Social documentary filmmaking cannot be undertaken in a theoretical void, regardless of the intentions of the filmmaker. Each film's textual, stylistic and aesthetic composition is dictated by the ideological intent of the filmmaker, either consciously or subconsciously. As a result, social documentary films are a product of either conservative or subversive filmmakers and can be viewed as cultural products of social control by the dominant capitalist ideology or as tools promoting class awareness, class struggle and revolutionary praxis by those sympathetic to Marxist doctrine. This dissertation examines how Marxist ideology, in particular theories relating to class structure and the class struggle, can be used by filmmakers to analyse social documentary films. It enables the construction of a methodological 'toolkit' for filmmakers from which they are able to determine if individual social documentary films can be regarded as Marxist or not. This 'toolkit' is comprised of the theories of Lenin, Comolli and Narboni, Brecht, Althusser, and Weber among others. Once a methodological framework is constructed, it is used to evaluate a number of social documentary case studies including 7-Up, Harlan County USA, Roger and Me, and my own film, A Shit of a Job (which was produced by myself for broadcast on SBS television), as to their adherence to the principles of Marxist aesthetics and allegiance to the proletarian cause of class awareness and the class struggle.