky was fully c...