Socialist realism as exemplified in Violence questions an existing social order and articulates a revolutionary option. Capitalism is an economic system in which the factors of production are concentrated in a few hands resulting in the alienation of property from the direct producers - the workers. The means of production thus shifted, become the property of the capitalist - the movers of the bourgeois society. The direct result of this is apparently a dichotomy between two classes - the labourer (the worker) who receives his means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power, and the capitalist who receives the worker’s labour and appropriates all the proceeds arising from it. The worker only receives an insignificant portion of the proceeds only for survival. Social crisis is therefore bound to arise as a reaction by the exploited workers who are in the majority.
In the capitalist society the worker is an exploited and alienated. He is without capital or investment or ground rent and lives entirely on his labour. He is used “just like ahorse needs only receive so as enables him work.” He is not considered for leisure as a human being and rather than fulfill himself in the work, he does deny himself. He does not develop freely a physical and mental energy but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. While at work, the worker feels homeless because the work is not his own. Since he works for someone else, he does not belong to himself but to another person (ibid., pp. 177). These conditions are the consequent creation of the capitalist society as portrayed by Iyayi’s Violence.
Idemudia, struggles with unemployment and poverty in a social background of class intolerance. Right from the cover design of the novel, Iyayi depicts clearly a class conflict; the bourgeois class is represented by a modern society, enriched with skyscrapers. The masses are depicted in a dilapidated tent in a shanty slum. Idemudia unfortunately ends his secondary education in class four when his father could no longer pay his school fees. He is alternatively thrown into the labour market unprepared. He fails to secure employment after many years. Marries and has a son, he sends the child to the village. He is forced to hang around Iyaro for hire as a common labourer - a life of agony of having to feed a loyal and determined wife who grows increasingly bitter because of their condition. Iyayi portrays Idemudia’s dilemma as not only arising from his poor education, but also lacking an opportunity to improve himself through his labour. In the Nigerian capitalism, even the educated are unsafe from exploitation. The bourgeois take the advantage of Idemudia’s unskilled labour to exploit him, so that though he works hard, he is underpaid and his condition suffers consistent degeneration. Idemudia, his wife and his three friends, (Osaro, Omoifo and Patrick) represent the Nigerian worker. Their social dilemma and deprivation is the subject of Iyayi’s criticism in Violence.
This explains the argument of Marx in his appraisal of capitalist ideals as the worker is simply exiled and dehumanized. An indebted Idemudia and his wife cannot pay their debts yet the man works hard but is paid so little – a paltry sum of N5 at the end of the month. Iyayi postulates that there is too much injustice in this system. The Nigerian employer who Queen Obofun represents is constructed as a slave driver who is insensitive of the basic needs of his worker. He is ever ready to extort and exploit especially those who lack the guts to say No! And Iyayi calls this Violence.
When a man is denied opportunity, of being educated, of getting a job, of feeding himself and his family properly, of getting medical attention cheaply, quickly and promptly, the act of violence is committed against him (ibid. pp. 193).
An overt contrast to this condition is the world of the opulent depicted by Obofun and his wife Queen, whose ill-gotten affluence places them on the apex of the society. The Obofuns whose wealth is accumulated through fraud in collusion with the government live in sheer luxury, own a fleet of cars, and own a chain of hotels. While Idemudia is so poor that he cannot even replace an old broom in his room, the wealthy Queen (his employer) throws away left-over food in her refuse bins. The employment of labourers in her construction company is to save her low-cost housing contract which the government had threatened to terminate for her delay in executing the project. At the work-site work condition is extremely unbearable. The workers are slave-driven, sacked at will, intimidated and denied the opportunity to negotiate for a higher wage. “… they worked in subdued silence like prisoners, coming and going in the intense light of the sun” (ibid. pp 246). This condition eventually forced Idemudia and his co-workers to embark on an industrial action. And Iyayi argues that physical violence is a moral option against psychological violence.
Class dichotomy in a capitalist society generates class discrimination and breeds hostility. In Violence, class intolerance affects even the running of the hospital. Idemudia’s illness and subsequent admission in the hospital reveals class consciousness in the administration of the hospital. Idemudia can only go to a lower Ogbe hospital where the general wards are so congested that patients are paired up in beds irrespective of the nature of their diseases. Unlucky patients are forced to sleep on the bare floor along the corridor in front of the wards. “Senior service” wards are for the rich and in most cases the executive wards are virtually empty, because the rich who seldom fall sick have the best hospital facilities reserved for them while the poor who are prone to frequent ailments have no hospitals. Iyayi portrays this situation as injustice against workers. Idemudia and Osaro sell their blood to a man in a Mercedes Benz car, showing that capitalism saps the last drop of blood of the common man and rapes his manhood.
In the mock-drama embedded within the plot of the novel, also titled “Violence”, the Defence Counsel puts the whole society on trial and postulates that the society lacks moral qualification to punish crimes. Iyayi through the Defence counsel argues that every form of sabotage, crime or prostitution in the society is a direct consequence of lack of opportunity propagated by irresponsible government as well as intolerant class stratification. The lack of privilege and opportunity to the worker is a greater violence than whatever reaction the aggrieved worker might project. Here again Iyayi insists that it is the social institution that makes the man and determines his level of morality. In fact, through the Defence Counsel, Iyayi calls to question the moral eligibility of judges; because individuals are no more responsible for their actions than the society conditions them. Iyayi insists that it is the poverty of Idemudia’s family, the lack of food and the lack of money to pay Idemudia’s hospital bill that drive Adisa to adultery. Adisa must convince herself that her poverty justifies her offering her body as a way of solving her material problem. Festus Iyayi sees the Nigerian capitalist society as committing various forms of violence against the masses. To him capitalism is violence, and violence should be answered with violence. He advocates for a mass revolt which hopefully would usher in a new socio-economic order.
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