SOURCE: Bisztray, George. “Marxism and the Pluralism of Critical Methods.” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 26 (1977): 10-16.

[In the following essay, Bisztray outlines the dialectical methods used by Marxist critics as an underlying criterion for the Marxist perspective in literary interpreation.]

We are told that we live in an era of pluralism of literary methods. Today, in German literary scholarship, Methodenpluralismus is a fashionable term, which has already inspired a number of studies and anthologies. Jost Hermand's pioneering Synthetisches Interpretieren (1968) was followed by several similar investigations.¹ In France and the English-speaking countries, methodological discussion has been less profuse than in Germany, Scandinavia, and the East-Central European world. Nevertheless, even here the signs of change cannot be missed. In France, structuralism and its outgrowth, semiotics, challenged the monopoly of post-war existentialism (and, for that matter, pre-war explication de texte). Meanwhile, here in the United States, it has become fashionable to write obituaries for the “New Criticism”—even while it still thrives, disguished and undisguised, in hundreds of freshmen English classes around the country.

Those who advocate the use of the term Methodenpluralismus assume that modern literary scholarship is witnessing a long unseen, perhaps even unprecedented, tolerance toward the utilization of a variety of approaches to a work of art. Increasingly, the particular subject matter and the unique goal of the investigation, rather than academic tradition, determine which method one chooses. In addition, overlappings between different methods are tolerated with increasing frequency, as the risk of eclecticism appears subordinate to the advantages of synthetic creativity.

There is no solid argument to contest statements alleging the earlier poverty of dominating approaches. In the West, we found various forms of close reading and, very secondarily, speculative existentialist or psychoanalytical interpretations. In the East, we found a standardized version of Zhdanovism. What I have not found in the debate on methodological pluralism is a recognition of how the present variety of options reflects the thawing of the Cold War and our age of détente among the major powers. Indeed, the tendency toward methodological pluralism is a phenomenon which involves all of Europe: West and East learn from, and sometimes plagiarize, each other.

There is, to be sure, an unusually high degree of pluralism observable on the European scene. But what about the word “method?” If we consider this term in its most elementary, “dictionary” definition, we find something incongruous about he way it is used in recent literary scholarship.

In the German discussion, some of the so-called “methods” found are, in Pollmann's study: hermeneutics,² stylistics, psychocriticism, “thematic criticism,” existentialism and phenomenology, sociology (including Marxism), and literary history; in Hauff et al.: hermeneutics, positivism, Marxism, and structuralism; and in Leibfried‘s study: positivism, psychologism, formalism, Marxism, sociologism, mathematical methods, and “work interpretation,” that is, a German variation of New Criticism. It is clear that, although they admit the epistemological and logical extensions of these so-called “methods,” their advocates still choose, in most cases, a primarily ontological, “structural” starting point.

What, after all, is a method?

The dictionary tells us that a method is a systematic mode of procedure. Scientists insist on the verification of data as a criterion for any acceptable methodical process toward a set objective, while humanists and Geisteswis-senschaftler regard a systematic cognitive process through various phases as the most significant attribute of a method.

Let me express this idea more metaphorically. Man is born into a complex structure of existence. Both the necessities of existence and instinctive human curiosity set certain theoretical and practical goals before the individual. Among man's elementary aspirations, especially on a higher level of his intellectual development, is the attempt to discover and to achieve. The stages of this twofold (cognitive and creative) process, together with the means involved, are what we can call “method.”

From this perspective, Marxism is not a “method.” As a matter of fact, neither is sociologism, phenomenology, or existentialism—not even New Criticism, structuralism or positivism, unless they are further qualified. Discussions about critical theories built on the tenets of these intellectual trends may therefore find the term “critical pluralism” (kritischer Pluralismus), proposed by Norbert Mecklenburg,³ more appropriate than Methodenpluralismus.

The dominating Marxist method is dialectics.⁴ But Marxism shares the use of dialectics with several non-Marxist theories, ideologies or practices, such as existentialism on the cognitive level, psychoanalysis with its thesis of the interaction between individual and civilization, and information theory and computer technology, in which the feedback element is based on a clearly dialectical principle. One major area of obscurity in the modern discussion of the pluralism of methods is that the discussion builds on axioms or ideological preconditions which are parts of a system. The results are dubious. They extend from the complete equation of dialectical criticism with Marxism (as in Frederic Jameson or Fritz Raddatz, who involve Sartre in a discussion of Marxist critics),⁵ to the labeling of literary theories as dialectical, even if they are exactly the opposite, namely, metaphysically deterministic and non-interactional (as in Goldmann or Della Volpe).⁶

In order to avoid such conceptual and logical fallacies as the mixing up of methods and (theoretical) systems, let me clarify briefly some terms which will occur in this paper alongside with method. System is understood as a combination of things, facts or principles to form a united whole. A structure is the organization of parts of a system, that is, it can be applied best for more “material” (socio-economic or political) and modelizable systems. A theory, on the other hand, is a system of rules and principles, eventually appearing as a proposition, in need of further proof—that is, an intellectual and perhaps speculative system. An ideology is a body of beliefs and ideas to which different social groups actively subscribe and adhere; it is also the name of the discipline studying such beliefs and ideas. All these concepts should be conceived in their constant interaction. Ideologies feed theories and build systems, and vice versa; whereas methods may increasingly perfect theories and develop them to the level of facts to form solid systems, or conversely, they may degrade theories to ideologies.

So much for terminology. Naturally, the recognition that dialectics is the dominating Marxist method plausibly follows. But since dialectics is also a method exploited by theories which differ greatly from Marxism, the question should be asked: Granted that we cannot speak of Marxism as a method of knowing and interpreting literary and cultural phenomena, how could the methods of Marxism, those it has utilized or may utilize in the future, specifically contribute to the únderstanding of these phenomena?

Since theoretical motivation determines both the starting axioms and—by and large—the goals of an investigation, it is appropriate to clarify, in the first place, what “Marxism” we are talking about. The Chinese hierarchy of idols seems to be most complete including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. We can easily dismiss the last two celebrities, since their preoccupation with literary theory and criticism was essentially marginal and indirectly negative, at least in the Western European context (although otherwise Mao might be called a talented poet). Lenin's emphasis on consciousness and partisanship has, however, influenced both Brecht and Lukács. And Engels, who by no means timidly and tacitly disapproved of Marx's stand on the relation between economic basis and social superstructure (as Demetz believes),⁷ contributed to the Marxist literary scope in several inspiring ways.

Ultimately, however, the genetic source is Karl Marx.

But again, we must ask: which Marx? The young author of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), or the later Marx, student of economy (Capital, 1867, 1885) and polemic interpreter of modern history (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852; The Civil War in France, 1871)? In other words, is the individual or the social exploitation and liberation the focus of our inquiry?

This question divides general “Marxology” now as much as it did about a century ago when the first major split in the Marxist world movement began to develop between communists and social democrats. In France, for instance, Roger Garaudy represents the adherents of young Marx nowadays, whereas Louis Althusser represents those who adhere to the ideas of the more mature Marx.⁸ Erich Fromm proposes a third option: He would look at Marx's message as a unified one, in which economic structure and individual human conditions are always in synthesis.⁹

The dialectical, synthetic view of Marx's theory provides a useful means which enables us to draw a distinction between the two basic types of Marxist critics, the proto-Marxists and the para-Marxists. The first term is my own—although it is catchy, it is certainly semantically vulnerable. The second term comes from Michel Crouzet, but has been popularized by George Steiner,¹⁰ and is equally inadequate.

To put it briefly, whereas the proto-Marxist critics integrate into their theory to various degrees both aspects of the Marxian heritage—the more philosophical as well as the more scientific—the para-Marxists accept only one aspect and therefore do not encompass the total message of Marx. Georg Lukács, Plekhanov, Brecht, Ralph Fox, Christopher Caudwell, Roger Garaudy and Ernst Fischer are included among the leading proto-Marxists. On the other hand, party ideologists from Zhdanov to Khrushchev and from Franz Mehring to Alexander Abusch one-sidedly espouse distorted interpretations of the primacy of economic conditions and class struggle in their statements on aesthetics. Therefore, these theoreticians (many of whom are really pseudo-theoreticians) cannot be regarded as wholly Marxist critics. A similar example is the Italian communist critic Galvano Della Volpe, who did Marxism no great service when he stated that the meanings of our words are economically determined. Another para-Marxist is Lucien Goldmann, in whose work the two Marxian “heritages” (the philosophical and the economic) appear in a dichotomized form. On the one hand, there is a cult of Kantian formalism and Hegelian speculative dialectics (hence Goldmann's admiration of the young Lukács); on the other hand, we find a purely economic determination (“une homologie rigoureuse”) of the sphere of consciousness by productive and marketing factors. And finally, there is a whole group customarily associated with Marxism, the socalled Frankfurt school of social philosophy, that learned from the radical and rationalistic social criticism of the young Marx without accepting his later theory of the class struggle and communism as a historical necessity. Therefore, Adorno's aesthetic theory and Marcuse's and Horkheimer's scattered references to literature are clearly para-Marxistic. (The only exception in this group may be Leo Lowenthal—ironically, he is the only one who associated himself least closely with the Marxist heritage.)

As we can see, the dialectical method (which, by the way, penetrates all of Marxian theory) proves to be an underlying criterion for discriminating between primary and secondary Marxist critics and tendencies. But this is a matter of critical theory and history, which has little to do with the evaluation of literary works. In order to move a step closer to the analytical potential which Marxist theory offers, it is appropriate to clarify in what sense the dialectical method can be applied with a truly Marxist perspective in literary interpretations. This, naturally, implies certain references to the Marxist ontological system.

In a short article entitled “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism” (1913), Lenin lists the three structural elements of Marxism as economic theory, the sphere of social interaction, and philosophy. It used to be almost a commonplace to derive the sociological aspect and historical dialectics from the economic theory alone. More recently, however, it has become customary to distinguish, as Lenin did, between the three structural components. In this way, the significance of dialectics and the relevance of sociological research conducted independently of economic reference have been more clearly spelled out. Also, there is now a good chance that the entire Marxist theoretical heritage may finally be liberated from all the demagoguery of economic determinism by means of which popularizers, bureaucrats and tyrants discredited it for almost a century.

The basic Marxist structural relationship used to be interpreted, with frequent references to Marx's “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859), as a one-channel causal determination of the products of human consciousness (such as “legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic … forms,” to quote Marx) by the existing economic structures and relations. It was Georg Lukács, sometimes alone among Marxist critics, who tempered economic determinism most consistently. The best recent Marxist aesthetic achievements have successfully challenged the earlier conception of a “pyramidal” structure with the economic conditions serving as basis and all components of consciousness (the “superstructure”) supported by this.

Now we have arrived at the point where we can discuss the applicability of the dialectical method in a truly Marxist analytical practice. I suggest that we take a look at the French critic Roger Garaudy in order to demonstrate Marxist dialectics at work in literary interpretation. We shall consider as an example of the dialectical method Garaudy's 1963 essay on Kafka, published in his D'un réalisme sans rivages.¹¹ Although this essay is primarily illustrative of the analysis of the creative method, it also provides certain guidelines for a few implicitly proposed critical methods.

The dialectical approach to existence—and also to the immanent existence of the literary work—permeates Garaudy's whole argumentation. Josef K, hero of The Castle, epitomizes the dialectical negation of a petrified system of existence. He looks for meaning in absurdity and searches for a means to transcend meaninglessness. Although his struggle does not end in a socially relevant revolt, neither does it end in submission, but instead remains an individual struggle for understanding “how the system works.”

Garaudy asserts that Kafka, like Picasso, represents an ethical form of aestheticism which radically separates him from Kierkegaard's seemingly akin religious existentialism. Garaudy supports this statement with biographical evidence as well. Although it is true, he points out, that both Kafka and Kierkegaard broke their engagements to be married, Kafka, unlike Kierkegaard, found new human relations with Milena and Dora. By overcoming the Kierkegaardian pitfall in which antithetical relations are turned into paradoxical ones, Kafka, in Garaudy's eyes, remains a truly dialectical modeler of modern life.

The prerequisite for artistic modeling is mythifying. In the Marxist tradition, myth is regarded as one kind of false ideology. Garaudy the iconoclast, however, regards myth as the first stage of the creative process. To him, literature is not a reflection of macro-cosmic historical events, nor an abstract idea with aesthetic Christmas decorations placed upon it. The literary work is part of a myth, and myth provides the means for encoding human relations.

The outcome of having conceived reality in mythical form is a model of reality, that is, reality encoded in a particular form. Kafka's nightmare world is a model of the real world. Garaudy's model has more “depth,” that is, more of a third dimension than the almost exclusively two-dimensional diagrammatic models of the structuralists. The third dimension in Garaudy's interpretation of the model might be the underlying philosophy, ideology, or individual psychological attitude, which provides the key for decoding the model. In addition, Garaudy's model has a fourth, invisible Einsteinian dimension, the time perspective. Garaudy is not an idealistic communist who thinks that the alienation of the modern individual will automatically disapper with the establishment of socialism. But neither is he a metaphysician who would regard alienation as an eternal condition humaine. To him, alienation is a time-bound historical phenomenon which will not disappear at once in socialism; only socialism, however, can provide the hope that it will disappear sometime.

As we have seen, the method of reconstructing the immanent structure of the literary work which Garaudy advocates is more of a dimensioning than a level-building method. There are not only “levels of consciousness” but also “levels of reality” and, in a truly Hegelian-Marxist spirit, a dialectical relationship between object and subject. Dialectics is also indispensable in the receptive phase, to which Garaudy attaches an extremely great degree of importance. In his view, a literary or art work represents a message which is activited only in the receptive medium, that is, in the consciousness of the reading or viewing public.

One aspect of reception is the interpretative and evaluative “reception” of the work by the critics—a function originally intended to inform the reading public of news in the book market. Garaudy does not speculate much about the relation between criticism and the public, but instead provides both with his own views about how a work should be interpreted. He clearly favors the pluralism of methods followed by an integrating synthesis. In a work “several significations may overlap” (he gives examples of religious, medical, and psychiatric significations overlapping in Kafka's case), yet not even in their quantitative sum total do these “meanings” (or interpretations) embrace the totality of the message. Only the expérience vécue, a recreated artistic vision, can embrace Kafka's message. This sounds somewhat anti-methodological. Yet Garaudy himself integrates several conventional analytic methods in his essay. Although finally putting off sociological and biographic interpretations of Kafka, Garaudy himself uses elements of Kafka's family background, culture, and professional experiences as evidence. I have already cited the biographical comparison of Kafka with Kierkegaard. Also, Garaudy's findings of three main “themes” in Kafka, those of the “Animal,” “Search,” and “Unfinishedness,” remind one of Jungian analysis and its distant echoes in Campbell's and Frye's myth-centered criticism.

I proposed Garaudy, himself a builder of critical methods, as a model illustrative of some main methods and tendencies in Marxist criticism. Since the Garaudy model is meant to be symptomatic of a distinct Marxist trend, it should be appropriate to mention at least a couple of other critics who demonstrated the same awareness of the necessity of giving dimensions to existence as it appears capsulated into a literary work. In Mussolini's prison, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci wrote 2848 pages of critical notes penetrated with the same sensible and balanced discussion of ideology, consciousness, and dialectics which characterizes Garaudy's essays. Among Garaudy's contemporaries, the Austrian Ernst Fischer had similar aspirations for investigating the interactions of social activity and individual consciousness.

The question may arise: what methods other than mythical and biographic interpretation have Marxist scholars of literature used, and which ones may they use in the future?

The following summary of some typical analytical methods widely applied in literary analyses is intended to sketch in the present state and future perspectives of a pluralistic Marxist methodology. It should be noted that the best examples of how Marxists have applied different methods are permeated by the dominating method, namely dialectics—and the worst examples by a metaphysical spirit, that is, by a deterministic method.

Various methods of genetic interpretation, both on the socio-historical and on the individual-biographical level, have been among the most traditional tools of Marxism. Confronting individual works with a preevaluated social structure or with facts about the writer's family, education, etc. produced some very negative results which now ought to be regarded as deterring examples. Thus, in the thirties, we were told by Maxim Gorky, by the so-called “Red Professors” (an incompetent late vintage of the sociological school), and by some para-Marxist bureaucrats (notably, Zhdanov) that, since the bourgeois world was disintegrating, naturally Joyce's, Gide's, and Proust's works had to be decadent.¹² In the fifties, similar deterministic arguments were used to “interpret” Kafka. As for understanding literary works from the perspective of the author's personality, Franz Mehring at the turn of the century asserted that Ibsen's turning away from realism in favor of symbolism was a necessity. How could he have helped it, since he came from a bourgeois family? And how could Gerhart Hauptmann have helped betraying realism since his father, a self-made man and innkeeper, had betrayed and exploited the class that nurtured him, the proletariat?¹³

In certain periods, such excesses dominated Marxist criticism. Unfortunately, these excesses have been unfairly exploited by the ideological adversaries of Marxism. One should be mindful of the way in which Lunacharsky, Lukács, Gramsci, George Thomson, Arnold Kettle, and more recently Hans Mayer benefited from the genetic method in their major works. They used this method with great moderation and with a true insight into its dangers. The same truth holds for the derivation of literary movements from socio-historical conditions. Even if we cannot accept the evaluation Lukács ties to his genetic delineation of modern literature (realismr naturalismr impressionismr symbolismr expressionism),¹⁴ the parallel he established between this process and the growing complexity of life under capitalist conditions may be corroborated by the history of the development of philosophy and scientific and social thought during the past hundred years. The tabloid art and the grand systems of the nineteenth century have fallen apart to mosaic pieces. In science, especially, new terms such as atomic physics, relativity or indeterminism suggest the same particularization and anarchy which Lukács believes to find in modern Western literature.

Also on the genetic level, one can use the comparative method—and not only in the specific way that “comparative literature” requires it should be used. Contrastive comparisons often have false or extra-aesthetic undertones, even in Lukács (“Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann”),¹⁵ not to mention the mouthpieces of Soviet socialist realism, Gorky, Zhdanov, and others, whose favorite disjunction reads something like this: “Whereas in capitalism … with us, in socialism. …” But the same Lukács who established the unfortunate, undialectical Kafka or Mann dichotomy, also compared to each other, very constructively, Stendhal, Balzac, and Zola in order to point out the three developmental stages in a nineteenth century model of literary realism: Enlightenment realism, critical realism, and naturalism.¹⁶ (Again, we must disregard Lukács' biased evaluation, in preferring Balzac to the other two, but especially to the “predecadent” Zola.)

The genetic and the comparative methods are extra-textual, although this characteristic is by no means a necessity. Textual analytical methods have not fared well in Marxist criticism. In fact, there has been a tendency to maintain conventional stylistic and formal analyses as acceptable scholarly methods, which are irrelevant, however, for criticism or evaluation. This dichotomization resulted in a surprising poverty of truly ideologically Marxist, dialectical approaches to the text. In the 1930's, especially, both the members of the Soviet sociological school and the ideologists of socialist realism made considerable efforts to intimidate and discredit the so-called Russian formalist critics of the previous decade. Ironically, the very same formalist critics were the first and only ones to analyze Lenin's language and style from the supermodern perspectives of mass media and communication theory.¹⁷

One might ask: how could Marxism employ such methods as “purely scholarly” textual criticism? It seems to me that the different drafts or editions of a literary text could provide fascinating information about the working of social control mechanisms, for example, censorship when and where it existed, inner sociocultural checks, or compliance with the expectations of publishers, theater directors, and the media. To give an example, on the demand of his German translator and manager, Henrik Ibsen wrote, although under protest, an alternative ending to A Doll's House, in which Nora does not leave her husband. But the literary text may provide evidence for non-conformism as well. A comparison of Ibsen's preliminary notes to A Doll's House and the finished drama demonstrates how the author ultimately gave a supreme complexity to the play against his own, culturally more biased original intentions. The preliminary notes characterize Nora in the projected final scene as a woman “quite bewildered and not knowing right from wrong,” in “mental conflict,” “depressed and confused” as well as “bitter,” tortured by “dread and terror”—still a fairly conventional image of the “fallen woman” of nineteenth century literature. In the finished drama, however, Nora makes the decision to leave her family with full awareness, saying: “I've never felt so sure—so clear-headed—as I do tonight.” This is a clear indication of a radicalization of Ibsen's original conception of modern woman in the course of the creative process.

For the time being, no clearly Marxist stylistics exists—a formidable state of affairs, indeed, if we consider that Plekhanov, some sixty-five years ago, advocated the development of a system of correspondences between the conventions of formal expression and underlying ideologies.¹⁸ Perhaps the evident need for exceptional precautions scared serious Marxist scholars away from this field. Only the methods of interpreting genre traditions (especially the novel) brought several interesting and typically Marxist results. Other more specifically formal aspects of literary style have been neglected.

Similarly uncultivated are the methods of semantic and lingual analysis, with the exception of Della Volpe's abortive attempt. Semiotic structuralism occasionally exploited Marxist theses, and vice versa. This is, however, a matter of intellectual interaction, and not a development within Marxism. Semantic terms and methods are also related to structural investigations. The problem with the recreation of structural relations and models is that these shapes should also be evaluated in a Marxist context. Here, the only example we have is Lucien Goldmann, whom many Marxists do not regard as a member of their group.

The need for interpretation of structures resulted in a predominantly German movement, Ideologiekritik, which is similar to the French semiotic-semiological enterprises, although not identical. More philosophical and less pseudo-scientific than semiology, but equally rational, Ideologiekritik attempts to discover the underlying ideologies of human values, behavior, institutions, and conventions. Its potential and methods are highly relevant for further Marxist application.

Quantitative methods, although widely used in the socialist countries, are likewise de-ideologized. The Russian formalists' investigations of literary “leitmotifs,” which took the form of unsophisticated frequency or content analyses, were later denounced as “idealistic.” Statistical analyses, content analyses, and computerized research in algorithms and textual patterns have never, to my knowledge, been carried out to serve clearly Marxist research hypotheses or objectives.

Qualitative and psychological methods which focus on the receptive level have also been neglected. Because of a lack of data on readers' reactions, and because of the onesided nature of publishers' statistics, cultural leaders in the socialist countries were long convinced that everyone was reading Balzac, Tolstoy, and Sholokhov. Some recent research reports, although mostly based on such conventional data collecting methods as questionnaires, pointed out fairly embarrassing developments in the taste of the reading public in the socialist countries. This kind of research, and the publication of some sensible theoretical works (particularly the East German collective study Gesellschaft-Literatur-Lesen)¹⁹ will, it can be hoped, stimulate a greater interest in the questions of how Marxist scholarship and criticism could benefit from methods which investigate the influence of literature on society.

In conclusion:

1. Marxism is not a method, but a theory which is exceptionally open and receptive to a plurality of applicable methods. It is difficult to conceive, for instance, how phenomenological or existentialist approaches could benefit from quantitative methods, or how the psychoanalytical approach could exploit historicism. Both methods, however, coexist very well in Marxism.

2. The dominating Marxist method is dialectics, which permeates other methods as well. Dialectics is, however, not a concrete method, since it has very general philosophical extensions, and is a basic epistemological tenet. Therefore, in particular analyses, a variety of more concrete methods should be applied in order to give substance to dialectics.

A meager conclusion? But we have seen how the concept of method is constantly mixed up with ideologies and systems, and how any form of dialectics in criticism is still regarded as automatically qualifying itself for the label of Marxism. Also, the poverty of critical methods in Marxist scholarship demonstrates the sad traces of a past practice when conservative critics and bureaucrats insisted on overusing a few methods instead of freely sampling a relevant dozen. However, is not the case of Western scholarship surprisingly similar in this respect? As long as such academic fallacies are still committed, even meager conclusions may be enlightening.

Notes

1. Significantly, they appeared in clusters, especially in the early seventies. Some examples are: from 1970—Gansberg and Völker, Methodenkritik der Germanistik (Stuttgart: Metzler); Erwin Leibfried, Kritische Wissenschaft vom Text (Stuttgart: Metzler); Manon Maren-Grisebach, Methoden der Literaturwissenschaft (Bern and Munich: Francke); from 1971—Jürgen Hauff et al., Methodendiskussion (Frankfurt: Athenäum); Methoden der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Viktor Zmegač (Frankfurt: Athenäum); Leo Pollmann, Literaturwissenschaft und Methode (Frankfurt: Athenäum).

2. I.e., textual criticism, although not along the New Critical lines, but rather a mixture of phenomenological and content-oriented interpretations.

3. In his work Kritisches Interpretieren (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1972), pp. 167-69.

4. Considering the objectives of this paper, it would constitute an inexcusable digression to characterize the dialectical method. The main characteristics of dialectics can be epitomized in the following points:

   • a. Every part of a structure is in direct or indirect interaction with the whole.
   • b. This interaction takes the form of a conflict of antitheses both within and between these parts.
   • c. The antitheses become reconciled in a synthesis, which then becomes the starting point of new conflicts.
   • d. In the developmental line, qualitative and quantitative factors follow each other alternately or simultaneously, and therefore cannot be separated dichotomically.

   Evidently this characterization is so generalized that it has little practical relevance to literary analysis as such.

5. Frederic Jameson in Marxism and Form (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971; Fritz Raddatz in the anthology, Marxismus und Literatur (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1969), which he edited.

6. Lucien Goldmann with his genetic-structural theory of homologous systems emphasized especially in his Pour une sociologie du roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); Della Volpe with his theory of “dialectical semantics,” developed in Critica del gusto (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1960).

7. Peter Demetz, Marx, Engels und die Dichter (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1959), p. 187ff.

8. Especially in Garaudy, Karl Marx (Paris: Seghers, 1964); and Althusser, Pour Marx (Paris: Maspero, 1965) and Lire le Capital, 2 vols. (Paris: Maspero, 1966).

9. “Introduction,” Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, ed. Erich Fromm (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), pp. VIII-IX.

10. Cf. Steiner's reference in Language and Silence (New York: Athenaeum, 1967), p. 307, to Crouzet's article in La Nouvelle Critique, November, 1956.

11. Paris: Plon, 1963, pp. 151-242.

12. Cf. Zhdanov's, Gorky's, Radek's and Bukharin's speeches at the First Soviet Writers' Congress in 1934, publ. in Problems of Soviet Literature (Moskva: Co-op. Publishing Society of Foreign Workers, 1935), and Literature and Marxism, ed. Angel Flores (New York: Critics Group, 1938).

13. Franz Mehring, Gesammelte Schriften und Aufsätze, ed. E. Fuchs (Berlin: Soziologische Verlagsanstalt, 1929-39). On Hauptmann: II, 269; on Ibsen: II, 315.

14. Cf. his Werke (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962), X, 139-40.

15. Particularly in chapter 2 (“Franz Kafka oder Thomas Mann?”) of his Die Gegenwartsbedeutung des kritischen Realismus (1957), publ. in Werke, IV. English tr.: Realism in Our Time (New York, 1971).

16. Cf. his essays on Balzac, Stendhal and Zola in Werke, VI, 447-521. English tr.: Studies in European Realism (New York, 1964), pp. 21-96.

17. A convenient German collection of these essays is Sprache und Stil Lenins, ed. Fritz Mierau (Munich: Hanser, 1970).

18. Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov, Sochineniya (Moskva: Gosizdat, 1923-27), XIV, 183, 189.

19. ed. Manfred Naumann et al. (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1973).