Invisible Man is a novel by African-American author Ralph Ellison, first published by Random House in 1952. It responds to Ellison's own disillusionment with the communist party.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Ellison was associated with the Communist Party, in part through his association with fellow African-American writer Richard Wright. As someone raised in poverty, Ellison was influenced by Marxist ideology concerning class oppression. However, in 1945, Ellison became disillusioned with the Communist Party, feeling that the Party had betrayed African Americans and its own ideals. Invisible Man was written in response to this break with the Communist Party.

The Communist Party is reflected in the novel as the Brotherhood. The narrator first embraces it, but it eventually betrays him. In chapters 16 through 18, readers see how success in the Brotherhood undermines the narrator's sense of identity. The narrator realizes that the Brotherhood has become a self-serving group as concerned with its own influence and image as with its putative ideals. Also, in these chapters, the narrator begins to realize that the Brotherhood's sense of class struggle still does not adequately interrogate racial conflict and that it is part of a "white man's world" that betrays African-American identity.

I think that there is much in way of Marxism in the story in that there is a culture that represents oppression.  For Ellison, the primary lens is one of race.  The issue of race becomes the defining element.  However, Ellison does embrace the Marxist line of thought in that the power of the White race in the story represents their ownership of the means of production and their oppression of a group of individuals represents how those in the position of power refuse to share it with others.  For example, the narrator's desire to believe that "White is right" is predicated not as much on race but in that opportunities and a sense of empowerment is associated with White people.  This is a Marxist argument in that those who are White are economically powerful, representative of the Marxist idea that material reality determines everything.  The "scheme" of which the narrator feels he is a "queer part" is one related to the issue of control, something that Marxist thought stresses. There is a "scheme," a configuration to keep power in the hands of the few at the cost of the many.  The quest for identity is one in which the individual seeks to define his role in such a predicament and context, which is Marxist in its idea that the individual must engage in reflection and thought about why what is there is there in the first place.  While Ellison openly uses race as the prism through which all else is filtered, there are heavy Marxist implications present in how power is constructed and understood.