SOURCE: Fokkema, Douwe, and Elrud Ibsch. “Marxist Theories of Literature.” In Theories of Literature in the Twentieth Century: Structuralism, Marxism, Aesthetics of Reception, Semiotics, pp. 81-135. London: C. Hurst & Company/New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978.

[In the following essay, Fokkema and Ibsch analyze Marxist literary theory from a metatheoretical point of view.]

Marxism is a philosophy of contradictions, and any attempt to explain Marxist theory in a rational way will encounter apparent inconsistencies. The belief in the primacy of material conditions and the simultaneous effort to emphasize the human role in changing these conditions is one of the most characteristic contradictions of Marxism. How can materialism and heroic revolt be considered as compatible?

If one were to accept that this contradiction can be solved by resorting to the dialectical method, a new problem arises, namely the question whether any criticism of the dialectical method is possible at all. Different from Russian Formalism or French structuralism, Marxist literary theories have a basis in a normative philosophy with explicit ideas about epistemological questions. Marxist theory cannot accept any criticism on a purely empirical basis. On the other hand, the criticism of Marxist theory on the basis of norms derived from that same theory cannot be considered satisfactory either. For instance, criticism of the Chinese interpretation of Marxist theories on the basis of the original writings by Marx and Engels, or criticism of Marx and Engels on the basis of criteria derived from neo-Marxism will necessarily remain limited in scope. The very basis of Marxist thought, common to the original Marxist philosophy and its various offsprings, would escape a critical assessment in this way.

We have decided to analyse Marxist literary theory from a metatheoretical point of view, in spite of the fact that Marxist theorists deny that such a point of view is at all possible. The non-attractive alternative is acceptance or rejection of Marxist theory on non-scientific grounds. On the other hand, we do not claim that our metatheoretical position gives us access to any superior wisdom. If we analyse Marxist theories in terms alien to these theories, we are only relating one system of thought to another system of thought. Of course, our own framework of reference can also be subjected to analysis and criticism by scholars who for one reason or another may prefer another epistemological position (perhaps that of Marxism).

Any analysis, any attribution of meaning and value occurs within the limits of certain rules. If one is prepared to explain what the guiding rules are (and adheres to them), any analysis and assessment is valid. The rules which we will respect in our analysis are those of precision, explicitness, falsifiability, the distinction between theory and practice (or between metalanguage and object language), and the distinction between observed facts and attributed values. These conventions belong to the tradition of critical rationalism. It is our firm conviction that this tradition, of which Karl R. Popper (1969b; 1972a) is one of the main representatives, has been extremely productive and has yielded results, also in the field of literary theory, which have withstood the test of severe criticism. Though Marxist scholars reject various tenets of the Popperian tradition, they take it seriously, as may appear from the highly interesting volume Der Positivismusstreit (Adorno, 1969), to which we will return below.

MARX, ENGELS AND LENIN

It cannot be our aim to present here a systematic survey of Marxist thought. But if we were to restrict ourselves to the Marxist pronouncements on literature, we would probably fail to see the relation of literature to society, to historical development, and to the materialist conditions which serve as its basis. Marxism refuses to consider phenomena in isolation, and therefore it can be characterized as holistic. In this it resembles structuralism; but structuralism still allows the scholar to restrict his field of research for practical reasons, whereas Marxism is less inclined to mitigate its holistic claims. Another basic postulate of Marxism is the primacy of matter over thought. This, in fact, separates Marx and Engels from Hegel. All three have embraced the dialectic method. But Hegel conceives the dialectic merely as a movement of thought, whereas the founders of Marxism suggest that dialectical relationships exist both in thought and nature.

Dialectical materialism, which explains the development of the world as dialectical, is hard to understand unless we take into account that it implies a certain dynamism and describes a process of development from a lower to a higher stage. Here it may help to recall the original meaning of the word “dialectic”, which is derived from a Greek verb meaning “to carry on a discussion”. Statement (thesis) and counterstatement (antithesis) may give rise to a certain conclusion (synthesis). Under favourable conditions the conclusion can be considered as belonging to a higher level. The conclusion, of course, may serve again as the starting point or first statement in a new discussion.

Marx and Engels applied the dialectic principle mainly to the sphere of social development. They believed that the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would lead inevitably to the overthrow of capitalism, thus promoting the cause of social progress. It was in his later years that Engels took up the study of natural science in order to elaborate the idea that “amidst the welter of innumerable changes taking place in nature the same dialectical laws of motion are in operation as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events.”¹ Engels tried to show that the dialectic principle is at work throughout nature or reality.

The omnipresence of the dialectic principle has been emphasized also in recent Soviet philosophy, which views the dialectic as “the theory of the most general laws of the development of nature, society and thought” (Rozental' and Judin, 1963: 124).

Besides dialectical materialism, which aims to establish the objective necessary laws governing the whole of reality, the Marxist philosophers have distinguished historical materialism. Historical materialism is the extension of the tenets of dialectical materialism to the study of social life and social development. The laws of historical materialism are complicated by the human factor. Marxism is not purely deterministic. There is a margin of free will and individual convictions, which accounts for the difference between dialectical and historical materialism. It is clear that literature, which Marxist critics view primarily as ideology, must be studied within the terms of historical materialism.

The effect of Marx's materialist conception of history is often hard to discover in his pronouncements on literature, especially his earlier statements which appear more representative of an educated young German in the 1840s, well versed in classical literature, than of an iconoclastic revolutionary. In general his literary assessment is based on 1. the criterion of economic determinism, which is concerned with the question whether a literary work represents advanced or regressive developments in the economic basis; 2. the criterion of verisimilitude, which is in full accordance with the literary code of his days; and 3. the criterion of personal preferences, such as for the writings of Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Goethe, which belong to the literary canon of his time. Although one might expect that the first criterion is the most important from the Marxist point of view, later Marxist authors (with the exception of the defenders of Proletkul't and Chinese critics during the Cultural Revolution) have rather consistently upheld the last two Marxian criteria as well.

In his “Foreword” (1859) to Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie Marx expressed most clearly how he saw the relation between the economic basis and the superstructure (including literature):

The mode of production of material life determines altogether the social, political, and intellectual life process. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary their social being, that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or, to mention the legal expression, the property relations within which they have been at work. From conditions for the development of the forces of production these proprietary relations become their fetters. Then a period of social revolution begins. With a change in the economic basis the entire immense superstructure is transformed with greater or less speed.²

This is a concise statement of Marx's economic determinism which, in spite of its imprecision, has always remained in the background of later Marxist explanations of the relation between ideological superstructure and economic basis, or literature and the economic structure of society.

The quoted statement is imprecise because, as a result of changes in the economic basis, alterations in the superstructure will follow sooner or later. Apparently, certain expected changes in the superstructure may trail behind. This produces an epistemological complication which in some cases makes it impossible to refute the Marxist thesis of economic determinism. If, for instance, the expected changes in the superstructure have not occurred (say, the rise of a splendid socialist literature in a socialist society), the Marxist theorist may claim that such changes are merely delayed for one reason or another. Therefore, in principle the Marxist thesis of economic determinism cannot be falsified.

In the same year Marx and Engels applied their concept of economic determinism in their criticism of Ferdinand Lassalle's Franz von Sickingen (1859), a play about a rebellious knight in the Peasants' War of early sixteenth-century Germany. In a letter of March 6, 1859, Lassalle asked Marx and Engels to comment on the text of his tragedy. Marx and Engels considered Lassalle, the future founder of the first German workers' party, as a possible political ally. Their criticism is kindly phrased but rather severe (cf. Demetz, 1967: 107-16). First, in their separate letters to Lassalle, they display the criticism of men of literary taste. Marx regards the main character as rather shallow and gives the much-quoted advice that he should have taken Shakespeare rather than Schiller as an example to follow.³ Engels too makes a positive reference to Shakespearean vividness, and hopes that in the future Lassalle may succeed in expressing his message through the action of his characters rather than in abstract discussions.

There are, however, two other issues at stake which are related to economic determinism. It is Marx who questions whether the choice of the historical Franz von Sickingen (1481-1523) as a tragic hero is correct. Marx rejects Sickingen as a reactionary, who failed “because he as knight and representative of a disappearing class rebelled against the existing order” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 180). Engels adds that Lassalle had neglected the non-official plebeian and peasant elements in the Peasants' movement. Lassalle's lengthy answer to Marx and Engels of May 27, 1859, which appears in many anthologies of Marxist literary criticism, is revealing. He clearly sees that Marx and Engels had wanted him to write about more progressive events in German history and not about a reactionary knight who, in accordance with the laws of historical development, was doomed to fail. But Lassalle retorts that the historical Sickingen was less reactionary than Marx believed, and that there is no historical basis for assuming that the lower classes during the Peasants' War were politically more advanced than Sickingen: “In the last instance the idea of a Peasants' War was not less reactionary than the plans of Sickingen” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 192). Lassalle accuses Marx and Engels of defending a deterministic view of German history: this concept of history, which destroys the possibility of individual decisions and action, “provides no basis for practical revolutionary action or the represented dramatical action”.⁴

From a literary point of view things become even more interesting when, apart from the political assessment of the historical Sickingen, Lassalle claims that his Sickingen cannot be measured with the yardstick of the historian but is a product of poetical treatment. Lassalle asks the rhetorical question: “Has not the poet the right to idealize his hero and to attribute a higher consciousness to him? Is Schiller's Wallenstein the historical figure? Is Homer's Achilles the real one?” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 200). Lassalle finds support for his view with Engels, who had conceded in his letter to him that he did not wish to deny Lassalle the right to conceive Sickingen and Hutten in such a way as if they had intended to emancipate the peasants. Lassalle emphasizes the right of the poet to idealize his material. In short, he stresses the fictional nature of literature. Marx did not comment on Lassalle's answer and only scathingly protested at the length of his letter. Nevertheless, the Aristotelian idea that literature may deviate from a depiction of historical truth, and may idealize reality instead, remained one of the constitutive concepts of Marxist literary theory.

Marx's comment on Lassalle's play can hardly be regarded as a piece of literary criticism. The main thrust of his remarks concerns the interpretation of historical facts. Similarly, his commentary on Eugène Sue's Les mystères de Paris (1842-3)—a highly popular serialized novel about the Parisian underworld and upper class, persecuted innocence, rescue and salvation—was motivated not by literary interest but by the opportunity to strike a blow at his philosophical opponents, the Young Hegelians Bruno, Edgar and Egbert Bauer (Marx and Engels, 1968: II, 64-142). The three brothers Bauer had accepted a review of Les mystères de Paris in their monthly Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung. Author of the review was Szeliga, pen-name of Franz Zychlin von Zychlinski (1816-1900), a Prussian officer. Marx's criticism deals with the confused and far-fetched Hegelian interpretation of Les mystères de Paris, rather than with the novel itself. His abhorrence of the unwarranted, idealist interpretation of the French novel becomes all too evident, as well as his inclination towards the application of the criterion of truthfulness, which in Marx's narrow interpretation is nothing more than fidelity to social reality. As Peter Demetz (1967: 102-7) has shown, from his criticism of a far-fetched philosophical interpretation Marx gradually turns to a sociological criticism of Sue's novel, thus making his own preconceived idea of social reality into a yardstick of literary quality. This aspect of Marx's criticism, which was characteristic of nineteenth-century positivism, contradicts the Aristotelian concept of literature as representing an idealized and more universal image of reality, which was defended by Lassalle and apparently accepted by Engels. It seems that from the very beginning Marxist literary theory was built on contradictory strains, which later Marxist philosophers had little trouble in reconciling with the help of the dialectic method.

In addition to the criteria of economic determinism and verisimilitude, Marx upheld his own literary preferences which largely coincide with the literary canon of his days. In this respect his observations on ancient Greek art are interesting. In 1857, two years before Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie appeared, Marx drafted an “Introduction” to that book, which was published posthumously by Karl Kautsky in 1903 and even then did not immediately receive much attention in Marxist writings. In fact, it stretches the point that has also been made in the “Foreword” (1859), viz. that changes in the superstructure will follow sooner or later as a result of changes in the economic basis. In the manuscript of the “Introduction” (1857), Marx departs from the deterministic concept that developments in the superstructure, notably in the realm of aesthetics, must necessarily follow from changes in the economic basis. He emphasizes that there may be an unbalanced development of artistic and material production.⁵ Intrigued by the fact that in antiquity Greek art had reached “unsurpassable” heights when social and economic development were still low, Marx concluded that periods of great artistic momentum do not necessarily correspond to a high development of the material basis.⁶ His main problem is to understand how the art of an archaic society can radiate “eternal charm” (ewiger Reiz) and give pleasure to people in the industrial age. His explanation is psychological, rather than materialist, as he relates the admiration for Greek art to a nostalgia towards the historical youth of the human race.⁷

Although this explanation cannot be considered materialistic and the draft “Introduction” was published only posthumously, the theory of the unbalanced development of artistic and material production has become a lasting tenet of Marxist literary theory, serving now as an escape clause through which the assimilation of the great classical writers was to be justified, now as an embarrassing argument in the hands of dissident writers in socialist states who protested against the excessive claims of Socialist Realism. For if Marx's theory of unbalanced development is applied to modern times, it follows that a socialist society does not necessarily give rise to a superior literature.

Friedrich Engels has contributed two important documents to the corpus of Marxist writings on literature. On November 26, 1885, he wrote a letter to Minna Kautsky on the occasion of the publication of her novel Die Alten und die Neuen (1884). In this letter two problems of a more general nature are raised. The first is that of the relation between literature and political commitment or “tendentiousness” (Tendenz). Engels disapproves of the obvious political bias in Minna Kautsky's novel. Although he is in no way opposed to “tendentious literature” (Tendenzpoesie) as such and counts Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Dante, Cervantes and Schiller among the best Tendenz writers, he also believes “that the Tendenz has to be evident from the situation and action, and should not be explicitly explained; the poet is not obliged to present the reader with the historical, future solution of the social conflicts described by him.”⁸ Engels' critical attitude towards obvious political bias in literature is part of his bequest to the tradition of Marxist criticism. It appears that his position can be held against the very essence of Socialist Realism which, according to the Soviet definition of 1934, is expected to represent “a truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development” (quoted by Swayze, 1962: 113). It would seem to be impossible to present reality in its revolutionary development without indicating “the future solution of social conflicts” described by the writer. In fact, a Chinese critic who during the Hundred Flowers period attempted to escape from the political restrictions of Socialist Realism, tried to support his argument by referring to Engels' position on Tendenz literature (Fokkema, 1965: 130-2). One may conclude that Engels' reserves vis-à-vis literature with an obvious political bias is the source of another contradiction in Marxist literary theory.

The other problem raised in the letter to Minna Kautsky is that of the typical. From German idealism Engels borrows the view that every character in a novel should be “a type, but at the same time also a particular individual, a ‘this one’, as old Hegel expresses himself.”⁹ But on the basis of which criteria should the typical properties of a character be selected? In his letter of early April 1888 to Margaret Harkness, who had sent him her novel City Girl (1887), Engels holds that the selection of typical characteristics should be compatible with the requirement of realism. In this letter, written in English, Engels coined the famous phrase: “Realism, to my mind, implies, besides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances” (Marx and Engels, 1953: 122). In his comment on Franz von Sickingen the word “realistic” had appeared as the opposite of abstract and ideal, and as a characteristic of Shakespeare's drama (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 186). Almost thirty years later Engels uses the term in a similar way. Realism means fidelity to historical truth. Miss Harkness should have devoted more attention to the rebellious protest of the proletariat against exploitation, because that protest had manifested itself as an historical fact. Again Engels rejects the idea of a Tendenzroman, and rather points to Balzac who in La comédie humaine has given “a most wonderfully realistic history of French ‘Society’” (Marx and Engels, 1953: 122). It appears that Engels relates his concept of type to that kind of literature which later Marxist criticism was to call “critical realism”. Unlike Demetz, we believe that Engels saw the typical as “a model representation of experience” rather than “an ideal image” (Demetz, 1967: 137-8). The assumption that Engels should be considered a precursor of Socialist Realist criticism is indeed hard to substantiate.

The kind of realism Engels advocates may even lead to results that contradict the political opinions of the writer. Balzac is a case in point, as he, despite his sympathy for the nobility, wrote with unconcealed admiration about the republican heroes of Cloître Saint-Merry, the men who, according to Engels, in the 1830s represented the masses of the people and in fact were his own political opponents. Engels calls this “one of the greatest triumphs of Realism”. His theory of a possible discrepancy between the political views of the writer and the meaning of his work has been a significant contribution to Marxist literary theory. In 1858 N. A. Dobroljubov had defended a similar view in relation to Gogol, who “unconsciously, simply with artistic intuition” came very close to the point of view of the people (Dobroljubov, 1961: 213). However, Engels does not seem to have known Dobroljubov's critical writings although he had heard about his work and respected his political views (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 598-9). But, when phrasing his opinion of Balzac, Engels may have been familiar with a similar judgement of Zola on Balzac, published in 1881 and 1882 (Wellek 1955-65: IV, 18).

In Marxist criticism usually both Engels and Dobroljubov are quoted as the authors of the theory of the possible discrepancy between the writer's world view and the meaning of his work. The theory has heavy implications. Like the thesis of the unbalanced development of material and artistic production it has helped to assimilate the classical writers into the corpus of permitted reading matter. Moreover this theory of Engels and Dobroljubov is incompatible with a quick judgement of literary works on the basis of the author's biography or political intentions. It turns the attention of the critic to the literary text, and as such disavows what the New Critics have called “the intentional fallacy”.

Like Marx, Lenin admired great art and was plagued by the problem how to reconcile it with revolution. Between 1908 and 1911 Lenin wrote five articles on the occasion of the eightieth birthday and the death of Lev Tolstoy. Although repeatedly admitting that Tolstoy's works “rank among the greatest in world literature” (Lenin, 1967: 29, 48, 53), he at the same time equates Tolstoy's point of view with “that of the patriarchical, naïve peasant”. He detests in Tolstoy “the landlord obsessed with Christ”, “the jaded, hysterical sniveller”, “the crackpot preaching of submission”, and the defender of clericalism (Lenin, 1967: 55, 29). Lenin is evidently worried by the political effect of Tolstoy's writings. But from the literary point of view he attributes lasting value to Tolstoy's work. Quite in accordance with Marx's thesis of the unbalanced development of material and artistic production, and Engels' theory of the discrepancy between world view and work (but without referring to them), Lenin posits that “Tolstoy […] produced artistic works which will always be appreciated and read by the masses, once they have created human conditions of life for themselves after overthrowing the yoke of the landlords and capitalists” (Lenin, 1967: 48). It is clear that Lenin is opposed to cutting all ties with great literature, which induces him to justify his admiration for great art as far as possible in political terms.

Lenin's approach to justifying his appreciation of great art is that of historical relativism or historicism, which in free imitation of Friedrich Meinecke (1936) we have defined earlier as the attempt to interpret and evaluate the historical phenomena of a certain age in relation to the other phenomena (including the norms) of that age. As historical materialism stipulates that the superstructure evolves as a result of specific historical changes in the economic basis, the development of the superstructure cannot be disconnected from its material basis. In principle, changes in the superstructure are supposed not to run ahead of changes in the economic basis, although, according to later Marxist thinking, certain developments in the superstructure may be considered to be conducive to further changes in the economic basis. This has been exemplified by the institution of ideological campaigns or “cultural revolutions” in socialist states. However, in the last resort the development of “social consciousness” or culture is governed by material production (Wetter, 1966: 240). Therefore, the possibilities of literature of a certain period are in principle restricted by its historical, material conditions. It is in this sense that historical materialism allows of a certain degree of historicism.

The historicist argument of historical materialism is that the merit of a writer should be measured against the background of the socio-economic conditions of his time, rather than with the yardstick of the modern revolutionary movement. Or in Lenin's own words, “the contradictions in Tolstoy's views must be appraised not from the standpoint of the present-day working-class movement and present-day socialism (such an appraisal is, of course, needed, but it is not enough), but from the standpoint of protest against advancing capitalism, against the ruining of the masses, who are being dispossessed of their land—a protest which had to arise from the patriarchal Russian countryside” (Lenin, 1967: 30). It appears from this quotation that Tolstoy should be judged both from the point of view of his contemporaries and from the standpoint of “present-day socialism”. Thus two different yardsticks can be used: the historicist standard in order to assess Tolstoy's historical role and to save him as an important writer, and the political standard in order to judge his work in relation to the political expediency of the day. Any contradiction between the two norms obviously requires a dialectical solution, with the possibility that under certain political conditions the first norm is emphasized rather than the second, or the other way round. In a similar way many years later Mao Tse-tung (1942) comes to differentiate between “the artistic criterion” and “the political criterion”. Since Lenin rejects any abstract “‘eternal’ principles of morality” (Lenin, 1967: 59), Mao denies the existence of “an abstract and absolutely unchangeable artistic criterion”. The artistic judgement of literary works of past ages by the proletariat depends largely on the question whether or not these works “had any progressive significance historically” (Mao Tse-tung, 1942: 89). Here, too, it is the historicist argument that must save great literature.

Lenin's judgement of great literature is based on both an historicist and a straight political norm. The historical materialist can never indulge completely in historical relativism because political expediency may require a different attitude. A more general reason why the historical materialist cannot identify himself completely with the historicist approach is that (according to Marxist theory) historical materialism, with neglect of its nineteenth-century origin, must be considered as objective truth which itself can not be subjected to a relativist judgement.

However, apart from the historicist and political criteria, one must infer that Lenin, like Mao Tse-tung,¹⁰ is aware of a straight artistic criterion, on the basis of which certain works of art must be appreciated from an aesthetic point of view, although they may have diverted the recipients from revolutionary action. Artistic intuition claims its toll, when Lenin in a conversation with Maksim Gorky calls Beethoven's Appassionata sonata “amazing, superhuman music”, adding that it affects his nerves and makes him want to say sweet nothings and to pat the heads of people, whereas “today we mustn't pat anyone on the head or we'll get our hand bitten off” (Lenin, 1967: 247). It is possibly a similar experience that prevented Marx from reasoning away the contradictions in the theory of the unbalanced development of material and artistic production.

Perhaps more important than Lenin's pronouncements on Tolstoy and Beethoven is his article “Party Organization and Party Literature” (Lenin, 1967: 22-8). Written in late 1905, it deals with a new situation resulting from the disappearance of the distinction between the legal and the illegal press in Russia (Simmons, 1961). Previously the illegal Party press could easily be controlled and kept inviolate. But when writers of all kinds had legal access to the press, Lenin was worried about possible bourgeois influence on the Party press by writers who, holding leftist or even outspoken Christian ideas, were not members of the Social Democratic Party or did not want to submit to Party discipline. This was the occasion for Lenin's statement.

Later interpreters have stretched the original purport of the article at least in two ways. First, they have overlooked the fact that Lenin only speaks of Party control over Party publications, and not of any Party or state control over non-Party publications. Although Lenin's article has been used to justify state censorship in communist nations over non-Party publications, it provides no basis for such a justification. Secondly, the difference between political and literary publications has been blurred. In fact, Lenin meant writing in general rather than creative literature. E. J. Simmons (1961: 82) has correctly observed that the Russian equivalent of belles-lettres, i.e. chudožestvennaja literatura, does not occur even once in Lenin's “Party Organization and Party Literature”. To mention only one example of an interpretation which sustains the view that Lenin aimed his remarks at creative literature and cleared the way for censorship also outside the realm of Party publications, one may refer to the report of A. A. Surkov to the Second Congress of Soviet Writers, published in Literaturnaja gazeta of December 16, 1954. Surkov says of Lenin's “Party Organization and Party Literature”: “These words of Lenin, which have now been confirmed in practice by the entire development of our literature, assume—given the common direction through the application of the method of Socialist Realism—the possibility of the existence of various currents, of creative competition between them, and of broad discussions of the advantages of this or that current.” Although Lenin of course did not say anything about an obligatory or standard literary method, not to mention Socialist Realism, Surkov implies that there will only be freedom to discuss literary issues in so far as such discussion takes place within the framework of the official method of Socialist Realism. Surkov's interpretation is in flagrant contradiction to Krupskaja's view that “Party Organization and Party Literature” is not concerned with literary works (Eimermacher, 1972: 44).

It is far-fetched indeed to suggest that Lenin laid the basis for state censorship in an article which deplores the situation in “literary work, which has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship” (Lenin, 1967: 24). One is bound to conclude that the one-sided propaganda for Socialist Realism in the socialist states and the institution of censorship of creative literature deviating from that official method cannot be justified by references to Marx or Engels, or Lenin's pre-revolutionary pronouncements on literature. In fact, censorship is not the logical consequence of historical materialism, because changes in the economic basis must sooner or later, but inevitably produce changes in the superstructure. Theoretically, censorship can be applied only temporarily and for tactical reasons. In practice, it has appeared that “temporarily” may be a fairly long stretch of time.

THEORY AND PRACTICE AFTER THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

The introduction of a socialist economic structure after the October Revolution created a new situation, in the field of Marxist literary criticism as elsewhere. From a Marxist point of view, the cultural situation in the Soviet Union and other socialist states is completely different from that in Western Europe or North America. As convinced Marxists, the Soviet leaders were expected to believe that the new economic basis would sooner or later produce a new culture. But they could not know when that new culture would come into being and to what extent its creation could be furthered by political or other means. Another question was what attitude should be taken towards the old or bourgeois culture. These questions divided the Soviet leaders for about a dozen years, until in the early 1930s the problem was temporarily shelved, although not solved. When in 1934 Socialist Realism was announced as the highest form of literature, older literature was in principle relegated to a secondary position. The recurrent references to Socialist Realist works avant la lettre, such as Gorky's Mat' (Mother, 1906), Serafimovič's Železnij potok (The Iron Flood, 1924), Gladkov's Cement (Cement, 1925), and Fadeev's Razgrom (The Nineteen, 1927) served to substantiate the view that the construction of a new culture was well under way. Moreover, the concept of Socialist Realism served as a guiding principle in official literary criticism and was supposed to further the literary expression of the new society.

Although the notion of Socialist Realism was a compromise, it was not the natural and self-evident outcome of a long discussion on theoretical matters among the Soviet leaders. In the first years after the October Revolution, there was a definite trend to abstain from Party interference in the sphere of culture, or at least, to restrict Party decisions in matters of culture to a minimum, and to wait patiently for the revolutionary literature of high quality that the writers were expected to produce. In the meantime one continued to read older literature of which millions of volumes were printed in cheap editions. This line was represented by A. K. Voronskij, from 1921 until 1927 editor of the journal Krasnaja nov' (Red virgin soil), and at a higher level and more hesitantly by A. V. Lunačarskij, head of the People's Commissariat for Education during the 1920s, by Leon Trotsky, one of the main theoreticians of the CPSU in the early 1920s but expelled from the Party in 1927, and to some extent also by Lenin, who however died in 1924 (cf. Maguire, 1968).

In the first issue of Krasnaja nov' Lunačarskij expressed his appreciation of Marx's position, as recollected by Franz Mehring, that those people who did not understand the significance of classical art for the proletariat were “incurable idiots” (Eimermacher, 1972: 96). Lenin also stressed the principle of cultural continuity. In a draft resolution of 1920 he implied that proletarian culture is “not the invention of a new […] culture, but the development of the best examples, traditions and results of the existing cultures from the position of the Marxist world view …” (ibid.: 81). Perhaps Lenin's own literary preferences may have played a role here. He had no appreciation whatever of Majakovskij's Futurist verse, although it was well received by audiences of workers when recited by the author. But the other Soviet leaders, including Trotsky, also felt in general that the writers who wished to ignore the accomplishments of bourgeois culture, such as Proletkul't (a group of proletarian writers advocating the construction of a proletarian culture) and the communist Futurists supporting the review Lef, had little to offer that could compete in quality with older or non-Marxist literature.

Whereas Homer, Shakespeare, Balzac and the great Russian Realists remained among the permitted reading matter (ibid.: 261-2), Voronskij complained that censorship of modern literature was too strict. He could accept only one criterion for censorship, viz. if a literary work were counter-revolutionary. The censors, however, should not interfere with the artistic evaluation of a work and, in principle, the writer should be free to describe the dark sides of Soviet life. The censors should not consider “the representation of life in the manner of Gogol, Saltykov-Ščedrin or Chekhov as an attack on the revolution” (ibid.: 20). This attitude, shared by Viktor Šklovskij and backed by Lunačarskij (ibid.: 300, 262), opened the way for such writers as Zamjatin, Pil'njak and Bulgakov to continue publishing during the 1920s. Lunačarskij and Voronskij in general emphasized the cognitive value of literary works, which were believed to convey information one would never find in statistical surveys. They urged the writers to write the truth, and nothing but the truth, even if it would contradict the expectations of the Party (ibid.: 265-7).

The writers centred around the banner of Proletkul't were of a different opinion. Their aim was to create a proletarian culture without the help of other classes. Shakespeare and Molière had fulfilled their historical mission, and were only of historical interest to the proletariat (ibid.: 133). But the proletarian writers seldom plainly rejected the cultural heritage. Kirillov's appeal to burn Raphael in the name of the future and to destroy the museums is an exception. Conveyed in a poem (of 1917), it is a late echo of similar Futurist views.¹¹ In a conference resolution of 1925 the proletarian writers claimed that “the destruction of all kinds and shades of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois literature had become necessary,” but this conclusion was somewhat mitigated by simultaneous lip-service to the Leninist programme of critical assimilation of classical and bourgeois art and culture (ibid.: 278-9).

Proletkul't attempted to reach its goal by means of budgetary allocations, censorship and defamation campaigns. They believed that far too much support was given to writers such as Boris Pil'njak, who openly said that he was not a communist and did not intend to write as a communist, or Il'ja Erenburg, who by this time had completed his satirical novel Julio Jurenito (1922) (ibid.: 199-200).

In 1924 a protagonist of Lef, N. Čužak, explained most clearly what he hated in the still prevailing cultural policy which allowed such writers as Pil'njak and Erenburg to publish and Voronskij to articulate his views on literature. The Party should check all that kills the will to act and to gain a decisive victory. Everything that contradicted good taste or the enjoyment of life should be eliminated. Any writer should know exactly what he wanted to say and what effect he wished to reach with his writing. No talk about inspiration or the mystique of “artistic creation” should be allowed. But the theory that literature has mainly cognitive value should also be rejected. In Čužak's view, the basic task of class literature was to train—first of all among the young people—the will to participate in the construction and victory of socialism (ibid.: 168-72).

There were various reasons why the Party was hesitant to side with Proletkul't in its quarrel with the other writers. In the early 1920s Proletkul't was not supported by any of the major writers. Further, it seemed politically unwise to regiment cultural life too strictly at a moment when the political and economic situation was far from stable. Finally, the problems of the young Soviet state were so vast that literary issues were mainly left to the second echelon, which implied that no clear directives were issued by the Party centre. Trotsky tried to justify the attitude of the Party in cultural matters as follows:

Art must make its own way and by its own means. The Marxist methods are not the same as the artistic. The Party leads the proletariat but not the historic processes of history. There are domains in which the Party leads, directly and imperatively. There are domains in which it only cooperates. There are, finally, domains in which it only orientates itself. The domain of art is not one in which the Party is called upon to command. It can and must protect and help it, but it can only lead it indirectly

(Trotsky, 1924: 218).

One of the most important reasons why the Party did not unconditionally side with Proletkul't was the claim of Proletkul't that it could direct the whole field of literature without interference from the Party centre. Although nearly all members of Proletkul't organizations, such as the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP), were Party members, the Party still feared that the Proletkul't organizations would assume a position independent from the Party. However, the Soviet leaders gradually became impatient with the situation in literature when they saw that the non-Marxist writers did not automatically turn into supporters of the regime. As a result, the position of Proletkul't became stronger.

This did not, however, lead to a complete victory for Proletkul't. When in 1930 RAPP had absorbed almost all other writers' organizations, it could be held responsible for the poor shape of Soviet literature. RAPP had reached its monopoly position by vehement criticism, defamation and intimidation of competitive organizations and individual writers, of which the attacks on Boris Pil'njak and Evgenij Zamjatin from 1929 onwards were the most notorious. As a result of the action by RAPP against dissident writers, the major authors were silenced. More or less supported by Maksim Gorky, they lodged complaints with Stalin, who urged the Central Committee to dissolve the organizations of proletarian writers and unite “all writers who support the programme of the Soviet power and try to participate in the construction of socialism” in one Writers' Union (Eimermacher, 1972: 434).

At the First Soviet Writers' Congress (1934), Socialist Realism was accepted as the guiding principle in literary creation. In the Statutes of the Writers' Union it was described as follows:

Socialist Realism, the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism, demands of the artist truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development. At the same time, truthfulness and historical concreteness of artistic representation of reality must be combined with the task of ideological remoulding and education of the working people in the spirit of socialism

(Swayze, 1962: 113).

The formula was evidently a compromise, and contained a number of contradictions. It was intended to loosen some of the severe political restrictions that Proletkul't had wanted to introduce in literature, but the official definition of Socialist Realism maintained the demand that propaganda be made for the political ideals of socialism. Describing reality in its revolutionary development in fact meant to portray that which could be considered as reality as well as that which was not yet reality. From the very beginning the concept had to be extensively explained, and the explanations were contradictory. In an address to the Writers' Congress, Maksim Gorky—whom A. A. Ždanov, in view of Gorky's distrust of Proletkul't, praised with unmistakable irony as “the great proletarian author”—elaborated on the power of the word, on literature as “exorcism” and “incantation” (Problems of Soviet Literature 1935: 15, 29). Nikolaj Bucharin, however, believed that Socialist Realism “is the enemy of everything supernatural, mystic and all other-worldly idealism” (ibid.: 251). Bucharin emphasized the realist component of Socialist Realism, whereas Gorky and Ždanov stressed the romanticist component. The one saw the writer primarily as an observer, the others rather like a preacher or propagandist. Although in later years in different situations different answers have been given as to the required emphasis on the one or the other function of the writer, the claim that the Soviet writer must participate through his work in propaganda for the socialist way of life has never been dropped.

The First Soviet Writers' Congress took a less rigid view of classical and bourgeois literature than Proletkul't. With a reference to Stalin's dictum that the writers should be engineers of human souls, Ždanov, speaking in his capacity of secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, explained that “the critical assimilation of the literary heritage of all epochs” represented a task which should be fulfilled without fail (ibid.: 22). Gorky expressed a positive opinion of “Griboedov, Gogol, and so on, down to Chekhov and Bunin”. He called the critic Vissarion Belinskij one of the most talented and honest Russian men. But he rejected Dostoevsky's Memoirs from Underground, as well as Proust and Céline. Karl Radek criticized Joyce, who had portrayed “a heap of dung, crawling with worms”, and counselled the writers to learn from Tolstoy and Balzac rather than from Joyce (ibid.: 153, 182). In this way the writers were urged to write about the splendid future of communism in terms borrowed from the nineteenth century! Many years later Abram Terc (pseudonym of A. D. Sinjavskij) rightly concluded that the concept of Socialist Realism suffered from eclecticism (Terc, 1957).

Why are the modern Soviet writers not allowed to experiment with new and unfamiliar forms? In principle the Party must at all times have access to the whole field of literature. Complex forms and their corresponding meanings, however progressive they may be, will detract from the accessibility of the literary text and therefore incommode the required inspection by the Party. The communist writer is allowed and even encouraged to dream, but his dreams should remain within the confines of Marxist logic and comprehensible to the Party censors. The history of Proletkul't has shown clearly that ultimately no authority other than the Party is entitled to decide whether a literary work is harmful or advantageous to the cause of the revolution. Different from Trotsky's rather tolerant position in literary matters, the Stalinist Party believed that it could not delegate its powers, or literary life in general, to a few intelligent critics or writers. The Party claimed that at all times it should be able to discuss literary works in ideological terms, and it therefore continued to talk about literature in the nineteenth-century fashion as consisting of content and form that are separable.¹²

From the early 1930s the Soviet writers were expected to accept the final guidance of the Party. They had to respect the principle of “party spirit” (partijnost'), i.e. they must adopt the standpoint of the Party and remain loyal to its continually changing policies. Party spirit also came to serve as a criterion in the judging of contemporary literary works. Similarly, the term “popular nature” (narodnost'), which in 1836 Belinskij (1953-9: I, 283) used to characterize Gogol's stories, described the progressive, “folk” character of older literature and also served as a standard in Soviet literary criticism. Marxist critics consider the communist Party spirit as the highest level of “popular nature” (Ovsjannikov, 1973: 395).

Attributing the principle of party spirit in literary matters to Lenin (though without much foundation), A. A. Ždanov carried it to its extreme consequences. His influence on early post-war literary life was as extravagant as it was detrimental. In 1946 he urged the Central Committee to censure Michail Zoščenko and Anna Achmatova, which initiated an extremely strict regime in literary life.¹³ Ždanov died as early as 1948, but it was only after the death of Stalin in 1953 that a cultural thaw set in.

One of the indications of that thaw was a change in the definition of Socialist Realism. The Second Congress of the Soviet Writers' Union (December 1954) acknowledged that the demand to combine the truthful expression of reality in its revolutionary development with the task of ideological education of the working people should be considered redundant, as any truthful expression of reality should be expected to further ideological education. The definition of Socialist Realism was simplified as follows: “Socialist Realism demands of the writer truthful representation of reality in its revolutionary development” (Swayze, 1962: 114). In spite of the emendation, the main contradiction in the requirement to describe present and future at the same time was maintained.

The editorial “On the Problem of the Typical in Literature and Art” in Kommunist of December 1955 also contributed to the general relaxation in the realm of culture. We have mentioned in chapter 2 that it raised the problem of “the typical” (tipičnost'). The editorial criticized the view that the problem of the typical is always a political problem. Merely rephrasing ideas that had been expressed before,¹⁴ G. M. Malenkov had pronounced in this way as late as 1952 (Erlich, 1955: 414; Swayze, 1962: 81, 133).

The editorial is divided into three sections, dealing respectively with the typical, party spirit and exaggeration as a means of typification. It states that the meaning of typification lies in the use of “clear, concrete and affective, aesthetically impressive images which not only influence man's reason, but also his emotions”. Thus it is wrong to restrict the concept of the typical by making it correspond with the essence of certain social forces. Artistic cognition of life has certain elements in common with science, but is still different from it. It is determined by its own laws, of which typification (tipizacija) is a basic one. Different from science, “art reflects the laws that govern reality in images, i.e. in concrete and affective forms which embody the general in the particular.”

The editorial admits that typification is always connected with the world outlook of the artist, but it regards as wrong the endeavour to find expression of a party standpoint in everything typical regardless of the time and conditions in which the artist worked. Here the danger of vulgarization threatens. For it is possible that the “objective” significance of a work contradicts the political views of the author. In this context the well-known example of Balzac is mentioned. Not all artists possess the necessary party spirit, but their work may still be worth reading. Nevertheless, the communist party spirit is “the highest expression of class character in world outlook”. Party spirit is “the basic ideological principle of the artistic method of socialist literature”.

Finally, the editorial censures the mistake of many dogmatists who understand the method of “exaggeration” in a superficial way. They forget that the uncommon in realistic art can become typical only if it carries “germs of the new with the potential of mass character” in them, or if it is connected with regular, not accidental phenomena of life. This sort of error in the application of the device of exaggeration has been the origin of needless and unwarranted embellishment (lakirovka).

As usual in Marxist writings, the editorial deals with the genetic aspects of literature and with its effect on the reader. It hardly discusses any characteristics of the literary text. It recognizes the literary use of aesthetic images which may influence the emotions, but significantly does not explain to what extent these aesthetic images elude political judgement. The principal message of the editorial seemed to be that in the past political censorship had been too severe. On the other hand, the basic Marxist tenet that in the last resort everything is political, and in principle should be subjected to a political judgement, was not revoked. On balance, the cultural thaw introduced a less explicit Marxism than had been usual in the Ždanovist period. This enlarged the area in which discussion was possible. The issues of the 1920s were rediscovered, not only Russian Formalism but also the views of Lunačarskij and Voronskij, some of whose statements and articles were reprinted.

The Marxist critics who avoided the structuralist approach focussed their attention on the origin and function of literature. In explaining the genesis of literature, the editorial in Kommunist of December 1955 had referred to Belinskij's formula, “art is thinking in images”. In doing so, it had caused a concept with Romanticist and idealist connotations to be introduced into the genetic explanation of literature, which was otherwise supposed to be materialist.¹⁵ This can be exemplified by the following historical expatiation, which aims to demonstrate that Belinskij's theory of art was characterized by the concepts of unconscious creation and an almost mystical contemplation of truth. It is all the more necessary to examine briefly the heritage of nineteenth-century Russian literary criticism (including also N. A. Dobroljubov and N. G. Černyševskij), since, together with Marxist thought, it has provided basic concepts to Soviet literary theory.

First one should recall Belinskij's view of the creative act mentioned in an essay on Gogol of 1836: “The power of creation is a great gift of nature. The creative act in the soul of the creator is a great secret. The moment of the creation is a moment of sacrosanctity. The creative act is purposeless with a purpose, unconscious in consciousness, free in dependence.” According to Belinskij, the nature of the creative act implies that the artist should be left completely free in the choice of his subject-matter. He concludes his essay by saying: “Can the subject-matter add something to the value of the [literary] work? […]. Let Mr. Gogol describe those things which his inspiration orders him to describe, and may he shrink from describing the stuff that is urged upon him by his own will or by the critics” (Belinskij, 1953-9: I, 285, 307). Secondly, in the same essay he explains his concept of the typical: “One of the most significant characteristics of creative originality,” Belinskij says, “consists in the typification (tipizm) […]. In the works of a true talent every person is a type and every type is, for the reader, a known unknown.” In one instance he calls a famous literary character in one of Gogol's stories “a symbol, a mystical myth, […] a caftan made so amazingly well that it fits the shoulders of a thousand people” (I, 295-7). The type as explained by Belinskij is the immediate result of the impulse of inspiration. He described art as “the immediate contemplation of truth, or thinking in images” (IV, 585), which is reminiscent of Hegel and A. W. Schlegel.¹⁶

Belinskij's thinking has also been popular in early Russian Marxism. Discussing the reception of art, the outstanding Russian Marxist critic G. V. Plechanov took a position which harks back to the Romanticist tradition. He has praise for Kant's postulate of the disinterested enjoyment of beauty, and expects the writer to speak the language of images, rather than the language of logic. He adds that “the useful will be judged by reason; the beautiful by contemplation. The domain of the first is calculation; that of the second the instinct.” And with a clear reminder of Hegel and Belinskij he adds that “the most important feature of aesthetic enjoyment is its immediacy.”¹⁷ As a corollary of this position and in full agreement with Belinskij, Plechanov distrusted any attempt to make writers disseminate political propaganda (Demetz, 1967: 189-98).

As one of the leaders of the Mensheviks, Plechanov was arrested immediately after the October Revolution and died in prison in 1918. His early critical writings, however, remained a topic of literary polemics in the 1920s. Lunačarskij and Voronskij emphasized that the relation between a literary work and the economic basis was of an indirect and circumstantial nature. Art is in no way a simple reflection of reality, Lunačarskij wrote in 1924. The writer is not only an observer, but also a preacher, and can give immediate expression to his thought and feelings. In his defence of literature, Lunačarskij attributes to Krupskaja the idea that the masses also prefer “to think in images” (Eimermacher, 1972: 262, 265). In the same year I. Vardin, a spokesman of Proletkul't, branded Voronskij as a non-Bolshevik critic who still upheld traditional ideas from Belinskij's days (ibid.: 201). As late as 1932, Plechanov's views on logical thinking and thinking in images were criticized in Pravda as leading to “the reactionary theory of immediate impressions” (ibid.: 429).

One sees that the acceptance or rejection of Belinskij's concept of the creative act has a heavy bearing on various issues in Marxist literary policy. Acceptance means in fact that the writer must remain free to select his subject-matter, and that one cannot expect him to propagate prescribed ideas in his work. Any censorship would be out of bounds. When they restored Belinskij as a permitted source of literary theory, the Soviet leaders avoided making these consequences explicit. When necessary, they have resorted to other strains in the nineteenth-century Russian critical tradition to support the claim that the writer should deal with prescribed subject-matter and be a propagandist of socialist ideals. Both N. A. Dobroljubov and N. G. Černyševskij could provide the required support. Whereas Dobroljubov to some extent still embraced the Romanticist concept of the creative act, both admit that form and content can be discussed separately and accept their own preconceived knowledge of social reality as a standard whereby to judge a literary work. Advocating a strictly materialist theory of reflection, Černyševskij in a book review of 1856 asked the rhetorical question whether one would admire Raphael so much if he had painted only arabesques, birds and flowers (Černyševskij, 1950: 230). A few years later Dobroljubov observed: “We will never agree that a poet wearing out his talent in an exemplary depiction of leaves and brooklets can have the same significance as the one who with equal force of his talent is able to represent, for instance, the phenomena of social life” (Dobroljubov, 1961: 262). Recently the Soviet critic Moissej Kagan expressed himself in a similar way and declared that the value of a literary work depends immediately upon the character of the theme.¹⁸

Nevertheless, it is quite understandable that the Chinese Marxists, unrestricted by the need to preserve the Russian critical heritage, discarded the whole gamut of critical writings by the Russian revolutionary democrats, including even Černyševskij. In 1966 and 1967 Belinskij, Dobroljubov and Černyševskij, as well as Chou Yang, the Chinese theorist and politician who had popularized their views in China, were criticized as representatives of bourgeois idealism.¹⁹

But even today, the defenders of Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union rely in part on a heritage of Romanticist concepts of inspiration, immediate impression and unconscious creation. This is another instance which shows the eclectic nature of Soviet literary theory, which accounts for its many contradictions. According to recent Soviet literary theory, the creative act is both conscious and unconscious. The literary work is the result of both subjective creativity and the reflection of objective reality (Guljaev, 1970: 128; cf. Fizer, 1963). The writer is requested to describe reality realistically and to make socialist propaganda at the same time; he is both observer and preacher. He is to respect the political principle of party spirit and the aesthetic principle of the typical. His work is socially determined as well as the result of individual efforts (Ovsjannikov, 1973: 247). The Marxist theoreticians assume a dialectical relationship between the opposite terms in these various contradictions. One textbook carries the argument so far as to postulate “a dialectical relationship between party spirit and artistic talent”, since the truthful expression of reality is assumedly connected with the interpretation of the world “in the light of the most advanced, Marxist-Leninist world view” (Guljaev, 1970: 128). These conclusions are acceptable only if one accepts the underlying assumption that Marxism-Leninism is identical with truth or the only and guaranteed way to truth.

But how could the original Marxist economic determinism gradually turn into a vague and unfalsifiable eclecticism? Whenever in some practical situation any law of dialectical or historical materialism did not apply or convince, the Marxist theoreticians in the Soviet Union have tried to adjust themselves, not by rejecting the Marxist law in question, but by condoning exceptions to that law. In this way, the theory of economic determinism was invalidated, although this invalidation was never officially acknowledged as such.²⁰

Practice and, as Morton Bloomfield (1972a) has suggested, political expediency became the judge of truth. Indeed, whenever the changing political moment determined the truth value of a Marxist position, the easy road of eclecticism could no longer be avoided.

THE CHINESE RECEPTION OF MARXIST LITERARY THEORIES

Marxist thought was introduced into China only in the twentieth century, and no serious attention was paid to Marxist literary theory before the May Fourth Movement (1919). Aimed at the political and cultural emancipation of China from the fetters of Confucianist traditionalism, the May Fourth Movement opened the way to the study of European thought, including Marxism. The 1920s were characterized by a rapid proliferation of literary movements and journals covering the full range from l'art pour l'art to plain Marxist utilitarianism. Many Chinese writers were convinced that literature should serve the revolution, but apart from uncertainty about the character of the revolution there was a protracted debate over the degree to which literature could maintain its literary characteristics in that subservient position. In 1928 Lu Hsün, the most influential critic of his day, expressed the dilemma of the leftist writers as follows: “Though all literature is propaganda, not all propaganda is literature; just as all flowers have colour (I count white as a colour), but not all coloured things are flowers. In addition to catchwords, slogans, notices, telegrams and textbooks, the revolution needs literature—just because it is literature.”²¹ Although a true revolutionary, Lu Hsün remained first and foremost a writer, who always defended the particular nature of literary expression and the freedom it needed. When Mao Tse-tung expressed himself on literary theory in 1942, he was influenced rather by a more rigid current of leftist thought, as represented by the Marxists Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai and Chou Yang.

One striking difference between Chinese and Soviet Marxist criticism is that the former is much less entangled in efforts to assimilate European literature from the Renaissance down to the pre-revolutionary Russian classics. It appears that in general Maoist literary criticism can be applied more consistently and more rigorously, as the European heritage means evidently less to the Chinese than to the Russians. This enables the Chinese leaders to apply certain Marxist principles, or what they consider to be Marxist principles, in an uncompromising way. In particular they have tended in recent years to strip Marxist literary theory of its eclecticism, hardly aware of their being eclectic themselves in doing so. Since the Cultural Revolution, the Maoist critics have rejected Marx's criterion of verisimilitude,²² as well as his personal admiration for the European classics, whereas they have given full emphasis to his criterion of economic determinism and the “Leninist” principle of party spirit.

During the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese made a similar attempt to avoid eclecticism in their critique of the ambivalent concept of Socialist Realism. In China, Socialist Realism had been cherished as an ideal between 1953 and 1958.²³ But when certain Chinese writers during the Hundred Flowers period had attempted to deprive the concept of its ideological content by replacing it with the phrase “realism of the socialist epoch”,²⁴ the official Chinese theoreticians coined the concept of “the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism” to supersede the ambiguous Soviet formula.²⁵ The new concept emphasized the revolutionary goals of literature and detracted from the claim of truthful representation. The Chinese theorists plainly sided with Gorky's romanticist attitude as well as the Ždanovist emphasis on the political function of literature. This was clearly pronounced in one of the articles explaining the new Chinese formula:

Another opinion is that the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism is an enrichment and development of Socialist Realism. Most comrades acknowledge that this enrichment and development become manifest in the emphasis on revolutionary romanticism, and although according to the explanations of Gorky and Ždanov this revolutionary romanticism was an organic part of Socialist Realism, later it did not receive satisfactory attention either in practice or in theory.²⁶

The last sentence conveys a critical attitude vis-à-vis recent developments in Soviet literary theory and practice. Therefore, the introduction by the Chinese of the new literary concept can also be interpreted as an attempt to emancipate Chinese Marxist literary theory from Soviet patronage. Significantly, a conference address by Chou Yang, who as a vice-director of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee was supervising literary life between 1949 and 1966, was entitled: “Establish China's own Marxist literary theory and criticism.”²⁷

Suspicious of eclecticism, the Chinese critics hardly ever made any reference to Marx's theory of the unbalanced development of artistic and material production, which contradicts the materialist law of economic determinism. One of the few exceptions is an article by Chou Lai-hsiang, who concludes that either the theory must be considered as not universally valid or as applicable also to the socialist epoch.²⁸ Both conclusions were embarrassing: the first because it detracted from Marx's thesis, the second because it would justify dissident literature. Chou Lai-hsiang decided that Marx's thesis no longer applied, and attributed to Mao Tse-tung the phrasing of the new law of “the parallel development of cultural, artistic and material production in the socialist epoch.” Although we definitely see here an attempt to straighten Marxist literary theory, for some reason or another the issue did not receive much attention in later Chinese criticism.

More attention was paid to the possibility of a discrepancy between the writer's world view and the meaning of his work, as formulated by Engels and Dobroljubov. For instance, the theory was invoked during the discussions on the interpretation of the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung lou meng) in 1954. As in the Soviet Union, the theory served to make the assimilation of the classical work of the cultural heritage possible. The theory was recurrently referred to, and during the first fifteen years of the People's Republic the main works of the Chinese tradition were reprinted and accessible to the public. Characteristically, however, during the Cultural Revolution and coinciding with an extremely vehement repudiation of almost all traditional literature, an attempt was made to eliminate this theory as it made possible an escape from economic determinism. Cheng Chi-ch'iao and T'an P'ei-sheng, the critics who tried to eliminate Engels' discrepancy theory from Maoist criticism,²⁹ also rejected the idea of unconscious creation, as well as the distinction between logical thinking and “thinking in images” (as defended by Belinskij, Plechanov, Lunačarskij and, in China, by Ch'en Yung). Cheng Chi-ch'iao moreover criticized the Soviet view, expressed in “On the Problem of the Typical in Literature and Art” (1955), that the typical is not always the result of party spirit. The Chinese critics had detected an idealist strain in all these positions, and correctly so. They paved the way for a non-eclectic materialist conception of literature, but they failed to have their ideas definitely accepted by the Chinese political leaders, who have avoided a clear decision on Engels' discrepancy theory, which in spite of its idealist origins, is certainly appropriate to justify the assimilation of older literature. Very recent developments have shown that to some extent Chinese classical literature has been made accessible again to the reading public. This would imply that Engels' theory of the possible discrepancy between the writer's world view and the meaning of his work is badly needed to justify this development. Perhaps in the near future also other “idealist” notions such as the difference between party spirit and the typical, the unconscious character of the creative act, and the concept of “thinking in images” will be restored as respectable elements of Chinese Marxist literary theory. Whether or not this will happen, cannot be predicted with certainty.

Let us, after these general observations, examine the few sources of Marxist literary theory which, at present anyway, are valid in China. The prevailing current of contemporary Chinese criticism has been determined by Mao Tse-tung's “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art” (1942). If we consider the years from 1949 until Mao's death in 1976 as one period, Maoist literary theory is the mainstream and the only school of thought which survived the vicissitudes of the political tide. Mao's “Yenan Talks” were conceived in wartime, when literature was naturally supposed to support the war effort. The view that literature is a “weapon” was hardly qualified in later years, although conditions changed considerably. Five later pronouncements by Mao Tse-tung on literature were published in the Red Flag of May 27, 1967.³⁰ The oldest of these dates from 1944 and the most recent from 1964. In 1944, with due emphasis on subject-matter, Mao expressed his doubts about the traditional Chinese opera, in particular Pi shang liang shan (Driven to Join the Liangshan Rebels), which stages “lords and ladies and their pampered sons and daughters” and “presents the people as though they were dirt”. In a criticism of the film The Life of Wu Hsün (1951), Mao advocated the application of historical-materialist explanations in literature and art. Three years later, in a letter to the Politburo, he addressed himself to the current discussions of the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber; on that occasion he condemned “the Hu Shih school of bourgeois idealism”. The two other pronouncements by Mao, of 1963 and 1964, deal almost exclusively with political matters. All these statements are completely in line with the position taken in the “Yenan Talks”. This also applies to Mao's most recent—and his shortest—statement on literature, which was published in People's Daily (Jen-min jih-pao) of December 16, 1971: “I hope that more and better works will be produced.” Here too an aspect of Maoist literary theory is being emphasized which was announced in the “Yenan Talks”, namely the idea that a socialist society cannot do without literature.

Apart from Mao Tse-tung himself, his wife Chiang Ch'ing contributed to Maoist literary theory. In 1964 she took an uncompromising position concerning the traditional Peking opera in a short speech which was not published at the time but appeared only in 1967.³¹ More important, and in fact the most important Maoist document on literature since the “Yenan Talks”, is the “Summary of the Forum on the Work in Literature and Art in the Armed Forces with which Comrade Lin Piao Entrusted Comrade Chiang Ch'ing” of February 1966.³² Mao Tse-tung is said to have revised the text three times before its publication and this may prove to be a guarantee against the “Summary” (or, at least, the ideas expressed in it) being outlawed, in spite of the fact that both Lin Piao and Chiang Ch'ing were ostracized. As we will see, the “Summary” is a quite faithful repetition of views expressed in the “Yenan Talks”.

During the Cultural Revolution Chiang Ch'ing made occasional pronouncements on literary and theatrical matters. On November 28, 1966, she launched a desperate attack on Western culture:

Capitalism has a history of several centuries. Nevertheless, it has only a pitiful number of ‘classics’. Some works modelled after the ‘classics’ have been created, but these are stereotyped and no longer appeal to the people. […] On the other hand, there are some things that really flood the market, such as rock-’n’-roll, jazz, striptease, impressionism, symbolism, abstractionism, fauvism, modernism—there is no end to them—all of which are intended to poison and paralyse the minds of the people. In short, there is decadence and obscenity to poison and paralyse the minds of the people.

After its publication in People's Daily of December 4, 1966, her disparaging view of art, which equalled or even surpassed Ždanov's pronouncements in vehemence, has not been reprinted. This justifies doubts as to whether its unqualified one-sideness is still considered appropriate.

In his “Yenan Talks” Mao Tse-tung rephrased the main concepts of Marxist and Soviet literary theory. Like the Soviet Marxist theorists, Mao does not attempt to define fiction, poetry or drama, or to analyse the function of plot construction, rhyme or dialogue. We know from Mao's own performance as a poet that he is aware of the difference between poetic forms, such as lü-shih (stanzas of eight lines, each of seven characters) and tz'u (a metrical form of which the length of each line, rhyme and tonal pattern are determined by the traditional “tune” which the poet chooses), but these distinctions are not part of the Maoist literary theory. In the late 1950s there was a lively discussion in the literary journals about poetic devices (touching on such questions as the function of rhyme and metre) which did not conflict with the official views on literature, for the simple reason that neither Mao nor any of his close associates ever expressed themselves on these matters. For the same reason, novelists were free to experiment with plot construction, although they usually remained on the safe side and did not go beyond models that had been established by Mao Tun, Pa Chin, Lao She and others in the 1930s or by early Soviet writers such as A. A. Fadeev, whose Razgrom (The Nineteen, 1927) was mentioned in the “Yenan Talks” as an example to be followed. In the “Yenan Talks” Mao Tse-tung says very little about drama, but this gap was filled two years later with his comment alluded to above, on the subject-matter of the traditional opera.

Subject-matter is also one of Mao Tse-tung's main concerns in the “Yenan Talks”, as well as in recent criticisms.³³ A characteristic feature of Maoist literary theory is that subject-matter can very well be considered in isolation, separate from its formal expression. The historical explanation that in this way Mao was continuing an old, largely Confucian tradition and that moreover his “Yenan Talks” were primarily meant as a moralist response to moralist criticism by “rightist” authors (Ting Ling, Hsiao Chün and others) is not relevant here. Mao can pay almost exclusive attention to subject-matter, since in full accordance with Marxist literary theory his assumption is that form and content can be separated. Mao's view on the relation between form and content appears from the following statement: “[…] Nor do we refuse to utilize the literary and artistic forms of the past, but in our hands these old forms, remoulded and infused with new content, also become something revolutionary in the service of the people” (1942: 76).

According to Mao, the class struggle and the anti-Japanese war may serve as subject-matter. Anti-national, anti-scientific and anticommunist views should not be represented. The “Summary” supports the view that the fullest attention should be given “to the themes of socialist revolution and socialist construction”, and is even more specific in the claim that literary works should be created about three particular military campaigns. Of course, the “Summary” addressed itself primarily to the military, but in a country where the people are constantly reminded to learn from the army and the army from the people, the hint to deal with military themes should not be interpreted as being restricted to military men.

Further restrictions about the proper subject-matter are to be found in Mao Tse-tung's comments in the “Yenan Talks” on “the theory of human nature”, “the love of humanity”, etc. Mao's position is that “there is no human nature above classes” and “there has been no […] all-inclusive love of humanity since humanity was divided into classes” (1942: 90-1). The basis of these statements is the belief that the class struggle is the all-pervading force in human life. The idea of the class struggle as the primordial factor in human life is rooted in the conviction that “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought” has provided the final answers to all human problems. That conviction has a number of consequences. It means, for instance, that Marxist political solutions are in principle always correct. A society where the Communist Party has come to power has no serious flaws. Therefore, Mao Tse-tung explains, the writers should portray mainly the bright side of socialist construction. If shortcomings or negative characters are described, they should only “serve as a contrast to bring out the brightness of the whole picture”. As the Soviet political leaders had distrusted the satirical prose of Zamjatin and Zoščenko, Mao Tse-tung determined that Lu Hsün's style of the “satirical essay” (tsa-wen) should not be imitated (1942: 91-2).

Implicit in the “Yenan Talks” is the idea that all human problems have in principle been solved by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. As a result of the heavy reliance on one particular ideology, Mao's literary theory in fact provides no justification for experiment. With the exception of the small margin which is the result of a more or less daring interpretation of Party directives, it must be clear to a Chinese writer what his message should be. There is no urge to doubt established solutions that have been sanctioned by the Party or Chairman Mao, or to discover alternative solutions by creating imaginary worlds which considerably depart from the Marxist mould. The stiffening effect of an accepted, once-and-for-all ideology can be seen also in the language of the literary texts. Not only is the solution to all problems known in principle, but the phrasing of that solution also leaves little leeway. In the 1967 version of the modern Peking opera Raid on the White Tiger Regiment, 3 per cent of the text consists of quotations from Mao Tse-tung's works and his name is mentioned twenty-five times. This particular text is an extreme example of the way the Maoist literary theory was to lead. Even if certain texts do not contain direct quotations from Mao, the writers are still held to abide by the phraseology that can be found in his works.

The exclusiveness of Maoist ideology and the infallibility of its wording prevent the Chinese writers from probing into the relation between sign and concept, or between word and reality. In fact all propaganda work in China, of which literature is often considered a part, is directed towards spreading the belief that words and concepts are one and that things do exist in reality if words only say so often enough. It is clear that the conception of poetry as a means to refine communication and to prevent language from being polluted is incompatible with the acceptance of the Maoist ideology.

Maoist ideology has a direct bearing on contemporary Chinese literature. But neither in theory nor in practice is literature completely equated with propaganda. Mao Tse-tung is aware of the fact that “the people are not satisfied with life alone and demand literature and art as well.” He also mentions the reason why: “Because, while both are beautiful, life as reflected in works of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more intense, more concentrated, more typical, nearer the ideal, and therefore more universal than actual everyday life” (1942: 82). In spite of the attempts to do away with eclecticism, recent Chinese literature still seems to be a compromise between political and artistic demands.

The overriding end value of Maoist literary theory is the advancement of the revolutionary struggle. Or, as Mao Tse-tung said in the “Yenan Talks”, the Chinese writers must ensure that revolutionary literature provides “better help to other revolutionary work in facilitating the overthrow of our national enemy and the accomplishment of the task of national liberation” (ibid.). This normative statement suggests how literature may function in social life. The end value implicit in the statement (“literature should serve the political struggle”) does not seem to have a specific literary character. Within the framework of Maoist ideology the same norm could be applied to intellectual work in general, industrial production, or leisure. All these “should serve the political struggle.” Although this main value is not exclusively applicable to literature, it does determine Maoist literary theory which in that way becomes part of a larger ideological system. It should not be considered exceptional that the justification of a literary value system exceeds the literary context. In general, all literary evaluation is determined by the relation between the valued object and the valuing subject who, consciously or not, takes the social context into account.

One may object that the end value of literary production was formulated by Mao Tse-tung in a war situation, and does not warrant far-reaching conclusions. However, as was mentioned earlier, the views expressed in the “Yenan Talks” have never been negated or superseded by later statements, although the circumstances under which Mao Tse-tung made his speeches in 1942 have certainly changed. It appears from the “Summary” that the struggle is now mainly against “bourgeois idealism”, “modern revisionism” and pacifism. The subservience of literature to the political struggle has remained the same.

The political struggle that is referred to here is largely determined by the Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideology and by the Communist Party. Maoist literary theory implies, as Mao has said, adherence to the principle of party spirit,³⁴ which, as in the Soviet context, means that the writers and critics in their work have to side with the Party and, in practice, are obliged to follow the Party's directives. This principle accounts for the dynamics of Maoist literary criticism and can explain many of the ups and downs in the reception of classical and contemporary Chinese literature, as well as foreign literature. Due to changing circumstances and in connection with other political developments, the directives of the Party are subject to change. Therefore, literary works which seemed in accordance with the Party line in the early 1960s were liable to be outlawed during the Cultural Revolution when another policy prevailed, and may be restored to the body of permitted reading matter again if that would suit the Party. The recently revitalized interest in classical poetry, triggered off by the publication of Kuo Mo-jo's book on Li T'ai-po and Tu Fu in November 1971, may illustrate this. Studies of Li T'ai-po and Tu Fu were as normal in the early 1960s as they were impossible during the Cultural Revolution. The official evaluation of modern literature may show a similar curve.

The imminent or open disapproval of certain texts by the Party can be bypassed by rewriting. A standard example of a book that was subjected to repeated rewriting is The Song of Ouyang Hai by Chin Ching-mai. The Chinese editions of 1965 and 1966 favourably mentioned the political ideas of Liu Shao-ch'i, which necessitated rather excessive rewriting. Fragments of the last edition published in 1967 made mention of Lin Piao, then Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party and after September 1971 in disgrace. If only for that reason, the novel must be revised again before it can be republished.³⁵ Also in the Soviet Union authors have been compelled to rewrite their books, but the principle of rewriting has been applied more consistently in contemporary Chinese literature. The texts of the various new Peking operas on modern themes have been repeatedly rewritten and published with the date of the new text added, but without any reference to the earlier editions. In this way, literary history is being rewritten as well. The Chinese critics are not in any way allowed to respect the past; even less than their Soviet colleagues may they indulge in historicist considerations. Therefore, we may conclude that in China the primordial norm of party spirit has produced the principle of permanent revision or the non-finality of the literary text as an instrumental value which very much determines contemporary Chinese literature. Whereas Chinese criticism speaks repeatedly of party spirit, the principle of the non-finality of the literary text is hardly made explicit.

There are more instrumental values. Since literature should serve the political struggle, Mao Tse-tung logically calls himself a “utilitarian”. The concept of literature as a weapon in the revolutionary struggle leads to the demand that the weapon should be appropriate and forceful. Hence Mao Tse-tung's defence of artistic criteria—which, however, remain subordinate to the political norms. The latter make censorship necessary and, as in the Soviet Union, the idea of ideological supervision has decided the question of the relation between form and content in favour of their separability. Soviet and Chinese Marxists apparently agree that the structuralist concept of form and content as aspects of an organized whole (which implies the conviction that certain small changes in the text may destroy the work of art) might bolster resistance to political censorship. The concept of structural unity provides the text with an unassailability that is anathema to Marxist literary theory.

There are other, more specific norms in Maoist literary theory. As to genres, there is a preference for folksongs (characterized by standard imagination), reportage (which suppresses the fictional aspect) and the modern Chinese opera (which relies heavily on extra-literary devices such as music, dance and acrobatics). The whole system of Maoist literary theory and much recent literary practice show a strong preference for those texts which can easily be tested with political norms. Finally, the advancement of the political struggle dictates a firm choice in favour of “popularization”, to the neglect of the “elevation” or improvement of artistic standards.

The concepts and values of Maoist literary theory cannot be fully understood if the historical context is neglected. Mao's literary theory was a reaction to both traditional (Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist) concepts of literature and the confusing intrusion of Western influences (Naturalism, Symbolism, Expressionism, the stream-of-consciousness novel, Socialist Realism). In his “Yenan Talks” Mao Tse-tung offered a relief from the depressing multitude of new movements and ideas which, often in a simplified or distorted way, confronted the intellectuals of modern China. Mao's choice was largely the Soviet model as interpreted by theorists such as Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai and Chou Yang. It was not Mao's intention to write a complete poetics, but to provide a unity of focus. The incompleteness of the “Yenan Talks” left some margin for creative freedom. Only gradually did it appear that essential constituents of literary creation were fettered. During the first twenty-odd years of the existence of the People's Republic, Chinese cultural policy led to ever more neglect of the forms and function of literary imagination. Mao Tse-tung's encouraging words of December 1971 give some hope that this trend has been reversed. During the Cultural Revolution—or, to be more exact, in the years 1967-71—the national press was unable to recommend a newly-published or reprinted novel or any volume of poetry by one single poet. In fact, the literary scene was utterly barren. If the observation in the “Yenan Talks” that the people demand literature is still valid, something must be done to satisfy that demand.

There is a plain political reason for encouraging literary production. As Lu Hsün observed, literature is needed as propaganda. But prose that is devoid of fiction and verse that consists of straight political admonitions are too easily recognized as propaganda. Literature loses its exceptional value as a means of propaganda as soon as it loses most or all of its specific literary character. Oddly enough, this political consideration may finally save a residue of the Chinese literary potential. The publication of several novels since 1972, renewed attention to the problem of the “typical”, and the hesitant acknowledgement that literature should not be equated with politics confirm that possibility.³⁶

LUKáCS AND NEO-MARXIST CRITICISM

A survey of neo-Marxist literary criticism cannot neglect Georg Lukács, although in the greater part of his publications he can by no means be called a neo-Marxist. The label “neo-Marxism” is used by non-Marxists rather than by the neo-Marxists themselves, which makes it difficult to agree on a definition of the term. For the present purpose we shall use it to distinguish between those theoreticians who base themselves unconditionally on the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin—accepting at the same time the leading role of the Communist Party in matters of culture and science—and those others who, while often relying on Marx and Engels, do not interpret their writings in a dogmatic way, or accept the absolute supremacy of the Communist Party in problems of culture and science.

In this sense Th. W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Lucien Goldmann, as well as Jacques Leenhardt and Frederic Jameson are neo-Marxists, but Lukács is not. It is necessary to make a distinction between those who accept the Marxist canon as definite truth and those who regard it merely as a source of inspiration, particularly in the study of Marxist literary criticism. The distinction should prevent us from considering high quality criticism based on an unorthodox Marxism as a tribute to Marxism rather than a defeat for it. It might appear that the more interesting criticism comes from writers who depart from the orthodox canon. In a discussion of recent Marxist criticism we are on the safe, orthodox side if we first try to establish the position of Lukács, who as a Marxist in his writings never explicitly criticized Marx, Engels or Lenin, or the CPSU, except in a single case in which the CPSU first had criticized itself (Lukács 1963-75: IV, 459). However, Lukács' Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen (The Particular Nature of the Aesthetic, 1963) stands somewhat apart from his earlier work, since it expounds a Marxist aesthetics that is founded also on sources other than Marxian ones.

It is impossible and also unnecessary to discuss here the complete works of Lukács. The writings of his pre-Marxist period such as Die Seele und die Formen (1911) and Die Theorie des Romans (1916) are, as Lukács has explicitly admitted with regard to the latter, exponents of the “geisteswissenschaftliche Methode” (Lukács 1962: 6-7). In 1938 he disqualified Die Theorie des Romans as “a reactionary work throughout, full of idealistic mysticism, mistaken in all its interpretations of the historical development”.³⁷

Lukács, who joined the Communist Party in 1918 and after a brief visit to Moscow (1930-1) emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1933, cooperates here with M. A. Lifschitz in his search for a Marxian aesthetics. Thus begins his orthodox period which lasts from the early 1930s to about 1956. (In 1944 he returned to Budapest.) The main contributions of this period are his studies of nineteenth-century Realism, his selective essays on the new Soviet literature and Socialist Realism, and his attempts to emphasize the Realist aspects of twentieth-century literature, e.g. in the work of Thomas Mann, at the expense of other trends, such as those of Expressionism and Surrealism, as well as the narrative prose of Kafka, Joyce, Döblin and Dos Passos. The assumption that Lukács too easily submitted to the current cultural policies of the Soviet Union should perhaps be qualified; indeed, he clearly threw the weight of his influence into the scale of a cultural policy that stood for the continuity of the literary tradition. One may deplore the fact that he never defended the avant-garde, but he had success in taking sides with those who were critical of the illusory ideals of Proletkul't. Among others (not all of them good company), Lukács was instrumental in defining a cultural policy that in Eastern Europe prevented a break with the rich nineteenth-century literary tradition. Goethe, Balzac, Dickens, Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky belong to the permitted reading matter in the Soviet Union, partly as a result of Lukács' efforts. The significance of this may appear from a comparison with China, where this is no longer the case. Aided by a keen political intuition, Lukács made use of any opportunity to broaden the margins of freedom. Within two years of the publication of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), Lukács wrote a very favourable review. Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen is a similar case. Indeed, ever since the editorial “On the Problem of the Typical” (1955) had appeared in Kommunist, emphasizing the difference between the aesthetic and political effects of literature,³⁸ it has again been possible in the communist countries to discuss the particular nature of aesthetic texts. Yet in Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen, Lukács made the broadest possible use of the opportunity.

In the following pages we shall restrict ourselves mainly to two pivotal topics: the debate on Expressionism and Realism, and the problems related to political commitment and the principle of party spirit.

The debate on Expressionism and Realism, which was mainly carried on in the German review Das Wort, published in Moscow between 1936 and 1939, is generally believed to have been started by Lukács in his article “‘Grösse und Verfall’ des Expressionismus”, which was published in Internationale Literatur in 1934.³⁹ It has a revealing motto from Lenin: “[…] that which is inessential, apparent and superficial most often disappears, and does not take root like the ‘essence’.”⁴⁰ Lenin's saying induced Lukács to formulate his main point: Expressionism had succeeded only in describing the surface of phenomena, while Realism had access to the essence of the historical development. After several German writers such as Klaus Mann, Herwarth Walden and Ernst Bloch had rejected Lukács' position, Lukács published his well-known essay “Es geht um den Realismus” (1938) in Das Wort (Lukács 1963-75: IV, 313-44).

In that article Lukács mainly criticizes Ernst Bloch, whom he otherwise respects as a fellow-Marxist. Bloch had doubted Lukács' view of reality as a coherent totality. If that view were correct, Bloch concluded, then the Expressionist devices of disruption, interpolation and montage would be an “empty play” (ibid.: IV, 315). Here Bloch too relied on Marxist thinking. He accepted that literature, as part of the superstructure, should reflect the true nature of reality (the economic basis). However, he differed from Lukács on the nature of reality. He considered Lukács' conception of reality as a coherent totality to be a remnant of classical idealism, and countered that, particularly under the capitalist system, “perhaps a real reality can also be interruption”.⁴¹ Bloch believed that Surrealism may serve as an example here. “Surrealism”, wrote Bloch “consists of montage. […] It is the description of the confusion of an experienced reality [Erlebniswirklichkeit] with broken spheres and caesuras.”⁴²

Lukács introduces a new element by reformulating the problem as follows. Do the capitalist system and the bourgeois society in their unity of economy and ideology objectively, independently from consciousness, form a coherent totality? (ibid.: IV, 316).

Bloch had based his defense of Expressionism on a conscious experience of reality (Erlebniswirklichkeit). Lukács refers to a reality independent of consciousness. As experience cannot serve as an argument to support his position, Lukács must appeal to the authority of Marx, who had written that the conditions of production in every society (i.e. also the capitalist society) form a whole (ibid.: IV, 316). According to Lukács, this should settle the dispute, at least among Marxists such as Bloch and himself. In this way, the difference had been reduced to a different interpretation of the social and economic reality. Lukács' polemic manoeuvre derives straight from Marx who, in his criticism of Les mystères de Paris, also used his own interpretation of reality as a yardstick to judge literary quality. Lukács does not discuss the quality of the work of Joyce or Dos Passos, or of Expressionist literature, but rather the characteristics of the reality they supposedly reflect. The discussion is seriously hampered by branding experience as superficial and Marxist theory as revealing the essence. “Every Marxist knows that the immediate reflection in the minds of the people of the basic economic categories of capitalism is always distorted.”⁴³ Lukács holds against Bloch that he pays attention only to superficialities, to the fragments of reality, whereas the basis of his own holistic argument consists of rather dogmatic references to Marx and Lenin, and suffers—to use the phrase of Guillén (1971: 444)—from “abstractionism”.

According to Lukács, the Naturalist, Symbolist, Expressionist and Surrealist writers made the mistake of reflecting reality as it immediately appeared to them (ibid.: IV, 321). They overemphasized the isolated moments of the capitalist system, its crisis and disorder. But they did not dig for a deeper “essence”, for the coherence between their experiences and the “real life of society”, nor for the “hidden causes” of their experiences (ibid.: IV, 322). For the reflection of the whole of reality one should turn to great Realists, such as Gorky and Heinrich Mann, who have been able to produce literary types of lasting value (Klim Samgin, Professor Unrat), types with “lasting characteristics […], which, as tendencies of the objective development of society, or even of humanity, will be effective over a long period.”⁴⁴ The Realistic writers who succeed in creating such types are the real avant-garde. The tendencies of social development are described in their budding (im Keim). Therefore, the question whether a writer has seen things correctly can only be judged from hindsight.

Finally, Lukács refers to the range of the reading public as an argument in defense of Realism. Realism is popular (volkstümlich) and complies with the criterion of Volkstümlichkeit or, in Russian, narodnost' (the latter term recalls the early Romanticist essays by Belinskij.) Lukács is aware that the word, particularly in German, is loaded with adverse connotations, which induced Brecht to make a number of sarcastic observations in his diary (Brecht 1968: XIX, 323-4). To Lukács, the popular nature of literature means continuing the cultural tradition. Popular literature is diametrically opposed to avant-garde literature. To Lukács the total rejection of the past is equal to anarchy. He could easily find a quotation from Lenin to support that view (Lukács 1963-75: IV, 339).

Clearly the Realism of Romain Rolland and of Heinrich and Thomas Mann exemplify literary continuity more convincingly than Joyce or other representatives of the avant-garde, in particular to uneducated readers. The avant-garde can be approached only through a very narrow gate. The man in the street (“der Mann aus dem Volke”) has easier access to Realist authors, and this, says Lukács, is of political significance. The political interest of Realism appears from the necessity to create a popular front. Lukács' defence of Realism cannot be disconnected from the Soviet-supported popular front policy.

Lukács expressed himself in favour of a literature that could provide answers to questions by the reader, answers to questions posed by life itself. Therefore the answers should be recognizable and clear. In fact, Lukács argues—to use Lotman's terminology—for an aesthetics of identity, rather than an aesthetics of opposition. From a Marxist point of view, this is quite understandable because, since Marx, the interpretation of the world in principle has been known. In other words, the orthodox Marxist has no need for new codes.

It is this consequence of Marxist literary theory—in our view an inevitable one—that went against the grains with many creative writers. Bertolt Brecht may serve as an example. In 1938 he wrote in his diary regarding the Expressionism debate: “No Realist will be content to repeat forever what one already knows; that would not indicate a living relation with reality.”⁴⁵ Brecht shunned the petrification to which Lukács' position might lead, and preferred a less rigid and less orthodox point of view. He opted for the possibility of an unobstructed literary evolution:

Do not proclaim with the face of infallibility the one and only possible way to describe a room, do not excommunicate the montage, do not put the interior monologue on the index! Do not beat the young people with the old names! Do not take the attitude of permitting technical development in the arts up to 1900, and from then onwards no more!⁴⁶

The differences between Brecht and Lukács went back at least as far as 1932, when Lukács in his essay “Reportage oder Gestaltung?” rejected Brecht's argument for a non-Aristotelian drama, including his concept of alienation (Verfremdung). In this article Lukács had suggested that Brecht's theatrical convictions were incompatible with the teachings of Marx and Engels (Lukács 1963-75: IV, 58-60). Moreover, their differences had a lasting effect: Brecht's plays were never performed in the Soviet Union during his lifetime (Rühle 1960b: 48).

Brecht considered himself involved in the Expressionism debate when Lukács attacked the technique of the montage in the work of Dos Passos. Brecht notes that he himself is not prepared to abandon that technique. He observes that Lukács' thinking is dictated by the past. He sees in Lukács' essays an inclination to capitulation, utopianism, idealism, artistic enjoyment (Kunstgenuss) and escapism.⁴⁷ He concludes from Lukács' criticism of Dos Passos and his preference for Balzac a penchant for the idyllic, but, as Brecht warns, the assimilation of the cultural legacy is not a peaceful process (Brecht 1968: XIX, 317). Indeed, from a revolutionary point of view one could very well argue so. Brecht is opposed to a dogmatic interpretation of the Marxist canon. Clearly alluding to Lukács, Brecht writes that one should not worry too much when critics condemn the avant-garde as formalist on the basis of quotations from the Marxist classics in which the word ‘form’ occurs (ibid.: XIX, 308). Brecht obviously questions the authority of Marx and Engels on current literary issues.

Brecht did not stand alone. Anna Seghers too, in her famous letters to Lukács (reprinted in Lukács' collected works), expressed her reservations about the use of isolated quotations, which she compares to a magic broom (Lukács 1963-75: IV, 365). She also questioned the mirror metaphor used by Lukács, defended Dos Passos, and pointed out that Lukács' great examples, Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann, grew up under quite different circumstances from the so-called decadent writers criticized by him. In a later discussion of the Expressionism debate, Jürgen Rühle correctly observed that the later work of Thomas Mann is characterized by “reflections, essayistic features and irony” to such an extent that it cannot simply be brought under the heading of Realism. Contradictory times produce contradictory literature, writes Rühle (1960a: 245). (On similar grounds, but without referring to Lukács, Harry Levin (1966) included the later work of Thomas Mann in his period concept of Modernism.)

Lukács, however, remained undisturbed under the wealth of counter-arguments. His orthodox argument is based on a distinction between appearance and essence, between experienced reality (Erlebniswirklichkeit) and objective reality, between superficial explanations and “hidden causes”. But how to check and discuss “hidden causes”? The crucial point in the Marxist criticism of literature is always the prevailing interpretation of Marxist theory, which may differ with the temperament or erudition of the interpreter and which is also largely determined by the opportunities of the political moment. The current interpretation of the Marxist canon determines which “hidden causes” must be uncovered. It draws the line between subjective experience and objective reality.

Lukács is fully aware of the significance of the political situation for his own work. His important essay “Die Gegenwartsbedeutung des kritischen Realismus”, which was published in Hamburg under the title Wider den missverstandenen Realismus (1958), is clearly a product of the destalinization process. In a foreword Lukács explains that he always was opposed to the term “revolutionary romanticism”, but that he can only now criticize it openly (Lukács 1963-75: IV, 459). He calls this criticism merely “verbally new”, although in fact his argument against “revolutionary romanticism” is of more than “verbal” significance against the background of the canonization of the term in China in the same year. Lukács' rejection of “revolutionary romanticism” is the corollary of his idiosyncratic interpretation of Socialist Realism, which in his view should be close to critical realism.

Lukács' defence of Thomas Mann and rejection of Kafka is arbitrary to the extent that his position is politically motivated. Because in 1957 communist propaganda harped on the anti-war theme, Lukács concluded that the choice was no longer one between capitalism and socialism (ibid.: IV, 550). Soviet peace propaganda enabled Lukács to differentiate between the products of bourgeois society. Lukács opted for Thomas Mann, as he leads away from Angst, at the expense of Kafka who supposedly leads towards it. Simply on the basis of his style Kafka could be considered a Realist, but he halts before “the blind and panic Angst”. Kafka attributes a nihilistic significance to the world, the (realistic) description of which he allegorizes in a transcendental way (ibid.: IV, 498, 534). The realistic details of his work are interchangeable. In Thomas Mann's fiction they are not; there everything has its fixed place. The non-interchangeability of the details in Mann's work is assumed to be based on the belief in a final, immanent significance and meaning of the world (“eine letzthinnige immanente Vernünftigkeit, Sinnhaftigkeit der Welt”) (ibid.: IV, 496). It is this belief in an immanent purpose that is shared by the Marxists.

Lukács considers much of Thomas Mann's political views naive or even reactionary, but he declares as applicable to Mann, Engels' theory of the possible discrepancy between the writer's political convictions and the significance of his work. His novels are acceptable because he “instinctively” organizes the phenomena of life in a correct way. Mann's fiction takes part in “the triumph of Realism”, as do the novels of Conrad, Hemingway and Steinbeck.

The updating of critical realism, motivated by Russian peace propaganda, was detrimental to Socialist Realism. As was mentioned above, Lukács had already argued in 1938 that Realist authors must create types that show the budding tendencies of social development. Usually this kind of prefiguration of the future is reserved for Socialist Realism. Lukács' definition of Realism empties Socialist Realism of its particular meaning. The differences between critical and Socialist Realism were elaborated in the last part of “Die Gegenwartsbedeutung des kritischen Realismus”. Socialist Realism is characterized by the “concreteness of the socialist perspective”. It describes the people who attempt to build a socialist and communist future, and whose psychology and morale reflect that future. Critical realism, on the other hand, focusses on the protest against the capitalist system (ibid.: IV, 554).

Lukács emphasizes that two factors have spoilt the case for Socialist Realism: the sectarianism of Proletkul't and the propaganda for revolutionary romanticism coinciding with Stalin's personality cult (ibid.: IV, 563, 599). Revolutionary romanticism is as objectionable as Naturalism. The first relies too much on revolutionary zeal, the second too little. Revolutionary romanticism neglects the necessary stages of social development, confuses future and present, and ends, says Lukács, in a schematization and vulgarization of the current socialist reality. The answer to the “sectarian schematization of the Stalin period” should be a close alliance between critical and Socialist Realism (ibid.: IV, 602).

Lukács is even more explicit in his review of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He observes that even in the socialist nations Socialist Realism has become a term of abuse. The central problem now is the critical review of the Stalin period. If Socialist Realism is again to reach the level of the 1920s, it must again become realistic. Too often it had remained at the stage of doing no more than commenting on Party resolutions. One should appreciate Lukács' assessment of Solzhenitsyn's novella, which he surprisingly called a milestone in the history of Socialist Realism. But his review of Ivan Denisovich is not an argument for unrestricted freedom. Lukács knows too well that all Soviet literature is bound to provide “illustrations” of the Marxist canon, if it is to be condoned by the orthodox Marxists. As long as absolute validity is being attributed to the writings of Marx and Engels—and that, officially, is the situation in the communist countries—any innovation must remain within the bounds of the Marxist truth. Literature, then, will mainly be an “illustration” of that truth. However convinced Lukács was of the adverse consequences of the Stalinist dictatorship, he avoided examining the social and ideological conditions of that dictatorship and, in a rather un-Marxian way, identified the Stalinist malaise with the personality of Stalin.

In spite of his criticism of Socialist Realism (in particular its romanticist component), to most Western-Europeans Lukács was and remained a major spokesman for Marxist orthodoxy. In a review of Wider den missverstandenen Realismus, first published in 1958, Theodor W. Adorno attacks Lukács severely and personally⁴⁸. He condemns his repeated attempts to adjust to the directives of the Soviet bureaucracy, which had degraded philosophy to a power instrument. Adorno considers as being dogmatic Lukács' rejection of all non-Realist modern literature. He regards his aesthetics as out-of-date and his reliance on the pronouncements of Marx and Engels as doubtful.

The crucial point in Adorno's argument is his analysis of Lukács concept of art, as explained in the latter's book Über die Besonderheit als Kategorie der Ästhetik (On Particularity as a Category of Aesthetics), most of which had been published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie by 1956.⁴⁹ Lukács discussed, among other things, the difference between art and science, but in a way that was unacceptable to Adorno. Lukács finds that art and science have much in common. Both reflect the same reality, and, in this reflection, both aim at universal validity, at “totality”. They differ insofar as science searches for abstract, general laws, whereas art creates “perceptual, symbolic images of something particular that organically comprises and sublates both general and individual aspects […], and aims at a universal empathy.”⁵⁰ The generalization at which art aims includes a sublation (Aufhebung) of the individual to the level of the particular (or the typical), as well as a concretion of the general which also takes place at the level of the particular.

This concept of art, which was later elaborated in Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen, differs from modern aesthetics in that Lukács explicitly defended the primacy of the semantic content. He criticizes Kant for having attempted to free art completely from any conceptualization (Begrifflichkeit or Gedanklichkeit,) and Hegel for his insufficient criticism of Kant in this respect (Lukács, 1963-75: X, 714). Conceptualization is inherently present in art, although it is sublated to the level of the particular. The primacy of the “content” is evident. According to Lukács, the content determines the form; any influence of the form on the content is of secondary importance.

Adorno objects to this view. He agrees with Lukács that art is a form of knowing, but he disapproves of the reduction of the dialectical unity of art and science to a simple identity, as if works of art from their own perspective would only anticipate what is to be covered later by the social sciences. On the contrary, the gap between art and science cannot be bridged that easily. “Art does not convey knowledge about reality because it photographically or ‘perspectively’ represents reality, but because, on the basis of its autonomous nature, it expresses those things that are concealed by the empirical forms of knowledge.”⁵¹ Art is “knowledge sui generis”, because it affects the empirical data. It connects reality with the subjective intention, which results in “objective significance”.⁵²

Adorno comes close to Lotman's concept of the semanticization of formal features. According to Adorno, it is the construction that may overcome the accidental aspects of the individual. The interior monologue was necessary as, in an atomistic world, man is controlled by alienation. In the great works of the avant-garde the interior monologue is only seemingly subjective. Likewise, from Beckett's subjectivist drama all historical elements are seemingly eliminated; in fact, his work is in an objective way polemical (Adorno, 1958-74: II, 166).

Although one may be tempted to side with Adorno in this dispute, some reservations should be stated. Adorno's reference to things that are concealed by the empirical knowledge of reality but known by means of artistic intuition comes close to Bloch's concept of experienced reality (Erlebniswirklichkeit). Lukács' concept of knowledge, however, exceeds the concept of empirical knowledge. The things that escape empirical verification may be covered by Lukács' concept of knowledge, and therefore Adorno's claim that art may convey a kind of knowledge sui generis—correct as it is, in our view—does not really affect Lukács' position. Another point is his interpretation of the interior monologue or Beckett's drama. It appears that Adorno is as clever as Lukács at juggling with the opposition of essence versus appearance. As long as his interpretation is not couched in a theory of interpretation or related to a specific literary or cultural code, it remains as arbitrary as that of Lukács. Further, one may detect a doctrinaire attitude in Adorno's position, where he claims that art may make things “objectively significant” (objektiv sinnvoll). Can such a thing as an objective significance of the world or of history exist? Here Adorno's view comes close to that of Lukács and other Marxists who would answer the question in the affirmative. The argument that Lukács is a dogmatist is also applicable to Adorno. His dogmatic attitude appears also from the value he attaches to his own quotations from Marx. Indeed, as Adorno suggests, Lukács' career can be characterized as “forced atonement”, but it is somewhat strange to see that the critic subscribes, without compulsion, to a similar Marxist world interpretation, uses the same dialectical method as his despised opponent, also juggles with essence and appearance (though with different results) and, like all Marxists, discovers an objective sense in a postulated world which escapes empirical examination.

Yet Adorno and Lukács differ on important points. Adorno stresses the particular epistemological function of art, and defends the autonomous character of literature. Perhaps Adorno and Lukács differ most where the concept of the political commitment of literature is at stake. In Über die Besonderheit als Kategorie der Ästhetik Lukács emphasized the role of conceptualization in art, which enabled him to accommodate the concept of party spirit (Parteilichkeit or, in Russian, partijnost'.) Conceptualization (Gedanklichkeit) in literature appears as a concrete factor of life, within the setting of concrete situations with concrete people, as part of the struggles, victories and defeats of men. The representation of reality in art implies a partisan view of the historical conflicts of the time in which the artist lives.⁵³ The selection of the represented segment of reality and the attitude of the author towards his material (Stoff) reveal his party spirit. Both that selection and the author's attitude towards his material belong to the range of content and can be judged from an extraliterary point of view. According to Lukács, the originality of literary works derives from the “correct position, as far as the content is concerned, in relation to the great problems of the time”.⁵⁴ The question whether a position is “correct” or not, cannot be answered on the basis of the text alone but is ultimately judged from an extraliterary point of view, viz. that of the current interpretation of Marxism. In 1932 Lukács had described literature as “a product and weapon of the class struggle” (Lukács, 1963-75: IV, 24). In 1956, the wording has changed, but the principle of party spirit is still based on the acceptance of the correct Marxist world interpretation, and therefore basically an extraliterary affair.

In an essay originally published under the title “Engagement oder künstlerische Autonomie” (1962), Adorno presents a quite different approach to the persuasive function of literature (Adorno, 1958-74: III, 109-36). Literature, including texts that express a political commitment, cannot be reduced to a justification of one political view. Adorno rejects the old concept of Tendenz literature; his concept of political commitment leaves the ambiguity of the literary text intact in principle. As in his criticism of Lukács, Adorno now objects to Sartre's emphasis on communicative meaning. Again he seems to argue for the semanticization of formal features. Words do not mean the same in a literary text as outside literature. The hermetic literature of the avant-garde, whatever the communicative meaning of the words may be, resists attempts at political manipulation, since it cannot easily be assimilated by the accepted cultural system. The difficult form is a more effective protest against the established system than any plain political message. “The emphasis on the autonomous work is itself rather of a social and political nature”, wrote Adorno,⁵⁵ and this position does not imply a rejection of the autonomy of the literary work, notably that of the avant-garde, as naive readers may have believed; on the contrary, Adorno expresses here his firm belief in the subversive nature of abstruse, avant-garde art. Or, as he phrased it in his unfinished, posthumously published Ästhetische Theorie (1970), “the a-social aspect of art contains an expressed negation of a particular society.”⁵⁶

Political censorship, which is quite compatible with Lukács' concept of party spirit, is impossible from Adorno's point of view (which moreover has serious implications for the interpretation of literature). As to the question of censorship, Adorno is diametrically opposed to the views of Lukács and of the Soviet bureaucracy. Of all Marxist baggage it is primarily the dialectical method that characterizes Adorno's criticism. His dialectics, his postulate of an objective sense in a world that escapes empirical examination, and his many references to Marx and Engels are generally held to be sufficient for him to be considered a neo-Marxist, although it is clear that his Marxism and that of, say, Mao Tse-tung are worlds apart and with quite different implications for the study of literature.

As appeared from Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen, Lukács remained unsusceptible to Adorno's objections. He repeated and expanded the argument of Über die Besonderheit als Kategorie der Ästhetik. Systematically he explains the similarities and differences between ordinary thinking, science and art. They all reflect reality, i.e. a reality that exists independently of man's consciousness. In contradiction to science, the reflection of reality in art is anthropomorphic. It derives from the world of man and is directed towards it.

Another difference between the scientific and the artistic reflection of reality is the evocative character of art. In evoking the emotions and passions of life, the work of art uses certain techniques such as rhythm and symmetry (Lukács, 1963-75: XI, 283 and 298). In view of the anthropomorphic nature of art, the artistic evocation is first of all geared towards the inner life of man. It extends his experience of life and gives shape to his own image of himself and of the world he lives in. In this context Lukács recalls the effect of the Aristotelian catharsis, as well as the principle of party spirit. Now, the principle of party spirit is qualified by the aesthetic concept of “the suspension of the immediate practical interest” (ibid.: XI, 655).

In order to fuse the general and the individual in the particular, art reflects reality by means of types. Again there is a difference between the artistic and the scientific typification. Science, says Lukács, aims at the reduction of types and abstracts from the individual and the particular in order to approach a maximum degree of generalization. Artistic types, on the other hand, remain closely related to the individual: “the type is conceived in such a way that the unity with the individual in which it appears in life, is not dissolved, but on the contrary deepened”⁵⁷ (cf. Parkinson, 1970: 109-47).

The similarities with the aesthetics of German idealism, even with its Russian interpreter Vissarion Belinskij, are obvious. But Lukács departs from that tradition by postulating that art and science reflect the same objective reality. We have already discussed Adorno's objections to this postulate. Contrary to Klaus Völker (1969: 147), we believe that Lukács is firmly on the side of Marx. Parkinson (1970: 139) has correctly observed that, like Marx, Lukács has consistently defended the position of philosophical realism. But in other respects too Lukács defends the Marxist analysis of the world. Discussions with Lukács are not simply discussions about the qualities of things or the characteristics of reality; they are concerned as much with explanations of the Marxist writings, which he has invested with infallible truth. It is this—and not his philosophical realism—which has elicited the objections of Brecht, Anna Seghers, Adorno and many others. Nevertheless Lukács' Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen is characterized by a conciliatory tone. He clearly emphasizes the continuity in European aesthetics, which begins with Artistotle rather than with Marx or Hegel.

As with Lukács, the recurrent theme in the criticism of Walter Benjamin and Lucien Goldmann is the relation between objective reality and art, or, more generally, basis and superstructure. It is the merit of Walter Benjamin that he described the material basis of artistic production in a rather sophisticated way in his essay “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” (The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility, 1936). The basic idea of this study is that every period has its own devices for the reproduction of art, but that the modern reproduction by technical means has totally changed the traditional image of art. The technical reproduction of a work of art, however adequate it may be, destroys anyway “the here and now of the original” (1936: 14). At this point Benjamin introduces his concept of “aura”, the distinctive atmosphere surrounding the original work, which he defines as “a peculiar web of space and time: the unique appearance of a distance, however short that distance may be”.⁵⁸ The technique of reproduction loosens the reproduced form from the tradition to which the original work belongs, and ignores its genuineness and aura. So far, Benjamin's argument is strictly historicist. His conclusion, however, is firmly in the Marxist tradition: “As soon as the criterion of authenticity no longer applies to the production of art, the whole function of art has been transformed (umgewälzt). In place of its ritualistic basis another practice appears; henceforth it is based on politics.”⁵⁹ The autonomous nature of art has disappeared with the disappearance of its ritualistic basis. As far as literature is concerned, Benjamin mentions Dada as a programme that capitalizes on the new function of art. The Dadaists aim to destroy the aura of their products which they brand as reproduction while using the means of production. In fact, this positive attitude of Benjamin towards the avant-garde is quite incompatible with Lukács' defence of cultural traditions. Benjamin sides with Brecht and Adorno when he expresses his reservations vis-à-vis the conventional devices of artistic creation. He attaches a political value to the work of the Dadaists, as “revolutionary content” in traditional forms is too readily assimilated by the capitalist society (cf. Helga Gallas, 1969: 149). It is in this way that Benjamin's claim that art should be political is to be understood (1936: 51).

This position was almost a matter of course for writers living in Germany in the 1930s or familiar with the fascist Kulturpolitik. But the political situation of the 1930s can no longer be an excuse for the naivety and exaggerations inherent in Benjamin's argument. He certainly makes the mistake of taking the new developments in art and the reproduction of art in an absolute way. From hindsight we know now that records did not replace live musical performances but complemented them. The film did not replace the stage play. Reportage did not mean the death of the novel, nor did Dada signal the end of other artistic traditions. Benjamin is clearly myopic in his judgement of Soviet literature as “the expression into words of work itself”.⁶⁰

In our opinion, Benjamin has been overestimated as a critic of literature; however, his influence has been enormous. Ernst Fischer (1971), for instance, copies his ideas and imitates his style. Adorno often leans on Benjamin's authority, but also feels the necessity to qualify his crude ideas on art in the technical age (Adorno, 1970: 322-6). Thousands of students have read his essays as part of the Marxist canon. Indeed, Benjamin at times entrenches himself in Marxist jargon. On other occasions—which may account for his popularity among students of literature—he seems almost to forget his professed Marxism and indulges in erudite analyses of cultural history, such as his essays on Baudelaire, which can hardly be called Marxist except for a dubious play with the opposition between essence and appearance.⁶¹

Apparently, references to Marx and Engels cannot guarantee acceptance of an argument, even among Marxists. Obviously Benjamin considers the work of Baudelaire as representative of the Second Empire. Les fleurs du mal are the last lyrical work of which the influence was felt throughout Europe (Benjamin, 1969: 161). Brecht countered this position with a series of sarcastic observations on Baudelaire, culminating in the view that “he in no way expresses his epoch, not even ten years of it.”⁶²

Quite another tradition of neo-Marxist thinking came to the fore in the work of Lucien Goldmann. After his great work Le dieu caché (Goldmann, 1955) in which he analysed the relation between seventeenth-century French literature (Pascal, Racine) and the ideology of Jansenism, he turned to the problem of the relation between the literary text and social and economic reality—in fact, the old problem of basis and superstructure. The difference from older expositions of the same problem is that his investigations are based on the hypothesis of a direct relation between economic structures and literary phenomena, i.e. without the intermediation of the collective consciousness (Goldmann, 1964: 30). Although Goldmann does not uncritically accept the Marxist canon, he firmly bases his theory on Marx's observations on the fetishism of merchandise. Goldmann argues that Marx has foreseen that in market economies, i.e. societies with a predominant economic activity, “collective consciousness gradually loses all active reality, and tends to become a simple reflection of the economic life and, finally, to disappear.”⁶³

Goldmann's hypothesis indeed introduces a new element in the discussion of the relation between literary phenomena and the economic basis. But he does more. He is aware of recent developments in narratology. He uses the concept of structure (“the whole of the relations between the various elements of the content” (1964: 30n)), and has a keen eye for the formal aspects of literature. One may suspect that he can exclude the intermediation of the collective consciousness only because he is able to invest the formal features of narrative constructions with meaning.

Certainly, Goldmann works in the Marxist tradition, from which he selects his sources carefully and eclectically. He relies heavily on Lukács, but often on material, such as Die Theorie des Romans, which Lukács himself has discounted as a product of the geisteswissenschaftliche Methode. Goldmann specifies his more general hypothesis, and suggests that there is a “homology between the structure of the classical novel and the structure of exchange in the free economy”.⁶⁴ For example, the nouveau roman is characterized by dissolution of the character and, consequently, by increase in the autonomy of objects. This development can be explained by the reification (Verdinglichung) which is the result of the unrestricted growth of the free market economy, its trusts and monopolies, capital investments and government intervention. Here he assumes a direct relation between the economic system and the forms of literature (Goldmann, 1964: 187-9). As Peter Demetz (1970: 30) has observed, Goldmann, in accordance with earlier Marxist criticism, conceives of art as reflecting social reality.

Goldmann inspired Jacques Leenhardt (1973) to analyse Robbe-Grillet's La jalousie in a similar way. But Leenhardt has more fully assimilated the writings of structuralists such as Roland Barthes, Jean Ricardou and Roman Jakobson. As a result of his careful analysis of the text, his attempt to establish analogies between the text structure and the socio-economic basis of France in the 1950s distinguishes itself from other, more general studies in the field of the sociology of literature (Levin L. Schücking, 1923; Leo Lowenthal, 1957; or Robert Escarpit, 1970). But it is legitimate to question whether the Marxist framework, including the dialectical method, is an asset or rather a liability to Leenhardt. Although at many points his analysis is convincing, one may wonder whether his theory of a close analogy between the socio-economic structure and the structure of literary phenomena can explain the difference between La jalousie and L'Année dernière à Marienbad, as Leenhardt seems to believe (1973: 30). One may doubt even more whether his theory would be applicable to the fiction of Julio Cortázar or John Barth, and all those who come under the ill-coined heading of Post-Modernism (Hassan, 1975). Their work is an elation of the subjectivist spirit—in the disguise of anonymity—and can be related to reification only by way of the introduction of a false collective consciousness.

Within the Marxist tradition, the question whether a particular consciousness is true or false cannot be decided by empirical means. It is highly dependent on the class position of the people whose consciousness is discussed, as well as on the current teleological interpretation of their social conditions. Here we are back where we were at the beginning of this chapter. If one does not subscribe to the Marxist teleology and its paraphernalia (the correct interpretation of the political situation by the correct Party), one simply cannot decide whether a particular consciousness is true or false. The discussion between the Marxists Bloch and Lukács on the question whether Expressionism and Surrealism reflected a true or a false consciousness provides a convincing example. It cannot be stated clearly enough that in the Soviet Union this particular issue was decided in favour of Lukács, only because his position was supported by the guardian of unfailing truth: the CPSU. We are inclined to call Party interference in such matters presumptuous and authoritarian. Once such a decision has been taken by the Party, it can no longer be criticized, at least not in the communist countries. That situation is incompatible with the tradition of scientific research which adheres to the principle that it should be possible to check any proposition and to discuss and, if necessary, criticize any argumentation.

Criticism of the arguments presented by the neo-Marxists, who accept neither the unfailing authority of the Communist Party nor the infallibility of Marx and Engels, is also gravely hampered. Here it is epistemological rather than political obstacles that prevent an open-minded discussion. However liberal or tolerant they may be, all Marxist and neo-Marxist thinkers—if the epithet is to mean anything at all—accept the dialectical method. It is quite significant that one of the most sophisticated neo-Marxist critics, Theodor W. Adorno, defended the dialectical method against Karl R. Popper's criticism. Their polemic was printed under the title Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie (Adorno, 1969).

Although this epistemological discussion has a more general significance and does not apply to literary theory alone, its main themes may be recalled here because of their bearing on Marxist literary theory. Adorno argues as follows:

1. The dialectical method may provide an insight into the totality of society and prevents the artificial isolation of facts and problems. Apart from the matter investigated, it will draw attention to its counterpart. Apart from the scientific problem, it will also study its social context. Besides an investigation of the object it will necessitate an examination of the subject's position in society. In addition to the static moment of observation, it will focus on the historical context of the observed phenomena and their expected future development. The object of the dialectical method has no limits. Rather bluntly Adorno declares: “Society is one.”⁶⁵ Jürgen Habermas explained that Adorno conceives society as a totality in the strictly dialectical sense of the word (Adorno, 1969: 155).
2. The dialectical method is oriented towards the relation between the general and the individual in their historical concretion (Adorno, 1969: 91). This historical concretion is the embedding of any phenomenon in the historical context which has not only a past but also a future. To Adorno, the future is not open, but determined by a postulated goal (Sinn) that directs man, society and history. The teleological aspect of his philosophy appears from his view that things have an inherent destination. Science, in his opinion, must uncover the truth or falsity of that which the phenomenon under examination “wants to be”.⁶⁶ Therefore, according to Adorno, science must be critical (kritisch) in the sense of being related or even submitted to a political goal (Adorno, 1969: 97). The same way of thinking transpires when Benjamin warns his readers that a particular scientific observation is progressive (Benjamin, 1936: 11) or not (ibid.: 59), whereas he neglects the question whether these observations are true or false. It is not necessary to show that Adorno's political aims coincide with those of Marxism in order to see the detrimental effect of a political prejudice upon scientific investigations.
3. The teleological aspect relies on the postulated distinction between an apparent (scheinbar) and an essential (wesentlich) truth. Adorno's dialectics, in fact, attributes a double identity to the subject, who can be split up into one with higher intentions (true consciousness) and one with lower intentions (false consciousness), not unlike the conception of Freud, whom Adorno approvingly cites in a somewhat different context (1969: 96). Only the appearance of phenomena is accessible to empirical investigations; their outcome may be incompatible with essential truth. In accordance with recent Soviet philosophy,⁶⁷ Adorno postulates a totality which escapes empirical investigation but still yields essential truth (1969: 93).
4. Rejecting the isolation of problems, Adorno also rejects the distinction between theory and practice, between object language and metalanguage, and between observed facts and attributed values. He implies that the subject must become conscious of its own position in society. Habermas saw a role here for hermeneutics (Adorno, (1969: 158). So did Fredric Jameson in his confusing book Marxism and Form (1971). Jameson, himself in favour of the dialectical method, brought it to its logical conclusion, namely its self-destruction. He describes dialectical thought as tautological, “tautological in the ontological sense, as part of a dawning realization of the profound tautology of all thought”. In the end, “the very act of thinking dissolves away. Here the identity is not that between two words or two concepts, but rather between subject and object itself, between the process of thinking and the very reality on which it is exercised, which it attempts to apprehend” (Jameson, 1971: 341-2).

In fact, the student of Marxist criticism must choose between this high-sounding mystique and the more down-to-earth critical rationalism based on explicit rules that can be checked by anyone, and of which Popper, in answer to Adorno, provided a brief synopsis (Adorno, 1969: 103-25).

Let us recall briefly here that (1) Popper, in his claim that the object of any scientific examination should be clearly delineated, did not deny the complexity of the world as a whole. On the contrary, in his view the world is too complex to be grasped within one single question. (2) In rejecting the teleological aspect of Adorno's epistemology, Popper did not exclude the possibility that we may acquire some knowledge about the future. He only objected to a determinism of which the origin is obscure, if not metaphysical. (3) Of course, Popper's claim that all scientific propositions should be falsifiable prevents him from accepting Adorno's postulate of a totality that escapes empirical investigation. (4) Finally, Popper can not do without the distinction between theory and practice, or between metalanguage and object language. He attempts to eliminate subjectivism and projects the principle of objectivity into the scientific tradition, whereas Adorno includes the subjectivity of the scientist in his epistemology, It is not a simplification to say that the dialectical method as explained by Adorno is incompatible with Popper's critical rationalism.

In conclusion, it must be emphasized that the Marxist attempt to analyse the world in its totality and to relate to each other the various series of experience and knowledge—more or less as Tynjanov and Jakobson (1928) proposed to do within the structuralist framework—, is in itself a legitimate and valuable undertaking. But in the study of the relation between literature and society, between ideology and the economic basis, the postulate that ultimately the economic basis determines the developments in the other series, is a severe handicap to openminded research. Engels' postulate⁶⁸ may serve as a criterion to distinguish Marxists and neo-Marxists on the one hand from non-Marxist thinkers on the other hand.

Critical rationalism and all scientific traditions that depart from the Marxist model have been accused of promoting conservatism. There is no basis for the accusation. In fact, as many politicians know, political action should be based on the outcome of neutral research rather than on the biased results of “progressive” analyses, coloured by a particular political view. In order to make revolution with a chance of success, one must first know the facts, as far as one can know them. A scientific tradition that aims at objectivity serves anyone who wants to improve the world. The Marxist tradition, which has abandoned even the intention to heed objectivity in the sense of being open to criticism, is a liability rather than an asset to those who wish to change the world.

This applies also to the dialectical method. In our view there are more direct ways of analysis and knowledge than the dialectical method. Unwittingly Lukács revealed the unfalsifiable nature of dialectical propositions. In his view, “dialectics denies that plainly one-sided causal relations exist anywhere in the world”; even the simplest phenomena are characterized by complex interactions of cause and consequence.⁶⁹ So far the dialecticians have failed to show the superiority of their system. Their studies lack the explicitness and precision necessary to continue the debate on literature and society started by highly gifted men who, however, did not succeed in shaking off the burden of dialectics.

Notes

1. “Es handelte sich bei dieser meiner Rekapitulation der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften selbstredend darum, mich auch im einzelnen zu überzeugen—woran im allgemeinen kein Zweifel für mich war—, dass in der Natur dieselben dialektischen Bewegungsgesetze in Gewirr der zahllosen Veränderungen sich durchsetzen, die auch in der Geschichte die scheinbare Zufälligkeit der Ereignisse beherrschen” (Friedrich Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der.Wissenschaft: Dialektik der Natur, 1873-1882 [1935; rpt. Glashütten im Taunus: Auvermann, 1970]; Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, [XIII], Sonderausgabe, p. 1·1).

2. “Die Produktionsweise des materiellen Lebens bedingt den sozialen, politischen und geistigen Lebensprozess überhaupt. Es ist nicht das Bewusstsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewusstsein bestimmt. Auf einer gewissen Stufe ihrer Entwicklung geraten die materiellen Produktivkräfte der Gesellschaft in Widerspruch mit den vorhandenen Produktionsverhältnissen, oder, was nur ein juristischer Ausdruck dafür ist, mit den Eigentumsverhältnissen, innerhalb deren sie sich bisher bewegt hatten. Aus Entwicklungsformen der Produktivkräfte schlagen diese Verhältnisse in Fesseln derselben um. Es tritt dann eine Epoche sozialer Revolution ein. Mit der Veränderung der ökonomischen Grundlage wälzt sich der ganze ungeheure Überbau langsamer oder rascher um” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 74, 75).

3. “Du hättest dann von selbst mehr shakespearisieren müssen, während ich Dir das Schillern, das Verwandeln von Individuen in blosse Sprachröhren des Zeitgeistes, als bedeutendsten Fehler anrechne” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 181).

4. “Aber diese kritisch-philosophische Geschichtsanschauung, in der sich eherne Notwendigkeit an Notwendigkeit knüpft und die eben deshalb auslöschend über die Wirksamkeit individueller Entschlüsse und Handlungen hinwegfährt, ist eben darum kein Boden, weder für das praktische revolutionäre Handeln noch für die vorgestellte dramatische Aktion” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 191).

5. Marx phrased this phenomenon literally as “the unequal relation between the development of material production and, for instance, artistic production” (“das unegale Verhältnis der Entwicklung der materiellen Produktion, z.B. zur künstlerischen”) (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 123).

6. In Marx's own words: “Bei der Kunst bekannt, dass bestimmte Blütezeiten derselben keineswegs im Verhältnis zur allgemeinen Entwicklung der Gesellschaft, also auch der materiellen Grundlage, gleichsam des Knochenbaus ihrer Organisation, stehn” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 123-4).

7. “Warum sollte die geschichtliche Kindheit der Menschheit, wo sie am schönsten entfaltet, als eine nie wiederkehrende Stufe nicht ewigen Reiz ausüben?” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 125).

8. In Engels' own words: “Aber ich meine, die Tendenz muss aus der Situation und Handlung selbst hervorspringen, ohne dass ausdrücklich darauf hingewiesen wird, und der Dichter ist nicht genötigt, die geschichtliche zukünftige Lösung der gesellschaftlichen Konflikte, die er schildert, dem Leser an die Hand zu geben” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 156).

9. In Engels' words: […] “jeder ist ein Typus, aber auch zugleich ein bestimmter Einzelmensch, ein ‘Dieser’, wie der alte Hegel sich ausdrückt, und so muss es sein” (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 155).

10. Cf. the following observation by Mao Tse-tung: “Some works which politically are downright reactionary may have a certain artistic quality. The more reactionary their content and the higher their artistic quality, the more poisonous they are to the people, and the more necessary it is to reject them” (Mao Tse-tung, 1942: 89). From this passage it appears that a particular literary work, which cannot be judged positively even on historicist grounds, may still possess a very high artistic quality.

11. Cf. Erlich, 1969: 42. German translation of the poem “My” (We) by V. T. Kirillov in Lorenz (1969: 78-9).

12. This was one of the differences between Stalinist orthodoxy and Russian Formalism. The idea that scientific analysis may “separate” form and content was still being defended recently by Moissej Kagan (1971: 279). Cf. Engels' separation of form and content in his letter to Lassalle (Marx and Engels, 1967: I, 185).

13. “O žurnalach ‘Zvezda’ i ‘Leningrad’; iz postanovlenija CK VKP(b) ot 14 Avgusta 1946g” (On the journals ‘Zvezda’ [Star] and ‘Leningrad’; from the resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviki] of August 14, 1946), Bol'ševik, No. 15 (1946): 11-14. A. Ždanov, “Doklad o žurnalach ‘Zvezda’ i ‘Leningrad’” (Report on the journals ‘Zvezda’ and ‘Leningrad’), Bol'ševik, No. 17-18 (1946): 4-20.

14. Cf. L. Timofeev and N. Vengrov (1955: 148): “The writer's opinion on what constitutes the typical in life, the features described by him as typical, that which he typifies in his work,—all this reflects first and foremost the writer's political views.” Also quoted by Friedberg (1959: 21).

15. From quite another angle H. R. Jauss (1975c) reached similar conclusions.

16. Hegel described the creative act as “geistige Thätigkeit […], welche jedoch zugleich das Moment der Sinnlichkeit und Unmittelbarkeit in sich hat” (Hegel, 1956-65: XII, 68-9). René Wellek has observed that the second part of Belinskij's formula is reminiscent of A. W. Schlegel's definition of poetry as “bildlich anschauender Gedankenausdruck” (Wellek, 1955-65: III, 363).

17. The quotations are translated from the German: “Der Nutzen wird mit dem Verstand erkannt, das Schöne mit dem Kontemplationsvermögen. Das Gebiet des ersteren ist die Berechnung; das Gebiet des zweiten ist der Instinkt. […] Das wichtigste Kennzeichen des ästhetischen Genusses ist seine Unmittelbarkeit” (Plechanov, 1955: 196-7).

18. “Vom Character des Themas dagegen ist der Wert des Werkes unmittelbar abhängig. Es ist unbestreitbar, dass das Interesse der Menschen für das Kunstwerk bestimmt wird durch die Tiefe des Themas, seine soziale Bedeutung, durch das Mass, in dem es den wichtigsten Bedürfnissen der Gesellschaft, der Klasse, der Nation, der Menschheit entspricht” (Kagan, 1971: 285). In this respect Rita Schober, an East German scholar, agrees with Kagan: “Das höchste Prädikat ästhetischer Wertung käme dann einem Werk zu, in dem der Künstler das für seine Zeit […] wesentlichste Thema aufgreift, die für seine Entfaltung optimale künstlerische Idee findet […] und es ihm zugleich gelingt, diese in der künstlerischen Ausführung voll zu realisieren.” A similar priority of ideological content appears from the concept of the image of (socialist) Man as a criterion in literary judgement (Schober, 1973: 241-4).

19. See Cheng Chi-ch'iao, “Wen-i ling-yü li pi-hsü chieh-ch'ih ma-k'o-szu-chu-i ti jen-shih-lun; tui hsing-hsiang szu-wei lun ti p'i-p'an” (It is necessary to persist in Marxist epistemology in the realm of literature and art; a critique of the theory of thinking in images), Hung ch'i (Red Flag), No. 5(1966): 34-52; translated in Survey of China Mainland Magazines, No. 523(1966): 23-47. Also: T'an P'eisheng, “Chou Yang ho O-kuo ti san-ko ‘szu-chi’” (Chou Yang and Russia's three '-skys'), Chieh-fang-chün wen-i (Literature and Art of the Liberation Army), No. 18(1967): 15-18; translated in Survey of China Mainland Magazines, No. 608(1968): 14-20.

20. This has been elaborated by Karel van het Reve in his book Het geloof der kameraden (Amsterdam: Van Oorschot, 1969).

21. Quoted from the essay “Literature and Revolution” (“Wen-i yü koming,” 1928), Selected Works, III (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1959): 22. Original text in Lu Hsün, Ch'üan chi (Complete works), IV (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1973): 95.

22. An editorial in Kuang-ming jih-pao (Kuang-ming Daily) of June 6, 1966, criticized the view that “before the truth all men are equal” (tsai chen-li mien-ch'ien jen-jen p'ing-teng). It explained that not all people can be equal before the truth, since there are different kinds of truth defended by different classes, instead of one “abstract” truth. This view makes it impossible to check whether an assertion is in accordance with that which it purports to say, and therefore it ends all scientific discussion.

    Accordingly, any objective, truthful representation of facts is considered suspect, unless it is indicated that the represented “truth” coincides with the truth of the Party. If the “truth” is a “bourgeois truth”, the orthodox Maoist reaction runs as follows: “How can they talk of being ‘objective’, ‘truthful’ and ‘impartial’! Beguiling words like ‘objective’, ‘truthful’ and ‘impartial’ are but so many soiled figleaves to hide the fact that they are serving the bourgeoisie and safeguarding its interests!” (“Carry the Great Revolution on the Journalistic Front Through to the End”, Peking Review, No. 37(1968): 20).

23. In an address to the Second Chinese Writers' Congress (1953) Chou Yang emphasized that the writers “should master the creative method of Socialist Realism” (Wen-i pao (Literary Gazette), No. 19 (1953): 7-17). In the same year Mao Tse-tung's “Yenan Talks” of 1942 were reprinted as part of the Chinese edition of his selected works. Although Mao Tse-Tung in 1942 had not mentioned “Socialist Realism” (as reflected in the 1950 American translation of the “Yenan Talks” [Mao Tse-tung, 1950]), the 1953 Chinese edition of the “Yenan Talks” made it appear as if already in 1942 Mao Tse-tung had been in favour of “Socialist Realism” (cf. Mao Tse-tung, 1942: 87).

24. Wang Jo-wang, “P'ing ‘she-hui-chu-i shih-tai ti hsien-shih-chu-i’” (Critique of ‘realism of the socialist epoch’), Wen-i pao No. 6 (1957): 6-7.

25. Chou Yang, “Hsin min-ko k'ai-t'o-le shih-ko ti hsin tao-lu” (The new folk songs cleared a new road for poetry), Hung ch'i, No. 1 (1958): 33-9.

26. Wen-hsüeh p'ing-lun (Literary Criticism), No. 2(1959): 124.

27. “Chien-li Chung-kuo tzu-chi ti ma-k'o-szu-chu-i-ti wen-i li-lun ho p'i-p'ing”, Wen-i pao, No. 17 (1958): 7-12. Italics added.

28. “Ma k'o-szu i-shu sheng-ch'an yü wu-chih sheng-ch'an fa-chan ti pu p‘ing-heng kuei-lü shih fou shih-yung yü she-hui-chu-i wen-hsüeh” (Is Marx's law of unbalanced development of artistic and material production applicable to socialist literature?), Wen-i pao, No. 2 (1959): 20-4.

29. See above, note 19.

30. Hung ch'i, No. 9 (1967): 2-10. English translation in Ch'en (1970: 77-82, 86, 97).

31. Hung ch'i, No. 6 (1967): 25-8. English translation in Chinese Literature, No. 8 (1967): 118-25.

32. Hung ch'i, No. 9 (1967): 11-21. English translation in Important Documents on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1970): 201-38.

33. See, for instance, the criticism of Chou Yang by Wen Kung in Jenmin jih-pao (People's Daily), February 18,1972. Wen Kung's article criticizes Lu Ting-i and Chou Yang for rejecting the view that “subject-matter decides” (t'i-ts'ai chüeh-ting).

34. Chinese: tang-hsing (Mao Tse-tung, 1942. 70).

35. D. W. Fokkema, “Chinese Literature under the Cultural Revolution”, Literature East and West, 13 (1969): 335-59.

36. Yün Lan discussed the problem of the typical and (without much basis) accused the “frauds of the Liu Shao-ch'i type” of having propagated the mistaken view that “literature is identical with politics” (Yün Lan, “I-shu-shang yao ching i ch'iu ching” (In artistic work one must always seek refinement), Jen-min jih-pao (People's Daily), April 28, 1973).

37. “ein in jeder Hinsicht reaktionäres Werk voll von idealistischer Mystik, falsch in allen seinen Einschätzungen der historischen Entwicklung” (Lukács, 1963-75: IV, 334).

38. See above, p. 100.

39. For a different opinion see H.-J. Schmitt (1973).

40. “[…] das Unwesentliche, Scheinbare, an der Oberfläche Befindliche verschwindet öfter, hält nicht so ‘dicht’, ‘sitzt’ nicht so ‘fest’ wie das ‘Wesen’” (Lukács, 1963-75: IV, 109).

41. “Vielleicht ist die echte Wirklichkeit auch Unterbrechung” (ibid.: IV, 316). Cf. Bloch, 1962: 270.

42. “Surrealismus ist erst recht—Montage. […] Sie ist die Beschreibung des Durcheinanders der Erlebniswirklichkeit mit eingestürzten Sphären und Zäsuren” (Lukács, 1963-75: IV, 320). Cf. Bloch, 1962: 224.

43. “Jeder Marxist weiss, dass die grundlegenden ökonomischen Kategorien des Kapitalismus sich in den Köpfen der Menschen unmittelbar stets verkehrt spiegeln” (Lukács, 1963-75: IV, 317).

44. “dauernden Züge […], die als objektive Entwicklungstendenzen der Gesellschaft, ja der ganzen Menschheitsentwicklung, durch lange Perioden hindurch wirksam sind” (ibid.: IV, 332).

45. “Kein Realist begnügt sich damit, immerfort zu wiederholen, was man schon weiss; das zeigt keine lebendige Beziehung zur Wirklichkeit” (Brecht, 1968: XIX, 295).

46. “Verkündet nicht mit der Miene der Unfehlbarkeit die allein seligmachende Art, ein Zimmer zu beschreiben, exkommuniziert nicht die Montage, setzt nicht den inneren Monolog auf den Index! Erschlagt die jungen Leute nicht mit den alten Namen! Lasst nicht bis 1900 eine Entwicklung der Technik in der Kunst zu und ab da nicht mehr!” (ibid.: XIX, 294).

47. Brecht, 1968: XIX, 298. Cf. Klaus Völker (1969: 138): “Lukács dagegen geht es nicht um Einflussnahme auf die Wirklichkeit, er sucht das ‘Kunsterlebnis’.”

48. “Erpresste Versöhnung; Zu Georg Lukács: ‘Wider den missverstandenen Realismus’,” reprinted in Adorno, 1958-74: II, 152-188.

49. Lukács, 1963-75: X, 539-787. Cf. Lukács' revealing self-criticism on pp. 788-9.

50. “sinnfällige, sinnbildliche Gestalten eines Besonderen, das sowohl seine Allgemeinheit wie seine Einzelheit organisch in sich fasst, in sich aufhebt […], (und) auf eine universelle Nacherlebbarkeit gerichtet ist” (Lukács, 1963-75: X, 712). It is extremely difficult to do justice to the original formula in a translation. Parkinson, who has also struggled with this text, suggests that “das Besondere” should be translated as “the special”, a suggestion which we have not followed (Parkinson, 1970: 115).

51. “Kunst erkennt nicht dadurch die Wirklichkeit, dass sie sie, photographisch oder ‘perspektivisch’, abbildet, sondern dadurch, dass sie vermöge ihrer autonomen Konstitution ausspricht, was von der empirischen Gestalt der Wirklichkeit verschleiert wird” (Adorno, 1958-74: II, 168).

52. “Das Wesentliche jedoch, wodurch das Kunstwerk als Erkenntnis sui generis von der wissenschaftlichen sich unterscheidet, ist eben, dass nichts Empirisches unverwandelt bleibt, dass die Sachgehalte objektiv sinnvoll werden erst als mit der subjektiven Intention verschmolzene” (ibid.).

53. “So schliesst die von der Kunst widerspiegelte und gestaltete Wirklichkeit von vornherein als Ganzes bereits eine Parteinahme zu den historischen Kämpfen der Gegenwart des Künstlers ein” (Lukács, 1963-75: X, 713-14).

54. “inhaltlich-richtige Stellungnahmen zu den grossen Problemen der Zeit” (ibid.: X, 716).

55. “Der Akzent auf dem autonomen Werk jedoch ist selber gesellschaftlich-politischen Wesens” (Adorno, 1958-74: III, 134).

56. “Das Asoziale der Kunst ist bestimmte Negation der bestimmten Gesellschaft” (Adorno, 1970: 335).

57. “Andererseits wird der Typus stets so erfasst, dass die Einheit mit dem Individuum, in der es im Leben erscheint, nicht aufgehoben, sondern im Gegenteil vertieft wird” (Lukács, 1963-75: XII, 241).

58. “Was ist eigentlich Aura? Ein sonderbares Gespinst von Raum und Zeit: einmalige Erscheinung einer Ferne, so nah sie sein mag” (Benjamin, 1970: 83).

59. “In dem Augenblick aber, da der Massstab der Echtheit an der Kunstproduktion versagt, hat sich auch die gesamte Funktion der Kunst umgewälzt. An die Stelle ihrer Fundierung aufs Ritual tritt ihre Fundierung auf eine andere Praxis: nämlich ihre Fundierung auf Politik” (Benjamin, 1936: 21).

60. “In der Sowjetunion kommt die Arbeit selber zu Wort” (Benjamin, 1936: 34).

61. In “Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire”, published in 1939-40, Benjamin devoted many pages to the motif of the urban masses in the work of Baudelaire, although he had to admit at the same time that “the masses are so much internalized by Baudelaire that their representation does not occur in his work” (“Die Masse ist Baudelaire derart innerlich, dass man ihre Schilderung bei ihm vergebens sucht”) (Benjamin, 1969: 128).

62. “Er drückt in keiner Weise seine Epoche aus, nicht einmal zehn Jahre” (Brecht, 1968: XIX, 408).

63. “La conscience collective perd progressivement toute réalité active et tend à devenir un simple reflet de la vie économique et, à la limite, à disparaître” (Goldmann, 1964: 30).

64. “L'homologie entre la structure romanesque classique et la structure de l'échange dans l'économie libérale” (Goldmann, 1964: 16).

65. “Die Gesellschaft ist eine” (Adorno, 1969: 90).

66. “Wissenschaft hiesse: der Wahrheit und Unwahrheit dessen innewerden, was das betrachtete Phänomen von sich aus sein will” (Adorno, 1969: 97).

67. In his criticism of Karl Popper, I. S. Kon (1966: I, 287) postulates “a system of social relations which exists independent from the human consciousness” (“ein System gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse, das unabhängig vom menschlichen Bewusstsein existiert”).

68. In a letter of January 25, 1894, to W. Borgius, Engels explained the primacy of the economic basis as follows: “We consider the economic conditions as determining the historical development in the last instance. […]. The political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic etc. development is based on the economic development. But they all also react to each other and to the economic basis. It is not so, that the economic condition is a cause, active alone, whereas the rest has a passive role. But there is interaction on the basis of the in the last instance determining economic necessity.” (“Wir sehen die ökonomischen Bedingungen als das in letzter Instanz die geschichtliche Entwicklung Bedingende an. […]. Die politische, rechtliche, philosophische, religiöse, literarische, künstlerische etc. Entwicklung beruht auf der ökonomischen. Aber sie alle reagieren auch aufeinander und auf die ökonomische Basis. Es ist nicht, dass die ökonomische Lage Ursache, allein aktiv ist und alles andere nur passive Wirkung. Sondern es ist Wechselwirkung auf Grundlage der in letzter Instanz stets sich durchsetzenden ökonomischen Notwendigkeit.”) (Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, Werke, XXXIX (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1968): 206). Cf. also Engels' letter of September 21-22, 1890, to Joseph Bloch (ibid., XXXVII (1967): 462-6).

69. “Die Dialektik bestreitet, dass irgendwo auf der Welt rein einseitige Ursache-Folge-Beziehungen existieren; sie erkennt in den einfachsten Tatsachen komplizierte Wechselwirkungen von Ursachen und Folgen” (Lukács, 1963-75: X, 207-8).