As Marxist critical discourse with distinct ideological connotation and practicality, political criticism runs through the different development phrases of Marxist literary theory in the 20th century, and affects the construction of knowledge forms of modern Chinese literary theory. Also, it is equally important to play an important role in establishing a “political criticism” discourse system of contemporary public literary theory. The authors of the present paper hold that classical Marxism in fact created a kind of primitive political criticism, which set up the “political criticism” from the aspects of basic attributes，value function and thinking connotation in a philosophical way. Meanwhile, primitive political criticism serves as a general guideline to theory. Political criticism, advocated by PostMarxism, contains the deepness and richness of primitive political criticism from Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson, including the realistic reflection and exploration from “Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe” and their cultural dimension, and represents the diversity and openness in theories. In the new sociocultural context, making use of the leading role of political criticism, summarizing the historical experience of Chinese literary theory, and absorbing the essence and core of political criticism mark the important theoretical and practical significance in building the “theories and criticism” discourse system of the human community.

political criticism; primitive standard research; cultural dimension; modern Chinese literary theory; discourse system construction