CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL, MARXIST

APOLOGIST AND CRITIC

A IIWcoTïW Vo. 6 Robert Gibbons

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate school of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

January 1967

Approved by Doctoral Committee

Adviser Department of English ^7£77/ 11

, X TABLE OF CONTENTS 293581

CHAPTER PAGE

I. FROM SPRIGG TO CAUDWELL...... 1

Sprlgg...... 1

Caudwell...... 12

II. THE BOURGEOIS ILLUSION...... 23 Background...... 23

Preliminary Definitions and Distinctions...... 25

The Ideas...... 30

"Reality: A Study of Bourgeois Philosophy"...... 43

III. THE DYING CULTURE...... 49 Liberty...... 51

The Literati...... 54

The Hero...... 62

Religion and Ethics...... 67

Hlstory...... 78

Psychology...... 83

Aesthetics...... 97

IV. CAUDWELL’S WORLD-VIEW...... 103

Origin, Development, and Future of Poetry..104 Art and Science...... 115

Dream-Work of Poetry...... 125 A Marxist Theory of Art...... 130 V. EVALUATION...... 139

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 151

APPENDIX 158 PREFACE

The pen name, "Christopher Caudwell," was reserved for the

serious works of Christopher St. John Sprigg, who died in 1937. Under

this pseudonym were published This My Hand (1936), Illusion and Reality

(1937), Studies in a Dying Culture (1938)» Poems and The Crisis in

Physics (1939)» and Further Studies In a Dying Culture (1949). With the

exception of Poems, all of these were written in the last two years of

his life» though only This My Hand, a novel» was published before his

death. Illusion and Reality was at the printer's when he died» but all

the rest were edited and published posthumously from his manuscripts;

and the order of composition of the whole series is nearly impossible to determine.

The chronology of any writer's works is usually relevant insofar

as It helps to establish the development of his ideas. But since all of

Caudwell's works were written within the same short developmental period»

chronology becomes less important» not because it is absolutely Impossible

to ascertain» but because logical development takes precedence. A logical

pattern does emerge if his works are considered in the following order:

The Crisis in Physics. Studies. Further Studies, and Illusion and Reality; and the books are much more understandable if they are studied in this order.

As will be shown, Caudwell regarded dialectical materialism to be the cure for all the sickness in bourgeois society because it was the only philosophy which was not merely a system of thought. Because dialectical iv

materialism was also a plan of action, it was relevant, not Just to

thinking, but to living, to "the life processes of society," Dialec­

tical materialism Is the resolution to the old philosophical problem

of the subject«object relation; and The Crisis in physlcsdestablishes

the subject»object dichotomy as the fundamental error in bourgeois philosophy. The manifestation of this dichotomy in bourgeois culture provides the material for the other three books. Studies In a Dying

Culture, less technical and less difficult than Further Studies, demon» strates how the subject-object dichotomy has led the bourgeois to a mistaken notion of freedom. Further Studies completes the task Studies began, the tracing of the contradictions In bourgeois ideoiogy»«psychology, history, philosophy, rellglon»»whieh arise from the subject«object dichot­ omy. And Illusion and Reality is an attempt, both successful and unsue» cessful, to integrate all the brandies of ideology into one consistent Marxian world»view.

The two branches of bourgeois Ideology Which interested Caudwell the most were science and art. The need to release them from the stifling grlpofthe bourgeois illusion is a central theme that runs through

Caudwell’s four major works. Also pervasive In these works are two mes* sages: first and most obvious, that bourgeois culture id dying and, sec­ ond, that leadership in the new proletarian culture must come from the ranks of the enlightened bourgeois. In reading Caudwell*s work, one is ever aware of the implication of a passage from Max Planck’s Where is

Science Going? that Caudwell quotes in The Crisis in Physicsand that he uses as an epigraph to Studies In a Dying Culture: V

"We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every branch of our spiritual and material civilisation we seem to have arrived at a critical turning-point. This spirit shows Itself not only in the actual state of public affairs but also in the general attitude towards fundamental values In per« sonal and social life.

"... Formerly it was only religion, especially in its doc« trinal and moral systems, that was the object of sceptical attack. Then the Iconoclast began to shatter the ideals and principles that had hitherto been accepted in the province of art. Now he has invaded the temple of science. There is scarcely a scienti­ fic axiom that is not nowadays denied by somebody. And at the same time almost any nonsensical theory that may be put forward in the name of science would be almost sure to find believers and disciples somewhere or other.**1

lhe feeling of collapse of the old order, of culture tumbling about

his ears, that Planck experiences is, according to Caudwell, the har­

binger of revolution.

Caudwell believes the tensions and contradictions of bourgeois

culture have become so unbearable that bourgeois society is going to explode and be resolved into a new order. The proletariat will, of

course, be the moving force in this revolution; but the proletariat, unable to produce its own ideologists and intellectuals, needs the leadership of bourgeois intellectuals who will Join its ranks. This transference of loyalties Is first mentioned In The Communist Manifesto.

That Caudwell knows this passage well and has taken its message to heart

is apparent in all his work.

Just as therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the no­ bility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and In particular a portion of the bourgeois Ideologists who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement *

*The Crisis in Physics (London, 1939), p. 26, Vl

as a «hole. They thus defend not their present, but their future Interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.2

The Crisis in physics informs the bourgeois philosopher and scientist of the philosophical instability of bourgeois society;

Studies and Further Studies demonstrate to the bourgeois historian, psychologist, scientist, artist, and philosopher the manifestations of that collapse in the ideological sphere; and Illusion and Reality Is an appeal to the bourgeois Ideologists and intellectuals of every dis­ cipline, but especially to the artists, to become leaders in the ranks of the proletariat. That Caudwell himself was such a men will become in­ creasingly clear. But Caudwell was not just another Marxist critic using quotations from Cap!tai and the Theses on Feuerbach to bludgeon every­ thing boureois simply because it was bourgeois; nor Is he entirely free of this fault. His feet were as firmly planted In the twentieth cen­ tury as they were in the nineteenth. Although Marx’s revelation of the economic laws of society is inevitably the starting point of every Caud- well argument, ;hls theories of art and of science are worked out in the very reputable context of the then most recent discoveries of modem psy­ chology, physlology,and physics, Whether Caudwell remained a thorough­ going Marxist or whether, as some of his Marxist critics claim, his theory of art is actually idealistic, is not the eoncem«ef this study,

^Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in The Essential left (New York, 1962), p. 24. vii

That he was a Marxist in spirit and intention is clear. Also clear is the fact that Caudwell's brand of Marxism cannot be dismissed out of hand. Instead of being stigmatized, he ought to be studied.

This study is designed as an Introduction to Caudwell's ideas.

Nothing is a satisfactory substitute for reading Caudwell, but a pre­ sentation of his ideas, disregarding the validity of his Marxism, is needed. The basic aim of the study, then, is explication and not criti­ cism. The ideas presented in Chapters 2-4 are Caudwell's. As the criti­ cism In Chapter S indicates, the primary Interest of the author is in Caudwell as a literary figure, even though the large bulk of his serious writing deals with fundamentally non-literary matters. I

CHAPTER 1

PROM SPRIGG TO CAUDWELL

I. SPRIGG

Christopher St. John Sprigg was born of middle-class parents at Putney on October 20, 1907,* He spent most of his childhood at

East Hendred and was educated by the Benedictines at the Ealing Priory

School, where he developed an early interest In both poetry and science. His intellectual detachment shocked his classmates, and his intellectual dexterity amazed them. He delighted in arguing, and doing it most cap­ ably, on behalf of views very much opposed to his own.

During his adolescent years he expressed displeasure with school and desired to quit his education in order to help with the family finances.

In 1922, before Christopher was fifteen, his father found the school fees too much of a burden and granted Christopher his wish. The elder Sprigg took his son with him to Bradford, Yorkshire, where he had been appointed literary editor of The Yorkshire Observer. Within a short time Christopher

*Most of the general biographical information in this chapter comes from Paul Beard’s "Biographical Note" prefacing the 1939 edition of Caud- well’s Poems and from George Thomson’s "Biographical Note" prefacing the second edition of Illusion and Reality, The anecdotes of Caudwell*s Com­ munist activities come from Louis Harap’s sketch in the Dally WCrker (see below). And the personal and family Information comes from my correspondence with Caudwell’s brother, Theodore Stanhope Sprigg. Other biographical ac­ counts can be found in Hyman (see below), Frankel (see below), and the London News Chronicle (see below). 2

had joined the staff at the newspaper* For two years he remained with

the Observer, during which time his duties as a cub reporter included writing reviews of novels, perhaps It was here that his interest in writing fiction was born.

When young Sprigg left the newspaper, he went to London, where

he lived most of the remainder of his life. His first job in London

was editorship of British Malaya, a position he held for about two years.

He then joined his older brother, Theodore Stanhope Sprigg, in the founding

and directing of Airways Publications, Ltd., a company Which published

aviation magazines including Airways and Aircraft Engineering. He took

up piloting in order to ghost a book for his flying instructor on learning

to fly. Although he never acquired a license or showed any further aetive

interest In flying, he did write, under various pseudonyms and under his

real name, articles on aeronautical subjects; and in more than one of

his later detective stories is to be found a residual interest in avia­ tion.

Another interest of these years was automotive mechanics. He ac­ quired a considerable theoretical and practical knowledge of automobiles,

and later in his life took great pride in owning and driving a somewhat

aged car. He owned a motorcycle, which he used extensively. His in­

terest in automotlves gave birth to designs for an infinitely variable

gear which, when published in the Automoblle Engineer, attracted much at­

tention. Through hls interest in aerodynamics and automotlves he acquired

the foundation for his knowledge In physics, a knowledge which, some ten years later, was to bear fruit in the remarkably well-informed Crisis In Physics. 3

In the same year that his design appeared in Automobile Engineer, 1927, a poem of his was published in the American Dial, This was the

only one of his poems to be published In his lifetime, and it brought him

many complimentary letters from readers in England, America^ and Russia* Sprlgg had begun writing poetry when he was living in Yorkshire, and he

continued to write large masses of verse until two years before he died.

Each batch of poems was distinguishable from its predecessors by differ­

ences in style and technique. One of his poems appeared in The Year’s

Poetry. 1938, and three more in New Verse ,in 1939, These four and several

others were collected by Paul Beard, a close friend of Sprlgg*s, and pub­

lished in 1939 as Poems by Christopher Caudwell, e * * *

Except for "Four Juvenilia" and a translated Latin epitaph, which

is a forepiece to the book, the verse in Poems is representative of the

latest poetry that Sprlgg wrote. The first five were written between

the ages of seventeen and nineteen. The others were all composed in 1934

or early 1935, with the exception of The Art of Dying.which was begun in

1926 and was revised many times until the final draft in 1934. Shortly

after Sprlgg became Interested in Marxism, he quit writing poetry.

The few of Caudwell*s critics who have mentioned his poetry have not agreed that it is good, but have agreed that, had he lived longer,

2"Once I Did Think," LXXXII (March 1927), 187. 3paul Beard, "Biographical Note," Poems (London, 1939), p, 10, 4

Caudwell would have written better. Louis Harap said that Caudwell was an authentic but immature poet and that In hla poems "resided the po­ tentiality of important versed Raymond Williams found the poems "un­ interesting as verse."?» An anonymous Times Literary Supplement reviewer praised Caudwell's "witty, clever, serious and profoundly musical poetry," but felt that he sometimes Imitated Donne and Shakespeare too closely.6* 7 8

In ail, he thought Poems contained some of the best poetry of the 1930's.

Stanley Edgar Hyman judged the poetry to be "often lyric and always ex* tremely talented," but "the work of a poet not yet formed." Hyman also believed that had Caudwell lived he would, like Hopkins, have returned to writing poetry even though he repudiated it at the time of his conver­ sion to Marxism. Whether or not Caudwell's poetry ranks among the best of that Q decade, it is worth reading. Several of the Twenty Sonnets of Wm. Smith and a number of other poems in the small volume are strongly satiric modem love poems in which the vision of romantic love la shattered by realistic images and ironic juxtaposition. A strong vein of irony runs throughout the poems, whether Caudwell*s subject is ideational or sensuous.

^»Christopher Caudwell: Marxist Critic, Poet and Soldier," Dally Worker, November 24, 1946, p. 9. e "A Young Man's Papers," Manchester Guardian Weekly. November 18, 1965, p. 11. 6 "Caudwell Remains," December 9, 1965, p. 1160. 7The Armed Vision (New York, 1948), p. 171.

8 And it is presently available, a reprint having been published by Lawrence and Wlshart late in 1965. 5

Even though the origins of several of hls poems in Shakespeare and Donne

is apparent, what is best in these poems is Caudwell's own Ironic touch.

Come live with me and be my love. Let us love's bourgeois pleasures prove Where grasses* homely knitting spreads Antimacassars for the hill's heads Or landlady, shrill-rattled snake, Glides through the aspidistran brake. Let us be honest, flesh is flesh. Yet there's a difference in the dish If spiced with natural pleasantries Or raw upon the sIAb life-size. Where shall we fry our dish of love And its more subtle pleasures prove? You know love is as we are able; The dish is done when brought to table»9

As this poem might suggest, one outstanding quality of all of Caudwell's poetry is cleverness. The fact that this is his poetry's ultimate vir­ tue indicates that none of hls poems are great; but one can do much worse than write elever poetry. Like any real poet, Caudwell delighted in the word and all of its Implications, especially—and perhaps unlike any real poets—When those implications involved puns.

Paul Beard called Caudwell's book of poems one step in an attempt to bring the Marxist in him to terms with the artist. But Louis Harap thought the poems were not "informed with communist' consciousness." If what Harap meant was that the poems are not propaganda pieces, he is most certainly correct. And if what Beard meant was that in Caudwell's poetry the Marxist was not reconciled with the artist, then he too is correct. Occasionally one finds a tell-tale word, like "bourgeois" above, or a familiar idea, like the lie of religion in Sonnet VI; but these no doubt

9Poems, p, 26. 6 suggest the Marxist primarily because the reader approaches Caudwell*s poetry knowing that the author was a Marxist. Although a sense of de­ cadence accompanies several of his poems, only In "Orestes," a verse drama on the contemporary malaise, is there a consciously proletarian element— the "Shades," who near the end of the drama express the enmity of the op­ pressed class. The fact that Caudwell stopped writing poetry shortly after he became engrossed in Marxism suggests that he reached one of two decisions. Either he decided that all his time not spent earning his livelihood should be devoted to strictly Communist activities. Or he found it impossible to write poetry "informed with communist conscious­ ness" which did not force either the poet or the Marxist to abdicate.^

*****

After 1928 Sprlgg wrote fewer and fewer articles for scientific periodicals. Instead he directed most of his effort toward other journal­ istic activities—popular books on aviation and detective thrillers. In 1932, collaborating with Henry Duncan Davis, he published Fly With Me, a manual on flying. In each of the next three years he published two detective novels; British Airways was also published in 1934 and Great Flights, which he described as the "first book" on outstanding flying feats, in 1935. Al­ though an interest In Marxism began to absorb much of his time near the end of 1934, Sprlgg continued to write popular literature for a living. Under various pseudonyms he published a number of tongue-in-cheek science

^Caudwell was able, as will be seen in Chapter 4, to work out a theory of poetry presumably satisfactory to both the poet and the Marxist in him. 7

fiction short stories. Hie two thrillers In 1935 were followed the next year by Uncanny Stories—a collection of weird short stories by Saki, de la Mare, Dickens, Stevenson, and Hawthorne—to Which he attached a

lengthy critical introduction. Also in 1936 Sprigg*s serious novel.

Hits My Hand, was published. Hie last detective story and the last

aviation book, Let's Learn to Fly, appeared in 1937.

Sprigg published all of hls detective novels and his aviation

books under hls own name, but he used his mother's maiden name, Caudwell,

for his serious works—Hits My Hand. Poems, and hls Marxist studies. Hie reason he gave for using a pseudonym for his serious work was that he did

not want to spoil his reputation as a writer of "pot-boilers,” as he

called his thrillers. In reality, though, he attached no merit, literary

.or otherwise, to his hack work. He feared that his poetry and more stu­ dious ideological work might not be taken seriously If it was known that they were written by a comparatively well-known author of detective

thrillers.

■ft it * -It *

Sprigg will never be remembered as a fiction writer. In a period

of just over four years he ground out eight novels (excluding one still

in manuscript), only one of which he considered serious, and numerous

short stories which, according to Paul Beard, were written "in the mode

of Kafka,Hie seven light novels were all detective thrillers; four

^"Biographical Note," p. 8. 8

of them were Doubleday Crime Club selections, and all had at least two

printings. Several of these thrillers were printed in both England and Canada, perhaps because Sprlggis fiction was better received In America than it was in England. His serious novel, discussed below, was psycho­

analytic in nature. A few of the short stories were published in obscure

periodicals, and the rest remain in manuscript. Sprlgg's fiction was un­

questionably hack work, written for the money it brought him, but he acquired a considerable following, as able hack writers often do.

He began; writing detective stories when he was about twenty-four, and his popularity is attested to by the fact that within five years the different printings of his thrillers totalled twenty*two. He published his first two**Fatality in Fleet Street and Cylme in Kensington (American title: Pass the Body)**in 1933» The former was reprinted in 1935 and again in 1936, and the latter had two reprintings in 1933, one under each title, and one In 1934 and another In 1936 under the British title« Mean­ while, Sprlgg's pen was not idle. Nineteen thirty-four saw the publlca* tlon of The perfect Alibi, reissued In 1934 and 1936, and Death of an Airman, reprinted in 1935 and 1937. The Corpse with the Sunburned Face and Death of a Queen had a single reprinting In 1936. His final detective story was The Six Queer Things, published and reprinted in 1937« His lone serious novel, This My Hand, was also reprinted in 1937, after having been published the previous year* Uncanny Stories received a single printing in 1936«

12 In his "Biographical Note," Thomson says that This My Hand was published In May, 1935. The back of the title page says, "First Published In 1936*" The Cumulative Book Index lists 1936« 9

Throughout all of Sprigg’s fiction run eertaln distinguishable strains*

Almost without exception his works are marked by humor, often based on disparity. Secondly, Sprlgg consistently manifests his ability to draw

interesting characters. These characters are not always believable, but they never lack distinction. There is also a tendency toward the bizarre, the inexplicable. Such is normal stuff for a detective story, but even in This My Hand the author’s attachment to the aberrant is ob­ vious. On the whole, Sprlgg has a kinship with the novelists who glut the modern market: popular for a few years, they rather quickly slip into obscurity, not because they are entirely unworthy of being remembered but rather because a mass of new writers, with equal talent and destined to the same fate, takes their places.

The reviews of Sprigg’s detective stories were mixed. The Corpse 13 with the Sunburned Face was called "thrilling and often amusing," but the plot was judged to be "rather mixed"*1* and Sprlgg was criticized for having too many superfluous characters.1^ Crime in Kensington was called an "unusual tale told with zest, humor, original characters," but it was also criticized for its extremely odd and unlikely assortment of

1:1"New Mystery Stories," New York Times, October 20, 1935, p. 22. 16 Saturday Review, XIII (November 2, 1935), 26. Rather ironically this anonymous reviewer tags Sprigg’s book "capital." ^TLS. November 23, 1935, p. 773. 1^Saturday Review, IX (July 15, 1933), 711. 10

characters.17 * And The Six Queer Things—which, the reviews suggest,

was Sprlgg's least successful effort—was called in one review turgid and naive,1® but in another "a rip-tail roarer.**19 Death of an Airman,

by consensus of reviewers his best thriller, was praised for its diverting characters,2® for its "fascination of aviation stuff (extra-well done),"21 22 23 22 and for its "mystifying and highly entertaining" story. The book

really is a worthy example of the genre. It exhibits several virtues which make it quite enjoyable: there is eminent good humor; the story

is cleverly conceived and ingeniously executed; and the characterization, though sometimes stock, is interestingly accomplished.

Sprlgg's single serious novel seems to have been little read,

George Thomson, in hls biographical note prefacing illusion and Reality, said:.."It shows that he had matfea close study of psychology, but he 23 had not yet succeeded In relating his knowledge to life." And John Strachey called the book, quite simply, "a failure."^ Both judgements

17TLS, March 16, 1933, p. 186.

1®Sylvia Norman, "The Guilty Party," Spectator. CLIX (October 15, 1937), 652. , 19Saturday Review. XVI (June 26, 1937), 18.

'■''-^Qwlll Cuppy, New York Herald Tribune Books, April 14, 1935, p. 9. ^Saturday Review, XI (March 30, 1935), 590. 22 Isaac Anderson, "New Mystery Stories," New York Times, October 20, 1935, p. 22.

23Pn age 3,•» ^"Introduction," Studies in a Dying Culture (London, 1938), p. lx. 11

would seem to be fair« The story Is, ostensibly, an account of the

inner and outer lives of a fugitive, Ian Venning; of his two wives,

the first of whom he murders; and of his mistress, whom he also murders.

Venning is a powerful, impulsive man with a dull consciousness and an

even duller conscience. He lacks the intellectual ability to under­

stand most of what happens to and around him. After nearly any experi­ ence of some significance and intensity, one finds him "muddy, grey,

confused." He resolves most of his perplexities with the comforting thought that "things" are deep and complex, not simple. Even after he murders (in neither ease Is it premeditated), he has only vague, indis­ tinct feelings. When he feels guilt, it is for a small boy chasing a dog in the rain or for his mistress’s young sister with the innocent eyes. At times, Venning is vaguely aware of a developing second self, which gazes with interest at the actions of the first. If the reader’s sympathies first are extended to Venning in his ordeal with his neurotic wife, Celia,ithese sympathies; are gradually withdrawn as his obstinacy, selfishness, and lack of will power become apparent. He Is a pathetic figure who seems to function only In a very unreal world.

This My Hand is quite possibly Caudwell’s attempt to give an artistic expression to the decadence of bourgeois society. The passage from Planck* quoted above, expresses Planck’s recognition of, but inability to explain, the collapse of contemporary culture; and it expresses a fundamental idea of all of Caudwell’s work—vlz. that bourgeoisXculture is dying, Caudwell sets This My Hand in the fragmented post-World War I

English society* Since every Marxist knows that the Kaiser’s war was 12 an ¡imperialistic war, it is likely that the disintegration of Ian Venning and the. malaise of his associates are to represent the decadence of bour­ geois culture. Venning is certainly not aware of the crisis of which

Planck speaks; and caudweli's comment on Planck's statement fits Venning perfectly. Jhese words reveal a general feeling of collapse of the old order, together with a complete helplessness and lack of under­ standing as to Its cause, which is characteristic of certain elements of society in a revolutionary crisis. Everything is confused, culture is tumbling about his ears: that is all Planck knows.25

Even If This My Hand is crudely written, it very strongly suggests an all-pervasive sickness, which Is what Caudwell thought to be the out­ standing characteristic of bourgeois culture.

II. CAUDWELL

Before his Interest in Marxism absorbed all of his time and led him to take up residence in the East End to study working-class condi­ tions, Caudwell lived on amicable terms with his brother, even after the latter's marriage. During these years he liked to swim, and he enjoyed playing tennis, although he did It poorly. He never became a devotee of any sport but he would gladly try his hand at anything. He was fond of horse riding and became quite a fair rider; the technique, like other techniques, fascinated him. He developed a fine sense of humorespecially directed against himself. Paul Beard remembers his wry comment oh being

75The Crisis In Physics, p. 27. 13 thrown while riding in Windsor Park: "The horse arrived«’) back wearing my wristwatch." He was a man Whose sincerity would not permit intel­ lectual pretense« His extreme independence of character combined with a strong sense of reserve to make him an Imprea&lve man despite his rathbr short stature« His vast store of fact, his perceptive theories, and hls courteous listening made him an enjoyable conversationalist.

His talk was as copious as hls writing. He impressed his friends as a young man with a seemingly lnexhaustive store of creative energy*

He was a young man who not only warmed hls hands before, but gave great hearty pokes at, the fire of life; a young man so interested in everything, from aviation, to poetry, to detective stories, to quantum mechanics, to Hegel's philosophy, to love, to psycho-analysis, that he felt that he had simply got to say some­ thing about them all.2®

And, most remarkably, what he said about all of them was significant*

Thio was the man who, towards the end of 1934, had no strong political views and who, thought he thought most highly of himself as a poet, was to write little poetry after discovering some of the Marxist classics. He cultivated his interest in Mdrxlsm with the same intensity that he had earlier directed toward aviation and poetry. He spent the summer of 1935 at Cornwall deep in the study of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

To understand the Impact that Marxism had on Sprigg, one must remember the eoonomie and social chaos in England in the early 1930's. The slump that followed the boom years of the twenties lengthened unemployment lines«

Students and white-collar workers found themselves as helpless as indus­ trial workers. That the nearly universal impoverishment could have

2®Strachey, Studies, pp. ix-x. 14 coincided with the most gigantic technological advances in history was paradoxical. Such absurd schemes as destroying food (to keep prices up) and replacing machine labor with manual labor (to reduce unemploy­ ment) were being seriously considered. Looking around him, Sprlgg could not help but see a culture crumbling before his eyes, He could not help but wonder why, when for the first time man had developed a technology capable of feeding and housing everyone, there was more poverty and va­ grancy than ever before.

Marxism brought the answer to Sprlgg that It brought to the gloom of Britain’s depressed areas. He gleaned from Marx the clue to the con­ temporary malaise. He discovered a world-view into which he could inte­ grate his knowledge of art, of science, of psychology, of philosophy.

He ^a^,jthat the confusion of contemporary society could, and Inevitably would, give way to the unity of dialectical materialism. He said In his

Foreword to Studies in a Dying Culture:

The Marxist’s first task is to separate, from this confusion, the elements that represent real empirical discoveries, and fit them into his synthetic world-view* This is comparatively easy, More laborious is the analysis of the cause which. In each discovery* makes it go bad, so to speak, upon the inventor’s hands.27

The Marxist must understand how the very progress of the bourgeois but- ture only hastens its decay. He must understand how s single cause can operate In so many various fields and initiate so many different forms of decadence and confusion, GalnlngHis understanding, then sharing it and living by It, was the task to which Caudwell devoted the rest of his life,

27Page xxi• 15

Having studied the Marxist classics for* a year, during which time he wrote the first draft of Illusion and Reality, Caudwell took up real-

denc^Jn Poplar in late 1935 in order to study working-class conditions

first hand. Within a few months he had Joined the Poplar branch of the

Communist Party; and although some of his waterfront comrades were at

first suspicious of the retiring, intelligent lyoung member who was a novelist, he made himself welcome by taking part in ail of the Party's routine tasks—speaking on street corners, posting illicit flyers, and selling Dally Workers—most of which he disliked. Two interesting, and perhaps apocryphal, stories are told about Caudweli's Communist activities.

A short time after he joined the Party, while he was still re­ garded as a newcomer in need of guidance, Caudweli's branch was having no success in writing a certain leaflet. When it was suggested that Comrade Sprigg attempt the task, to everyone's amazement he produced an excellent copy in ten minutes. At a later date Caudwell was attending a course at Marx House, the London workers* school. Although he was ex- tremely.interested In the course, Marxism and Literature, he quite sud­ denly annotnced that he would have to quit attending. It was later dis­ covered that he had given up the course to sell Dally Workers at the sub­ way that same hour. His attempt to be assimilated into the masses was entirely success­ ful. Even though he did become Secretary of the Poplar branch, he re­ mained unknown to the hierarchy of the Party until after his death. He avoided Party officials and abhorred the thought of being classed with the Party intellectuals. He was as unwilling to associate with a Party 16 clique as he had been earlier to associate with any literacy club.

He thought little of his own abilities, but was determined to find his own way through the intellectual problems confronting him. Early in

1936 he went to Paris for a first-hand experience with the Popular

Front^movement and upon returning dived into his work with a renewed enthusiasm, taking up the study of Russian,

Caudwell worked by the clock. Only after staying at his type­ writer until five would he go out to participate in Party activities.

Between the time he returned from France, in the spring of 1936, and the end of the year, he re-wrote Illusion and Reality, completed the essays laterpublished as Studies and Further Studies, and began The Crisis in

Physics. But this was not all; during this same period he also com­ piled tMcanny Stories and wrote his final detective novel,7® * * H* i*s pot boilers continued to be his sole source of Income. The returns from this hack work enabled him to take some time off to produce his Ideological studies,

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, the Poplar branch embarked on a campaign in behalf of the Loyalist forces. They raised enough money to buy an ambulance, and Caudwell was selected to drive it in a caravan across France, After delivering it to the Spanish Government In December

7®In addition to these published works Sprlgg was also working on several MSS during the last two years of his life, one of which was a book length narrative In which he was exploring new and more serious forms of fiction. Also in MS are a large number of poems, two three- act plays, a collection of fantasy stories, and mlscellanla. 17

of 1936, he joined the International Brigade. He wrote home:

"You know • • . how I feel about the importance of democratic freedom. The Spanish People's Army needs help badly; their strug­ gle, if they fail, will certainly be ours tomorrow, and, believing as I do, it seems clear where my duty lies."29

He was given a brief period of instruction as a machine-gunner and, be­

fore his own Instruction was completed, was made an instructor to the

rest of his section. Even as a soldier he continued his journalistic

activity as co-editor of his Battalion Wall newspaper. In letters home he sought news from Poplar, for he found it difficult, In a war zone, to imagine the frame of mind of the English party leaders. These Party

leaders meanwhile, were being solicited by Caudwell's brother to recall him to England, where he would be mast useful to the Party—as a writer.

But his brother was having a difficult time because none of Caudwell's

Marxist works had been published and his attempt to avoid Party notoriety had been entirely successful. After proofs of Illusion and Reality were sent to a high Party official, this official cabled the Spanish front asking that Caudwell be returned to England. But the cable arrived a few days too late. Caudwell had been killed on his first day Of action, Februaryl2, 1937, while covering the retreat of his company at the battle for Jarama River. He was last seen firing point-blank at the Moors who were less than thirty yards away. His death was a dramatic demonstration of one of the themes that runs through his ideological writing, the unity of theory and practice. ★ ewe *

29"Last Letters of a Hero," The News Chronicle. June 28, 1937. 18

A few months after Caudweli's death Illusion and Reality was published by Macmillan and Company* For two years the reviewers' war

raged. Favorable reviews were few in number, but most of the reviews

appeared in non-Leftlst periodicals. Some reviewers were patronising;

others were openly hostile; and others were sympathetic. Many of them,

unfortuantely, missed the main issues of the book and concentrated on

abusing the fervent and eloquent last chapter or on praising some rela­

tively insignificant matter. One reviewer judged that Caudwell was at his best when analyzing individual poets and their works;38 but another thought these analyses to be one of the book's weaknesses.3* The latter

praised Caudweli's generalizations; but a third reviewer called them

tedious and unconvincing. A thoroughly unfavorable spectator reviewJJ was balanced by W. H, Auden's wholly favorable notice.34 The latter

called Illusion and Reality "the mostlmportant book on poetry since Dr.

Richards* books," and he found it "a more satisfactory answer to some of the problems which poetry raises."?3 * 32 33 34 *

38"The New Books," Saturday Review. XIX (January 28, 1939), 20.

3*Hcrace Gregory, "The Social Sources of Poetry," The New Re­ public, XEVIII (February 8, 1939), 25.

32H. A. Mason, "The Illusion of Cogency," Scrutiny. VI (March 1938), 430.

3■’3■’Philip Henderson, "Poetry and Marxism," CLVIII (May 14, <1937), 914, 916. 34«Books Newly Published," New Verse, XXV (1937), 20-22,

Smother reviews of Illusion and Reality appeared in TLS (June 5, 1937), Forum (August 1938), Poetry (October 28, 1938), Boston Transcript (December 31, 1938), Southern Review (1938) and (1939); and a review on the occasion of the second edition appeared In Nation (Ajbri-1 12, 1947). 19

While Che reviewers were disagreeing about the merits of Caud­ well's first book, hls second was published in 1938. Studies in a

Dying Culture received little notice. The only prominent review was E. M. Forster's in Nation.36 Forster found the eight essays which con­ stitute the book cogent and brilliant, but fanatical. He disapproved of Caudwell’s conception of art in a classless society; and he was dissatisfied with the author's naive and mystical definition of liberty.

Studies in a Dying Culture set the pattern for the remaining three Caud­ well books. After a few advance notices In Leftist publications. The

Crisis In Physics and Poems were published in 1939, This pattern was again repeated in 1949 when Further Studies in a Dying Culture appeared.

None of these books received the notice that Illusion and Reality had, and all of them seem to have been read primarily by a small but growing

Caudwell cult. Caudwell's reputation in Marxist circles has grown steadily since the years of anonymity before hls death. Foreign language editions of

Illusion and Reality have been published in Hungary, Italy, Japan, and

Russia. In 1945 George Thomson acknowledged, In his Preface to Marxism and Poetry, hls indebtedness to Caudwell's Illusion and Reality and praised Caudwell's contribution to creative Marxism. Caudwell's name also became better known through biographical articles in New Masses,37

36"The Long Run," XVI, NS (December 10, 1938), 971-972.

37Louls Harap, "Christopher Caudwell, Critic," LIX (November 20, 1945), 22-23. 20

Dally Worker, and World News and Views»®® In 1948 Allek West, a prominent

Party member, published an article on Illusion and Reality in the Com­ munist Review;®9 and Stanley Edgar Hyman devoted a chapter of his Armed

Vision to Marxist criticism, especially the criticism of Caudwell.*®

In the last two years of the 1940’s, Caudwell’s influence was seen fre­ quently in the pages of The Modern Quarterly,

His notoriety reached its zenith in 1950 and 1951, In four con- l secutlve numbers of The Modem Quarterly there was conducted a dialogue on the relevance of CaudwelPs works and the validity of his Marxism,

Although the dialogue focused on Illusion and Reality, his other three

Ideological works were frequently quoted. Initiating the dialogue was

Maurice Comforth’s unreasonably harsh and almost entirely negative criti­ cism of, among other things, Caudwell’s style, his tendency to over­ simplify, and his idealistic theory of poetry,*1 Comforth’s whole essay was a thinly-veiled attempt to create a controversy, and in this design he was entirely successful. The next issue of The Modem Quarterly con­ tained a lengthy polemical reply by George Thomson in which Comforth’s attack was rejected point by point,*7 In the summer and autumn issues

®®Hyman Frankel, "Christopher Caudwell," XXVII (February 15, 1947), 76-77, 39 "On ’Illusion and Reality’," III, iv (January 1948), 7-13. *®"Christopher Caudwell and Marxist Criticism," pp, 168-208. *l"Caudwell and Marxism," VI, NS (Winter 1950), 16-33.

*7"In Defence of Poetry," VI, NS (Spring 1951), 107*134. 21

the dialogue was joined by twelve other writers. Including such figures, well-known in Marxist circles, as Aliek West, Alan Bush, and G. M.

Matthews* Most of the brief essays submitted by these people were In de­

fense of Caudwell and Illusion and Reality; but the dialogue ended oni.ia negative note as Comforth reiterated his central objections and expressed the conviction that Caudwell, had he lived, would have seen the error of his ways and become a better Marxist*43 The final fruit of the Caudwell dialogue was an article in Science and Society in which Fred Wharton, re­ affirming parts of Cornforth's argument, attempted to initiate an American dialogue on Caudwell by laying the groundwork for further discussion.44

But no further discussion materialised.

Since this flurry of activity from 1945 to 1951, which included also a reprint of Poems in 1949, Caudwell has received little notice. Studies was reprinted In 1952, It and Further Studies were bound under a slnglecover in 1958 and published as Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture. In 1965 Caudweli's Poems was reprinted again; but, ^un­ fortunately, Paul Beard's useful biographical sketch was omitted. The same year eleven essays were selected from Studies. Further Studies, and

The Crisis In Physics and published under the title of The Concept of

Freedom. In a very brief biographical introduction to the book. Professor

43 Hyman thinks that a mosaaature Caudwell would have "outgrown, seen through, orctherwlse sloughed off" those "basically unfair" charac­ teristics that he believes to be a part of the Marxist approach to litera­ ture. (The Armed Vision, p. 207.) ^"Christopher Caudweli's Illusion and Reality," XVI (1951), 53-59. 22

Thomson says that Caudwell's theory of aesthetics was necessarily Incom­

plete and partly erroneous. That Thomson was unwilling to make these concessions in 1951, but that he makes them unsolicited In 1965, suggests that Caudwell's reputation among Marxists has perhaps been established.

He is respected as a man of potential genius, but a man whose most mature and significaré work was prevented by his heroic death. CHAPTER 2

THE BOURGEOIS ILLUSION

I. BACKGROUND

What had the crisis in physics to do with Christopher Caudwell? What had the crisis in physics to do with the writer of Studies In a Efrlng Culture and of Illusion and Reality? In what way were these linked in his mind? In what way were they related in Nature? How could the problems of technical and philosophical significance with which modern physics was wrestling—Relativity, the Quantum Theory- stir one whose mind appeared to move in a totally different plane? In what possible sense could he have anything to contribute to the solution of these complex problems? (p. xli)1

These questions are asked by Hyman Levy in hls introduction to The Crists in-Physics (1939), and they can all be answered generally with the same term—historical materialism. In his introduction to Illusion and

Reality, an essay Which sounds a good deal like a synopsis of The Crisis

In Physics, Caudwell says that "historical materialism is * . . the basis of this study," He might have made the same claim for The Crisis in

Physics, for the whole book is based upon the assumption that all bour­ geois Ideology—even that portion of it like physics dignified with the name of science—is part of the societal superstructure that evolves from and reflects the economic foundation. In other words, the crisis in physics is, as Levy says, "fundamentally a partial aspect of the whole crisis in bourgeois economy." (p, xli) *

^Ihis and all further quotations from The Crisis In Physics » (London, 1939) will be documented by a page reference in .the body of the paper. 24

In the overall scheme of Caudwell’s works The Crisis In Physics

was apparently intended to play a major role. Caudwell himself had a

higher regard for this work than he permitted himself to have for most of his others.7 As a former bourgeois intellectual who had switched

his loyallties, Caudwell certainly recognized the radical nature of his

argument and its extra-economic and potentially extra-Marxist appeal.

In this book he strikes right to the heart of the assumption upon which bourgeois culture is based; and he does it in convincing fashion by

tempering Marxian sociology with the most recent discoveries of twentieth-

century physics. Caudwell directs his attack at bourgeois philosophy, at the foundation ofthebourgeois* ideological structure. The bourgeois

believes that thought precedes action, that consciousness is primary to

social intercourse. When a contradiction in bourgeois thought is exposed, then, all the actions based on these philosophical assumptions should be

Invalidated. For Caudwell sociology is primary: the Integrity of the other Ideologies Is determined by their correlation with it; but for the bourgeois, philosophy (thought) is primary: the integrity of his world­ view depends on its being built on philosophical foundations. In destroying the very starting-point of the bourgeois philosophies, their "scientific" basis, Caudwell struck what ought to have been for the bourgeois the lethal blow against his society as a whole.

7Paul Beard, "Biographical Note," p. 8. 25

Il * PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

The most fundamental difference between bourgeois ideology and

Marxist ideology is that the former traces its method or its theory from philosophical principles, while the latter derives from sociological laws. Not the laws of thought but the laws of society are the ultimate resources of the Marxist« Marx found that the whole superstructure of society is raised upon an economic base. Laws, literature, ethics, science, even philosophy—the entire ideology of society—is a product and a reflection of the economic base of that society: this is historical materialism.

In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the econo­ mic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise le­ gal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.3

Whereas the bourgeois builds his world-view upon a system of thought

(philosophy), the Marxist builds his upon a system of activity (socio­ economic relations).

A study of Caudwell, then, should begin with his sociology, not with hls philosophy. But one cannot study Caudweli's sociology by itself,

3 Karl Marx, "Preface,*’ in A Critique,of Political Economy, trans. N. I. Stone (Chicago, 1911), pp. 11-12. 26 because his sociology Is never separated from his philosophy, his physics, or his psychology just as economics is never separated from the central ideology of society. Nowhere does Caudwell make "A Study of Bourgeois Sociology," for his writings as a whole are a critique of that sociology, He believes that Marx produced the only scientific study of the principles which make up the base of the societal struc­ ture, That Is, Marx has studied forces of production, productive rela­ tions, the market, profit, etc., not theoretically but as they actually operate in practice and produce a society’s economy. And in making this scientific study he exposed the fundamental fallacy of bourgeois economy— viz, the belief that economic production can be based on a relation be­ tween a man (owner) and a thing (machine) rather than on a relation be­ tween men. The apparent relation between men and things in bourgeois society only disguises the real relation between some men who own the machines and other men who are bound to the machines for a livelihood.

In short, economic relations, a study of history shows, are social rela­ tions; but bourgeois economy is based upon the illusion that they are not.

In a slave-owning society, the economic relation was clearly a social one, l,e, between man and man. The slave-owner ruled the slave; the slave-owner’s will was carried out by the slave. In feudal society the economic relation was still clearly a social one. The lord dominated the serfs; the serfs paid homage to the lord. In both of these societies the productive relation, the driving force of society, was social—but it was also coercive. The bourgeois thinks he has eliminated thé Coercive economic relation by setting up a system in Which it is unlawful and 27

immoral for a man to "own" another man. All that a man can own now is

„. property. It is one of his natural rights, and coercion has supposedly . .

been eliminated so that everyone might freely exercise hls natural rights.

The bourgeois does not see that his property right is, in disguised form,

also the right to own other men; he suffers from the bourgeois illusion

that all men are free, l«e« self-determining, in hls society. What he fails to recognize is that the only freedom in such a society belongs to

the machine owners, who are "free" to exploit the other men who depend

on the machine for their livelihoods. But even these machine-owners are

not free, for they are subject to the unpredictable (because they are un­

known) laws of economic necessity—booms, slumps, wars, crashes.

All of this has been demonstrated scientifically—that is, prac­ tically, not theoretically—by Marx. Society and consciousness* develop

only through man's interpenetration with Nature—working with it, changing

It, and being changed by it. This most elemental of experiences Is econo- . .mic. Economic activity is the fact of life. But in bourgeois society,»

by definition a class society, consciousness has been separated from the economic process. Consciousness, in reality a product of man's interpene­

tration with Nature (for social man nothing is primary to this interpene­

tration), has become in bourgeois society divorced entirely from the inter-

^„^penetratlon. Marx said that "the starting-point of capitalist produetlpn,

Its actual basis, was a divorce of labour from the product of labour, a divorce of the subjective labour power from the objective condition of

*In Further Studies Caudwell defines consciousness,technically, as "instinct modified by experience." What he means is my meaning here: self-and other-awareness. 28

labour."® The conscious class in bourgeois society does not work on nature; it is the leisure class. The proletarian class interpenetrates with nature, which should make it conscious and therefore free,® but the conditions of bourgeois economy keep this class in subjugation. In bourgeois society the conscious man (subject) has been separated from nature (object) and no longer interpenetrates with it; the very fact of life for bourgeois economy is the separation rather than the interpene­ tration of man and nature, and this subject-object dichotomy will mani­ fest itself throughout the ideological superstructure built upon the economic base.

The concept of the economic process being an interpenetration be­ tween man and nature is taken straight from Capital,

Primarily, labour is a process going on between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, initiates, re­ gulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He confronts nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms,and legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate nature’s productions in a form suitable to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature* He develops the potentialities that slumber within him, and subjects these inner forces to his own control,*7 6

Throughout The Crisis in Physics and all the rest of his work, when

Caudwell speaks of the proper subject-object relation being an inter­ penetrative one, this is what he means: both man, the subject, and nature.

®Karl Marx, Capital. I, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London, 1930), p. 626. 6Freedom for the Marxist, as will be explained below, is the con­ sciousness of necessity* 7Page 169. 29 the object, are changed as a result of man's action on nature. The subject-object dichotomy--the improper, bourgeois subject-object relation- manifests itself in all branches of bourgeois ideology simply because any ideology is a reflection of the economic foundation upon which it rests.

The only way that the contradictions can be removed from the ideological superstructure of bourgeois society is by eliminating the subjeet-object dichotomy from the economic base of that society. And the only way that this dichotomy can be eliminated is by the proletariat be­ coming the conscious class. But in order for this to happen the bourgeois class, which depends on the subjection of the proletariat to its will for its very existence, must be destroyed. Since the bourgeoisie can maintain the status quo only through coercion and force, the proletariat will have to wield a stronger force. In revolting and overthrowing the bourgeoisie, the proletariat can restore the subject and object, man and nature, to their proper interpenetrative, mutually-determining relation.

Caudwell is committed to the belief, as were Marx and Lenin, that the successful revolution of the proletariat can be accomplished only through the leadership of certain of the bourgeoisie. As the passage from

The Communist Manifesto would Indicate, these intellectuals* once they realise that truth is on the Left, will reject bourgeois culture entirely and take up the aegis of the proletariat by becoming its ideologists.

The Crisis In Physics provides the bourgeois intellectual with a philoso­ phical basis on which to build hls allegiance to the proletariat. It shows the bourgeois scientist and philosopher how he is enchained by bourgeois "categories of ideology" that misinterpret nature and how hls 30 solvation lies in joining forces with the proletariat which has found, through the force of circumstances, a legitimate dialectical materialistic approach to nature, in fact, at one point in The Crisis in Physics

Caudwell quotes a portion of that passage from The Communist Manifesto mentioned above and makes a very explicit invitation to his scientist- reader to join the revolutionary class, (pp. 72-73)

III. THE IDEAS

Very briefly, the argument of the book is as follows: recent dis­ coveries in modem physics have led to certain contradictory views of the universe, and the resolution of these contradictions will require giving up the old categories of bourgeois ideology, based on mechanical materialism and idealism, and adopting revolutionary ones, based on dia­ lectical materialism. Caudwell very slowly and very carefully develops this thesis by showing (1) how present bourgeois ideas of the universe have evolved from those held by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century physicists and philosophers and (2) in what respect these earlier thinkers misunderstood the subject-object relation. He points out that crises In physics, or in any other discipline for that matter, are not new phenomena, but that all previous crises have been resolved within the existing frame­ work of bourgeois ideology* In fact, Einstein's relativity physics,

Clerk-Maxwell's electromagnetic equations, and Planck's quantum physics were all resolutions of previous crises. This present crisis, though, a manifestation of the separation of the subject (man) from the object (na­ ture), can be resolved only by bringing the subject and object back into 31 the proper relation, which is not one of separation but rather one of

interpenetration, Since the subject-object dichotomy is the fundamental characteristic of bourgeois ideology, this ideology must be replaced by a revolutionary one. The subject-object dichotomy began permeating bourgeois ideology at the time of its inception, i,e, from the time some men separated fromr- nature in the labor process. This separation occurred simultaneously with the development of classes in primitive societies and with the development of machines In modem societies. According to the Marxist view, machines are the tools of an industrialised society and abet man in his struggle with nature* The active subject-object relation, l,e, man’s interpenetration with nature, ended when the more conscious mem­ bers of society no longer worked with the machines but merely owned them.

Because a society .Always adopts the ideology of its more conscious mem­ bers (consciousness being necessary for Ideology), bourgeois ideology developed. But because these members of bourgeois society no longer had an active relationship with nature, the ideology they developed naturally reflected their distorted subject-object relation.

This peculiar distortion of man’s proper relationship with nature appears in bourgeois philosophy under two guises—mechanistic materialism and idealism. The mechanist philosophers and their physicist counter­ parts view the world as a machine which runs according to certain de­ finable laws (gravity, mass, velocity, etc«)« The bourgeois "had come to know Nature via the machine (^factory and laboratory], hence the laws of Nature came to him to seem identical with the laws of the machine," 32

(pp. 36-37) This is not too serious an error, for the machine, which

Is constructed out of hits of nature, has laws not wholly different

from the laws of nature. What leads the bourgeois to a false mechanistic

philosophy Is his misconception of a machine.

The bourgeois theory of the machine is based on the part he plays in relation to the machine In concrete living*. • • His role, and the relations of bourgeois economy, are such that man's desires emerge from the night of the market and are realized through the machine as products, idiich vanish again Into the night, (p. 38) In other words, the bourgeois sees the machine as his slave, as the means

to realizing hls desires. He regards ownership of the machine as a one­

way relation. He thinks that the machine works for him by fulfilling hls

desires; but he does realize that the machine itself has an effect on

his so-called free desires,that he does not stand, god-like, apart from

it. In short, the bourgeois does not realize that man and machine are

in a mutually determining relation, each changing the other. When this conception of the machine is used as an analogue for a

system of philosophy, the result is mechanistic materialIsm. Man's re­

lation to nature is one-way; nature exists in itself and has no effect on

man. The mechanist's universe is the world-in-1tseIf, completely self-

contained; it Is the object completely cut off from a subject. The uni­

verse is a machine which runs according to its own laws, laws to which man Is not subjected. This view leads logically to the position of abso­

lute determinism. If the exact mass, velocity, and location In space and

time of any particle of matter could be determined, then the bourse of

the entire universe, past and present, could conceivably be calculated 33

fro» it. Such a view gives rise to Laplace's conception of the Divine

Calculator, which for Caudwell has come to stand for mechanism.

If the mechanists are guilty of removing the subject from the

scheme of things, the idealists are guilty of removing the object. Caud­

well says that mechanism and idealism are "different sides of the same penny."

Mechanism stripped Nature, the object, of alt qualities which had in them any tincture of the subjective, and which therefore made Man dependent on nature. This set free all sensuous active quality as Man's exclusive possession, the attributes of Mind. * . . It was the peculiar result of the cleavage between subject and object produced by bourgeois economy that the sensuous active element in concrete living was developed separately from science as idealism, (pp. 55-56)

Through a process of development from. Berkeley to Hegel, mind—active, sensuous subjectivity-mas stripped of all qualities which had objective components. Mind stripped Of all objective quality was as bare as matter stripped of all subjective quality* Finally mind was even dissociated fxmthe brain, which would tie the idea to matter. "Hence this final reality was the Idea existing out of the human brain—the Hegelian abso­ lute Idea." (p. 56) If the ultimate reality is mind, then nature, or non-mind, does not exist in itself. The object exists only in contempla- tlonbythe subject* Reality, nature, becomes for the idealist hi sown experiences and nothing else. "What then could exist, philosophicallyà for the scientist? Only phenomena—that is, appearance—the conscious field regarded as existing apart from its terms. . . . This is positiv­ ism." (pp. 62-63) The idealist-positivist, though, is no closer to the truth than the mechanist-materialist, for both fail to recognise that 34

neither subject tot object exists lit Itself, but that each exists only in active relationship with the other.®

The recent discoveries in physics that unsettled the bourgeois

philosophers and physicists, both materialists and idealists, culminated

®3eglnning on page 64, Caudwell develops a sub-chapter entitled "The Screen of Phenomena." He says that "consciousness (phenomena) is a relation between Man and Nature, but positivism attempts to take the relation without the terms," He attacks the positivists, for whom consciousness has become "a mere passive ’reflection* of the world: Its function • • . merely to be a shale copy of existing practice," "Reality knocks on the nerve endings and these are ’interpreted* as consciousness by the subject* This theory of consciousness as mere reflection leads to a regretful admission that It Is a ’misleading* refidCtlon, ♦ * . Thus according to Eddington, the real table Is a swarm of molecules bussing hither and thither, and is totally different from the table we see. The table we see is a mere fiction, a symbol of the realthing. Consciousness here has become a screen," (pp, 64-65) " But a true dialectic view of the learning process, which Caud­ well purports to hold, would seem necessarily to lead to this idealism* Caudwell will not permit the subject to be passive in the relation of consciousness. And ^yetlshe accuses the positivist of taking the relation without the terms despite the fact that the positivist has the subject and object interpenetrating. The subject "interprets" the object; this changes the subject, who now "knows"; the new knowledge In turn changes the object through the subject’s subsequent action on It in ac­ cordance With Its new knowledge. The subject would seem to remain pas­ sive only if the phenomena are presented to it unchanged, uninterpreted, l*e,* only if consciousness Is not a screen. Perhaps Caudwell would have had more tolerance for the positivist philosopher if he had accorded to consciousness the same task he gives ; to poetry In Chapter 10 of Illusion and Reality, If it is true ithat "man­ kind cannot bear too much reality," perhaps consciousness, like poetry, has adream-work to perform* Such an Idea leads, of course,, to a highly Idealistic epistemology: If consciousness is an illusion, then the reality underlying it can be known only Intuitively—a far cry from Marxism, but not too far from the intuitive grasp of the future which Caudwell claims is one of the character!sitics of the hero in Chapter 2 of Studies In a Dying Culture. , ' \ 35

in Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy« According to Caudwell, all

philosophers of the bourgeois era were strict determlnists In that their

universe was predicated on continuity and harmony. For the mechanists

there was order In laws of nature, and for the Idealists there was order In the mind of God. But Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy (called

by Caudwell "Principle of Uncertainty") precluded the possibility of the

kind of order envisioned by the bourgeois mechanists and idealists.

Until the twentieth century physicists believed that classical

Newtonian physics gave an accurate description of the mechanical be­ havior of all matter, extended objects as well as particles* But in the early years of this century experiments were being conducted and theorising was being done Which would prove that Newtonian physics, based on Euclidean geometry, was insufficient.8 The flrsttsensational breakthrough came in

1905 with Einstein's special theory of relativity, the basic premise of which was the constancy of the velocity of light. The theory was the re­ sult of Einstein's attempt to reconcile the contradiction insdneteenth- century experiments which proved both (1) that the earth moved through the ether without disturbing it and (2) that the Other moved with the earth , , on its path around the sun. The special theory of relativity prestmes that the velocity of light is always the same, but one's yardsticks

9The beginning of the twentieth century is a convenient dividing line. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century physicists, of course, recog­ nised imperfections in Newton's theories. But the theories remained largely workable until this century, even while unanswerable questions were being posed by late nineteenth-century scientists. 36

of length and time (velocity being distance divided by time) vary with

hls motion.

Einstein's theory gave rise to Minkowski's conception of a four­

dimensional space-time continuum and suggested that a non-Euclidean

geometry might provide a more consistent view of the universe, in 1915

Einstein made known his general theory of relativity, which was figured in Riemannlan geometry and used as a starting point Minkowski's four­ dimensional universe. This theory was incredibly useful in that it ex­ plained, among other things, gravity as simpl^a manifestation of the curvature of a four-dimensional universe (l.e. not a force, but a property of such a universe), and it explained the Irregularity in the orbital path of Mercury. 5. Ijt„ predicted—and these predictions were later confimed— that light from a distant star would be deflected as it passed near the sun and that the star, consequently, would appear displaced; and it pre­ dicted that atoms on the sun would vibrate more slowly than similar atoms on earth* Relativity physics was eminently practicable, but it did not explain everything. It could not, for instance, account for electric and magnetic phenomena. More Importantly, though, the laws of relativity physics did not correspond with the laws of quantum physics.

While Einstein was developing laws of macroscopic proportions. Max

Planck was attempting to determine whether the long or the short waves emitted from a hot body carried the most energy. The results of his ex­ periments were blatant contradictions of his mathematical calculations, and those calculations were based on laws that were universally accepted and that had been verified many times in many different experiments. When 37

hls own results were re-checked and revealed no error, the only solu­

tion was to change one of his assumptions. Instead of regarding energy

as being emitted continuously, he decided that it was emitted in jerks,

or quanta. An atom radiating energy would radiate it In separate little

spurts. The further idea that energy is actually atomic came from Ein­

stein. As a result, matter, electricity, and energy all came to be re­

garded as having an atomic structure. A further result of quantum theory was the necessity of renovating the current theory of light. Light had always been regarded as a wave

phenomenon; but since light was a form of energy, that theory ought to

have been scrapped in favor of a corpuscular, or bullet, theory of light.

The wave theory of light, however, could not be abandoned; it explained

too many things that the corpuscular theory did not. Further experiment

apparently resolved the contradiction by showing that the electron was

both a wave and a particle. The laws of quantum physics which developed as a result of these experiments were found to be incompatible with the

laws of relativity physics. The laws explaining the motion of what seemed tobe the ultimate constituents of matter simply were not applicable to bodies of astronomical size. This contradiction was formidable In itself, but quantum physics bore a strange fruit which complicated the picture even

further. All of the experimentation on the electron led to Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy. Noting that the quantum of energy was a pro­ duct of both position and velocity, that both position and velocity had to be determined in order to measure an electron, Heisenberg discovered 38

that the more exactly the one was measured, the less exactly the other

one could be measured. The reason for this was the fact that the act , of observation (or measurement) itself caused a change in the quantum

being observed. The atom of energy being observed would be disturbed, and therefore changed, merely by its exposure to light. Heisenberg's

discovery rendered obsolete the principle of determinacy upon Which had been founded both relativity and quantum physics—because it demonstrated that there was no cleavage between subject and object and, carried a step

further by Caudwell, that their proper relation was a mutually determining one. The crisis in modem physics had split modem physicists into two schools: Einstein and Planck, on the one hand, were defending older views and upholding determinism and causality; whereas Jeans, Schrodinger,

Heisenberg, Dirac, and Eddington, on the other, were proclaiming "that

'determinism* or 'causality* has been expelled from physics, that the Universe is the creation of a mathematician, that its real nature is un­ knowable," (p. 3) and that modem physics provides evidence for free will.

The old school had assumed a view comparable to that of the mechanistic materialists, while the new school's views corresponded to those of the philosophical idealists: the universe had become a thought in the mind of a mathematician. The members of the new school all contributed some­ thing to showing that the old school's notions were not correct. But this new school attempted to resolve the crisis within the framework of bour­ geois ideology, and because their resolution was based on an improper subject-object relation, it too was unsatisfactory. Its claim for free 39

will was based on an erroneous understanding of freedom as the ignorance

of necessl ty—the old "bourgeois illusion." Caudwell would show that the

revolutionary resolution to the modern crisis in physics permits a real

freedom of the will, a freedom based on the recognition of necessity.

To show the error of the old and the new schools, Caudwell makes

a distinction between strict determinism and causality (which he calls sww*thie causal relation"). The old school defends determinism and the new,.,

school repudiates it because both of them misunderstand the real nature

of determinism. Because they see a dichotomised subject-object relation^

they never permit man to enter into their scheme of determinism. But

Caudwell justifies his definition of causal relation, as opposed to deter­

minism, by citing Heisenberg's proof that the object (nature, quanta) Is

changed by the subject (man* experimenter) in the very act of knowing.

Caudweli's explanation of the causal relation brings man into the causal

world of physics. The bourgeois physicist cannot make Caudweli's distinc­

tion between strict determinism and the causal relation because his whole

frame of reference is based on the separation rather than the interpene­

tration of subject and object.

Determinism and causality are precisely the same in theory and both exclude the causal relation. But

determinism ... can be given a meaning as soon as we study Its generation in theory by practice. Determinism is merely the logical characteristic by which we denote exlstents in the field of con­ sciousness. Since In a static field of consciousness an existent Is absolutely and necessarily determined by the remainder of the field (g or not-g) the parts of objectivity appear to be neces­ sarily connected. * ./• 40

But because it is a purely logical form, it is without content, and is of no value to physics, ’Whatsoever is, when it is, is necessarily so as it is* Is in fact an old scholastic dictum. Anyone can understand that all that is is determined by all that is not-j>, and that If everything not-black is sorted from the Universe, it leaves only black. Thus determinism in its strictest form is nothing but a law of thought, the statement in physical terms of the principles of Exclusion and Contradiction, (pp. 127-128)

Theoretically, each existent is determined by every other existent; this is the same as saying that, in theory, everything is caused by what it is not. The scholastic dictum, phrased more simply, is "being is being": that an existent is itself is determined or caused by the impossibility of It being something other. Caudwell emphasizes that such an idea is theoretically, but not practically, true because even though being exists in the world of thought, becoming is the only real process in the world of practice* As Heisenberg demonstrated, quanta do not exist; they become

Caudwell continues his distinction:

For this very reason, however, strict determinism is not an ade­ quate basis for physics because a logical law operates entirely within the realm of theory, and merely soils the ’premises,* l,e. What Is already In the conscious field. But physics is concerned with the ’cause* of the conscious field; then, aware that changes are produced in the conscious field (objects move, etc,), aware that It Is the subject of an effect, it asks what is the cause? And it can only answer by practice, by Itself being driven out to fill the role of cause, and Itself produce changes in Its own conscious field—l.e, changes in ’matter’, in the source of changes In phenomena. Hence there is a difference between the principle of determinism and causality, (p. 128)

This passage, taken from the unrevised section of the book, Is more con­ fusing than it need be. Caudwell means simply that physics wants to know what in fact, not in theory, is the cause, not the determinant, of any changes in the conscious field (of the physicist). Change Involves 41

becoming, not being; and so determinism la no longer a sufficient ex­

planation. Aware that any aueh change is an effect, physics asks what

its cause is. And the only answer physics can accept is one arrived

at through practice, that is, through experimentation on the "matter"

of the phenomena involved in the change. And through such an experiment, which necessarily has the physicist as its cause, physics discovers that

another existent caused the change. It discovers further that this other existent, in causing the change, was itself changed. Cause and effect is always a mutually determining (determinism, in Caudwell's sense) re­

lation and always involves the emergence of some new quality—else there has been no change. Earlier Caudwell said that «an ingression of novelty"

(p. 125) is the essence of a causal relation* There is, then, a real distinction between strict causality, or determinism, and the causal re­

lation: determinism is a dead principle of thought, while the causal re­

lation is a vital principle of action. Determinism has meaning for theory, but causality has meaning for positivé© science.

Caudwell concludes his argument: Causality (causal relation} as the framework of science has there­ fore a practical significance. It is simply matter, the thing-ln- itself becoming the thing for us. The unknowable thlng-in-itself cannot exist, for even to know it is unknowable Is to know some­ thing about it. But we know more* We know that treated in cer­ tain ways it reveals certain qualities. We change it—produce qualities—ripples in water, synthetic dyes, artlflcal rocks, and sun images. The particular causal relations Involved In these pro­ ductions of qualities, generalized and systematized, therefore give quite a lot of information about the unknowable thing In itself. Hence 'naive realism* or materialism is justified not by theo­ retical arguments but by practice. By continually 'changing Nature,' by continually producing effects and phenomena we learn the qualities 42

of matter. Matter Is a mere name—as vacuous as not-matter. It Is only matter in its causality, In the relations Which make qualities appear, that becomes rigid and fleshy and really existent, (pp. 129-130)

Once again the emphasis is placed on practice, 6ft action, on man (the

physicist) entering into an active mutually determining relationship

with the other phenomena of the universe. For Caudwell the unknowable

does not exist, so matter-in«itself does not exist. But "matter In its

causality" does exist and it leads one to a revolutionary physics whose

Intelligibility depends upon the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

The error of bourgeois physicists, old and new, is their failure

to recognise that matter of Itself can be a cause. Always they posit the existence of some "free" agent, a First Cause, not subject to the laws of

causality, to account for these laws—as if the laws were real "things" that required something other than their operational value for their

"existence.*? The bourgeois physicists do not recognise the mutually de­

termining power of particles of matter. They do not, in short, under­

stand that in any relation the subject and object interpenetrate; that one is not just "pure" cause (giver) and the other "pure" effect (re­

ceiver); that the subject, in practice, in action, Is not separated from

the object, regardless of their relation in theory. The Indeterminacy, or uncertainty, principle has underwritten Caudweli's dialectical material­

ism. Outside the sphere of "phenomena" and "experiments" and in the sphere of everyday living, the "free" agent becomes the bourgeois himself.

He will not permit himself to become a part of the causal world of physics; 43

there is something in him—a "free" will-«not subject to the laws of causality. The bourgeois suffers from the illusion that he is self- determining and that his freedom consists In the exercise of his will, regardless of the causal laws of necessity. But, in truth, his(the sub­ ject) is part of the material universe (the object) and stands In a mu­ tually determining relation with it. He is subject to the laws of causality, and his freedom lies in recognising these laws (becoming con­ scious of necessity) and then In "willing" to act in accordance with them.

The bourgeois illusion of freedom, derived from his dichotomizing of sub­ ject and object, manifests itself in every pore of his dying culture.

IV. "REALITYi A STUDY OF BOURGEOIS PHILOSOPHY"

The last essay In Further Studies, "Reality," also develops this central argument for dialectical materialism. The pattern of this essay.

Which is but one-fifth the length of The Crisis in Physics, is generally the same as that of the book. Here Caudwell enumerates four doomed at­ tempts made by bourgeois philosophers to get rid of the dualism that is generated by the subject-object dichotomy in bourgeois economic relations.

To let the object depend for its existence on a self-determining subject leads to solipsism. To let the subject depend on a self-determining object leads to mechanical materialism. To disregard the subject-object relation and consider the phenomena to be primary is phenomenology; and to claim that the material basis of the phenomena is unknowable is positivism. And, finally, to consider the subject and object as functioning separately, to consider mkn*a knowledge of the world (and the evidence of the world’s being Influenced by man) aa having been arranged beforehand by some­

thing outside of reality (God)—this is Cartesianism, In showing that

these philosophies cannot resolve the dualism, Caudwell uses the same ar­

gument that was found in The Crisis in Physics—vis, that these explana­

tions are all generated within a world-view that sees man operating

"freely" outside the world of material causality« The solution proposed

In this essay Is the same found In The Crisis In Physics—dialectical materialism, Which looks straight to the material basis from which the

subject-object antagonism derived*

Although the essay and the book say essentially the same things, the longer critique of bourgeois philosophy does not contain the lucid and detailed explanation of the premises of dialectical materialism that ia found in "Reality," The Crisis in Physics seems to have been designed primarily to expose the errors of bourgeois philosophy, "Reality" is im­ portant for its positive statement of the nature of the philosophy that thetventIeth-century Marxist will substitute for the contradictory bour­ geois -isms, Caudwell contends here that not only is dialectical material­ ism an antidote for the anarchy of modem philosophy, buttthat it has in fact been generated as a synthesis of mechanical materialism (thesis) and idealism (antithesis). The premise of dialectical materialism Is stated quite simply:

"that the universe Is a material unity, and that this is a becoming," (p, 218)10 The material unity of the universe is proved by thought in

18This and all further quotations from Further Studies In a Dying Culture, ed, Edge11 Rickvord (London, 1949), will be identified with a page reference in the body of the paper. 45

unity with practice, by hypothesizing about the thing-in-Itself and then

experimenting on it and making it the thlng-for-us.

Phenomena are exhibited by the thing-ln-ltself, and if we can by practice force the thing-in-itself to exhibit phenomena according to our desire, then we know this much about the thing-ln-ltself— that in certain circumstances it will exhibit?: certain phenomena, (p. 218)

The fact that science is able to practice on the material basis of all phenomena is proof of the material unity of the universe. But in prac­ ticing on this material basis the scientist causes a change in the ma­ terial basis. Nonetheless, this change-causing practice "Is a proof of unity, of the sameness, likeness, or determinism in all phenomena," (p* 219) caudwell recalls the often quoted statement from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point Is to change it," And he offers it as evidence that all bourgeois philosophies are doomed to frustration.

It is not possible to interpret the world, except by changing it. Thus the impasse of philosophers is seen to be the impasse of philo­ sophy, and a proof of the impossibility of interpreting the world by thought alone, (p, 219)

One of the characteristics of dialectical materialism which dis­ tinguishes it from other philosophies Is the "dialectic leap" that occurs whenever a new quality comes into being. The second part of the premise of dialectical materialism maintained that the universe, reality, was "a becoming," This means that change is the essence of reality; and If a thing is changed, It is unlike what it was before, it has some new quality If change is real, and by our premises it is primary, such a quality does not come into existence either by the gradual decre­ ment of a known quality to nothing, or the gradual increment of a 46

very faint quality to something. Before, it was not, not in any way. Now it is, in every way. There has therefore been a ’jump*. To deny this is to deny the reality of change, and to suggest that the qualitywas already there, but so faintly we did not 'notice It*, (p. 219)H

In continuing his explanation of the premise of dialectical materialism, Caudwell says that the name given to the material unity of the universe is "space" and that the name given to the becoming is

"time." Time does not flow on as new qualities emerge; rather, "the emergence of such qualities is what time is." (p. 220) Time is the quality of newness, of unlikeness in all things. But in order to say that "some­ thing" has changed, there must be a quality of likeness in It. If there is not, then the "something" is not changed; it is entirely different.

Just as the newness of quality, unlikeness, is time, theOldness, the likeness, is space. "Qualities do not arrange themselves homogeneously

In spaoe, space is the homogeneity in their qualities." (p. 220)

Caudwell's purpose in thus establishing time and space as aspects of becoming* of the dialectical movement of the universe, is to show that self-determination is a concept which should be alien to physics.

11At this point one wants to ask the dialectical materialist two questions. First* why cannot the change occur through the "gradual decre­ ment of a known quality"? Caudwell says that It cannot, but he offers no explanation. And, secondly* why cannot the "change" occur by a "gradual increment of a very faint quality to something"? Is it inconceivable that all potential qualities are present, in at least some minimal degree, in the thlng-in-itself from its inception? In other words* might not chhnge, the "jump" to a new quality be an illusion? The question is cer­ tainly not a new one, nor Is Caudwell's answer to it. In anticipating such a question, he takes an a priori stand. If no "jump" Is matter if an entirely new quality does not come into existence, "there would there­ fore have been no change, and reality is, by our definition, change." (p. 219)

• \ 6?

Any new quality* as it emerges* is determined by (or ’contains*) a prior quality (the cause) and the rest of the Universe of qualities. Or, more strictly—since becoming ls*2 logically prior to time and space—the two terms determining a quality, (a) the prior quality and (b) all other determining qualities, are to that quality cause and ground, and contain Its past time and its surrounding space, (p, 223)

What Caudwell means by "ground" is simply "the rest of the toilverse,"

A bell causes a sound, but the air, earth, etc, must be exactly as they are for that exact sound to be produced. In this case the bell is the cause and the rest of the universe is the ground, All this is not the same as saying that g is determined by all that is not-g. It is to say that changed-g is determined by g and all that is not-g, Caudwell reaches the same conclusion, couched in slightly different terms, that he did in

The Crisis In Physicsi every particle in the universe, as the universe becomes, Is determined by a mutually determining relation between itself

(subject) and the rest of the universe (object).

The universe of the dialectical materialist, although It "contains all qualities and all experience and has no closed parts, is yet as a who le'"j»al f-determined," (p. 230) That is to say, the totlverse itself needs no unknowable force outside of Itself to account for its becoming. In this universe, thought (or mind)* divorced from matter in most bourgeois philoso­ phies, plays a real and determining role.

Mind is a determining set of relations between the matter in my body and the rest of the universe. It is not all the set, for not all the necessities whereby my body and the rest of the Universe mutually detexmine each other is known to me, not all my being is conscious, , • , The more these relations between my body and the

^The original reads "its," 48

Universe are part of my conscious volition the more I am free. Those relations are necessary or determining relations. Free­ dom is the consciousness of necessity, (p, 231)

When the bourgeois finally recognizes that freedom is the consciousness of necessity, that self-determination is an illusion, he will no longer be a bourgeois;ha will be a Communist, a dialectical materialist. And, aware that the universe is determined by causal laws and that he, as part of the universe, Is determined by these same laws, the ex-bourgeois will recognize the illusion upon which his society is grounded, will em­ brace the scientific, "causal” Marxist sociology, and will become a leader

In the struggle to make the bourgeois illusion an anachronism. CHAPTER 3

THE DYING CULTURE

Caudwell was a man of action and a man of strong convictions: his life stands in evidence of these facts. He could not be content

in telling the bourgeois that his philosophy was distorted by hls eco­ nomic relations. He could not simply wait for the bourgeois world to collapse around him. Having diagnosed the source and nature of the sickness from which modem bourgeois culture suffered, he had to con­ vince the bourgeois that his culture was sick. The bourgeois could not be persuaded that his culture needed a new heart to give it new life blood If he could not see any symptoms of the old heart's malignancy.

So Caudwell sought out the bourgeois illusion in every limb of the super­ structure of bourgeois ideology. He found evidence of the bourgeois illusion in the bourgeois* literature, In his religion, and in his psy­ chology, In the way he wrote history, In the way he judged art, In the way he thought, and In the way he acted. And wherever he found the bourgeois illusion, Caudwell exposed it to the withering glare of dia­ lectical materialism. He made repeated attacks against the subject- object relation as it was distorted in bourgeois economic activity and against the mistaken notion of freedom that derived from this dichotomy.

Sometimes his attacks demonstrated his wit and sometimes they demonstrated hls knowledge of the most recent scientific discoveries. Always'they were vigorous, with no quarter given. 50

These attacks took the form of thirteen essays, including the one

studied in the last chapter* Sight of them, collected under the title

of Studies fcfi a Dying Culture, were edited and published by John Strachey

In 1938, The other five essays were edited by Edgell Rlekword and pub­

lished in 1949 as Further Studies In a Dying Culture. There are, no

doubt, good reasons for studying the books as separate units. The thematic

unity of each stems from a different source: liberty is the thereof Studies.

While "the unity of thinking and doing" is the theme of Further Studies.

In addition, the essays In the latter are longer, more technical, and more difficult to understand. And most Of the essays in that book were written later than most of the essays in Studies.

But there are also good reasons for studying the two books to­ gether. None of the essays is very far from dealing with both themes, thesebelng the ideas In which Caudwell was most Interested. Ethics, psy­ chology, ,and literature are assaulted in Studies; and Further Studies con­ tinues the attack con bourgeois ideology with critiques of history, religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. The essay on Freud in Studies and the essay on consciousness In Further Studies, taken together, provide a critique of bourgeois psychology. And, finally, since all thirteen of the essays were in manuscript form at the tlmo of Caudwell’s death, it is probably an unwarranted assumption that he had two separate publications in mind.

Because ail the essays serve largely the same function in the overall seheme of Caudwell’s work, each essay showing in a very specific way what is wrong with bourgeois culture, they will be treated as a unit here, 51

I♦ LIBERTY

In jhls introduction to Studies. John Strachey notes three tasks

confronting the twentleth«century liberator. First, he must expose the

unconscious, unseen social bonds of contemporary society which have

grown out of the economic relations that make modem society possible.

Second, he must make men realize that what is good in capitalist society

arises "from the higher degree of integration, the richer growth of

social connective tissue, which the new form of society has unconsciously

produced" and that what is bad in capitalist society "arises because

of the unconscious and, therefore, uncontrolled and uncomprehended nature of these new, close and dominating social relations." (p. xiv)1 And,

third, the modem liberator has to show men that the unconscious social relations must be broken down and that conscious socialism must be built

up* Caudwell is the liberator In all of these essays, but nowhere is the

irony of his position made clearer than in his essay from Studies. "Liberty:

A Study in Bourgeois Illusion." Here Caudwell reveals that what modern culture needs liberation from Is the bourgeois myth of liberty.

In hls critique of bourgeois freedom Caudwell goes right to the

core of the bourgeois illusion* Bourgeois social relations cause the

freedom (le. leisure) of the bourgeois and the unfreedom of the proletarian, who is chained to his job. This condition can be changed only by changing *

^This and all further quotations from Studies and Further Studies Will be identified with a page reference In the text. 52

the cause of it, the social relations themselves. Since Marxism is the

only scientific study of social relations, the intellectual must read

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, and Bukharin in order to find out how

to alter the existing social relations« He will discover that the transi­

tion from the present conditions to universal liberty wilt involve

the alteration of all the adhérences between humans and the capi­ tal, machinery and materials, Which mediate social relations. These^must no longer adhere to individual persons—the bourgeois class—but to all members of society ... « Moreover, this in­ volves that all the visible institutions depending on private pro­ fit relations—laws, church, bureaucracy, judiciary, army, police, education—must beguiled down and rebuilt, (p* 200)

The bourgeois, of course, will not permit this kind of revolution be­

cause it will destroy hls "freedom.'’

lhe bourgeois will fight to preserve his privileged status, but

it is a battle that the very conditions of his economy destine him to

lose, Capitalist economy demands that the bourgeois class become ever

smaller as its members force one another out of business with trusts and

monopolies* Intellectuals, doctors, professionals, petty bourgeois—all

will someday realize that the struggle of the proletariat is their strug­

gle, They will help to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat,

which derives Its name from the fact that, once in power, the proletariat

will use totalitarian,coercive measures to prevent the bourgeoisie from

staging a counter-revolution.

The bourgeois class will eventually disappear because there is no longer any need for its existence. Whereas the bourgeoisie depended

upon the proletariat, needed it to continue its own existence, the prole­

tariat does not need the bourgeoisie. Whenever the bourgeois class 53

disappears entirely, the proletarian state can ’Twither away" since there

Is no longer any need for It. Then, the conditions of universal liberty will have been established.

This story of the inevitability of the Communist classless society

Is told frequently In the work® of Caudwell. Its being singled out here

would perhaps be unwarranted if it were not for the fact that Caudwell

does not stop at establishing the conditions for universal liberty. The

classless society will grant to everyone the kind of freedom, associated

with leisure, that the bourgeois enjoys now; property relations will be

replaced with social relations and no one will "own" any other person.

Hie bourgeois seems to be free now because there are no constraints placed

on his actions as there are on the actions of the proletariat. The laws

that constrain the proletarian are for the benefit of the bourgeois. But,

Caudwell asks,how free is the bourgeois, or anyone else for that matter,

if he cannot do what he wills to do?

A free will alone cannot secure liberty; action must also be un- constrained—by civil law and by "natural” law. "To be really free we must also be able to do what we freely will to do." (p. 209) In order to be free, then, one must be conscious not only of hls own necessity but also of the laws of outer reality, since any free act will Involve not only himself but also outer reality*

Caudwell has reached the Marxist definition of freedom as the con­ sciousness of necessity, but he moves one step further to explain how one becomes conscious of inner and outer necessity; and in so doing he 54

introduces what will become In later essays and in Illusion and Reality

a central theme.

Language, science, and art are all simply the results of man's uniting with his fellows to learn about himself and outer reality, in order to Impose his desires upon it. Both Knowledge and effort are only made possible in co-operation, and both are made neces­ sary by man's struggles to be freer, (p. 216)

Art, as Illusion and Reality will show, will reveal to man the necessity of the human heart; and science will reveal to him the causal necessities of outer reality (and, for other men, he is part of outer reality). To­ gether they expand man's consciousness and thereby make him freer*

II. THE LITERATI

In three separate essays in Studies in a Dying Culture. Caudwell mcovers the bourgeois illusion In the lives and works of three popular twentieth-century writers—Shaw, Wells, and D, H. Lawrence. The basic error in both Shaw and Wells is their belief that freedom from bourgeois oppression can be achieved through talking rather than through action.

And Lawrence’s error is in his regressive answer to the problems of bour­ geois society; he believes that man's salvation lies in his return to the primitive In him, to the Instincts, to the "blood." All three writers, because they fail to join actively the battle against bourgeois society, contribute to its support. The essay on Shaw, entitled "A Study of the Bourgeois Superman," focuses on Shaw's abhorrence of modem science, on his recourse to utopian I socialism, and on his belief In the efficacy of pure contemplation, Shaw believdd that 55

out of hls Platonic soul man can extract pure wisdom in the form of world-dominating Ideas, and out of debate and ratiocination, without social action, beat out a new and higher consciousness, (pp. 2-3)

He did not recognize the restrictions which science has placed on the knowledge of a single Individual, but instead swept away the apparatus of science as "mumbo*jumbo" and substituted "the history of reality in terms ofa Witchdoctor’s ’life-force* and a Jam-to-morrow-God.« (p, 3) ’ • < His pride would not let him admit that he could not dominate all know­ ledge by pure cerebration.

Shaw’s attempt to substitute thought for action is evident in his plays and Is the reason for their failure.

A bourgeois intellectual always believes that whatever he con­ ceives as absolute truth and justice—vegetarianism or equal in­ comes or anti-vaccination—can be imposed on the world by success­ ful argument. Hence Shaw’s plays, (p. 11)

Hls characters are walking intellects; hls plays are debates. His "heroes" like Joan of Arc or Julius Caesar are unreal because they never do any­ thing. "Actors are nothing; thinkers are everything." (p. 8) Shaw made all proletarian figures into caricatures, who must be educated—must learn to thinkand debate—to be respectable. In all of his plays Shaw criti­ cized the bourgeois system, but he never acted. He talked; he said to accept,,^thjjigs as they are until the system 1» changed; but he would not act in order to change the system. And, Caudwell warns, "he who takes no active Steps to change the system,helps to maintain the system." (p. 15)

Dissatisfied with the system but unwilling to change it, Shaw let himself believe in a bourgeois class regenerated by Fabianism. As he be­ came more and more certain of the ultimate decay of the bourgeois class, 56 he found this solution untentable and resolved his problem in another way.

Relief is found In the faith of a Life Force making inevitably for a Utopia (Back to Methuselah). Or as in St. Joan he tries to comfort himself by turning to a period When this class he has com­ mitted himself to, this bourgeois class, played an active creative part: he draws St, Joan as the heroine and prophet of bourgeois individuality, amid a dying medievalism, (p. 17)

Even in working out this dilemma, though, he found himself faced with another problem, As the intellectual superman, he had the problem of communicating with "non-thinkers” and "half-thinkers," *an inferior race of creature." He decided to treat "frivolous minds" as children.

He "sugars the pill of reason with paradox, humour, with lively and pre­ post ro vs incident." (p, 12) As a result "his plays are full of deliberately forced conversions, unconvincing denouements, and a general escape from reality through the medium of fantasy and humour." (p. 15)

Shaw believed in preaching in his plays and did not let his art serve as a guide for action (knowledge) as good art must. He believed that preaching would cure the ills of the modem world also. He even had his ideal world of the future peopled by "preachers." It was

a world not of communism, but ... a world ruled by intellectual Samurai guiding the poor muddled workers; a world of Fascism. For bourgeois intellectuals obsessed with a false notion of the nature of liberty are by the inherent contradictions of their notion at length driven to liberty's opposite, Fascism, Shaw's Utopia is a planned world imposed from above in which the organi­ sation is in the hands of a bureaucracy of intellectuals, (pp. 8-9)

But a bureaucracy means classes, and liberty can exist only in a classless society, where one class will not impose so-called freedom on another.

And real freedom can be achieved only when action becomes the method for resolving the conflicts between thoughts. No Issue could ever be resolved 57

"in a world Where thought rules and action must hold Its tongue.*'

(p, 11) Shaw, as the bourgeois superman, was the epitome of the opera­

tion of the bourgeois illusion. He thought that man could disregard

science (which shows one the necessity of nature) and be "free" to

command the world through thought*

Like Shaw, Wells took a critical attitude toward the social con­ ditions that made life in the petit bourgeois class so frustrating.

Caudwell's "Study in Utopianism" is devoted to showing how Wells strug­ gled throughout hls life to escape from the petit bourgeois. He com­ mercialized his abilities in both science and art In order to get rich.

If Caudwell was able to admire the turner in Shaw and the realism in the earlier Lawrence novels, he found nothing admirable in Wells except a natural "artlsltc bent," which was quickly corrupted, and a "gift for vivid metaphor," which "appears in welcome flashes amid oceans of turgid and shoddy thinking," (p. 80) Wells emerges as the worst failure of all of the bourgeois studied in the book. Because of the Importance Caudwell attaches to science and art as agents for securing a greater measure of freedom for man, he no doubt was least tolerant of a man who was potentially both a scientist and an artist but who put both abilities on the open market, As much as

Wells disliked the social conditions of bourgeois society and as much as he sought freedom for all from them, he still criticized irresponsibly and constantly changed his mind about how the problems could,be eliminated 58

He took the role of popular 'thinker', writer of the novel *of ideas* and of 'outlines* of science and history, because he had been unable to pursue real art and had been forced to forsake real science. He could not be creative, for creation is the pre­ rogative of the man who is real artist or real scientist. Neces­ sarily therefore he became the great entrepeneur of modem and not- so-modem theories. ... But because he was devoid of any world­ view and had not escaped from the inborn bewilderment of the petit bourgeois, he can make nothing but a muddle of all these Ideas—an eclectic mish-mash. The subtlest and acutest hypothesis in his hands somehow becomes clumsy and shoddy. Science's most vital dis­ coveries recounted by him seem grey and llnen-draperish. Can there ever have been a man accepted seriously as a thinker, who showed so little capacity not merely for original but even for clear and logical thought? (pp, 83-84)

Caudwell has no higher opinion of Weils* commercialized art than he does of hls clumsy science. Whenever one writes for the market, he must Inevitably subject hls artistic talent to the whim of popular taste.

Caudwell's evaluation of Wells' art, though it lacks any specific references to any of Wells' work,is uncompromisingly disdainful.

Once having denied art as an avocation justified by its social utility in favourof art as a cash-producer justified by sales, the development of his writer's gift was stifled. ... Wells has not created any art of importance, and his life spent In the petty bourgeois upward struggle has prevented him from getting Into touch with reality. No real contemporary problem Is ever the theme of hls novels* Doubtless this explains the appeal to his mind of the scientific fantasy, with which alone—and then only in hisy»uth—he achieves any measure of artistic success, (pp, 80-81) Wells forsook science and art for propaganda because, like Shaw, he believed in the primacy.of thought over action. He believed the world's Ills could be preached away rather than acted away. He suffered from the common bourgeois error: "Man's will Is believed free in Itself, and not only in so far as it creates conditions which realize its free­ dom." (p. 86) But thought Is primary only for the utopian socialist, who is able to visualize (think) In detail the happy world of the future 59

but has noldea of how that world Is to ba attained. Action is pri­ mary for the scientific socialist, who knows only (1) that in the fu- ture social relations will be free and not determined by the cash- '■ i nexus and (2) that he must act to destroy the old system in order to bring this new world into being. Wells, the utopian Socialist,

makes the old bourgeois assumption that men are bom, each per­ fectly free, and that their wants and dreams mould the world of social relations, not that the world of social relations [molds] their wants and dreams, Which In turn react upon the world of social relations to produce a continual process of historical development. ... Wells’s ’science* requires as its first step the substitution for all laws of causality of the free operation Of the mind. (pp. 86-87)

Lawrence,«-toofi believed that men were bom free and that their present freedom consisted in the blind exercise of the individual will in defiance of the causal laws of social reality. "Man is ’free* in so far as his ’free* instincts, the ’blood*, the ’flesh’, are given an out­ let. Man is free not through but in spite of social relations." (p. 69) This illusion manifests itself in Lawrence’s art inasmuch as he did not find himself in his art form but rather tried to express himself in it.

The value of art to the artlstftshould be that It makes him free, that it helps him to realise his self. When the artist synthesizes his personal experience with society’s experience, When he presses his inner self into the mold of social relations, he creates, at the same time, a socially valuable product and his own self. But, Lawrence, instead of-becoming conscious through his fiction, used his fiction to preach the doctrine of unconsciousness. 60

Lawrence, like Shaw and Wells, had a hatred for the bourgeoisie of which he was a part and criticized them "relentlessly and bitterly«"

But his solution to the problems caused by bourgeois social relations was as unrealistic as Shaw’s. Uhlike Shaw, he did not glorify thought; on the contrary, he believed that the bloody the flesh, was wiser than the intellect.

The solution of the individual’s needs is * . . plainly to be found in a return to instinctive living. But how are we to return to instinctive living? By casting off consciousness; we must return along the path we have come. (p. 59)

Lawrence’s solution is inadequate because it is based upon the erroneous belief that consciousness Is equated with thinking and unconsciousness with feeling* But the further one regresses into unconsciousness, the less, not the more, feelings he has. "Pure" feelings would be nothing more than automatic response to stimuli—behaviorism. A look at primitive society reveals that the savage experienced fewer and less refined feelings than the twentieth-century man and needed a much stronger stimulus to evoke the feelings at all. The only way one can experience more feelings is by becoming more conscious* What Lawrence "might mean" is that "feeling has wilted under modem conditions and that we must expand the feeling basis of our consciousness." (p. 61) But, if Lawrence meant this, his solution would be Coimnunlst and not Fascist. But Lawrence chose Fascism, the perpetuator of the bourgeois society that he hated, because, like T.

E. Lawrence, he never succeeded In escaping from the limitations of bour­ geois consciousness.

2jn This My Hand. Ian Venning’s lack of feelings corresponded to hls dull consciousness* 61

Half of Caudwell's essay on Lawrence does not deal with the artist, but rather with art in general* It Is, In effect, a summary of those parts of Illusion and Reality which show (1) that the creation of a work of art is a social process, (2) that the art work has a social function, and (3) that bourgeois art denies both. Mudwell twice mentions having dealt with these matters more fully elsewhere, by which he evidently means Illusion and Reallty. But In one respect the explanation in this essay is superior. Here the author gives a more lucid—perhaps because it Is more concise—explanation of how language functions socially In a poem and how it operates dialectically because it creates an Illusion of reality,

Language "freezes" reality, which is actually ever-changing.

The artist experiences this discrepancy between language and reality as follows: he has had an Intense experience of a rose and wishes to communicate his experience to his fellows In words. He wishes to say, *1 saw a rose*. But ’rose* has a definite social meaning, or group of meanings, and we are to suppose that he has had an ex­ perience with the rose which does not correspond to any of society's previous experiences of roses, embodied in the word and its history. His experience of the rose is therefore the negation of the word 'rose', it Is 'not-rose'—all that in hls experience which is not expressed in the current social meaning of the word 'rose*. He therefore says—'I saw a roge like’—and there follows a metaphor, or there is an adjective—' heavenly rose* , or a euphemism—* I saw a flowery blush*, and In each case there Is a synthesis, for hls hew experience has become socially fused Into society's old exper­ iences and both have been changed in the process, (p. 52)3

3Caudwell's idea of the whole of society's experience changed by the Incursion of a new individual experience Is very similar to T, S. Eliot's explanation of the effect a new work of art has on the existing order of art. "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. . . . What happens when a new work of art is created is something that, happens II.

$2

Seen herels the same explanation, this time in terms of poetry, that

Caudwell gave in "Reality" for the emergence of new qualities* The rose of societyts experience is the like aspect of the change; the artist’s experience is the new, the unlike aspect of the change; to­ gether they constitute the new, but not entirely different, reality*

The rose has changed—that is* the social content of the word rose has changed—because a new quality has been added to it* The poet’s ex­ perience has changed because he had to transform it into current social coin, l.e«* put it in words that could be understood* Social conscious­ ness of reality becoming has grown through the agency of illusion—reality frozen, or the poem*

III, THE HERO

Of all the bourgeois figures considered in Studies In a Dying Cul­ ture* T> E, Lawrence Is the one with whom Caudwell Is most sympathetic*

What made this Lawrence admirable was that he not only talked about free­ dom but also fought for it* He did what Caudwell was to do—go to war simultaneously to ail the works of art which preceded it* The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them* The existing order Is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the Whole existing order must be. If ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this Is conformity between the old and the new*" ("Tradition and the Individual Talert*" in The Sacred Wood* pp, 46-45,) Caudwell, of course, does not conceive of society’s old experiences having "an ideal order," but he does believe that the experiences are "complete before the new arrives," 63

for the cause of freedom. Lawrence was a success where Shaw and Wells

were failures because he was a man of action. But what stopped Lawrence

short of being aihero was the fact that action alone is not sufficient,

and Lawrence’s thought never developed beyond theffiien-current forms of

bourgep 1 s i deo logy.

Caudwell’s conception of the hero as a man of action guided by

conscious thought is clearly enopgh established in the study. What is

rather baffling is the manner in which Caudwell establishes it. First,

he takes great pains to define the hero and then, after judging Lawrence

by this definition, explains that the definition is inoperative. Finally,

he Introduces the example of Lenin to demonstrate that the kind of hero so carefully defined Is not, by comparison, a hero at all,

Caudwell defines the hero, generally, as one who dominates his

environment (including other men) more than he Is dominated by It, He

Is able to maintain this domination over events only because he "conforms

closely with the law that produces them," (p. 23) Caudwell characterizes

the hero as .being unaware of what he Is doing, of acting with a "blind

intuition"; as receiving the call to action from the tension generated between the old and the new, the call to bring something new into existence; as being restless; and as reasoning crudely and using language that is mixed and often contradictory. The first characteristic Caudwell spends much time explaining.

Caesar and Alexander were heroes who did not consciously will to bring

into existence the Imperiate and the Hellenistic culture. 64

The hero understands geography, war, politics, and cities, and new techniques are Instrwnental to him, but men are instrumental to him too. And with it all he hardly knows why it is so; he could not give a causal explanation of what is to come about in the future in conformity with his presen&action, but it seems as if he knows in his heart what to do. A goddess, like Caesar’s divine patron and ancestor, Venus, seems to watch over his rela­ tions with men and events, (p. 24)

After having explained this characteristic so closely, and after having

called Caesar and Alexander heroes, caudwell will reject It and them in

the last part of the essay.

The hero is able to act with assurance even though he does not

knowwhence his actions are^directed because there is no mistaking the

call to action that Is generated by the tension between the old (the cul­

ture into which he was bom) and the new (his instinctive roots sucking

a new and Insurgent reality). It is a call to action to create some­

thing new "which seems to arise from the depths of man’s soul," (p. 27)

It signals him to "bring actively into the world this unknown thing, by

shattering the material embodiments that oppose it or by creating new

forms to receive it," (pp. 27-28) Because he feels the tension of a new

social relation but does not recognize that social relation, "it is at

first an appetite without an object." (p, 32) The hero becomes restless, desirous of action, but uncertain what action to take. So he acts blindly and gives crude half-reasons for his actions. In gathering followers he speaks a mixed and contradictory language to them and is unable to explain the object of his action. But that Is no problem, for

they too have heard that call to action from the heart of reality and have felt the growing tension in their hearts. For Its sake they are prepared to abandon consciousness; for it is the consciousness

\ v 65

of past obsolete experience. Reason—all the arguments based correctly on premises that have since changed—Is powerless to silence this voice, (pp. 28*29)

Having constructed this definition of the hero, Caudwell then examines the life of T. E. Lawrence to see if his actions in leading the Bedouin tribesmen were heroic. Lawrence displayed from his early years a strange restlessness and nostalgia for the past. At first this nostalgia was satisfied in archeology; but When it persisted, it became clear (not to him, but In retrospect) ehat he longed for "ampler social relations, purged of the pettiness and commercialisation of capitalism."

(p. 32) Because he did not understand this restlessness, he had diffi*» culty expressing the object of hls actions; but the primitive Arabs understood his friendliness, bravery, and ruthlessness. So, they followed him on the battlefield where their feudal organization enabled them to strike at the weak points of the bourgeois war-machine—at its clumsy organization, Its inefficiency, and its dependence on supplies.

So Lawrence freed Arabia. But what had he freeddit for? If one frees a society Whose social organisation belongs to the past, but has been preserved by a decadent autocracy, what can it do but advance to the present? If one gives a country liberty as the bourgeois understands it, liberty to be a self-governing 'in­ dependent* bourgeois state, what can come into being there but bourgeois social relations? (p. 25)

Some of the Arebs that Lawrence "freed" became part of the French Empire.

Others set up a bourgeois state under English tutelage "with government, police, oil concessions, and all the other bourgeois paraphernalia."

(p. 36) Lawrence felt that he and the British Government had betrayed some of the Arabs. But he never fully realised how completely he had 66

betrayed them all* He had brought into Arabia the very evil he had fled. Soon hls desert Arabs would have money, business, in­ vestments, loud-speakers, and regular employment. But he could not realise this consciously, for he had never been fully conscious that it was bourgeois social relations he was fleeing, and he was not aware of the omnipotent destructive power of the present over the past« (p. 36)

Lawrence’s failure, then, seems to stem from one of the characteristics of the hero; the unconsciousness of the object of his actions« Caudwell recognizes this contradiction and tries to explain It away by saying,

A new factor entered Into Lawrence’s tragedy which can best be understood by considering Lenin« Lenin is a hero of a stamp so different from the heroes of the past that one is tempted at first to revise one’s definition, (p. 40)

Caudwell does revise hls definition and explains that the reason for revising it is that the kind of hero originally defined can no longer exist« When he said, "These are the characteristics of the hero," he meant, "These usedtobe the characteristics of the hero; we will study them to see how the Communist hero differs from the ordinary breed of man." Lenin Is the self-conscious hero, as will be all Communist heroes, for "only the self-conscious hero can lead man towards the self-conscious society." (p. 41) Lenin had no doubt as to his task. The future he had to call into being was Communist society and he knew how it was contained within and could be released from bourgeois social relations. He did not merely know this intuitively but all is clearly set down in hls speeches and writings, (p. 40) x

Lenin was a real hero, for he was aware of the object of his ac­ tions. But Lawrence’s lack of consciousness was only part of the reason for hls failure. What also halted him on the near side of achievement and prevented him from becoming a Communist hero was, ironically, consciousness. 67

The hero should have plenty of native intelligence, but to be intellectual means that one’s psychic potentialities have been fully developed Into the current forms. Lawrence was a man of high consciousness, but it was the consciousness of a culture now doomed. All the outworn symbols of the long noonday of bourgeois culture stiffened his prodigious memory, and made of his genius an elaborate osseous structure too tenacious for the instinctive move­ ment of his soul, (p, 39)

Lenin, though an intellectual, seems to have escaped having had his psychic potentialities developed according to the then-current forms.

Of this matter Caudwell offers no explanation. At any rate, the heroes guided by instinctive feelings will no longer do the right thing; like

Lawrence, they will "be strangled by their own consciousness." (p. 42)

The Communist hero must be conscious not only of ehat he wills but also of what determines his will. Lawrence’s failure is due clearly to his unawareness of the necessity in social relations. The freedom he brought to the Arabs was the freedom of bourgeois ignorance.

IV, RELIGION AND ETHICS

In "The Breath of Discontent," from Further Studies, and in "Pacifism and Violence," from Studies, Caudwell explains, respectively, the Illusory nature of religion and the contradiction in the bourgeois ethics that is derived from Christian-bourgeois religion* The two essays stand in rather direct contrast to each other, even though the end of each is basically the same—viz. the exposure of the bourgeois illusion in another part of the ideological superstructure of bourgeois society—and even though both rely heavily on the writings of Marx. In the essay on religion Marx is quoted frequently, and Caudwell gives a convincing explanation of ehat J

68

Marx means. But Che essay on ethics is unsatisfactory for its dogmatic,

uncompromising, and thuddlngly repetitive assertions regarding the dic­

tatorship of the proletariat, the expropriation of the expropriators,

imperialistic wars and bourgeois social relations. In "The Breath of

Discontent,** Caudwell carefully analyzes the evolution of religion from

magic and confidently predicts that it will be replaced by dialectical

materialism« In "Pacifism and Violence," he lumps together in one mass

all who are not active Communist revolutionaries and, by definition, makes

all bourgeois into either pacifists or perpetrators of violence. Because he Is describing a development which has occurred largely In the past,

Caudwell can, in the first essay, draw on historical evidence. But be­

cause he is generalizing about the then present in the second essay, the

thirty years that have passed since its composition have made it an anachronism*^ *****

The thesis of the lengthy and somewhat difficult "Breath of

Discontent" Is, in its most general form, the much-quoted idea of Marx

4Twice in this essay Caudwell, with a considerable amount of self- assurance, makes statements that, if they were true when penned, are cer­ tainly not true now* A change in "truth" would ordinarily not disturb Caudwell, but these two changes shatter a couple of "historical" cer­ tainties. In attempting to show how bourgeois pacifism is different in kind from Eastern pacifism, caudwell says, "Anyone who supposes that bourgeois pacifism will, for example, take the form of a University Anti-War Group lying down on the rails in front of a departing troop train like an Indian pacifist group, is to be ignorant of the nature of bourgeois paci­ fism and of whence it took its colour." (p. 98) In another place Caudwell ridicules the bourgeois who has deluded himself into believing that* on the one hand, "Bolshevism Is only a ’passing fchase’, and, on the other hfednd, that in modern Soviet Russia there is simply ’planned capitalism.’"

li 69

that "'religious misery Is at once the expression of real: misery and

a protest against that real misery« • . . It Is the opium of the people.*" (p. 19)5 caudwell expands on this Idea and studies religion In context.

He shows how religion, always latent In magic, develops from It and how religion will, in a classless society, give way to dialectical materialism

Magic is the product of a primitive society. (Man's self-feeling before he has’ found himself.) Religion is the product of a class society. (Man's self-feeling when he has lost himself.) Dialecti­ cal materialism Is the product of a classless society. (Man's self-feeling when he has found himself again.) (p. 21)

Magic Is the self-feeling of a man who has not yet found himself

in the sense that he has not yet come to realize that he is a part of reality In causal unity with it. His only consciousness is that he is separated from reality, that there is a struggle between self and non­ self (Man and nature). In the course of this struggle man experiences emotions and, not being very self-conscious, projects these emotions into outer reality, non-self. Then he formulates ideas about the behavior of non-self. He acts according to these ideas, and from hls action on nature there begins to emerge In his consciousness a structure of nature*

This structure Is science In embryo, or magic. Man discovers that he can "make" nature behave in certain ways, more or less consistently, by saying certain words or by performing certain actions. As a result of experience, his prayers for rain are made at the beginning of the rainy season. ... He prays to the sun to rise at dawn, and does not ask it to rise immediately after It has set.

« Caudwell Is quoting from a famous passage in Marx's Introduction to A Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law. 70

. . . Thus all his seif-feeling, projected into outer reality, Is organised by it, and what were at first all-powerful emotions, ap­ parently dominating reality, became words emotionally charged, and yet organised and 'influenced* by reality, and, finally those be­ come symbols ... which are like a transparent dress conforming to the shape of outer reality, (pp. 24-25)

In magic affects and outer reality are confusedly blended. Man has not yet learned to distinguish them In science and art.6

But as art and science develop and make more clear to man the re­ lationship between self and non-self, between hls self-feeling and nature's necessity, the division of labor In economic production causes a change In magic. Art and science are helping man to find himself, but at the same time the division of labor and the emergence of classes which necessarily accompanies It are causing man to lose himself. Magic, made suspect by art and science, goes underground and emerges In a much more powerful form—religion* To the chief or headman of the newly formed economic society are attached or directed the affects developed in man's constant struggle with nature. In time, theiheadman's status grows to the extent that he becomes a god-king and stands for all those hatural forces which cause the affects* The god-king comes to own all the products of the labor of society and gives a part of them back to the people as gifts

6Caudwell makes an interesting distinction, somewhat outside the scope of the present discussion, between white and black magic. White magic does not ask for manna in the desert or for a harvest without sowing or reaping. What it does ask is, for instance, the blessings of the gods on the harvest or the newleyweds. White magic he calls "a relish to eco- nomiec productions." (p. 29) Black magic, or witchcraft, is anti-social and dangerous. The word is harnessed In spells which are directed against some personal enemy or toward some private good. A similarity between black magic, on the Individual level, and religion, on the societal level, Is apparent* 71 evidencing his mercy and beneficence. He clusters around him all the administrative, priestly, clerical, and warrior castes which insure the retention of his position and which are repaid from the bounty produced by the masses of slaves and peasants. As the ruling class becomes more and more parasitic, religion becomes the "bulwark of a functionless class and therefore one of the fetters on economic production." (p. 45) Condi­ tions become worse and worse for the laborers; life itself becomes intoler able. Life immortal, once the prerogative of the god-king, filters down to even the lowest slave in the form of an eternal reward. The concept of after-life is an expression of his real misery and a protest against that real misery.

Just as magic expressed man’s confused perception of the rela­ tion of man’s self-feeling to nature’s necessities, and disappears when man finds himself in a true relation to nature in science and art, so religion expresses man’s confused perception of the rela­ tion of man’s self-feeling to society’s necessities, and disappears when man completely finds himself in society, (p, 32)

Just as science and art helped to make man aware of the mutually deter­ mining relation between himself and outer reality, so do they make man aware of the mutually determining relation between himself and society. Magic wasdispelled when man recognized that he was not separate from nature but was a part of it and was subject to its laws of necessity.

Religion will be dispelled when man recognizes that he is not separate from society but is a part of it and is subject to its laws of necessity.

Historical materialism predicts that man can achieve this recognition only in a classless society. 72

*****

A good portion of "Hie Breath of Discontent" Is devoted to Caud- well’s historical materialistic study of the development of religions

In the following economic societies: Asiatic, Classical, Feudal, and 7 Bourgeois. Particularly relevant to the present discussion is Ms ex­ planation of the development of Christianity, for it is from Christianity that the modern bourgeois ethic, which Justifies both pacifism and vio­ lence , is derlved.

Caudwell views Christianity as a kind of primitive Communism which at first promised to ail men the Kingdom of Heaven, an earthly mlllenium.

(p. 62) But it failed as a revolutionary program because Jesus idld not accept the power that the people indicated they were willing to accord him at hls entry Into Jerusalem. Jesus the revolutionary became Jesus the reformist. The mlllenium was shifted to the next world. "The love-feast at which material food was shared In common, became the ideal sacrifice of the Mass in Which only.a ’token* food was shared out." (p. 62) At the same time this formerly revolutionary program became a religion; It sup­ ported the upper class as it preached to the lower the virtues of abstinence, fasting, poverty, and self-denial« Such a betrayal was of course only possible with a movement which had already been bewildered, and from the start, by the reformism of Jesus’s fatal choice:—’Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s,* which seemed at the time such a clever escape from a difficult political situation. Hds bewilderment was made permanent by the hailing of Jesus’s exe­ cution as an other-worldly triumph, not a this-worldly set-back«

7Ia Capital Marx uses these divisions to Indicate the different stages of economic development through which civilized man has passed. 73

This again had seemed a clever move at the time. Yet, like Socialism in Germany and Italy, Christianity had been defeated by this refusal to place in the forefront the vital question of power, (pp.. 62-63)

For fifteen centuries the Church managed to align itself with the ruling clasy, largely because it posed no threat to that class* se­ curity. Celibacy meant that no powerful Church official could establish a dynasty; and the Church’s influence continued in the other-worldy sphere.

But the Reformation, the first step in the bourgeois revolution, voiced the demands of bourgeois production. The Catholic Church, once a body off faithful bound together by overtly symbolized social relations, such as prayers for the dead, purgatory, and the communion of saints, became the

Protestant churches, a collection of individuals who were saved or damned separately according to the grace of God. But once the bourgeoisie gained its independence from the kings';» and feudal lords, once the social relations restraining it had been lifted, there developed the natural end of bourgeois religion—Deism. In opposi­ tion to a propertyless exploited class which wished to abolish one final coercive.relation, the property relation, the bourgeois-deists Invoked

’•Whatever is, is right,” Under Increasing pressure from a strengthening proletariat who demanded "liberty, equality', fraternity," the bourgeois conducted from 1793 to 1936 . . . a series of retreating movements resulting in the maintenance of some kind of Church or official theology which was arbitrary and coercive, just as the bourgeois State In spite of Its democratic slogans was arbitrary and coercive--because the re­ straint of property could only be maintained arbitrarily and coer­ cively, (pp, 70-71) 74

The modern bourgeois religion of imperialism received its final

expression in Fascism* The State, «hose interests are not the people's

Interests, comes first; to deny these Interests or to attack the State

Is blasphemy. In the final struggle between Fascists and their opponents,

led by the proletariat,

Idedogyls transformed and religion—In the actual struggle shedding Its illusions one by one—finds its fantastic reality sucked Into material reality, and its inverted world stood on Its feet* It emerges as the self-fedllng of a man who has found himself In society— as the consciousness of a classless society, (pp. 74*95) Religion, the opium of the people, will have become dialectical materialism,

the liberator of thepeople. The fantastic reality of religion will have

become the social reality of Communism. e w a e e

Like bourgeois economy, bourgeois religion contains the seeds of

its own destruction. This final struggle between Fascists and proletariat will reveal religion to be a spawner of Illusions and contradictions.

One contradiction that was already becoming apparent to Caudwell In 1936 was the bourgeois ethic based on bourgeois Christianity. In "Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics," Caudwell sees bourgeois ethics justifying pacifism and violence in the struggle to preserve the existing bourgeois economy. That the same religion was able to condone both pacifism and violence In the same struggle seemed to Caudwell the most blatant hypocrisy. It is hls contention, in this essay from Studies, that both bourgeois violence and bourgeois pacifism are products of the bourgeois illusion of freedom. 75

Thè bourgeois error that the ownership of private property is an undeniable freedom of the individual has been emphasized above« It is

important here because the bourgeois, when this liberty is threatened, uses violence to retain it. When capitalism turns to Imperialism, the need for violence increases. One bourgeois state must go to war to pro­ tect its property rights in an exploited country from another bourgeois nation. The bourgeois, in trying to justify this violence by justifying the right to own property, manages only to show his Ignorance of social relations. He rationalizes in this manner: In the slave society, the relation between owner and slave was a social one and therefore a re­ straint on the liberty of the slave; in feudal society, the relation be­ tween master and serf was a social one and therefore a restraint on human liberty; but in bourgeois society, the relation between a man and his pro­ perty is not social (not between man and a man, but between man and a thing) and Is therefore a restraint on the liberty of no one. But the bourgeois misunderstands liberty and fails to see that "social restraints must come into being to protect this one thing that makes him a bourgeois."

(p. 102) His ownership of property and machines Is a restraint on the liberty of those who are bound to that property and machines for their very subsistence. In permitting relations to things only, bourgeois society fosters more elaborate and cruel relations between men. "The more he alms for bourgeois freedom, the more he gets bourgeois restraint, for bourgeois freedom is an illusion." (p. 102) / Equally illusory is the bourgeois’ belief that the individual, acting alone, has power to influence society. Freedom as exercise of the 76

individual will leads to bourgeois pacifism. The pacifist, appalled by

the injustices of bourgeois civilization, decides that he will have

nothing to do with imperialistic wars and that he will not cooperate in

any way with the maintenance of the present order. He hates belligerents

and revolutionaries alike because they both use violent means to achieve

their ends. What the pacifist does not realize, though, is that his in­

dividual passive resistance Is entirely ineffectual. Nor does he realize

that he hblps to further bourgeois ends simply by living in bourgeois so­

ciety without actively opposing it. "Passive resistance is not a real

programme, but an apology for supporting the old programme." (p. 116)

Caudwell makes the same accusation at the anonymous pacifists that

he made at Shaw and Wells, who preferred thou^it to action. But, perhaps

because he is not dealing with an individual but with an -ism, he uses

his most potent vitriol against the pacifist*

The fact that one participates passively in bourgeois economy, that one does not oneself wield the bludgeon or fire the cannon, so far from being a defence really makes one’s position more dis­ gusting, just as a fence is more unpleasant than a burglar, and a pimp than a prostitute. One lets others do the dirty work, and merely participates in the benefits. The bourgeois pacifist oc­ cupies perhaps the most ignoble place of a man in any civilisation. He is the Christian Protestant whose ethics have been made ridicu­ lous by the development of the culture that evolved them; but this does not prevent his deriving complacency from observing them. He sits on the head of the worker and, while the big bourgeois kicks him, advises him to lie quiet, (pp. 116-117)

The pacifists justify their behavior in one of two ways. Some claim that it is a sin to kill or to use violence, that evil may not be done to achieve good ends. They then can rationalize that no matter how much suffering they see around them, they must save their own souls 77

first and avoid sinning. Bourgeois ethics condones the selfish act

of saving one's own soul first and thereby justifies this reason for

pacifism. Other pacifists claim utter selflessness as their motive.

They claim not to care for their own lives or their own souls. But they khow that violence breeds violence and oppression breeds oppres-

sion, so they propose to ease the burden of the oppressed by doing nothing.

The Marxist rejects both of these justifications for pacifism because,

In the first place, nocne can do anything by and for hlmself.for all

individual actions affect others in society, and, in the second, "history

records millions of opposite cases" wherein non*reststance was defeated

by violence.

The whole system of bourgeois religious and ethical values Is

seen to be corrupted by the bourgeois Illusion. Because the bourgeois is not aware of the causal laws of social relations, because he thinks that man acts freely when he acts in ignorance or defiance of these laws, bourgeois religion has become a fortress of reaction. Because the bour- geols thinks that the property "right" and universal freedom are compatible, he has distorted his ethical system to permit the most heinous crimes in defense of liberty* And because the bourgeois thinks that man is freer as an individual than he Is in society, he encourages the very contradic­ tion of violence, Caudwell sees the essence of the relationship between bourgeois Christianity and bourgeois economy foreshadowed In Jesus* act of throwing the money-changers out of the temple but not out of Jerusalem. 78

V. HISTORY

In his introduction to Illusion and Reality Caudwell says that

historical materialism is the basis of his study of the sources of

poetry. Exactly what this Marxist theory of history is and how It dif­ fers from bourgeois theories Is the subject for one of his shorter es­

says in Further Studies, "Man and Nature: A Study in Bourgeois History."

The error in bourgeois history is that it is not scientific; and it is

not scientific because the bourgeois historian has failed to realise that

man is a part of the material unity of the universe. His story is the

story of his interpenetration with the rest of the material universe,

and that Interpenetration has been economic. Hls story should be written, then, interms of the causal laws of economic production. Historical ma­

terialism is predicated upon the Marxian hypothesis that what distin­

guishes man from animal is conscious (not Instinctive) economic activity.

"The co-operation necessary to production makes them {unite, and makes

them men." (p. 128) W;? V

History is defined as

not the study of individuals, of their innate capacities and re­ sponsive changes to stimuli (for that is psychology) nor the study of the influences of the environment on men (for that is ecology), but it Is the study of this organisation which is neither innate nor given in the environment, and which although it Is the organl- $s*lon of men in nature has a law of development neither human nor natural but economic. (p. 129)

Since this organisation Is neither innate nor in the environment, it is either divine. Immaterial and unknowable, or it comes from the one activity which would form a part of the universe but would be neither man nor 79 environment separately—1 ,e, society, as it has been formed through the

interpenetration of man and the environment In economic production* Bourgeois historians, who have failed to recognize economic ac­

tivity as the basis for history, have devised various other approaches to man's story, all of Which are unsatisfactory. The environmental his­ torians think that the factor which has shaped man's history has been the environment—natural resources, climactic conditions, geographic formations, etc. Environment has played an Important role In man's history—Intemperate zones do not produce agrarian economies, nor do inland countries develop elaborate navigational systems—but the environ­ mental historians overlook the active and creative role of man. The en­ vironmentalists, regarding man as having been passively molded by his environment, do not realize that ’’the conditioning resources of Nature only exist, as determinants, insofar as from being thlngs-ln-themselves they become thlngs-for-us." (p. 136) These historians cannot explain the fact that coal exists In many parts of the world, but only at a cer­ tain time and in a certain place did it give rise to an Industrial develop­ ment*

Historians at the other end of the continuum seem to neglect en­ vironment's role entirely. They conceive of history as being made by man's desires and Ideas. They think that great men with great ideas and Imaginative aims make history. But these idealists fail to realize that even Caesar and Napoleon acquired their ideas and desires only by living in society and by being educated at a certain time under certain conditions*

The idealists write history as if consciousness were prior to society. 80

If such is the case, It Is Impossible to explain how

if a Melanesian, an ancient Athenian and a modem English babe were allowed to grow up in a wood, or for that matter a deserted town or factory, none would show any of the characteristics of its parents* culture—either their language, their economic pro­ duction, or their consciousness* (pp. 137-138) \ Far from being prior to societal and environmental influences, conscious- ness is produced by them.8

Athird bourgeois explanation of history, also idealistic, focuses

on absolute ideas* "Fixed ’cycles of decay’," the "realisations of

’Hellenic and Faustian cultures’," and the "evolution of ’the Weal of

liberty*," are supposed to account for the development of man. Because

these ideas do not reside in the head of any "great man," because they

are not conscious purposes, they need no determining cause. But it is

precisely because they have no determining cause that they furnish no

causal explanation of history.

Such an explanation is faced with the dilemma of admitting, either that these absolute ideas now exist really and that therefore evo- i Inti on is at an end, or do not really exist, in which case causa­ tion is explained as the work of non-existents, and this is easily seen for the logical trick it is. Again, if these absolute ideas are real existents now, either in the past the absolute ideas ex­ isted or were later generated by the process of history. If the former, then how can reality and the ideas be in mutually-deter­ mining relation; if the latter, how can the ideas be the cause of that which has generatedthem? K(p. 140)9*

o °"0bviously the environmental ’explanation* of history corresponds to mechanical-materialism in*bourgeois philosophy, with neo-Darwinism in biology, and with behaviourism in psychology. Similarly, the purposive ’explanation* corresponds to idealism in phllsophy, neo-Lamarckianism in biology, and the instinct and hormic schools in psychology." (p. 141) This comment is typical of the kind of interdisciplinary parallels which Caudwell effectively and frequently draws in Illusion and Reality, 9The circularity of Caudwell’s argument is confusing here until one accepts the truth of the historical materialistic premise that ideas and reality m$st be in a mutually-determining relation; that, in other words. 81

As these idealistic explanations have proved inadequate, a fourth

’’explanation" has developed* This "explanation," an expression of phil­

osophical positivism in the sphere of history, actually explains nothing.

Caudwell cites it as evidence of the breakdown of the culture which pro­ duced it* Positivism asserted that man’s sole concern should be with

phenomena, so the positivist historian amasses a

monstrously detailed collection of facts, of Inscriptions, pipe rolls, potsherds, and records of every description which become valued simply for their own sake, aa if a sufficient accumulation of them would eventually In some mysterious way give birth to a history, (p. 142) This "curiosity shop" approach to writing history is not the least con­ cerned with any kind of causal program or ordered method.

In place of these unscientific and unsatisfactory bourgeois his­ tories Caudwell proposes an evolutionary theory, historical materialism, which regards history as a product of the interpenetration of nature and social men* History itself is a record of the development of the economic base of society, of the ideological superstructure built upon it, and of the effects each has on the other. The base consists of the total eco­ nomic complex of a society—means of production, relations of production, means of distribution, etc. The superstructure consists of the laws, sciences, languages, arts, moralities, etc. which are all generated by man as he joins with other men in economic production; it is the "social theory of life" for the society which has created it.

ideas-ln-themselves do not exist. But if one accepts this premise, Caudweli’s explanation becomes unnecessary. 82

if men In the course of their interactions with nature, living practically as men in nature and in society, are faced with an ob­ jective fact that contradicts this social theory of life, a tension is generated which will ultimately bring about the appropriate modi­ fication of the superstructure, (p. 148)

When a small detailed part of the superstructure Is changed, a '»techno­ logical improvement" is said to have occurred. The constant bumping up against the causal laws of material reality has made man more conscious of those laws and has, hence, enabledhim to "improve" some small aspect of the superstructure. When enough of these relatively minor improvements, caused by relatively minor tensions, have accumulated, the whole super­ structure is modified. In this case, "ideological development" has occurred.

The past three centuries have seen enough technological improve­ ments to throw the entire superstructure off balance. Ideological develop­ ments that should have occurred have, in many cases, been repressed by the reactionary bourgeois ideology. Whenever a situation like this occurs, the revolutionary aspect of this evolutionary account of history is mani­ fested. Each repressed ideological development has widened the gap be­ tween the economic facts ("practice") of the society end its social theory of life. The tension generated is so intense that the superstructure crumbles, aided by the revolutionary element of society which demands a complete overhauling of the social theory of life* Today the widened gap is the one between classes, for the exploiting class controls the super- structure ("theory”) and the exploited class controls the base ("practice”). 83

Caudwell, like all Marxists, recognizes that although the generating

force of society’s development up till now has been the class struggle,

It should no longer be. For the first time in the history of man, the economic complex that forms the base of society is sufficiently developed to provide for the well-being of the whole society. Methods of produc­ tion have caught up with population; the final step is for methods of dis­ tribution to catch up with methods of production. This will require the disappearanceof the exploiting class. But society will not lose its vital force. As has been seen elsewhere, the proletariat does not need the bourgeoisie for its existence; the class struggle will disappear with the realization of universal equality.

tfhat will continue to drive on the development of society is the complete integration of theory and practice. As theory is tested in prac­ tice and prsctlce gives rise to new theories, man will gain more and more control over the forces of the environment. He «dll, hfact, be able to make his own history,

Man’s junderstanding of history In the scientific sense is shown by his capacity to make it, not blindly but according to his will; just as hls understanding of physics is Shown by his ability to make the elements fulfil hls predictions, (p. 126)

In a sense, then, man’s history Is just beginning, for only when man under­ stands the necessity in all matter, including himself, can he make history,

VI. PSYCHOLOGY

Caudweli’s critique of bourgeois psychology is found in four dif- ferent places in hls works: scattered throughout Illusion and Reality; In

BQWUN& SHEEN STATE IffiTEBITY LIBRARY 84

, < an essay from Further Studies« "Consciousness: A Study In Bourgeois

Psychology"; and in two essays from Studies« "Freud: Study in Bourgeois

Psychology" and "Love: A Study In Changing Values." In Illusion and

Reality« nothing Is said about bourgeois psychology that Is not said in r* much more detail In one of the essays, with the exception of Caudwell’s application of the principles of dream analysis to art, which will be studied in the next chapter. "Consciousness" is a detailed and technical critique of bourgeois psychology, especially of the neurological school, and it shows how dialectical materialism will bring psychology into the causal world of science. "Freud" is an explanation of how one of the modern schools, the instinct school, suffers from the bourgeois illusion* And

"love," basically a criticism of Freud’s concept of the libido, is an analysis of the economic nature of love. The essay on consciousness, then, seems to be a logical place to begin the study of bourgeois psychology.

Th^primary error In all bourgeois psychology is their insistence on keeping man out of the causal world of science. This insistence derives from the bourgeois illusion of freedom as self-determination through domlna tlon. The only bourgeois law for social action prescribes that man do as he will, but this law does not even consider whether man can do what he wills or whether he can even will what he wills. Because the bourgeois thinks nothing determines his will but himself, he believes that his de­ sires and ideas of Justice and morality are not in any way determined but are "primary and therefore eternal." (p. 169) in short, the bourgeois be- i lleves that "Mind" is self-determining and, hence, operates independent of 85

the causal laws which determine material reality* Physics and psychology

are both "closed worlds," and they cannot affect one another except per­ haps by analogy.

One of these analogies provides the theoretical basis for the

bourgeois psychology of assoc1stlonlsm. The psychologist devises "mental

laws" which guide the relations between ideas and Images of the mind.

These laws—laws of association of ideas—parallel the laws of motion and

determination of the world of physics. Psychology and physics were able

to remain closed worlds until biology broke In on both of them. It re­

vealed that man Is composed of particles subject to physical laws and that

(as cerebral Injuries show) "disturbances of the particles of the body lead

to disturbances of ’ideas'." (p. 173) The joining of the two formerly closed worlds is the task of neurology, which shows, in terms of cerebral neurones and electrical waves, that "Mind" is material. This makes It sub­ ject to the causal laws of physics.

Nothing could in fact be more repugnant to the bourgeois than this, logical outcome of his contradictory position. ... It induces him to lead an attack in full force on determinism or causality in physics (Jeans, Eddington, Weyl, Bom, et al). It leads him at last to picture, by whatever Immoral stratagem, the movements of the particles as indetermlned; and the particles themselves as unknow­ able. This he supposes, at least secures his menaced free-will. But in fact free-will does not lie along this road at all. (p. 175)

After some of the bourgeois psychologies have been studied, an examina­ tion of experiments In neurology will point the way to the road along which freedom does lie.

Because there Is an Inescapable dualism In bourgeois philosophy, any other ideology based upon that philosophy will manifest the dualism. 86

Such Is the case with the gestalt!sts and the neurologists. The two alternatives of bourgeois philosophy are idealism and mechanical material­ ism; and the gestaltists, believing that all mental phenomena can be ex­ plained in a purely physico-chemical way, and the neurologists, believing mind to be the iridescence” accompanying the movement of particles, end up, respectively, as idealists and mechanical materialists.

The bourgeois psychology in which Caudwell seems most interested through all of his work is the instinct school. Instinct psychologists

"see life as the theatre of an indwelling force . . . which Is the free source of life’s actions on the static environment." (p. 179) The error of this school is in dichotomizing life and environment, making the former free and the latter dead. But in reality the instincts, far from being free forces striving for unconscious goals, are unconscious necessities,

"innate patterns of behavior automatically elicited by stimuli." (p. 180)

The instinct psychologist sees the instincts in a struggle against an en­ vironment (society, in Freud) that thwarts and cripples their freedom.

But the psychologist unhampered by the bourgeois illusion knows that the

Instincts can only be made free by their becoming conscious. And they become conscious only through a mutually-changing contact with the environ­ ment— l.e, by becoming conditioned by experience. *****

The instinct psychologist with whom Caudwell deals most fully is

Freud. His essay on Freud in Studies criticizes Freudian psychology for being unscientific and duallstlc, and shows the necessity of psychological therapy being based on sociological laws. Freud’s psychology, instead of 87

being causal and materialistic, as a science should be, is religious and

idealistic, like a mythology. Caudwell compares the ego, superego, id,

censor, and other Freudian constructs to the deities of Olympus. Proof of the existence of these "mind-deities" is seen in dreams, hysteric

symptoms, obsessions, and slips of the pen and tongue. Freud’s psychology would be causal only if it could be put to a crucial test, but the id, ego, and other mlnd-deitles cannot be tested because they are merely symbols which account for the phenomena studied, Freud’s scheme is "religious" because he

supposes that any fable which Includes a connected statement of genuine psychical phenomena is a scientific hypothesis, whether or no it exhibits in a causal maimer the inner relations of the phenomena. Of course such explanations break down because they do not fit into the causal scheme of science as a whole, (p. 162)

The weather-deities of Olympus explained the phenomena of thunder and limning in the same way that the mind-deities of Freudian psychology explain the phenomena of neuroses and obsessions.

The mental phenomena which Freud masks behind his mysterious con­ structs are the same phenomena that all psychologists deal with. Psychic phenomena consist of Innervations, or activations of nervous energy in any part of the nervous system* The most recent group of innervations, phylogenetically, is called "consciousness" and is quite flexible and modi­ fiable* Hie older neurone patterns are less modifiable and make up what

Is called "unconsciousness." These unconscious Innervations influence conscious behavioral patterns, and they are in turn influenced by the consciousness because they can be viewed only through the consciousness. 88

Sometimes, due to an instability In the conscious neurone pattern, con­

scious behavior will be strongly conditioned, perhaps even regulated,

by unconscious.neurone patterns* In such cases the behavior manifested

seems regressive, ”We may also call this behaviour instinctive," (p. 168)

These neurone patterns that manifest themselves as Innervations both con­

sciously and unconsciously are the "raw materials" of psychological study. Like all psychologists, Freud studied these phenomena, but what he did not realize was that

since it is consciousness which is formulating psychoanalysis, all unconscious phenomena are likely to appear as seen by conscious­ ness, not as causal phenomena with the same physiological basis as consciousness and ultimately homogeneous with it, butas wicked de­ mons which burst Into the neat ordered world of consciousness. • • • Unconscious 'Influences,* causing perturbations in the con­ scious world, are by Freud called by such rude names as distortion, Inhibition, regression, obsession, the id, the censor, the pleasure- principle, Eros, libido, the death instinct, the reality principle, a complex, a compulsion, (pp* 168-169)

But just as consistent a psychology might develop conscious innervations

(experience) as "perturbations" in the simple life of the unconsciousness

(instinctive, Innate responses).

Freud has involved himself In "an irreconcilable dualism" by con­ sidering consciousness and unconsciousness as distinct entitles. They are distinct only In abstraction, for In reality there is a single hierarchy of innervations, any part of which may be at any moment in time conscious. Because recent experiences are richest, they usually make up the bulk of consciousness, but there is a constant traffic between the two ends of the hierarchy so that an unconscious innervation at one moment may be a con­ scious innervation at the next moment. A study of psychology that did not 89

regard consciousness and unconsciousness as interpenetrating would be as fruitless as a study of sociology that did not regard man and nature

as Interpenetrating. Because Freud believed that freedom consists in the realization of unconsclousclnnervations without their being restrained or thwarted

by the subject’s consciousness of societal prohibitions, he is unable

to help cure the modem malaise. He thinks that the individual has to be cured so that he will fit into society; but, in truth, society must be cured, renovated, so thie individual will be able to realize himself

in it. Freud ignores society and concentrates on the individual, a typical bourgeois error. He does not realize that it is impossible to study psy­ chology without a background of sociology. All psychological laws must be based on sociological ones because the whole hierarchy of innervations, both conscious!, and unconscious, are stimulated from outside the organism or from other parts of the organism that are influenced from without. This "outside," the environment, is nothing more than the field created by the interaction of other organisms. Therefore, anything relevant which is to be said about Innervations or their effects on the organism must take Into account the environment.

If one does not do so, either it is impossible to find the causal connexion in the change of the human psyche, or else one accepts the human psyche.as unchanging and all laws discovered from a study of contemporary psyches seem true for all time. (p. 177)

And Freud’s failure is precisely his inability to uncover "causal con­ nexions" accounting for the changes in the patient’s psyche. The causal 90 connections he finds In the psyche are only mythological masks for the real causes of the sickness, which lie in bourgeois society. *****

The mythological mask which seems to bother Caudwell the most Is the libido. His essay in Studies which, ostensibly, is going to be an evaluation of the bourgeois concept of love, turns very quickly into a critique, interesting and penetrating, of Freud’s concept of libido.

Freud would have all social relations originate in the libido, for he believed that "all emotional relations are just variations of sexual love, cheated of their aim." (pp. 132-133)

The unfortunate libido is exploited and oppressed and chained in the cruellest way by thesstructure of society and in its torments gives birth to all sociological and ideological phenomena. All this is simply a return to the old ’natural philosophy* concep- tiontof an indwelling vital force, with eternal desires and alms of its own. (p. 137)

But Caudwell would, of course, have social relations derive from economic activity. In support of hls argument that economic activity is primary to love In the scheme of human relations, Caudwelit draws a difficult analogy from cell reproduction.

We « ..know that economic production in its primary individual form of metabolism, necessarily appears before love, for it is the essence of life. In the primitive cell metabolism exists before love has come into being. The cells at first multiply by fission, as a kind of surplus anabolism, and do not come together either in colonies (social behaviour) or fused in pairs for propagation (sexual behaviour). But because metabolism in the very dawn of life’s history precedes the relation of love, it does not follow that love? Is a chance iridescence of life’s surface. Metabolism, in the yet not fully understood affinity it demands among its pro­ tein molecules, already contains at a material level the rudiments of what men came to name Bros, Love must be implicit In matter. (p. 131) 91

Instead of a "chance Iridescence," love is a "genuine enrichment" of man's economic life. But, snoreImportant, that economic life is prior both to

sexual behavior, on the cellular level, and by analogy to love, on the human Jdvel.

Freud’s error is in thinking that all manifestations of tenderness and affection which are called "love" are "simply modified sexuality or diverted libido," (p. 133) Freud's view assumes that sexual Intercourse is the clear goal of all love and that any love action which does not reach this goal Is thwarted* Infantile sexuality becomes ludicrous by

Freud's distorted view.

On the one hand the infant, with no experience of sexual inter­ course cannot desire it consciously and he cannot desire it un­ consciously, l.e. somatically, because he had not the organs or reflexes for achieving sexual intercourse, (p. 133)

Freud sees Infantile and childish love as mere modifications of adult love; but. In fact, adult sexual love Is only a modified childish love.

Adult love Integrates Into an elaborate and powerful new system primitive behavior patterns, as Freud admits. But Freud stands love's development

fa#}***-- on Its head. It would be as appropriate to think of the baby's body as a thwarted or inhibited adult's body as it is to regard the baby's affec­ tive life as a perpetually frustrated adult's.

Rather than sexual love being the ultimate and all other forms

Its modifications, as Freud believes, economic activity is the ultimate and "sexual love Is a modified economic relation." (p. 140) It appears to the bourgeois mind that the opposite is true because in the human species love has attached to itself a number of economic relations and 92

become enriched by them. In lower organisms this interweaving of eco­

nomic relations with sexual love does not occur. But the relations in­

volved In having a wife, rearing a family, earning one's living, and

keeping up a house have become attached to sexual love, which has be­ come "like a source of warmth irradiating these relations, and these in

turn become fuel which feed it and bring about its enrichment and growth."

(p. 141) Having established Freud's llbidinal theory as typical of the kind of distortion the concept of love has suffered in the bourgeois era,

Caudwell goes on to demonstrate how the bourgeois has desecrated this once wholesome relation with his property-relation mind.

The man often regards love as similar to a bourgeois property re­ lation, as a relation between a man and a thing and not between man and man. The wife was his property for life. She had to be beautiful to gratify his acquisitive Instincts; faithful because a man's property must not alienate Itself from him; but he, the owner, can be unfaithful, because he can acquire other property without affecting his present holding, A similar relation imposed itself on the children he had fed and clothed, and therefore paid their wages. They had sold their labour power to him. (p. 154)

Because bourgeois relations appear to exist between a man and a commodity, all tenderness has been expelled from them. More pleasant than the pre­ sent bourgeois property relations were the social relations betweeh king and subjects, lord and serfs, plantation owner and slaves. Each of these relations was coercive and exploitive, "It was unpleasantly ,like the relation of a man and his dog, but at least it was tender." (p„ 15l)

And not even the tenderness of a slave-owner for his slave is to'be found 93 in the relations of, say, "a group of shareholders to the employees of a limited liability company."*8 *****

Communism will restore the tenderness to social relations, will rid psychology of its mythic content, and will elevate it to the status of science by bringing the study of man’s "mind" into the world of causality

In explanation of what Communist psychology, based on dialectical material­ ism, will be like, Caudwell suggests that neurology has made a step in the right direction. Although it gives a bourgeois answer to the critical question of what consciousness is, neurology has performed the experiments which give a real dialectical materialistic insight into the nature of con­ sciousness.

*8From Caudweli’s examples one suspects that tenderness is perhaps a quality that social relationships could fare without. In short, what he means by tenderness is not clear. Insufficient definition is probably the most serious flaw in the essay. In his explanation of the infant’s inability to desire sexual intercourse either consciously or unconsciously he uses "somatically" as a synonym for unconsciously. But when Freud speaks of llbldfctal impulses, he is not talking about somatic Impulses. The word "instinct" causes the same kind of difficulty in this study as will the "genotype" in Illusion and Reality. At one point Caudwell says, "In ’the instincts’, the savage soul—the little manikin dwelling in the marionette body and pulling the strings—has returned to psychology." (p, 137) it seems as if he would exclude the 'instincts' from his own psychology, but he argues in another place that the bourgeois marries a beautiful woman to satisfy "his acquisitive instincts." Caud­ well apparently Intends one meaning for an instinct, which he defines as "a certain innate behaviour pattern or chain of reflexes, conditioned or modified by experience," (p. 135) and another for ’the instincts* Which he calls "an indwelling vital force, with eternal desires and alms of its own." (p. 137) But without further explanation, it is difficult to dis­ cern any difference between an "innate behaviour pattern" and an "Indwelling vital force." 94

These experiments, mostly on the thalamus, have turned up the

following set of oppositions:

CORTEX THALAMUS

1. phylogenetically more recent 1. phylogeneticAlly more primitive 2. seat of human mentation; reason, 2. seat of primitive mental func­ intelligence, consciousness tions 3. bulk increase as evolutionary 3« proportionally, and perhaps scale Is 'ascended absolutely, smaller bulk 4. conditioned,reasoned reactions 4. »'all or none" Instinctive re­ actions 5. epicritic sensation—low thres­ 3. protopathlc sensation—high hold, discrete localization: threshold difficult to localize normal sensation as one experi­ spot of sensation ences it 6. epicrltic sensations are pri­ 6. protopath1c sensation may be marily exterloceptlve—e«g., proprioceptive, l.e. internal sight, hearing

Even though this dualism has met with opposition, it does represent, with a few modifications, the general trend of neurological thinking.

The general view is that consciousness is primarily, if not solely, the nsstRation of sensation or motoretraces in the cortex, and that alt delicate affective shades are similarly cortical. Thalamic acti­ vity, it is assumed, Is associated with unconscious or subliminal perceptions and instinctive motor!sms. All violent affective 11 out­ bursts, particularly severe pains, are assumed to be thalamic, (p* 187)

But subliminal impressions contradict this trend, for in a sub- limlnal perception consciousness shows the characteristics of protopathlc sensation—restricted field (fewer sensations) and lack of fine discrimina­ tion (many repetitions are necessary for the impression to become con­ scious)—while unconsciousness is endowed with epicrltic discrimination and a range of experiences. From this, Caudwell concludes that conscious­ ness is not dependent on epicrltic or protopathlc sensation and that

11 The original reads '»effective." 95

repression has nothing to do with unconsciousness. He proposes thinking

"along other lines" in order to understand consciousness.

Caudwell believes that consciousness can be correlated with

"Interest" or "attention." The hunter In the field receives the linage

of the rabbit epicritically, as does the botanist the image of a flower

in a field. But for both the rest of the field is a blur, received

consciously but protopathically« In hypnotism details of this protopathic

sensation would be "remembered." Because a person can be conscious of

just one thing at a time, the more he is intensely interested in it, the more vivid it is and the more "unconscious" other things tend to be. If we regard the human cortex, in a well-educated person, as con­ sisting of n potentialities, consciousness at any moment can only be concerned with a minute fraction of n. The rest are unconscious. Therefore the cortex is primarily an unconscious rather than a conscious organ, (p. 192) What consciousness in the cortex amounts to is merely the glow of a few neurones out of millions that might be glowing. Consciousness is an ex­ ception, a tiny localization; unconsciousness is the distinctive feature of man’s cortical growth.

This contradictory idea of cortical function, based on subliminal perception and "interest," emphasizes that current psychology has an in­ adequate conception of consciousness. Consciousness must be regarded as a matter of degree—like heat and cold. Conscious and unconscious simply represent varying degrees of affective vividness, just as "hot" and "cold" represent "varying rates of molecular motion, which we divide subjectively into ’hotter than ours*, and ’colder than ours’." (p. 199) When viewed this way, it becomes clear that 96

consciousness is simply a specific feature of sensibility, a form of behavior* Sensibility involves on the one hand an innate re­ sponse to certain things and, on the other hand certain things in the environment to be interested in. (p. 194)

Consciousness becomes, in other words, Instinct modified by experience.

Despite the various contents of consciousness, the individual

senses that there is an unchanging basis for all these experiences.

This Caudwell calls the ego, which has access to the vast store of ex­

periences in the cortex. Even though it does not store the experiences

itself, the ego does maintain the general pattern of the experience.

But, Caudwell warns,

let it be understood that we do not regard consciousness as exclusively thalamic, or. the ego as seated in the thalamus and its outgrowths. This is to make the mistake of the mythologlsts. The thalamus, be­ cause of its strategic position, is the spear-point of consciousness. Consciousness is a behaviour of the whole nervous system. It is one out of a number of conditioned responses to stimuli, (pp. 200-201) In opposition to the view of Freud and the instinct school, any potential

response which is not made conscious is, in a sense, inhibited or re­

pressed. Inhibition and repression, then, are very natural processes.

Although consciousness and unconsciousness, instinct and experience,

or thalamus and cortex can be separated in a discussion, they cannot be

separated in practice. In practice bodily behavior is one thing, a unity, a material becoming in which both body and environment are involved.

Remembering that the universe is a material unity, as proved in "Reality,"

it becomes clear that body and environment are in a constant determining relation. Every part of the body not only affects the other parts but is also in determining relations with the rest of reality. It is determined by it and determines it, ... Of this multitude of 97

relations, spatio-temporal, perceptual and mnemic, 12 w® dis­ tinguish a certain group, changing as the world changes, not with it or separately from It but in mutually determining Interaction with it. This selection, rich, highly organised and recent, we call the consciousness^ or our ego« We do not select it out« In the process of development It separates out, as life separated out, as suns and planets, and the elements separated out, from the process of becoming« . « • But in separating out, it does not completely separate out, any more than any element did. It remains, like them in determining relation with the rest of the Universe, and the study of the organisation of this developed structure, of Its Inner rela­ tions and the relations of the system with all other systems in the Universe, Is psychology—not bourgeois psychology, but the psy­ chology of dialectical materialism, (pp. 208-209)

Psychology will be elevated to the status of a science when it Is brought

Into the causal world of science. The bourgeois illusion of freedom as

self-determination will be replaced with the understanding that freedom 13 is the recognition of the causal relation.

VII. AESTHETICS

Caudweli’s "Beauty: A Study in Bourgeois Aesthetics," from Further

Studies, is an analysis of how the subject-object dichotomy in bourgeois

philosophy has spawned two false aesthetic theories. Just as neurology corresponded to mechanical materialism and gestaltIsm to idealism in bour­

geois psychology, so does the coenesthesta theory correspond to mechanical';

l^Reed "mnemonic." *3Fear!ng that some of the details in the essay "Consciousness" might have been outmoded by a subsequent discovery, Rickword sent the manuscript to a "younger neurologist," Dr« B. H. Kerman. In Kerman’s opinion, "Caudwell brilliantly anticipates a whole trend which is now discernible in modem neuro-anatomy. The experimental material was not available when he was writing so that the value of hls application of the Marxist method to the facts as then known Is dramatically revealed by the results of subsequent investigation." (Further Studies, p. 11) 98 materialism and the absolute Idea theory correspond to Idealism In the realm of bourgeois aesthetics. Caudwell's critique of bourgeois aesthe­ tics has been kept for last because it deals in some detail with what

George Thomson calls "the key to all hls work": "hls intense realisation

... that in the last analysis art and science are inseparable from one another, being contradictory and complementary aspects of the life-process of society."*1* As this study has suggested, the more general key to all of Caudwell's work Is the subject-object dichotomy In bourgeois economy, but Professor Thomson's "key" is unquestionably the central theme of

Illusion and Reality and at least a few of Caudwell's essays. "Beauty" is one of these essays, and this analysts of it can serve both as an ex­ planation of why Caudwell was interested in making history and psychology scientific and as an introduction to the study of Illusion and Reality Which follows. Because the bourgeois considers himself separate from his environ­ ment, because of hls self and non-self dualism, he necessarily considers beauty to be a quality either in himself or In the environment. If the bourgeois identifies beauty as a feeling In himself, he believes that the likeness in all beautiful objects Is that all produce coenesthesla* This makes beauty into a chemleo-physiological phenomenon,15 if, however, the \ bourgeois lodges beauty in the environment, beauty becomes form, not parts

^"Introduction," The Concept of Freedom (London, 1963), p, 8«

15Caudwell rejects I. A. Richards* theory of beauty as of this sort. See below for a discussion of Richards* probable Influence on Caudwell* 99 in themselves but ;the relationship of parts in the work of art* But forms are ideas and exist independently of matter. Beauty has become an absolute idea. By Caudwell’s definition, beauty is a quality in the art work which "arises from the social ordering of the affective elements in socially known things." (p. 108) Man needs a third term to mediate between naked subject and naked object. He needs something which re­ mains relatively unchanged while he himself changes; this would account for his projection of beauty (a quality of all beautiful objects) out­ side of himself. But, at the same time, he needs something Which is, in contrast to the bare environment, changing; this would account for the fact that different objects are regarded beautiful by different ages and cultures, caudwell finds such a third term in society.

To an individual man society stands as environment, and is included with the sun, earth and air. To nature, however, society stands as an active human force. The antimonies of beauty as a value can therefore onlybe resolved by regarding it as a social product, some­ thing secreted in the process of society. ... The social process generates everywhere beauty,act as a universal but as a specific social product, just as it generates science, politics, or religion, (pp, 86-9&)16

Although beauty is determined by other non-aesthetlc—l.e, socio­ logical—qualities, there is nonetheless a distinct realm of aesthetics.

Beauty does have its own peculiar quality. A beautiful thing tells one something in the way that a glance tells. It has a significant content.

16In a book like F. W. Bateson’s Guide to English LIterature (Chicago, 1965) one finds this idea of beauty as a product of a particu­ lar society. For example, the inability of the author of Beowulf to understand the Canterbury Tales (p. IS), or Johnson’s view that attempting to improve on Pope’s metrics would be "dangerous." (p. 92) 100 iflce a discursive statement, but the significance is of a different sort.

The distinction between a true statement and a beautiful thing Is, for

Caudwell, the distinction between two products of society—science and art. The significance of a scientific statement lies in Its truth; and Its truth is determined by Its consistency tested in action. The scientific experiment refines out the inconsistencies between the bits of reality in society’s consciousness and reality itself. The scientific experiment enables man to penetrate his environment in the search for truth. But man’spenetration of his environment has always been more successful when It was a social penetration. "From the very start the labour process, by the society it generates, acts as a mediating term in the production of truth." (p. 96) But truth is never mere consistency because an affect attaches itself to every thought or perception. Man is never in a situation without responding to that situation; he never experiences anything without responding to the experience. Truth washed clean of affective coloration is bare geometry; the world has disappeared and only equations exist. If the pursuit of truth was the study of the objective elements

(bits of reality) in the conscious field, then the pursuit of beauty will

Involve studying the affective elements in consciousness. As indicated, affects always accompany perception. Man’s feelings make up the affec­ tive elements of consciousness. Man’s affects give rise to desires to change the environment* But, just as man’s penetration of the environ­ ment In sfcftence has always been more successful when It was done socially, 1

101

so too can man change the environment more effectively In coopera-

tlon.

The desires or the goals of the community are the starting point of art; and beauty Is the end of art. Beauty, then, is that quality in a thing which, prompted by an individual's affective responses, expresses society's desire to change the environment, to make it correspond more perfectly with the affective elements of consciousness* Just as truth became equations when man and society were ignored, so also does beauty become mere physiological response when society and nature are Ignored.

To demonstrate how mutually dependent art and science are, Caudwell shows that although art expresses the desire to change the environment, it cannot directly cause such a change. That Is the role of science.

Which "conditions the environment fcd the instincts and in doing so changes the environment." (p. 112) Truth and beauty, far from being goals of society—"directly they become goals in themselves, they cease to exist" (p. 112)—are instead generated as aspects of the ever-changing flow of reality. The scientist and the artist produce truth and beauty* not as ends in themselves, but as offspring of their attempts to resolve this ten- slon* they change both the organism and the environment.

A scientist inherits the hypotheses, and an artist Inherits the traditions* ofthe past. In the scientist's case aneexperlment, and In the artist's case a vital experience Indicates a discre­ pancy* a tension, Whose synthesis results in a new hypothesis or a new art work. Of course the scientist feels the tensloh as an error, as sometBing In the environment; the artist as an urge, as something in his heart* (p* 108)1?

l?That Caudwell is working in a science-art context established by I, A, Richards, apparent here, will be discussed In Chapter 5? i- v 102

Science reveals to man what can be done and art reveals what man would have done* The two working together and against each other are the life force of society. CHAPTER 4

CAUDWELI'S WORLD VIEW

In "Men andNature: A Study In Bourgeois History," Caudwell re­ marks that bourgeois economy reveals one of its contradictions in the organisation of labor in the factory, the trust, and the monopoly as opposed to the disorganisation of labor in the competition between these units* In this respect bourgeois economy is a microcosm of bourgeois culture.

Just the same phenomenon is seen in bourgeois ideology. We have highly organised sciences or departments of biology, physics, psy­ chology, anthropology, engineering, aesthetics, education, econo­ mics, philology, and the like, and yet not only do they not fora an integrated world-view, but their very increase of internal or­ ganisation produces a disorganisation of culture as a whole* (pp. 121-122)

The remedy for this dlsorgnizatlon and diffuseness is, says Caudwell, dialectical mater&Hlsm, which will integrate all the arts and all the sciences into one coherent world-view. Illusion and Reality stands as his attempt to synthesize all the arts and sciences into a Marxian world-view*

Thomson calls the book "the first comprehensive attempt to work out a Marxist theory of art."* But as Caudweli’s essay on aesthetics indicated, a legitimate "theory of art" cannot be separated from a "theory of scisince." They are complementary and contradictory aspects of the life process of society. In his Introduction to Illusion and Reality*

1 "Biographical Note," Illusion and Reality* 2nd ed. (London, 1946), p. 5. All further quotations from Illusion and Reality will be indicated with a page reference in the text. Quoted by Permission of International Publishers Co., Inc. 104

Caudwell discusses art’s relationship to the sciences. He says that

In order to criticize a work of art, one must "look at it from the outside." But since art is a product of society, when one is outside

of art he Is in society. The criticism of art differ«*; from "pure" crea­

tion of art In that it has a sociological component.

But physics, anthropology, history, biology, philosophy and psy­ chology are also products of society, and therefore a sound sociology would enable the art critic to employ criteria drawn from those fields without falling Into eclecticism or confusing art with psy­ chology or politics. There is only one sound sociology which lays bare the general active relation of the ideological products of society with each other and with concrete living—historical material­ ism. (pp. 11*12) Here, as elsewhere, Marxian sociology is the ground for the study. And

what Caudwell studies, precisely, is art’s relation to society. But in

discussing art Caudwell is never far from discussing the other side of

the same penny, science. In studying art he focuses on poetry for two

reasons: 1) "its ancient history and somewhat obsolescent appearance to-day raises crucial problems for the student of aesthetics" and 2) poetry is "the art most attractive to the writer," (p. 12)

I, ORIGIN, DEVELOPMENT, AND FUTURE OF POETRY

One of Caudwell’s basic arguments is that poetry has an economic origin and a social function—that is, it originated in man's struggle with nature and Its "truth" is social. The only distinctive characteris­ tic of poetry in its primitive form was its heightened language. Every­ day speech was the language of private persuasion, but heightened speech, characterized by some kind of rhythm, was the language of public emotion. 105

Then, as societies became more economically differentiated, this dif­

ferentiation was reflected in the development of language. Poetry be­ came a separate category of language whose purpose it was to express collective emotion. Caudwell wonders why a primitive tribe should need an instrument, like poetry, to produce a collective emotion when any

imminent danger would "instinctively elicit a conditioned and collective response.* (p. 26)

In answering, he explains both the economic origin and the social function of poetry. An instrument like poetry is necessary when no visible cause for collective emotion exists, but when such a cause is potential and the emotion is necessary, in struggling for survival primi­ tive man needs food to eat and protection against predatory animals. The poem he chants--poetry and music were originally parts of the same artistic process—assures him that the edible seed which he Is sowing will be trans­ formed into a plentiful harvest. The poem is an illusion which enables him to cause a future economic reality. The poem that is chanted as the warriors stalk the tiger Is used to give them a sense of solidarity, of social strength; it links one hunter with the rest and gives him confi­ dence thatthe hunting.party, a social unit, will be successful where in­ dividual efforts have failed.

Thus the developing complex of society. In its struggle with the environment, secretes poetry as it secretes the technique of har­ vest, as part of Its non-biological and specifically human adapta­ tion to existence. ... The poem adapts the heart to a new purpose, without changing the eternal desires of men's hearts. It does so by projecting man into a world of phantasy which is superior to his present reality precisely because it Is a world not yet realised, 108

whose realisation demands the very poetry which phantastlcally anticipates it. (pp. 2930)2

Thus, In this context, poetry may he seen as economic.

Poetry’s real value lies not in its description of the grain, not in its presentation of the fact of the harvest or the dead tiger, but in its expression of the social and collective complex that Is the tribe’s relation to the harvest or the hunt. Poetry

expresses a whole new world of truth—its emotion, its comradeship, its sweat, its long-drawn-out wait and happy conswnmat ion—which has been brought into being by the fact that man’s relation to the harvest is not instinctive and blind but economic and conscious. Not poetry’s abstract statement—its content of facts—but its dy­ namic role in society—its content of collective emotion—is there­ fore poetry’s truth, (p. 30)

Poetry has molded the instincts, which by themselves are blind, to the pattern of external reality. It makes men aware of their instincts; and, once aware, men canuse them in their struggle with nature. Poetry’s world-changing power, suggested at the end of the last chapter, will be considered in detail In the second part of this chapter.

If poetry is bom out of man’s struggle, then It ceases to function socially when It ceases to express those emotions. This disappearance of collective, emotional content from poetry occurs When the poetry of a society Is produced by men of that class which no longer actively struggles with nature. In the slave and feudal societies, the upper class—the art producer—drifts out of contact with reality, 1.e. no longer interpenetrates with nature.

2 The similarities between poetry and fantasy will be discussed in part three of this chapter. 107

The exercise of art, like the exercise of supervision, becomes a mechanical repetition by stewards of the forms, functions and opera­ tions of the past» Art perishes in a Byzantine formality or an aca­ demic conventionality little better than religious dogma* (p. 43)3

For a while fairy tale and folk art flourish; but as the estate of the

exploited class becomes meaner and meaner, even this source of genuine

collective emotion dies out*

In Caudweli’s explanation of the development of poetry he passes

rather quickly over the centuries between the primitive origin of poetry

and its state of decline in bourgeois society. He does say that whenever

man makes a leap to a new level of society—from slave to feudal, or from

feudal to bourgeois—for a short time poetry returns to fulfill its ori­

ginal function. Each time poetry expresses the collective emotion of the

dynamic class in society. But as society develops further, that once dy­

namic class—barons and landwoners in feudal society and the rising middle class In bourgeois society—becomes more and more parasitical; and its poetry becomes more and more decadent* *****

Caudweli’s treatment of the development of modern poetry Is

thorough. His study is still based upon the assumption that "poetry is

a productive or economic activity of man. To separate it from this founda­ tion makes its development impossible to understand." (p. 44) By modern poetry Caudwell means that produced by the entire complex of cultures which originated in Europe in the fifteenth century and spread over the

3caudwell’s low regard for Byzantine art stems from its expression of man’s alienation from nature. A noteworthy contrast is T. E. Hulme’s high regard for this non-vital art for precisely the same reason: it ex­ presses man’s separateness from nature. 108 whole western world.

There is something "modem" in Shakespeare, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Pope, Goethe and Voltaire which we can distinguish from Homer, Thales, Chaucer and Beowulf, and compare with Valery, Cezanne, James Joyce, Bergson and Einstein* (p. 55)

This whole cultural complex rests on an economic foundation which is the most "vasiegated and dynamic" that man has ever developed* Because many nations and many languages have been swept up into this complex, the study of modem poetry is a formidable task* Caudwell chooses to study the modem poetry of England because the development of modem English poetry Is representative of a like development in any capitalist country*

The fact that England for three centuries led the world in the development of capitalism and that, during the same period, It led the world in the development of poetry, are not unrelated coincidences but part of the same movement of history* (p* 56)

The sixteenth-century transition from feudalism, the stage of primitive accumulation, was a period during which the bourgeoisie sought unrestrained freedom*

Intemperate will, "bloody, bold and resolute", without norm or measure, is the spirit of this era of primitive accumulation* The absolute-individual will overriding all other wills is therefore the principle of life for the Elizabethan age* Marlowe's Faust and Tamburlaine express this principle In its netvest form* (p. 74) For an additional literary example Caudwell points to Shakespeare's princely heroes Who possess "the absolute bourgeois will" and whose kingly behavior is the expression of the Elizabethan ideal* tear, Hamlet, Macbeth,

Antony, Trollus, Othello, Romeo—each has a single obligation, which is

"to be the thing ht is, to realise himself to the last drop, to give out

In its purest and most exquisite form the amma of self*" (p* 74) 109

This princely will realizes Its ultimate development In the abso­ lute monarch. The court now is the social, political, and economic center of society, and it has become a source of evil. The monarch supports the men who accumulated their capital in the form of land, and he grants them special privileges and exemptions. The poets—Donne,

Herrick, Vaughan, Herbert, and Crawshaw--withdraw from the evil of the court to the private study and the country. Following this transition stage is the bourgeois revolution with its leader, Milton, England’s

"first openly revolutionary poet." This revolt is the active response to the economic evils of the court to which the metaphysical poets reacted passively by simply withdrawing. Speaking of the technical characteristics of poetry during this era, Caudwell says, "The puritan revolt against the court gives it a bare and learned vocabulary; and this conscious restraint is reflected in a stricter rhythm." (p. 118) The style becomes artificial and "consciously noble." But "the people," who helped the bourgeoisie secure its freedom, want freedom also. This revolutionary spirit is now dangerous to the bourgeoisie and so is discouraged. "The noble simplicity of the self-idealised revolutionary (Satan, Samson

Agonlstes, Christ in the desert) then vanishes in an atmosphere of de­ feat." (p. 118)

Following the successful bourgeois revolt and the unsuccessful revolt of the masses is the Restoration or, as Caudwell prefers, the

Counter-Purl tan Reaction. The bourgeoisie realizes that its most profitable alliance is with the court, but the court has become "almost burgher" and subject to its influence. The absolute prince of the Elizabethan era 110

can be no more; he is now subject to ’’reason." The concomitant effect

on poetry is that "formal rules are imposed to restrain the ’spirit’

whose violence has proved dangerous. Poetry indicates its readiness to compromise by moving within the bounds of the heroic couplet." (p. 118)

The characteristics of this Counter-Purl tan Reaction can best be seen In the works of Dryden, Suckling, Lovelace.

The unquestionable dominance of the bourgeoisie, established

through the Restoration, gives way to the era of mercantilism and manu­

facture. Caudwell distinguishes manufacture, as does Marx, from machino-

facture or factory production. Manufacture Is still hand labor; the

artisan is still an important cog in the economic system. The poetry of

this era, as exemplified by the works of pope, emphasizes a permanence of

forms and restrictions. The outward rules become a rational part of style*

Even the vocabulary "becomes formalised and elegantly fashionable." (p. 119)

The next stage In the movement of capital is the Industrial Revolu­

tion. Machine power, makes factory production feasible. The petty bour­

geois and artisan disappear from the economic scene. Amassed capital in

the form of industry becomes the strongest force in England. The "free"

market and "free" enterprise give the capitalist the kind of freedom he

is seeking. But with exploitation inevitably comes the desire for reform.

Liberal capitalists try to lead the people in a crusade against privilege; but the bourgeoisie, seeing the course taken in France by an alliance be­

tween bourgeoisie and proletariat, "becomes frightened, retracts .its de­ mands, loses its mass basis and enters on a reaction in alliance with the

landed aristocracy." (p. 120) For the second time the bourgeoisie has Ill learned that alliance with the proletariat is impossible, for their re­ spective notions of freedom are mutually exclusive. In the Romantic

Revolution of Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth can be found the Ideological changes of the Industrial Revolution.

Shelley . . • speaks for the bourgeoisie who, at this stage of history, feel^ themselves the dynamic force of society and there­ fore voice demands not merely for themselves but for the whole of suffering human!ty.z It seems to them that if only they could realize themselves, that is, bring into being the conditions neces­ sary for their own freedom, this would of itself ensure the freedom of all. Shelley believes that he speaks for all men, for all suf- fferers, calls them all to a brighter future. The bourgeois trammeled by the restraints of the era of mercantilism is Prometheus, bringer of fire, fit symbol of the machine-wielding capitalist. Free him and the world is free. (pp. 91-92)

In poetry, as in industry, there is a rapid growth of new technique.

Old forms are discarded and poetry becomes full of feeling. The immediate 4 appeal is no longer to reason but rather to the heart and the sentiments.

But the bourgeois Illusion of freedom and the subsequent realiza­ tion of its incompatibility with proletarian freedom is also reflected in poetry. Disillusioned, poetry withdraws more and more into the world of romance. "It is too compromised to make much of social reality except by extreme hypocr i syor.empty pompousness. All poets betray their youth as they mature." (p. 120) This disillusionment and betrayal mark the be­ ginning of the poet's isolation from society which»suits from the condi­ tions of capitalist production. The decline of British capitalism, ini­ tiated by the first capitalist crisis in 1825 following the Luddite move­ ments in various industrial centers, finds poets such as Tennyson^, Swinburne,

^Caudwell matches "bourgeoisie" sometimes with a singular verb and sometimes with a plural one. 112

and Arnold becoming more pessimistic and withdrawing more and more into

”a private world**’ The technical advancements of the preceding era are continued but now in a more personal fashion.

The withdrawal of the Victorian poets foreshadows the sense of alienation from society found in the twentieth century poet during the age of imperialism* As the capitalistic modes of production persist, expand, and intensify, enslaving more people under laissez falre free» dom, "the poet revolts by extreme individualism. ... Hie poem passes, by a series of stages.from the social world to the completely private world*•’ (p. 121) The art-for-art’s sake movement of the late nineteenth century—a disoclalization process in itself—now becomes art-for-the- artist's sake In the form of absolute personalization, surrealism. The words used in poetry no longer have a social association; if they have any conscious association, it is a highly personal one. The poem is com­ pletely separated from society and the poet from social reality* just as the worker Is completely separated from ownership of the means of produc­ tion* * * * * *

Poetry, as much as psychology or ethics, is a part of the super­ structure of bourgeois society* For this reason, the remedy for bourgeois poetry is the same as it was for the other branches of bourgeois ideology— a renovation of the economic base. When bourgeois economic relations dis­ appear, bourgeois society and the bourgeois poet will disappear with them*

Caudwell, recognizing that the proletariat Is unlikely to produce poets 113

(and scientists and intellectuals of every discipline) of its own accord, explains in the last chapter of Illusion and Reality, "The Future of

Poetry," how the leadership in proletarian poetry, and proletarian art

in general, will be provided by bourgeois artists whose artistic con­ sciousness "is attracted—by all the blindness and instinct in it—to the pole of the exploited class*" (p. 281) What prompts these artists to separate from their own class is the insufferable tension caused by a growing awareness of the bourgeois illusion* There are three alternatives for the bourgeois artist who is confronted with the opportunity of switching his loyalties: opposition, alliance, or assimilation.

Those who choose to oppose the proletarian movement have to fall back on the categories.and forms of yesterday, which have decayed so that they are unusable. Then, searching for a mode of expression, they

"regress" and return to almost mythologicahJhemes, to interpret the world in terms of the blood and the unconsciousness ... This attempt to roll history back gives us Spenglerian, "Aryan" and Fascist art* (p* 282)

And, as was seen in Studies In a Dying Culture, it produces such artists as D, H. Lawrence,

Those who ally themselves with the proletariat—Gide in France,

Day-Lewis and Auden and Spender in England—become only "fellow travellers" but not true members of the proletarian class.

Their attitude to existing society * * . can only be destructive— It is anarchist, nihilist and surreal1ste. They often glorify the revolution as a kind of giant explosion which will blow up every­ thing they feel to be hampering them. But they have no construc­ tive theory—1 mean as artists: they may as economists accept the economic categories of socialism, but as artists they cannot see the new forms and contents of an art which will replace bourgeois art* (p. 283) 114

These allies of the revolution lead a difficult life, for their theories

keep interfering with their art. They are willing that everyone else be

pro letari ani zed except the artist; they will penult no tampering—

"censorship"—with their own sphere of activity. "Crude and grotesque

scraps of Marxist phraseology" are found in their basically bourgeois

art; and "extraordinary and quite unnecessary outbursts of bourgeois

'Independence* and indiscipline" (p. 285) appear in their seemingly pro­

letarian living« To these "bourgeois revolutionaries" Caudwell addresses,

on behalf of the conscious proletariat, a lengthy and impassioned plea,

the essence of which is, "You must choose. There Is no neutral ground

of art«" Those who choose whole-hearted alliance with the proletarian cause are assimilated intothe movement and become the leaders in proletarian art« They find new forms and contents to replace the decadent old« And

they gathbr around them proletarian artists who produce ah art which

has a simplicity and openness of theme which goes with a certain crudity and clumsiness in handling the technique; rather like a proletarian occupying for the first time a role in administration which hitherto had been peculiarly the prerogative of the bourgeois. Yet it is by this means that bourgeois technique and bourgeois ad­ ministration will be lifted to a new level by a laborious refashioning, In which at first every mistake is made except the fatal bourgeois mistakes« (p. 29).5

The art they produce will be free, conscious, and social.

^"Simplicity and openness of theme" and the "crudity and clumsi­ ness" off technique would seem to be an apt description of the ’‘beat" poetry that developed a decade after Caudwell wrote Illusion and Reality. Caudwell might very likely have put the beat poets among the allies of the proletariat, though; for even though their forms were new, their at­ titudes were largely destructive. 115

And these axe the three outstanding characteristics of poetry

in the communist society* Poetry, as it was in the primitive tribe, will

once again be forthe people* The poet’s public will enlarge, becoming

"gradually coincident with society"—for example, the Soviet Union of 1936. (p. 293) Words with vulgar, insincere, commercialized, and trite

associations will be replaced by those with collectively emotional as­

sociations, Esoteric verse expressing the bourgeois illusion will give way to public verse expressing the conscious truth of Communism. And

the Communist poet will be concerned "to a degree never known before with

die realisation of all the values contained in the relations of human beings in real life" (p. 297) Caudwell’s last word Is as general as it must be and as simple as he could make it* The bourgeois poet, aware of the necessity of outer reality but not of the necessity of his own inner reality, is only half a man* "Communist poetry will be complete, because it will be man conscious of hls own neeasity as well as that of outer reality*" (p* 298) The Communist poet will, quite simply, be free*

II* ART AND SCIENCE

fine of the Ideas central to Illusion and Reality Is the one in­ troduced in Further Studies in a Dying Culture—viz* that art and science are complementary and contradictory aspects of the seme life process of society* This Idea, implicit throughout the book, is considered in depth in Caudwell’s eighth chapter, "The World and the Caudwell develops hls thesis in four steps* First, he shows that language is a means of 116 attaining scientific and artistic truth. Next he studies science as language; then, art as language. Finally, he demonstrates through the

Mock Ego of science and Mock World of art that science and art can have just one goal, freedom, and that they are complementary insofar as they help each other realise this goal. The role of language in the attainment of truth is an important one* Man, with his "more or less commons set of instincts," and nature

Interpenetrate in man’s struggle for existence. One of the issues of this dialectic interplay Is language; and language is relevant only for men in association. It Is the most flexible tool man has devised for the unification of Ms species, throwing out of the cry of the animal with Its primitive feeling-tone and objective referent, language retains these two characteristics, now more precise and complex* The word used primarily for its feeling«tone is art; and the word used primarily for 6 Its reference to objective reality is science. Language as art and as science enables man to attain two different kinds of truths. Since Caudwell defines art as the sum of changes in man’s feelings, artistic truth is the truth of feeling. And because he defines science as the sum of changes

In the perceptual world, scientific truth is the truth of perception.

&The possible Influence of I. A. Richards, whose eoenesthetic theory of beauty Caudwell rejected in Studies, can be seen here. In Principles of Literary Critic!ma, 5th ed. (New York, 1934), Richards states: "A statement may be used for the sake of the reference, true or false, which it causes. This is the scientific use of language. But it may also be used for the sake of the effects In emotion and attitude produced by the reference it occasions. This Is the emotive use of language," (p. 267) 117

Truth itself, of any kind, is a social product and is never static and absolute.

At any tine truth, is the special complex formed by the partial reflections of WdTfty in all living men’s heads—not as a mere lumping together, but as these views are organised in a given society, by its level of experimental technique, scientific literature, means of communication and discussion, and labora­ tory facilities» (p. 138)

Language as science, then, reveals truth about nature, and language

as art reveals truth about the genotype.

Caudwell’s concept of the genotype and its part In hls aesthetic

theory is discussed in Chapter 5« For the present, the following brief definition of the genotype will suffice* It is the

individual, the instinctive man as he is bom, who if ’left to himself* might grow up into something like a dumb brute, but in­ stead of this he grows up in a certain Mind of society as a cer­ tain kind of man—Athenian, Aztec or Londoner* (p. 136)

Caudwell distinguishes two aspects of the genotype, the timeful, change­

ful and the timeless, changless* The former indicates genetic individu­

ality and the latter suggests some kind of instinctive commonality that

Caudwell never clearly explains. In the context of the discussion that

follows, the© genotype is to be regarded as the housing for the necessity

of the instincts*

As man’s range of experiences is enlarged merely by hls being in

active contact with nature, hls perceptions grow more complex and hls

feelings more varied and refined* And as his objective and subjective consciousness enlarges, he becomes progressively more free; for, as stated before, freedom is nothing more than man’s consciousness of the necessity in nature and in himself* 118

In so far as art exposes the real necessity of the instincts by exposing all the various possible changes following from the vari­ ous means of influencing them, art becomes conscious of the neces­ sity of the world of feeling, and therefore free. Art is the ex­ pression of man's freedom in the world of feeling, just as science is the expression of man's freedom in the world of sensory percep­ tion, because both are conscious of the necessities of their worlds and can change them--art the world of feeling or inner re­ ality, science the world of phenomena or outer reality, (p. 141)

Thus, any man's freedom is in proportion to his consciousness of neces­

sity. How man discerns the truth in--that is, the necessity of—nature through the agency of language is the second step in the discussion of

art and science as liberators of mankind.

The word has a subjective and an objective quality, not in itself, but only as it is spoken, only as it is used in a "dynamic social act."

What makes this act social is the fact that man communicates from himself and to others when he uses words. And what makes it dynamic is that com­ munication is a dialectic process. In order for communication between men to occur, two conditions must be met: a common perceptual world must exist and common perceptual symbols must be used. The common perceptual world is reality as it has been experienced by all of the communicators; it is composed of the perceptions and experiences shared in common. This com­ mon perceptual world enables the speaker to tell the hearer something he does not know in terms of something he does know. The common perceptual symbols are words that stand for concepts in the private perceptual worlds of the communicators; and these concepts are only symbols of real things which have been perceived. Because communication is a dialectic process, Caudwell sees a three­ fold change as the essence of the word. The private perceptual worlds of 119 the speaker and of the hearer and their common perceptual world all change as a result of the "dynamic social act." If a speaker sgys, "•Some roses are blue*," the private perceptual world of the hearer

Is naturally enlarged, as is the cowon perceptual world, the existence of blue roses now being common to both private perceptual worlds.

But the transaction does not change only the hearer’s perceptual world and the common perceptual world. For in order to body forth hls unique individual experience of a strange blossom to the hearer, the speaker had to transform it into current coin* From a unique blossom, unlike anything seen before or since, it had to become for him a blue rose—as a blossom, belonging to the order rose; assa visual rose, to the colour blue. Thus the act of communication changed hls experience and as It were kept it on the social rails, just as it changed the common perceptual world and the perceptual world of the hearer, (p. 143)

And, as Caudwell says later, "Keeping perception on the social rails is merely keeping it conscious." (p. 144) As the above example would indicate, the common perceptual world, ever-enlarging through the social act of communication, is liable to in­ clude error. "Truth only separates out from falsehood by the active re­ lation to the common perceptual world with material reality." (p. 144)

The truth in the common perceptual world can be confirmed and the falsity ferreted out only by subjecting the common perceptual world to scientific experimentation, by relating it actively to material reality. This con­ tinual bumping up against the material world on the part of the common perceptual world is essential, for the latter, as it increases in complexity, becomes remote from concrete social life and turns Into "the shadow world of thought, or ideology." (p, 145) Whenever an inconsistency arises in the common perceptual world, it can be resolved only in the teal world by a crucial experiment on the matter that is represented in the shadow world. 120

This experiment then gives rise to « new hypothesis, which is nothing more than a change in the truth content of the shadow world. Language L i is the agency through which falsity is exposed for scrutiny by scienti- fie experiment. This is its relation to the truth of perception.

Its relation to the truth of feeling is, in the third part of the chapter, less clearly explained. Just as a feeling-tone inheres in all experience beeause^e^perlence is the produet of a dialectic inter­ action of subject and pbjeet, so does a feeling-tone inhere in a word because the word is the product of the subject-object interpenetration— in this ease, man's economic struggle with nature* Any word, by itsdlf, is the potential stimulus for a Whole range of entities in outer reality and a like range of feeling-tones inside; but what insures communication is the combination of words into grammatical units whereby the objective and subjective responses to the word are limited to the intentions of the speaker.■ We saw that we were able to communicate part of our experience of outer reality to others because of the existence of a common per­ ceptual world with agreed symbols. In the same way, we communicate our feelings to others because of a common feeling world with agreed symbols. This common perceptual world was nothing but the "real" world, or truth as reflected in the consciousness of society, What, then, is the common affective world? This common affective world Is nothing but the "I" which men construct as a result of their social experience, (p* 150)

As a result of his association with others, "men has amassed a whole world of affective experience which is thus easily accessible and constitutes the common ego or Mind," (p* 151) The feeling-tones attached to words con­ vey the affective experience in the same way that the objective referent 121 conveyed the objective experience* In other words, language as art leads to the ’truth of feeling* just ss language as science led to the

♦truth of perception«* This part of Caudwell’s argument Is much briefer end less satis­ factory than the preceding part* He gives no explanation of how truth and falsehood—or, as it would bo here, beauty and ugliness—can be distinguished in the common affective world, in the social ego* He does not indicate how the common affective world can be enlarged, or if it can be, except with the generalization: “The social ego has been so subtilised and refined by generations of art and experience, that an individual can realise his emotional peculiarities to the full within

Its frame." (pp. 151-152) If conflicts in the common perceptual world are resolved by an appeal to objective reality in the form of a scienti­ fic experiment* then it would seem that conflicts in the common world might be worked out through an appeal to the "I" of social experience«

Caudwell may have had something like this in mind When he posed the fol­ lowing question: When words arouse a feeling-tone^«¡us, we draw it from the social ego; otherwise how could s mere sound exactly arouse, like a note on a piano, a corresponding emotional reverberation selected from a socially recognised scale of values? (p. 152)

If he means that the socially generated and socially recognized scale of values In some measure controls the emotional response, then the ex­ planation is Implicit« The social ego Is the same for everybody; and

If controls each Individual’s response, the emotional reverberation will be essentially the same for each individual* But If Caudwell means 122

that the scale of values In the social ego Is simply the source of the

reverberation and that the individual controls which response is evoked,

then there ought to be some way of testing (comparable to the scientists

critical experiment) for the "proper" emotion. How does one experiment

on the common affective world to find out, say, if what he feels in a

given situation is really what hls comrades feel? Or, which feeling is more compatible with the ordering of internal reality? If the social

ego does not control the response, these questions remain unanswered. Having demonstrated the social character of the "World" and of

the "I," Caudwell endeavors to show that "the common world and the com­ mon ego do not live apart," (p. 152) that science and art both function

socially to produce freedom. To demonstrate the relationship be­

tween science and art Caudwell devises two concepts, the "Mock Ego" and

the "Mock World," The Mock Ego is the understood observer of every sci­ entific experiment to which is attached all the reality symbolized by

science’s language, . ' ’ _. - , »■ L-w'i- When we are making a Scientific statement, we make it about ob­ servable things—observable operations of ordering, observable colours, actions and the like. We assume always there is "some­ one" doing this ordering arid counting* The assumption is so im­ plicit and naive that scientists do not always realise that they are making this assumption and that they are referring everything to one obwxver. If queried, they will reply that this observer is any "right-thinking person" without explaining what right-thinking person could have so bewildering a range of experience, and maintain so neutral, so admirably judicial an attitude towards It. (p. 153)

Although scientists have tended to regard this observer as a piece of scaffolding Which could. If necessary, be dismantled, recent discoveries 123

in physics—Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy and the conflict be­ tween quantum physics and relativity physics—have shown that if the scaffolding is removed nothing is left. The building of science col­ lapses,7 The point is this: the Mock Ego does not really exist, but it is necessary to think of It as existing because subject and object are never separated in experience.

And, on the other side, when literary art conveys affective at­ titudes, it cannot do so without making statements about reality. "The emotions are only found in real life adhering to bits of reality; there­ fore bits of reality—and moreover organised bits—must always be pre­ sented to achieve the emotional attitude." (p. 153) But the material reality to which the underlying emotion is attached is as non-existent as the scientist's right-thinking observer. The material reality is a Mock World, an illusion accepted as an illusion*

Science and art are like the two halves produced by cutting the original human hermaphrodite in half, according to the story of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, so that each half evermore seeks its counterpart. But science and art do not when fitted together make a complete concrete world; they make a complete hollow •World—an abstract world only made solid and living by the inclusion of the concrete men, from which they are generated, (p. 154)

This neat, effective comparison contains in seminal form the whole of

Caudwell's theory of objective and subjective reality. Science, the language of truth, and art, the language of beauty, do not, like rhetoric, persuade; they merely present to man guides for action by making him more conscious and thereby more free. A mathematical demonstration

7In a shaft of humor, typical of Caudwell, he adds: "This Mock Ego is not of course taken seriously by scientists. He is appreciated as an abstraction. There is no interest in his home life or hobbies.*' (p. 153) 124

appears to the observer, quite simply, to be either true or false.

If It appears true, It is accepted; if false, rejected. “But if we

accept it we are no more persuaded of its truth than we are persuaded

of the ’truth* of a house standing in front of us. We do not accept

fit: we see it.“ (p. 156) Similarly, the feeling-complex of a poem

does not persuade. One Is no more persuaded of the truth of Hamlet’s confusion or of Prufrock’s world-weariness than he is persuaded of the

truth of a tooth-ache. The affective complex is simply injected into

the subjective world of the reader; he feels it. What is seen In a

scientific demonstration and what is felt in a poem make man freer.

Science gives man a deeper and more complex insight Into outer reality

and makes him conscious of its necessity. Art gives man a similar

insight into the “endless potentiality of the instincts«“ It makes man

conscious of the lnstinq.ts.by showing him the various ways in which they

may adapt themselves to experience.

Science and art mkke men free, but freedom la no valuable posses­

sion if men do not use it. Just as the “neutral, passive“ Mock Ego of

science needs the “dynamism and appetite of the instincts“ for its comple­ tion, so also the Mock world of art, "drdned of necessity, requires the mechanism of science for Its realisation*“ (p. 226) When this completion and realization occur, science and art are world-changing, “science

changing the world and art changing men.“ (p. 239) Art gives man a view of a reality that does not exist, and science gives man s way of making that fantasy real. The ultimate value of both art add science Is that they give man the freedom to act, to change the world. And the “point“ 125 of all knowledge Is, not to interpret the word, hut to change it.

111. DREAM-WORK OF POETRY

The catalyst In the scientific and artistic "reactions" that make men free by refining error and ugliness out of the common perceptual world and ego Is, somewhat paradoxically, fantasy. And by fantasy is meant nothing more thanthe distortion of the affective and/or objective elements of consciousness. Because psychoanalysis studies the distortion of the consciousness by the instincts, Caudwell feels that the discoveries of psychoanalysis will be helpful in understanding art. Consequently, a whole chapter of the book Is devoted to a study of the psyche and phantasy. The entire study, though, is but a preface to the presentation of Caudwell’s poetics* Chapter 10, "Poetry’s Dream-Work," is the key to that poetics. Poetry’s similarity to dream is established on the basis of their being irrational, non-symbolic, and concrete. These are three character­ istics of poetry defined in an earlier chapter of illusion and Reality.

Irrationality does not mean incoherence or meaninglessness. It means that the order in a poem (of sounds, beats, affects, Images) does not conform to the orderings men see in their environment. Instead, the order In a poem conforms to the order of internal reality, of the geno­ type. The same is true of dream; the flow of Images is controlled, not by any reasonable, rational laws or series of events in external reality, but by the affective laws of the genotype* The only distinction to be made here is that the "aspect" of the genotype which controls the order 126 of a poem Is the timeless, constant, general one, whereas the "aspect" of the genotype characterized by "individual genetic differences" controls the order of dream images. In other words, poetry is social; dream is private.

That poetry and dream are non-symbolic follows from their irra­ tionality.

Just as poetry, though It was deficient in rational congruence, was full of emotional congruence, so, although it lacks external symbolism—reference to external objects—it is full of Internal symbolIsm--reference to emotional attitudes, (p. 130)

In poetry, unlike mathematics, words are not important merely for what they represent. They are important in themselves and, hence, do not func­ tion in a purely symbolic manner. Similarly, dream images are most im­ portant, not for what they represent, but for their affective coloring.

If poetry were entirely non-symbolic, however, It would be "’meaningless* sound, but sound full of emotional reference—in other words, music."

(p. 130) And if dream were purely non-symbolic, its images too would be meaningless; the dream would have no manifest content.

Because poetry is not purelynon-symbolic, its emotions are at­ tached to real objects that exist in the ego’s field of vision. Because external reality is always present in poetry, poetry must conform to it to be "true." But this conformity is not abstract, general conformity as in stience, but is concrete, particular conformity. Burns’s love was

"like a red, red rose" in one poem, but she does not have to be in every poem, Poetry’s world is a mock world, consisting of concrete bits of reality, but only for the sake of that single poem. A dream is concrete because the same dream image need not have the same affective coloring nor 127

the same referent In external reality In every dream. The context and

texture of a dream is as important as the context and texture of a poem.

Having shown dream to have three of poetry’s characteristics,

Caudwell works the comparison In the other direction and reveals the core of hls poetics. Poetry has a manifest and a latent content, and, as a result, dream-work and poetic technique have much in common. The mani­

fest content of the dream caudwell calls “imsgie phantasy«“ It Is simply the succession of dream images, the story of the fantasy* In the mani­ fest content affects are displaced In relation to dream reality: surprising occurrences do not surprise the dreamer and trifling things appal him.

The reason for this displacement of affective responses can be explained through the dream-work and the latent content, which Caudwell calls “af­ fective reality«“ The dream is organized affectively (is irrational), and the basis or “reasoning“ behind the particular emotional organization of dretun images Is the latent content. Since the dream functions as the guardian of sleep, the dream-work consists In not admitting into the dream’s manifest content any affects strong enough to waken the dreamer* It per- / forms this "work” by distorting or displacing the affects in the manifest content. “If a certain threshold value is exceeded by the stimuli, or anything goes wrong with the switching [distorting}, too powerful affects are released; the sleeper, becoming more conscious, at once wakes«“ (p. 211) 128

Because every dream-Image is "over-determined,"8— * *that is, each image has various emotional significances—the "censor" can admit to the manifest content any emotional significance, any affect, that is not too powerful. But the admitted affect might not be the "reason," or origi­ nator, of the Image in the latent content! hence, the displacement of affective responses in the manifest content.

Poetry’s manifest content is its succession of images; it Is the paraphrase of the idea of the poem. The latent content of a poem, though, is expressed in the words themselves and not in "the portion of external reality symbolised by the manifest content." (p*. 212) The latent content, or "raw material," or poetry is found in the "affective cords linking the ideas" In the poem. Just as the dream’s affective organization was its latent content, so the poem’s affective organizations, or linking with affective cords, is its latent content. Words, like dream images, are

"over-determined." For each word- -V 1 theii","'re are a number of associations which might rise vaguely to the mind. „

In a simple word like "spring" there are hundreds of them; of greenness, of youth, of fountains, of jumping; every word drags behind It a vast bag and baggage .of emotional associations, picked

o Caudwell borrows the concept of "over-determination" from Freud, who, in his Interpretation of Dreams (trans. James Strachey, New York, 1961) says, "Dreams, like all other 'psychopathological structures, regu­ larly have more than one meaning," (p. 149) In another place he explains more fully that "each of the elements of the dream’s content Cfl»anlfest content,} turns out to have been ’overdetermined’—to have been represented in the dream-thoughts ^latent content]many times over." (p. 283) This Is precisely Caudweli’s use of the term. Every element in the manifest content, l.e«, every dream image, has sevens "origins" in the affects of the latent content. 129

up in the thousands of different circumstances in which the word was used. It is these associations that provided the latent con­ tent of affect which is the poem. Not the ideas of "greenness "youth", but the affective cord linking the ideas of "greenness" and "youth" to the word "spring", constitutes the raw material of poetry, (p. 213)

Part of the technique of poetry is to realize "the Immediate and even contradictory" affective tones of words. One might wonder, then, why there is any manifest content at all? Why not just a collection of words that mean nothing but that are full of affective associations?

The answer lies in the "dream-work" of poetry. Poetry Is "an adaptation to external reality," an "emotional attitude towards the world." (p. 214) As such, "it is impossible to have affects In poetry without their adherence to symbols of external reality, for poetry's affects (insofar as they are poetic) are social." (p. 215) The "dream- work" of poetry, then, consists in making the affectively organized images

(latent content) into something socially meaningful (manifest content) without losing the original affects. The poet "works" by attaching these affects to "socially accepted external reality." "A poem's content is not just emotion, it is organised emotion, an organised emotional attitude to a piece of external reality." (p. 216) Other emotions—a fit of sor­ row, a blind gust of rage—no matter how powerful, are anaesthetic be- 9 cause they are unorganized. When the poetic emotion is socially organized and properly attached, the poem enriches reality, which

®Here again Caudwell is in the good company of Richards—and of Coleridge« See Chapter 5 for a discussion. 130

suddenly and magically shimmers with affective colouring« . . . The poet holds up a piece of the world and we see it glowing with a strange emotional fire» If we analyse it ’rationally*, we find no fire. Yet none the less, for ever afterwards, that piece of reality still keeps an afterglow about it, is still fragrant with emotional life« (p. 214)

Here more than anywhere else in the book Caudwell’s feeling of

reverence for good poetry Is apparent« And he quickly makes it clear

that he has more than an aesthetic reason for appreciating the poetic

work of art. He sees in poetry a world-changing value. Dream originates

In the unconsciousness and moves upward; It is blind« Poetry originates in the consciousness and moves downward; it is aware and creative« It explores "the dynamic regions of the emotions" (p. 219) in order to change

the inner world« It molds the instincts to faallty and puts the reader

In good heart to grapple with it. And grapple with the world one must,

if he hopes to change it,

IV. A MARXIST THEORY OF ART

If Illusion and Reality Is an attempt to work out a comprehensive Marxist theory of art, as Professor Thomson suggests, then the book must deal with more than just poetry. If it is an appeal to the bourgeois artist, and not just to the bourgeois poet, to rally to the proletarian cause, then Caudwell must show how the other arts have a social function and a world-changing power. Having already shown that the technique, or

“work," of poetry consists In the mddlng of external reality—the Mock

World—to the affective reality of the genotype, Caudwell explains the techniques of the other arts by showing how they "handle” external reality 131

The following chart will provide a usuable guide to these explanations»

ART EXTERNAL REALITY

I, Sound; Music Pseudo-Logical Laws of Musical Structure Voefcry Syntactical and Grammatical Laws of Language story Real External World described II. Visual; Painting and Sculpture Projective Laws of Structurai? Représenta tlon Dance and the Play and Real Action imitated by Real People Film Architecture. Ceramics, Use-function (pp. 260-261) Textiles, Furniture, etc.

Of these various art forms, Caudwell is most interested in, naturally, poetry and in the story« It is these two forms which depend primarily on the word for their aesthetic value. His hypersensitive awareness of the use of language in man’s quest for freedom leads him to a more thorough analysis of how poetry and story use the word. The way in which poetry uses the syntactical and grammatical laws of language to mold external reality to the instinctive emotional patterns of the genotype has already been explained» Butthe novelist’s concern with the word differs from the poet's in three ways. The novelist arranges words to create the

"stuff" of his art; and the appeal of his language is external. The poet, on the other hand,arranges his words "without a prior reference to a coherent piece of reality"« (p. 201); he uses the words themselves as the

"stuff" of his art; and the appeal of his language is internal.

The first difference means that the novelist depends .upon the word to fashion an external reality in his story which serves as a background 132

for the emotional involvement of the reader.

The novel blots out external reality by substituting a more or less consistent mock reality which has sufficient ’stuff* to stand be­ tween reader and reality. This means that In the novel the emotional associations attach not to the words but to the moving current of mock reality symbolised by the words, (p. 200)

The poet» though» arranges his words so that the emotional associations attached to them either exclude or reinforce each other before the external reality of the poem is even considered. As a result» one word for the poet may have many emotional associations, but one word for the novelist has just one meaning. What Caudwell seems to be suggesting is that a poem can be fruitfully ambiguous in that the poetic word ought to incite various emotional responses. But the novelist cannot profit from the am­ biguity of the word because in order for the reader’s affects to be attached to the mock world he creates, his words must build, rather precisely, the world he desires—that is, the words must mean to the reader what they mean to the novelist*

The two other differences derive from the first. Because the word itself is less Important to the novelist, it may be said that "novels are not composed of words. They are composed of scenes, actions, stuff,people, just as plays are." (p. 200) For the poet, though, the word itself is the stuff of his art. He depends immediately on the non-symbolic value of the words, on their power to raise emotions through their affective coloring.

And because the novelist arranges his words to construct a reality which triggers emotional responses, "we do not seem to feel the novel ’in us’» il we do not identify our feelings with the feeling-tones of the novel." (p, 205)

But the poet’s concentration on the immediate affective associations of the 133

word Is a concentration on "the more dumb and Instinctive part of man’s e consciousness." The poet approaches "the secret unchanging core of the

genotype," (p. 204)

Poetry expresses the freedom which Inheres In man’s general timeless unity In society; It Is Interested In society as the sum and guardian of common instinctive tendencies; it speaks of death, love,©hope, sorrow and despair as all men experience them. The novel is the ex­ pression of that freedom Which men seek, not In their unity In society but In their differences, of their search for freedom in the pores of society, and therefore of their repulsions from, clashes with and concrete motions against other individuals different from themselves, (pp 206-207)

The timeless, changeless "aspect" of the genotype might be realized through

poetry, but the timeful, Individual "aspect" of It can be realized freely

and socially only through the novel.

All of the other art forms also assist man In realizing his freedom,

for in all art external reality is being molded to the instinctive emotional

patterns of the genotype, Man, thereby, becomes more conscious of hls

inner necessity (desires). In music, the sounds do not refer to outer

reality in any logical way; they ate "self-sufficient." "The peeudo*

logical rigour of scale and chord replaces the logical rigour of external meaning," (p. 242) It is through the manipulation of these pseudo-logical

laws that external reality (the sounds) is molded to conform to the Instinc­ tive emotional patterns of the genotype,

Among the visual arts, the techniques of painting and of sculpture

are essentially the same, "When we make a visual symbol of external

reality • , » it Is naturally made projective of external reality and not merely symbolic." (p. 249) In other words, the painting or the sculpture 134

must be a projection of external reality, must be in some way "like" the

external reality It symbolizes« The lines, colors, and shapes which

comprise these symbols have affective associations in their own right. As these bits of external reality are projected into the mock world, they

must be organised in an affective attitude, which is, what the painting or

sculpture will have in common with the genotype. "To the naive observer

this appears as a distortion in the drawing as a non-likeness to external

reality. But of course it 1$ really a likeness, a likeness to the affec­

tive world of the genotype." (p. 250) In painting and sculpture, then,

the qgo distorts the "projective laws of structural representation" in order

to mold external reality to, the instinctive emotional patterns of the geno­

type.

The dance, theep|ay, and the film are discussed together since all

three are essentially mimetic. The technique of these mimetic arts is

easily understood, as with the other arts (with the exception of the

story) the raw materials of the mimetic arts are bits of external reality (gestures, movements, actions). The technique of the mimetic arts con­

sists in organizing the affective colorings of these real actions into an emotional pattern consistent with the genotype, a pattern which, when the actions are Imitated by real people, will evoke the corresponding emotional response.

And, finally, the technique of architecture and the "applied"

arts consists In organizing bits of external reality into a socially useful

product; this product must have an aesthetic value. The balance, harmony, curve, and movement of the artifact—be it house, bowl, or davenport— 135

must be such that they evoke an affective response. In other words,

the architect or craftsman must mold external reality in a socially useful way to the instinctive emotional patterns of the genotype.1®

Simultaneous with his explanation of the techniques of the various

art forms, Caudwell gives some indication of how the development of each

form has paralleled the development of poetry through the various stages of a class society. It is most obvious here that "historical materialism

1®The question of utilitarian art is here raised. Caudwell's concern with the social use value of the art object is made explicit only with regard to the applied arts, but the need for a social use value is implicit in his insistence that social man can "use" art to mold reality to the instincts. His theory does not, however, call for utilitarian art in the normal sense of the term. Caudwell's attitude seems to be Identi­ cal with Plekhanov's on this matter. In an essay entitled "French Drama and Painting of the Eighteenth Century," Plekhanov says: "Investigation of the development of art among primitive peoples has shown that social man first approaches things and phenomena from the point of view of util­ ity, and only later does his reaction to some of them become esthetic. This places the history of art in a new light. Not every useful object, of course, seems beautiful to social man. But there is no doubt that only that which is useful will seem to him beautiful; in other words, only that which may be of Importance to him in his struggle for existence, against nature, or against another social man. This does not mean that a social man's utilitarian view Is identical with his esthetic view. By no meansi Utility is perceived by reason; beauty by intuition. The sphere of the first is interest; of the second, instinct. Furthermore— and we must keep this In mind—the sphere of intuition is far larger than that of reason. Thus when social man uses that Which seems to him beautifuirhe is almost never aware of its utility, which is nevertheless connected with his idea of the object. In the majority of cases the utility can only be discovered with the help of scientific analysis. The most important characteristic of esthetic pleasure is its indirectness." (Art and Society, pp, 33-34) This is certainly what Caudwell meant when he said that the beautiful thing tells one something in the way that a glance tells. The utility of a work of art is for Caudwell a subtle thing which can be explained generally as molding external reality to the instincts but can be analyzed in detail only with the help of scientific (psychological, physiological) investigation. 136

Is the basis of this study." The degree of economic differentiation and

the degree to which the consciousness of the art-producing class is di­

vorced from the consciousness of the class that interpenetrates with

nature—these are ever the conditioning factors in the developmenteof

the arts, Caudwell’s discussion of the development of drama provides

a good example of hfe historical materialistic study of the arts.

As economic differentiation gives rise to class society and its emphasis on "individuation," drama becomes more and more personal, and poetic drama becomes more and more impossible because It requires the actor to give up his personal ego and to submerge himself in the social ego of the poem, Vfoen dramatic action becomes dramatic acting, then the

individual has become more important to the drama than the collective

¿motion It originally portrayed. The mask and cothurnus of Greek actors tended to negate their individuality; the actor was then "the pure vehicle of poetry and action," The boy-woman of the Elizabethan stage "gave room for the poetry of Cleopatra to come forward and expand," but "the in­ cursion of woman on to the stage marks the rise of acting in the drama and the death of narrative and poetry," (p, 257) And when "starring actors" take "lead roles" In a play or film, drama has lost Its social significance and has become a tool for the spread of the bourgeois Illu­ sion of freedom. Because the bourgeois dramatist, and actor misunderstand freedom and think it to be a blind attempt at self-realization, their art is decadent. In fact, all bourgeois art is decadent for it reflects the consciousness of a class and a culture which sucks its life blood from an Illusion.

\ 137

The contrast between the frustration of the function of art In bourgeois culture and the potential of art in a culture free and unfet­

tered by illusion moves Caudwell to defend zealously the role of art and to exult In the power of art and science to help man live* From ore point of view art’s purpose would seem to be the development society,

for "cultures containing art haxe outlived and replaced those that have not, because art adapts the psyche to the environment and istherefore one of the conditions of the development of society," (p, 261) But if one stops to consider how art adapts the psyche to the environment, he discovers a second, more fundamental purpose: to distort reality by making it less like it is and more like the genotype.

Art remolds external reality nearer to the heart’s desires, It gives to external reality an affective organization, an organization which makes reality more interesting and which makes the heart of man

"go out to It with appetite to encounter it, to live in it, to get to grips with it," (p. 262) The purpose of art is to distort reality in order to tell man more about himself. Art tures the universe into a mirror in which can be seen the genotype "stamped with all the possibili­ ties and grandeur of mankind," (p. 262)

It is like a magic lantern which projects our real selves on the Universe and promises us that we, as we desire, can alter the Uni­ verse, alter it to the measure of our needs. But to do so, we must make ourselves yet more conscious of ourselves. The more we grip external reality, the more our art develops and grows in­ creasingly subtle, the more the magic lantern show takes on new subtleties and freeh srichness'i.J Art tells us what science cannot tell us, and what religion only feigns to tell us—what we are and why we are, why we hope and suffer and love and die, it does hot tell us this in the language of science, as technology and dogma

A 138

attempt to do, but in the only language that can express these truths, tiie language of inner reality itself, the language of affect and emotion* (pp. 262-263) Man can act freely only Insofar as he is aware of the necessity of objective reality and of his own needs and desires. By knowing about his needs and desires, man can change exterior reality in accordance with them. The affective language of art—the affective tone attached to the word, the color, or the line—makes man aware of his needs and desires* Scientific knowledge enables man to act efficaciously on ob­ jective reality, and artistic knowledge gives a human direction to that action. CHAPTER 5

EVALUATION

For all of his scorn of theory divorced from practice, there is curiously little.,evidence in Caudwell's own works that his knowledge

of Marxism came from any source hut the writings of Marx, Engels,

Lenin, eto a£. His participation in Communist activities is a known

fact, but his writings seem unaccountably distant from die Marxist

world of his day. He gives no indication of being aware of the Stalinist-

Trotskyist controversy nor of being moved by the mass purges In Russia

that were eotemporaneous with his ideological writings. Except for -his

reference in Illusion and Reality to the state o£poetry in the Soviet

Union in 1936, the Marxism of Caudwell's writing is a Marxism derived

from the pages of the Msrxistselassies that he discovered that summer In Cornwall, His reliance on Marx and Engels accounts, in part, for both the strengthsand the weaknesses one notes in trying to evaluate

Marx's stature as a critic,

Caudwell inherited, if not from Marx then certainly from Lenin, the habit of oversimplification. His categorizing all of humanity into dialectical materialists and bourgeois idealists and his inability to regard anyone who was not an active revolutionary as anything but a despicable reactionary are examples of this fault. Anything that heightens the class struggle, that advances the destruction of the bour­ geoisie, that is compatible with dialectical materialism has value; every­ thing else is valueless. Time after time Caudwell offers dialectical . I ?f

? • \ * 140 materialism as a proof of hls theorizing, and each time one becomes aware of the limitation of hls method: viz*, the invocation of a theo­ retical account of reality as positive evidence of the truth of Marxism. But dialectical materialism is fundamentally no more logical, or real, or convincing than idealism. As s philosophy it Is based, ulti­ mately, on an assumption regarding man’s ability to know—as is idealism, caudwell presumes throughout The Crisis in Physics and "Reality" that the unknowable cannot exist, that ultimate reality is knowable. So, dialectical materialism is a way of explanation (a way of giving an ac­ count of reality), not the way to certitude. In other words, CaudwOll’s argument—explicit in The Crisis in Physics and "Reality" and implicit in his whole critique of bourgeois ideology—that the present general crisis can be resolved only outside of the bourgeois world-view, only by replacing bourgeola categories of ideology with revolutionary cate­ gories, is speculative. In fact, if the dialectical process is to oper­ ate in normal fashion, it would be more likely that the present oriels would be resolvedby neither remaining within the present ideology alone, nor by overthrowing it completely and substituting something entirely new. If that happens, there will have been no "ingresslon of novelty’*" no "likeness" cqnmwn^to the before and the after, and, hence, no real change* Instead* from these two antithetical forces—bourgeois ideology and communist ideology—there shotxld emerge a new synthesis* which is neither thè one nor the other, because it is both of them.

Another limitation of Caudwell’s method, apparent this time in ’

Illusion and Reality, is his tendency to take too narrow, too purely i -K 141

economic a view of literature; and It too can be accounted for, at least

In part, by his strict adherence to party-line Marxism* Any attempt to

place Caudwell as a Marxist critic must take into account the fact that

Marxist critics In the i930’s were not an homogeneous group* In America a noticeable cleavage developed between Stall list- and Trotsky1st-Marxist

critics* A more orthodox Marxist criticism appeared under such names as

V* F. Calverton, Michael Gold, and Granville Hicks and in such periodicals

as Modern Monthly* New Masses* New Republic* and Science and Society; while such writersjm, James T, Ferrell, Hiiltp Sahw, and Edmund Wilson

and other contributors to, most notably, the Partisan Review produced

a brand of Marxism that drifted¿way from the party line as Stalinist

Communism became increasingly authoritarian* In England, if there was a less apparent cleavage In theory, there was a significant difference

in the kinds of Marxist criticism actually written. Using Marxism as a weapon, such critics as Ralph Fox and John Strachey produced a "hard line" political evaluation of literature; While, using it as a tool, Philip Henderson, George Thomson, and Aliek West produced a more apprecia­ tive and understanding criticism* There were, of course, in both countries critics who combined the Marxist with other methods of criticism or who worked in a Marxist context but are more accurately described as "socio­ logical." F* 0, Matthiessen’s American Renaissance* Vernon 1* Farrington’s

Main Currents in American Thought* and Bernard Smith’s Forces in American

Criticism in America and Cecil Day Lewis’ A Hope for Poetry4 Stephen

Spender’s Destructive Element* and Louis MacNeice’s Modern Poetry in

England are examples of such quasi-Marxist criticism* 142

Caudwell can be conveniently grouped with none of these critics, although different parts of his work represent all three critical stands.

In 3?he Armed Vision. Hyman notes three deficiencies of most Marxist critics: "they do not know enough--either enough history or enough literature"; "most of them do not really like literature, or wide areas of it, and use Marxism as a weapon for killing It off"; and "their cate­ gories are too narrow and their views too simple and mechanical«"1 Hyman claims that regarding thesd faults Caudwell Is blameless; but, as has been suggested, Caudwell sometimes does maintain a narrow, economic view of literature*

For example, his lengthy correlation, in Chapters 4-6 of illusion and Reality» of the development of bourgeois poetry «id capitalist economy-- even though at its best it gives some insists into the thematic and technicaldifferences between poetic movements—at its worst leads to rather distorted propagandising. Caudwell believes that Shakespeare would not have achieved «greatness "if he had not exposed, at the dawn of bour­ geois developoent,the whole movement of the capitalist contradiction, from its tremendous achievement to its mean decline," (p. 77) He sees in Rowoo and Juliet the "dewy freshness of bourgeois love" and in Antony and Cleopatra the "fatal empire—shattering drowsiness" of ^bourgeois love.

He sees Tlmon of Athens as an anticipation of surrealism and James Joyce, i as an expression of "the degradation caused by the whole movement of capitalism," (p, 78) He concludes his eulogy of Shakespeare's work with /

*Page 201. 143

the following evaluation:

From the life-thoughts of Elizabethan poetry to the death-thoughts of the age of imperialism is « tremendous period of development but all are comprehended and cloudily anticipated in Shakespeare’s plays. Before he died Shakespeare had cloudily and phantastically at­ tempted an untragic solution, a solution without death. Away from the rottenness of bourgeois civilisation, in the island of The Tempest, manattempts to live quietly and nobly, alone with his thoughts, Sutiian existence still retains an Elizabethan reality; there is an exploited class— Caliban, the bestial serf—and a "free” spirit who serves only for a time—Ariel, apotheosis of the free wage-labourer* This heaven cannot endure. The actors return to the real world, The magic wand is broken* And yet, in its purity and childlike wijsdcm,, there Is a bewitching quality about The Tempest and Its magic world, in which the forces of Nature are harnessed to men’s service in a bizarre forecast of communism, (pp, 78-79)

Caudwell’s correlation between capitalist economy and bourgeois poetry is similar to what was done a few decades earlier in Russia by George Plekhanov in an essay entitled "French Drama and Painting of the

Eighteenth Century" and to what was done a few years earlier in America by Granville Hicks in The Great Tradition, caudwell’s study is inferior to Plekhanov’s because the latter Is predicated on an historical relativism that Caudwell, although he Is aware of it, cannot fully appreciate, in another essay, "Art and Society,"2 Plekhanov explains the critical prin­ ciple of historical relativism which permeates his study of French drams and painting. He recognizes that every artist does not have to find hls inspiration in the movement to liberate the proletariat, that bourgeois artists can and will adopt legitimately the opposite point of view, end

2«French Drama and Painting of the Eighteenth century" and "Art and Society" have been published together as Art and Society (1937), with an introduction by Granville Hicks and translated by Paul S, Lattner, Alfred Goldstein, and C, H, Grout, 144

that becoming indignant at the bourgeois artist for producing decadent8

art is futile. Caudwell recognizes that the bourgeois artist will pro­

duce decadent art, but he cannot rid himself entirely of the desire to

equate decadent art with inferior art. Hls use of the term throughout

Illusion and Reality often Implies a value judgment. Still, Chapters

4-6 are superior to Hicks* notorious study because one senses that Caud­

well offers his correlation largely as a description and not as an evalua­

tion. He does not make Hicks* error of judging the value of a work of

literature by the degree to Which the class struggle is reflected in ijt'.

That Caudwell escapes this error in criticizing literature but does not escape it in criticizing the otheraspects of bourgeois society suggests

that he is more reliable as a critic than as an ideologist.

Though this is probably true and though his criticism Is frequently perceptive, he does have limitations as a critic, in addition to those noted above. For example, in hls "Study of the Bourgeois Artist," which

3In Literature and Dialectical Materialism (London, 1934), John Strachey explains that when Marxist epithets "bourgeois" and' "decadent" are applied to .a,,jwri,i:er like Proust, the first means that he writes "for and about the bourgeoisie" and the second points "to the narrowness of the range of Proust's field of vision. We are contrasting the unparalleled depth and comprehensiveness of his analysis of one dominant, but' extremely small, part of the French population, with hls pprfeet indifference to anything outside the ken of this particular sub-division of the French bourgeoisie and aristocracy." (pp. 17-18) He continues, "What womean when we say that these writers are decadent Is that such work could only be done, for good or 111, in the closing stages of a culture. Such work\ always has been done at the very end of each period of civilisation." (p. 18) Calling one decadent does not deny hls artistic greatness, "for decadence may have positive qualities of its own." (p. 19) What issues from this discussion of Strachey’s is the realization that terms like' \ "bourgeois" and "decadent" are terms of definition, not terms, of abuse v or evalutlon. 145

is among the moat cogent of his essays, he criticises D. H. Lawrence

without a single specific reference to anything Lawrence wrote. He

does give general approval to some of Lawrence's "earlier work" in

which he faithfully and isensltlvely recorded "the emotions of a real

people," but not a single name, event, or place is even mentioned in the

essay. He does not give any examples (as he does with Shaw) of Lawrence

preaching blood-consciousness. Never does he illustrate specifically a manifestation of the bourgeois illusion in Lawrence* s novels, even though

the point of titG:.3tudy is to demonstrate that Lawrence's failure as an

artist was due to that illusion. Caudwell does show in Lawrence's restless

A travellings in Mexico, Etruria, and Sicily a search for a less conscious

way of life. But Why purport to study the bourgeois artist if he is going

to neglect the artistic creations for the non-artlstic activities? Caudwell's criticism of Shaw is flawed by his unwillingness to admit that Shaw was as "active" among the Fabians as Lenin was among the

Bolsheviks. . Shaw was an organiser, an essayist and pamphleteer, and a

lecturer, as Was lenin» Even though Lenin was wounded in action, the action he was Involved in was nothing more than speech-making. Caudwell complains of Shaw's belief in preafeUng instead of acting,4 but one wonders if the self-conscious hero, Lenin, was any more a man of action than he was a propagandist, Shaw, as much as Lenin, was involved* in

^Caudwell's correlary objection that in Shaw's plays debate takes precedent over action ismore justified; but it is still too general a y' criticism to apply to all of Shaw's drama and it ought to be directed at a condition inherent in the genre—viz.. that drama must be dialogue— as much as at Shaw. \ 146

a cause; neither carried his cause to the barricades with gun in

hand.

It has been declared that Caudwell’s criticism—of both society

and literature—has unfortunate limitations and that these limitations

are sometimes inherent In his Marxist method and sometimes caused by his personal prejudices. In &imess, though. It must be added that

Caudwell’s theorising is not subject to the same limitations. one ap­ parent reason is his sensitivity to good poetry. Another is that his poetics grows out of a context that is not wholly Marxian, Although as a Marxist he rejects Freudianism, he is able, as a literary theorist, to integrate the discoveries of dream analysis into his poetics. And although as a Marxist he rejects all forms of "bourgeois idealism," he is able In his poetics to satisfy bourgeois idealists, not by being un­ true to hls convictions but by working out a problem in a manner satis­ factory both to the Marxist in him and the Idealist in the bourgeois. For example,.as Caudwell traces the development of poetry from the cries of primitive hunters, to the private words expressing the un­ conscious emotions of the modem poet, and projects its further develop­ ment into the future communistic society, one detects an assumption that

Is somewhat questionable, Caudwell’s fundamental criticism of bourgeois poetry is that it fails insofar as it does not express the collective emotions of that group of people who actively interpenetrate with nature

Hls basic criticism of the most recent bourgeois poetry 1« that It ex­ presses only the private emotion of the poet who is alienated from the 147

dynamic portion of society—the proletariat« Caudwell bases his criti­

cism on the assumption that, because the special purpose of heightened

language was for the primitive the expression of collective emotion,

poetry must necessarily have that same purpose today» This criterion

for evaluation would seen to contain one of those contradictions that

Caudwell is forever finding in bourgeois thought*

A dialectical approach ought to focus not on being but on becoming;

change is essential. Yet, with dialectical materialism as a philosophical

basis for Marxist literary criticism, Caudwell finds himself uncomfortably

maintaining that nothing is permanent, and that literature's relationship

to society is permanent, that poetry's purpose is, because it was, to

express collective emotion, it is agreed that if poetry, in its origin,

filled a need that developed from man's struggle with nature, then it

was successful poetry insofar as it satisfied that need. But as society

developed and as man's active interpenetration with nature changed (it

no longer being purely manual), certainly the needs growing out of this

struggle changed also. The function of poetry would still be to fill

a certain need (answer a desire), but the need would very likely be essentially different. If primitive poetry failed when it did not express

collective emotion, then whenever modem poetry fails, there Is a very good possibility that it fails for some other mason. If one adheres \ rigidly to a strict Marxist view of literature, he will inevitably find his criticism, in the words of Philip Henderson, "caught in the circular eddies of the dialectical whirlpool*!® is because It was; should be be- ■ ■ \ cause it used to be, ■ 'J. ------JPoet and Society (London, 1939), p, 51. , x \

■ \ '■ 148

Caudwell at least partially extricates himself from this diffi­

cult position through the use of the genotype, a concept he borrows

from genetics but which bears a strong resemblance to Jung's "collective

unconscious." Although Caudweli's ambiguous use of the term0 causes some

trouble throughout much of Illusion and Reality, in Chapter 10 he indi­

cates that he Is aware of the difficulty of the term, or at least of

the fact that he has been using it equivocally. He tells his reader

that the "genotype can be considered from two aspects; the tlmless and

the timeful, the changeless and the changeful, the general and the ¿parti­

cular." In explaining the timeless, changeless general aspect he says,

"Man does not change from Athenian to Ancifeftt Briton and then to Londoner

by innate differences stamped in by natural selection, but by acquired

changes derived from social evolution." (p* 206) In other words, man has an Innate sameness stamped In; Jung might have called it the collective unconscious,67 In explaining the timeful, changeful, particular aspect,

6At one point Caudwell says that the genotype is never found "in the raw," but from his definition it would seem that in Infants the geno­ type does exist in the raw, It is later revealed that the genotype has a psychic component, (p, 163) At tills point it looks as if rationalIs has been added to animal and that Caudweli's genotype is the twin of the Scholastic's essential man, Then, in consecutive paragraphs in the next chapter, Caudwell speaks of the "secret unchanging core of the genotype" and of the "relatively unchanging" genotype, (pp, 204-205) One Is tempted to think that perhaps it made no difference to Caudwell whether the geno­ type was changing or changeless; but it has to be Important to him, for If the genotype is unchanging, he has uncovered an entity which transcends man's struggle with nature; he has given man an essence unaffected by dialectic interplay. He has, In short, become an idealist. V\

It is interesting to note that where Caudwell uses Jung to under­ write historical materialism, T. S. Eliot uses him to udtlerwrite religion? -. 149

Caudwell says that genotypes "are bundles of genes" and reveal genetic

differences« This distinction of aspects, which is probably hls attempt

to resolve the ambiguity of the term, also suggests a way out of the

"circular eddies of the dialectical whirlpool." Caudwell keeps man In

the world of historical materialism with the timeful, changeful aspect of the genotype; but he also keeps poetry’s function the same—the expres­

sion of collective emotion—through the timeless, changeless aspect.

Poetry, as was observed earlier, changes man but does not change the

eternal desires of his heart.

Another reason why Caudwell can be respected outside of Marxist

circles Is his compatibility with such reputable figures as Richards and

even Coleridge in such a matter as the organization of poetic emotion.

Caudwell says that a poem's content is not just emotion, but organized emotional attitudes toward the objective world. The starting point of

this idea is problably Blographia Llteraria, where Coleridge states that

imagination reveals itself in a poem through "a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order." For Richards, emotional im­

pulses

active Jiin the artist become mutually modified and thereby ordered to an extent which only occurs in the ordinary man at rare moments, under the shock of, for example, a great bereavement or an undreamt­ of happiness.®

At first It looks as if Richards would equate poetic emotion with any

"fit of sorrow" or "blind gust of rage," which Caudwell has claimed to

8Principles of Literary Criticism, 5th ed. (New York, 1934), p. 243 150

be unpoetic emotion. But Richards explains that the ordinary man does

not experience the equivalent of poetic emotion with every fit of sorrow but only when his responses, which have been conditioned "by routine and

practical but restricted convenience, breakk loose and make up a new order."9 But such experiences are very rare, says Richards, and as one

grows older can bereceived only through the arts* Caudwell’s idea of

the poem’s content of emotion is very similar to this of Richards.

It is as a theorist, then, that Caudwell writes most convincingly.

It Is through his.poetics and not through hls criticism that he is likely

to be Influential on a society not permeated by Marxian thought. Even

If Caudwell’s dogmatic pronouncements on the bourgeois illusion and the

revolution of the proletariat are looked upon with suspicion by the non-Marxist literati, hls theory of poetry, drawing heavily onaa non-Marxist ideology, deserves the serious consideration of all men of letters.

9Principles of Literary Criticism, p. 244. K7

BIBLIOGRAPHY 152

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. PRIMARY WORKS

fiction:

Caudwell, Christopher« This My Hand, London, 1936«

Sprlgg, Christopher St. John* The Corpse with the Sunburned Face. London, 1935,

...... ♦ Crime in Kfenslngton. London, 1933.

Death of an Airman. London, 1934,

-• Psobh of a Queen. London, 1935,

-* Fatality In Fleet Street, London, 1933«

.* S2. Povfocfc Alibi, London, 1934. . A** Six Queer Things, London, 1937.

ed‘ ttieenny stories. London, 1936. Letters: "Last Letters of a Hero." The New Chronicle. June 28, 1937.

Non-fiction:

Caudwell, Christopher. Illusion and Reality. 2nd ed. London, 1946.

, Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture. New York. ,•1958,-• '

Levy, Hyman, ed. The Crisis in physics, London, 1939,

Rlekword, Edgell, ed. Further Studies in a Dying Culture. London, 1940. Strachey, John, ed. Studies in a Dying Culture. London, 1938.

Thomson, George, ed. The Concept of Freedom. London, 1965. 153

Poetry:

Caudwell, Christopher. Poems. London, 1939,

Sprigg, Christopher St. John, "Once 1 Did Think," Dial LXXXII (Marchra 1927), 187.

B. SECONDARY WORKS

Articles:

"The Caudwell Discussion." The Modern Quarterly, VI, NS (Autumn 1951), 340-358.

"The Caudwell Discussion." The Modern Quarterly. VI, NS (Summer 1951), 259-275,

Comforth, Maurice. "Caudwell and Marxism," The Modem Quarterly, VI, NS (Winter 1950), 16-33.

Frankel, Hyman. "Christopher Caudwell," World News and Views, XXVII (February 15, 1947), 76-77.

Harap, Louis. "Christopher Caudwell, critic," New Masses, LIX (November 20, 1945), 22-23.

...... "Christopher Caudwell: Marxist Critic, Poet and Soldier," r'fetly Worker, November 24, 1946, p. 9*

Mayakovsky, Vladimir. "How One Writes poems," The Modem Quarterly. Ill, NS (Autumn 1948), 67-77.

Thomson, George. "In Defence of Poetry," The Modem Quarterly, VI, NS (Spring 1951), 107-134.

Tse-Tung, Mao, "Talks on Literature," The Modem Quarterly, IV, NS (Winter 1948), 36-50. West, Aliek. "On 'Illusion and Reality*." Communist Review, III, iv (January 1948), 7-13.

Wharton, Fred. "Christopher Caudweli's Illusion and Reality." Science and Society. XVI (1951), 53-59.

J 154

Books:

Bateson, F, W. Guide to English Literature. Chicago, 1965,

Eastman, Max. Marxism: Is It Science. New York, I960, Eliot, T« S. "Tradition and the Individual Talent," in Hie Sacred wood, London, 1920.

Flores, Angel, Sd. Literature and Marxism; a Controversy by Soviet Cri tics. New York, 1938»

Freud, Sigmund. Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey. New York, 1961,

Henderson, Philip. "We Call It Self-Criticism," in Poet and Society. London, 1939«

Hicks, Granville. The Great Tradition. New York, 1933. Hyman, Stanley Edgar. "Christopher Caudwell and Marxist Criticism," in The Armed Vision. New York, 1948«

Lenin, V, I* Materialism and Smplrlo-Criticism, trans. David Kvitko. New York, 1927«

Marx, Karl. Capital, I, trans, Eden and Cedar Paul. London and New York, 1930,

. £ Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy; trans. N. I, Stone, Chicago, 19U, . "Theses on Feuerbach," in Selected Works, 1, New York, n.d* (Marx-Engels Institute official translation)

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, "Hie Communist Manifesto*" In The Es- sentisi Left; Four Classic Texts on the Principles of Socialism. New York, 1961,

Plekhanov, George. Art and Society, trans. Paul S. Leitner, Alfred Gold­ stein, and C. H. Crout. New York, c. 1936.

. Essays in the History of Materialism, trans. Ralph Fox. irr;' London, 1934«

Richards, I. A, Principles of Literary Criticism, 5th ed. New York, 1936, 155

Strachey, John, Literature and Dialectical Materialism. London, 1934.

Sullivan, J. W. N. The Limitations of Science. New York, c. 1933.

Thomson, George D. Aeschylus and Athens. Landon, 1941.

;...... Marxism and poetry, London, 1945*

Tindall, William York. Forces in Modem British Literature. New York, 1947.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modem World, London, 1925.

Reviews:

The Corpse With the Sunburned Face

Cuppy, will, New York Herald Tribune Books, October 27, 1935, p. 12.

New York Times, October 20, 1935, p, 22« Saturday Review, XIII (November 2, 1935), 26«

TLS. November 23, 1935, p, 773. Crime in Kensington (American title: paga the Body)

Anderson, Isaac. New York Times, July 9, 1933, p. 14«

Boston Transcript, August 9, 1933, p. 2. New York Herald Tribune Books. July 16, 1933, p, 7.

Saturday Review. IX (July 15, 1933), 711,

TLS. March 16, 1933, p. 186, Death of an Airman

Anderson, Isaac, New York Times, April 7, 1935, p. 17.

Cuppy, Will, New York Herald Tribune Books, April 14, 1935, p. 9.

Saturday Review, XI (March 30, 1935), 590« 156

Illusion and Reality

Auden, W* H. New Verse. XXV (1937), 20-22,

Boston Transcript, December 31, 1938, p. 2.

Siting, M, L. Forum, C (August 1938), v,

Fletcher, John Gould. "Illusion for Illusion," Poetry. Mil (October 28, 1938), 40-45,

Gregory, Horace. "The Social Sources of Poetry," New Republic. XCVIII (February 8, 1939), 25,

Henderson, Philip. "Poetry and Marxism," Spectator. CLVIII (May 14, 1937), 914, 916.

Mason, H. A. "The Illusion of Cogency." Scrutiny, VI (March 1938). 429-433.

Mlzener, Arthur. Southern Review, v (1939), 387-393, 400,

Muller, Herbert J. Southern Review, IV (1938), 187-201, 205-206.

"The New Books," Saturday Review, XIX (January 28, 1939), 20.

Spender. Stephen, "Horatio Hits Back," New Statesman and Nation, XXXIII, NS (April 12, 1947), 258,

«*universal Benevolence'} Shelleys de nos lours." TLS. June 5, 1937, p. 424«

Poems

"Caudwell Remains." TLS, December 9, 1965, p, 1160»

Comfort, Alex. “Three Legs," New Statesman and Nation. LXX, NS (November 19, 1965^,^94x1

Williams, Raymond. "A Young Man's Papers," Manchester Guardian weekly, November 18,. 1965, p. 11« ... "T""

The Six Queer Things

Anderson, Isaac. Boston Transcript, July 10, 1937, p. 4,

Cuppy, Will, New York Herald Tribune Books, June 27, 1937, p. 7. 157

New York Times, June 27, 1937, p. 12,

Norman, Sylvia, Spectator, CLIX (October 15, 1937), 652, Saturday Review* XVI (June 26, 1937), 18* Studies In a Dying Culture

Forster, E* M. "The Long Run," New Statesman and Nation, XVI, NS (December 10, 1938), 971—9^2, APPENDIX 159

APPENDIX

A CHRONOLOGY OF JOURNALISTIC AND LITERARY ACTIVITIES

1922-24 cub reporter; book reviewer for Yorkshire Observer

1924-26 editor of British Malaya; "Four Juvenilia" and Latin epitaphs written

1926 "Art of Dying" first written

1926-28 co-director, with T. S. Sprlgg, of Airways Publications, Ltd.

1926-34 large amount of verse written; none except "Art of Dying" and "Once I Did Think" published

1927 designs published in Automoblle Engineer; "Once I Did Think" published in Dial

1929 "329- MPH" published in Popular Mechanics 1931 The Airship published 1932 Fly With Me, in collaboration with Henry Duncan Davis, published

1933 Crime in Kensington (Pass the Body) and Fatality In Fleet Street published

1934 British Airways, The Perfect Alibi, and Death of an Airman published

1934-35 "Orestes" written 1935 a political poem on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement written; all verse in Poems, except "Juvenilia," Latin epitaphs, and "Art of Dying" written; Great Flights, The Corpse wlth the Sun­ burned Face and Death of a Queen published

1936 Studies in a Dying Culture. Further Studies in a Dying Culture, The Crisis Tn physics, and The Six Queer Things written; This My Hand and Uncanny Stories published

1937 Illusion and Reality, The Six Queer Things, and Let's Learn to Fly published 160

1939 three poems published in New Verse (all later published in Poems); The Crists in Physics and Poems published

1949 Further Studies In a Dying Culture published

1958 Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture published

1965 The Concept of Freedom published