Chapter 3 MARXIST AESTHETICS, OR, the POLITICS and MORALS of ART A) Marxist Aesthetics

Chapter 3 MARXIST AESTHETICS, OR, THE POLITICS AND MORALS OF ART a) Marxist Aesthetics. Marxists link aesthetic value and social value. That the arts are social is conceded, but not at the expense of truth in both play and challenge. b) Realism: Socialist and Romantic. In practice Marxist aesthetics was an extension and appropriation of the realist tradition already extant. The most cloying of work mixes realism with romanticism. c) Socialist Realism. Despite the poverty of romantic realism, and the terror behind its imposition, like any theory it could produce good art and, of course, bad. d) A Digression on Marxism as Theory and as Practice (Tradition). Once the indispensability of luxury is recognised Marxism is no longer needed to give weight and seriousness to artistic endeavours. e) Marxism Superseded. The intellectual value of Marxism was that it insisted on connections not seen or even denied previously. It was a precursor of systemism and is thus out of date. f) Reactionary Art. Examples of reactionary artists and their reactionary art are given. Judgement has to proceed case by case. We do not want all art to be reactionary any more than we want all art to be politically correct. Both kinds can invite appreciation and stimulate critical discussion. Thus fascist art is not an oxymoron. Common sense and common law are good general guides. Our treatment of art as part of society in chapter 2 has drawn on mainstream and uncontroversial sociological knowledge. The knowledge in question was partly created in debate with a powerful socio-economic theory, that of Marx. He laid great emphasis on the determining power over individuals of their relations to the modes and means of production, and of their position in the attendant class system. Like most great theories, Marx’s unified and simplified many phenomena. Like most great theories (Newton’s comes to mind), Marxism has been shown to be false. Nonetheless, the career of this false theory shows that discovery of falsity and waning of influence do not necessarily correlate, perhaps even the reverse. There is a large literature on Marxist aesthetics. This is doubtless in part because Marxism is an important philosophy, and what it has to say on the arts is important too ņ even in its own right. Yet the flood of Marxist literature is more than was reasonably to be expected. After all, few self-styled Marxists today maintain that Marx was in general correct, and many of those who think Marx was a great or important thinker will not call themselves Marxists (e.g. the present authors). So what it is that makes one a Marxist is something other than taking his ideas seriously. Whatever it is, to be known as a Marxist is good public relations in certain academic and intellectual circles, and so, even if one has no desire to defend Marxism, there is incentive to give the impression that one is a Marxist. Much “Marxist” aesthetics is not Marxist (it even confounds Marxist principles); the best Marxist aesthetics does not always 66 CHAPTER THREE identify itself as such. a) Marxist Aesthetics The most prominent Marxist aesthetician was the literary critic Gyorgy Lukács. Some even claim him as a philosopher and a sociologist. We do not know what makes him a Marxist ņ other than his political affiliation, of course, which is neither here nor there. This affiliation, his adherence to Stalinism as a political line and as a régime (in Hungary and the USSR), led him to renounce the books he had written early in the century. He was unhappy that some western Marxists found his earlier books more interesting than his later, Stalinist ones. Today these same books (especially his History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, 1923) are posthumously reprinted, published in translation, and discussed in great detail in the remnants of left circles.1 In Agassi’s student days he read Stalinist period Lukács with great interest. It is an interest hard to reconstruct because now he finds the books boring, confusing and ņ most important ņ servile and thus dishonest. On Agassi’s reading Lukács said inter alia that he would have praised the existentialists, were he not a communist. Marxist colleagues would say that this reading is sheer fancy on Agassi’s part. Anyway, we should not overlook the fact that young Agassi found him interesting, as others did too at the time. Why? Because he was a declared Marxist. Marxism surely was exciting. We shall leave aside the general question, why did a previous generation find Marxism exciting? But we shall discuss it in relation to art; to the arts in general and literature in particular. What was Lukács’ contribution to aesthetics? He took up the problem, assuming that art is a weapon in the class struggle, what kind of art does Marxist aesthetics support? The official answers are two or three: first, art should be for the masses, and so good artists must serve the masses with both art and correct socio-political messages. This is the vulgar answer that Chairman Mao, for example, offered. The second official answer is, realism is the right weapon for the class struggle ņ perhaps because it is easily comprehensible. The difficulty with this answer is that there is no argument to show that realism will always suggest the socialist message. The third answer is that class struggle is the vehicle of progress, and so there is a natural identity of interest between the supporters of the class of the future and the supporters of progress, social, artistic, scientific or any other. (According to the theory of progress of Hegel and of Marx, winner takes all.2) If so, then avant-garde art must be understandable by 1. The treatment of Lukács is far from unique. Today’s “Marxists” prefer to ignore Marx’s mature publications and value his early (Hegelian) manuscripts notwithstanding the fact that Marx and Engels disowned them in 1848 and later; they prefer the draft of his Capital to his final version of it and avoid comparing them. 2. Taken as a refutable hypothesis, the doctrine that progress comes in packages is amply refuted, say by the fact that the golden age of music is much later than that of the plastic arts, or that the greatest practitioners did not come from the metropolis. Taken as irrefutable, however, it can be rescued by all sorts of excuses, such as that the metropolis attracts ambitious artists. And then an excuse can be found for exceptions like Fra Angelico, Gauguin, van Gogh, (Emily) Dickinson and Scriabin. Attempts to find an excuse for this will lead to an interesting conflict between two romantic ideas: winner takes all and he must be dead first. .

Load more