See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/292078056

Marxist literary criticism before Georg Lukacs

Research · January 2016

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3007.3365

CITATIONS READS
0 896

1 author:

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
, Pavlov Institute, Kolkata, India
242 PUBLICATIONS   112 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

No Project View project

Novel in modern Indian literature View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Ramkrishna Bhattacharya on 27 January 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Marxist Literary Criticism before Georg Lukács
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya

¶ 1. The founding fathers of Marxism, Karl Marx (1818-85) and Frederick Engels (1820-
95), were not students of literature or professional literary critics. Both of them were,
however, polyglot and polymath, well-read in western literature, both classical and
contemporary. Whatever little they happened to write or speak on art and literature
is mostly of an incidental nature. Such remarks were chiefly occasioned by requests
to comment on some author or his/her work. Some were needed to illustrate
arguments. These stray remarks have been assiduously collected and published
posthumously. These selections provide us with a broad overview of the personal
tastes as well as the bases of judgment on which their evaluation ultimately rested.

¶ 2. In spite of the fragmentary nature of these comments, one cannot fail to notice an
underlying thread of unity even in the most casual remarks. Such an arch anti-
Marxist as René Wellek (1903-95) had to admit that ‘the pronouncements are not
thereby incoherent. They are held together by their general philosophy of history and
show a comprehensive evolution – from early involvement in the polemical situation
of the Germany of the [nineteen hundred] thirties and forties, through a stage of
rigid economic determinism, to a more mellow and tolerant attitude in the framework
of late realism and naturalism’ (3:239).

¶ 3. Marx’s and Engels’s views on art in general and literature in particular stem from the
world-view (Weltanschauung) they formulated: MATTER is primary, CONSCIOUSNESS
secondary. From this it follows that the economic formation of the society is the
material BASIS of all human actions and endeavours; art and literature, like law,
philosophy, etc. are parts of the SUPERSTRUCTURE.

¶ 4. The relationship between the BASE and the SUPERSTRUCTURE, however, is not one-
sided but they operate both ways. The SUPERSTRUCTURE is determined by the BASE and
the SUPERSTRUCTURE in its turn also influences the base. The key concept in the BASE-
SUPERSTRUCTURE relation is that of CHANGE: ‘[M]an’s ideas, views and conceptions, in
one word, man’s consciousness changes with every transformation in the condition
of man’s material life, in his social relation and in his social existence’. (Manifesto of
the Communist Party, Chapter II)

¶ 4a. The relative autonomy of art and literature (as part of the superstructure) is clearly
stated in Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Speaking of ‘aesthetic enjoyment provided by ancient Greek art,’ Marx said: ‘[I]n art
it is well-known that certain periods of higher development stand in no direct relation
with the general development of society, nor with the material basis and the skeletal
structure of the organization.’

1
¶ 5. As regards contemporary literature, it was Engels rather than Marx who provided the
lead. Realism, a newly applied doctrine in the fields of painting and literature, was
adopted by Engels as the criterion of judging modern novels and plays. Realism to
Engels did not imply mirror image. The definition of realism proposed by him is as
follows: ‘[B]esides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction of typical characters
under typical circumstances’. The characters too should be ‘concrete universal,’ both
typical and individual.

¶ 6. Marx never evaluated Dante (1265-1321) and Cervantes (1547-1616), Shakespeare

(1564-1616) and Goethe (1749-1832) on the basis of their class origin or the
reflection of the condition of the exploited people to be found (or not) in their works.
On the other hand, he seemed to emphasize their aesthetic quality (excellence in the
manipulation of words and vivid portrayal of life). Engels, too, cared nothing for the
class affiliation of the writer. He ranked Balzac (1799-1850) as a realist par
excellence, well above all Emile Zolas. Engels also made short shrift of the author’s
political views (‘the more the opinions of the author remain hidden, the better for the
work of art’). He preferred the objective unfolding of the social picture, irrespective
of the author’s personal preferences and prejudices (as found in Balzac’s novels). He
was all for the tendenzroman (problem novel) and even socialist novels, but not at
the expense of the established canons of art.

¶ 7. Neither Marx nor Engels was blind to the necessity of choosing and employing the
appropriate form. They insisted as much on the technical perfection as on the faithful
portrayal of the life and manners of an era. The a e s t h e t i c question is often
treated per se in Marx’s early works: ‘If you want to enjoy art, you must be an
artistically cultivated person . . . ’; ’[T]he most beautiful music has no sense for the
unmusical ear . . .’. Nor did he represent the wretched of the earth as the best
arbiter of arts. On the contrary, he declared: ‘The care-burdened, poverty-stricken
man has no sense for the finest play . . .’ (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844).

¶ 8. Among the leaders of the communist movement V.I. Lenin (1870-1924) and Mao
Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) (1893-1976) had rather conservative taste in art and
literature. They preferred the traditional to the experimental or avant-garde. Lenin
considered Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) to be better than Vladimir Mayakovsky
(1893-1930); Mao as a poet elected to compose verses in the classical Chinese style,
although he did not ask all to follow him in this respect. Both of them, however,
firmly believed that art belongs to the people and the primary responsibility of the
party litterateurs was to serve them. Thus they added a POPULAR dimension to artistic
creation which was not so prominent in Marx and Engels.

¶ 9. Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875-1933) and Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), on the other hand,
promoted experimental literature and unconventional critical approaches
(Lunacharsky patronized Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), who enjoyed a revival in
recent times), however obscure and incomprehensible they might be. They had a
catholic taste in arts and were, in Engels’s phrase, ‘educated in the literary sense’.

2
¶ 10. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), one of the founders of the communist movement in
Italy, used to follow the trends of contemporary Italian literature with avid interest.
His Prison Notebooks contain much that is valuable about Dante and Luigi Pirandello
(1867-1936). It is interesting to note that Trotsky called upon Gramsci to write on
the counter-revolutionary turn taken by futurism in Italy. Gramsci’s note survives
only in Russian, as it was printed as an appendix to Trotsky’s Literature and
Revolution.

¶ 11. None of the communist party apparatchiki (perhaps with the exception of Nikolai
Bukharin, 1888-1938), however, contributed anything of significance to Marxist
literary theory, or for the matter of that, to literary criticism either. The first break
comes from Franz Mehring (1846-1919) in Germany and Georgi Plekhanov (1856-
1918) in Russia. Mehring wrote extensively on continental literature in general and
German literature in particular. He believed in the continuity of culture (as did Lenin)
and tried to acquaint the German working class with the works regarded as classics,
even though the social outlooks contained in them would be different from that of
the workers. Plekhanov was interested in tracing the origins and functions of art. He
was the first Marxist critic to harness anthropology to the study of poetry, as evinced
in his Unaddressed Letters and Art and Social Life. This trend was taken over and
developed by Christopher Caudwell (1907-37) and George Thomson (1907-87) in
England.

¶ 12. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (1917) literary-critical and theoretical
questions regarding art were raised and hotly debated throughout the 1920s and
early ’30s. Mention may be made of Maxim Gorki (1868-1936), Valerian Pereverzev,
Mikhail Lifshitz (1905-83), V. Kamenev and others. There was a pronounced ‘left’
trend which wanted to dismiss Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) because he belonged to the
gentry. Others recalled Engels’s evaluation of Balzac and Lenin’s articles on Tolstoy.
No real breakthrough was made by the Russian critics and aestheticians. For that we
had to wait for Georg Lukács (1885-1971), Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), Bertolt Brecht
(1898-1956), Ernst Fischer (1899-1972), and others who followed.

¶ 13. The slogan of ‘Socialist Realism’ with the glorification of the Positive Hero was
formulated in the First Soviet Writers’ Congress (1934). The concept should have
been relevant only to those writers who belonged to or were within the periphery of
the communist party and should be applicable to such countries as had already taken
the road to socialism. However, attempts were made to adapt the ideas everywhere
in the world. This led to the idealization of the typical rather than the truthful
reflection of the objective world, and to a disregard of the question of form. Creative
writers seldom felt at ease with the demands made by the Party. The influence of
Andrei Zhdanov (1896-1948) ultimately paved the way for a stereotyped formula of
literary production – with its emphasis on political correctness, hollow optimism and
oversimplification. In fact, the term ‘Socialist Realism’ has been interpreted in so
many different ways that it is now seldom used in Marxist literary criticism.

3
 READING LIST

Primary Sources

Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from Cultural Writings. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilych. On Literature and Art. Moskow: Progress Publishers, 1967.

Lunacharsky, Anatoli. On Literature and Art. Moskow: Progress Publishers, 1965.

Mao Tse-tung. On Literature and Art. Peking: Foreign languages Press, 1960.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels.On Literature and Art. Ed. Lee Baxandall and Stefan
Marawaski. St Louis, Milwaukee: Telos Press, 1973 [Contains an excellent preface].

–––. On Literature and Art. Moskow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich. Unaddressed Letters, Art and Social Life. Moskow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1957.

Trotsky, Leon. On Literature and Art. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972.

Secondary Works

Demetz, Peter. Marx, Engels and the Poets. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1967 [Informative but biased against Engels].

Fokkema, D.W. and Eluard Kunne-Ibsch. Theories of Literature in Twentieth Century.

London: C. Hurst & Co., 1978 [Chapter 4 only].

Jefferson, Ann and David Ratey (eds). Modern Literary Theories. London: B.T. Batsford,
1992.

Vasques, Adolfo Sanchez. Art and Society. New York and London: Monthly Review Press,
1965.

Wellek, René. A History of Modern Criticism. New Haven and London: Yell University Press,
Vol. 3 (1965) and Vol. 7 (1991). [In spite of some cheap sarcasms and crude
misrepresentations, including a misquotation of Engels’s definition of realism (3:237),
generally informative.]

View publication stats