The Marxist Criticism of Literature

Author(s): Stanley Edgar Hyman

Source: The Antioch Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1947), pp. 541-568
Published by: Antioch Review Inc.
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 THE MARXIST CRITICISM
OF LITERATURE1
By STANLEY EDGAR HYMAN

FT HE SOCIOLOGICALCRITICISM of literature likeso muchelse,

originated,
with the Greeks.Plato'sRepublicincludesan exhaustiveapplication
of sociologicalcriteriato literature,in terms of both its genesis and its
function.Not only is poetrypropaganda,he proclaimed,but the greater
the poetic charm, the greaterthe propagandadanger,and he fittingly
bannedall but typesof arthe consideredusefulor harmlessfrom his ideal
state.Aristotle'sconceptof the socialoriginsand functionof art was, like
Plato's,basedon psychology,but since it was a differentpsychology,the
catharsisof passionversusthe stimulationof passion,it resultedin a very
differentsocial view. Horace continuedAristotle'sfunctionalview, but
made it ethicaland legal ratherthan psychologicaland reducedform to
no morethan a sugar-coating for functionalcontent,so that it was origin-
of
ally the function the poet to
set the boundsof public and privateproperty,and the limits of the sacredand
the secular,to prohibit promiscuousconcubinage,and found the rite of mar-
riage; to establishthe civic orderand recordthe laws: it was in these perform-
ances that the honor and renown of the divine bards and poems came into
being.

In the Renaissance,the Classicalview of the socialorigin and functionof

poetrywas revived.Lodge, in his "Defenceof Poetry"againstGosson's
"Schoolof Abuse,"quotesapprovinglythe theoryof "Donatethe gramar-

'This essay, as it will appearin my forthcomingbook The Armed Vision (Knopf),

is the backgroundsection from a chapter built around the work of Christopher
Caudwell, the brilliant young English critic killed in his twenties, fighting on the
Loyalist side in Spain. The inclusion of his work, which seems to me the most
impressive Marxist criticism yet written, would considerablybrighten the gloomy
picture here sketched out. For readers interested in making the comparison,his
most importantbook, Illusion and Reality,has recentlybeen reprintedby Lawrence
and Wishart in England.

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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
ian" that tragedy and comedy were invented as ways of praising GodI
for a good harvest or a fruitful year. The Puritans,representedby Gosson,
were as eager to establish the social function of poetry, but, like Plato, to
establish it as harmful. The Classical view survived as late as Shelley's
"Defense of Poetry" in 1824, which not only defines the poet as the "un-
acknowledged legislator" of mankind, but grivesrather dubious anthro-
pological theory for the origin of poetry in savage attempts at social com-
munication.
Modern sociological criticism of literature more or less begins in the
eighteenth century with Vico, who explained authors in terms of their
historical conditions in La Scienza Nuova, and continues in Herder's view
of literatureas primarily the product of national and temporal conditions.
In England at about the same time, relative social criteria began to be
applied to literature,particularlyto the "barbarous"work of Shakespeare,
by critics like Pope and Dr. Johnson?and Warburton and Bishop Hurd
came out for a complete historical relativism, the latter arguing that
Gothic architecture must be judged by Gothic standards and no other,
and analyzing romance literature in terms of feudal society and chivalric
life. The great line of sociological criticism, however, developed in France,
from Montesquieu, through Madame de Stae's Literature in Relation to
Social Institutions, to the historical criticism of Michelet and Renan. In
Sainte-Beuveit became an important literary criticism, but with personal
and biographicalelements emphasized more than the social, and in Sainte-
Beuve's disciple, H. A. Taine, finally emerged as full-fledged modern
sociological criticism.
Taine's History of English Literature, published in I864, is still the
best history of English literature we have, an almost miraculous feat for
a foreign critic. It studies English literatureas the result of changing Eng-
lish society, the product of race, epoch, and environment. At times it is
almost a class analysis, with Robin Hood a poetry of the yeoman class,
Burke a literary representativeof the "natural landed interests,"Addison
a spokesman for the new bourgeoisie, etc. The literary judgments are
sometimes off, particularly in the sort of English author difficult for
foreigners to handle, like Skelton and Donne, (the latter "of terrible
crudeness"), and Taine doesn't understand Shakespearevery well, vastly
underrates Coleridge, and dismisses out of hand the whole English class-
ical tradition. His picture generally, however, is so learned, so sensitive to

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 MARXIST CRITICISM
poeticnuance,and so full of insightsand sharpperceptions(he seesTudor
architecture, for example,as the giving-upof fortresses)that it morethan
outweighsthe deficiencies.Taine'sHistoryof EnglishLiteratureremains
to this day the greattriumphof sociologicalcriticism,and he showedin
his Balzac that the method is just as valuableused intensivelyon one
writeras it is in literaryhistory,readingthe Human Comedyas the bour-
geoisheroicepic with a completesensitivityboth to its socialimplications
and its literaryvalues.
The great continuersof Taine's traditionof socio-aestheticliterary
history were Francescode Sanctis,whose History of Italian Literature
appearedin I870, and Georg Brandes,the Danish critic, whose monu-
mentalMain Currentsin NineteenthCenturyLiteraturebeganappearing
in I872. Both, like Taine, were liberalor radicalin sympathy,Romantic,
class-conscious, rationalistic,deterministic,and enamoredof science;and
both had, in addition,Taine'sdeep sensitivityto literaturethat enabled
them to avoidmechanicalpigeonholingand evadethe rigid determinism
of their own concepts.De Sanctis'book (although difficultfor anyone
substantiallyignorantof Italianliteratureto judge) is a large-scalepicture
of Italianliteratureas an expressionof the Italianpeople,and its insistence
on the importanceof aestheticformand the relationbetweenform,rather
than content, and social conditions,make it a very importantwork.
Brandes'greatbook is an intensivecoverageof the firsthalf of the nine-
teenth century in French, German, and English literature.Although
Brandes'class analysisis sharperthan eitherTaine'sor De Sanctis',and
he quotes specifictexts a good deal less than Taine, his aestheticand
formalperceptionis fully as deep as that of either.Like Taine, Brandes
carriedthe method into full-lengthindividualstudies,including books
on Goethe,Shakespeare,Nietzsche,Voltaire,and a numberof others,in
eachcaseexhaustivelyrelatingthe man to his societywithoutlosingeither
him or the work as individualand uniquevalues.
Non-Marxistsociologicalcriticismin Americahas not been a very
substantialmovement.Its only majorwork is Parrington'sMain Currents
in AmericanThought,which drew largelyon Taine, Brandes,and the
economicdeterminismof J. Allen Smith, but also made liberaluse of
Marxistinsights (most of them unidentified).BesidesParringtonand
Van Wyck Brooksand his school,the most importantAmericansocio-
logical criticismis probablythat of John Macy. Macy'sfirst book, The
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
Spiritof AmericanLiterature,publishedas long ago as I908, is the appli-
cation of social criteria,includinga good deal of direct propagandafor
socialism,to the major figures of Americanliterature,but in terms of
economicand socialdebunking(literatureis "the expressionof outworn
statesof society")ratherthan Marxistanalysis.Macy made little or no
use of Marxistconcepts,and his secondbook, The CriticalGame,made
it clearthat he was a Socialistwhose criticalmentorswere Poe, Tolstoy,
and Remy de Gourmont (the latter "the greatestcritic that has been
born"). His only other book, The Story of the World'sLiterature,is a
tastelessand ignoranthack book in the Van Loon tradition,requiring
no discussion.
RandolphBournecontinuedthe Macytraditionof independentradi-
cal criticism,drawing on native sourceslike Veblen, but his work was
much more awareof Marx,and The History of a LiteraryRadicaland
essaysin UntimelyPapers(particularlya classanalysisof morals) make
it prettycertainthat he would have emergedas a Marxistcritichad he
lived. His revivalof the nineteenth-centurytheoryof the book reviewas
-tan independentinquiry,"in which the reviewerturns up his own in-
formationand developshis own views on the subject,restoredone of
the most fruitful methodspossiblefor sociologicalcriticism(Marx and
Engelshad usedit), but it fadedout againas an idea afterBourne'sdeath
for the good reasonthat it demandedmore of the criticthan almostany
of our contemporarysociologicalor Marxistcriticshave.
AnotherAmericansociologicalcriticwho did not live long enough
to fulfill his promisewas T. K. Whipple,who died in 1939 in his forties.
He had livedlong enough,however,to progressfrom a markedindebted-
nessto Brooksin his firstnonacademic book,Spokesmen, in 1928, to a
clear-headed and independentMarxismin his second,Study Out the
Land,publishedposthumously in 1943. Spokesmen dealtwith contem-
poraryAmericanwritersin termsof the Brooksthesisof the artisttrun-
catedby society,but the piecesin StudyOutthe Landarea genuineat-
-tempt,not to assigntruncations a priorito writers,but to studycalmly
andanalytically the complexweb of relationship betweena workof art
and society.(Evenwhen usinga whollypejorative termlike Michael
Gold's"fascistunconscious," Whippleremakesit as a termof objective
Withtheconversion
socialdescription.) of Whipplesometimein the'30's,
with BourneandParrington deadandMacyretired,the lastpossibility
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
of a non-MarxistAmericansociologicalcriticismdisappeared.From then
on, Americansociologicalcriticismwas eitherMarxistor it was nothing.
In the caseof Brooksand his school,it was nothing.
Little contemporaryliterary criticism has attempted to use any
formal sociologyother than Marxism.L. C. Knights has drawn heavily
on Tawney, as well as on Weber, Sombart,and others,in Drama and
Society in the Age of Jonson.The contemporaryGermancritic Levin
L. ShuckingpublishedThe Sociologyof LiteraryTastein 193I, apparently
influencedby bothMannheimand Weber,but ratherthanan actualsocio-
logy it is only the barestsketchfor a proposedscience.Although it asks
someof the questionsaboutthe determinantsof literarypopularity,it has
none of the answers.Towarda Critiqueof the Popularwould be a much
more apt title, and what warrantthe book has to discussionis in connec-
tion with I. A. Richards'criticalanalysisof readerreaction.

II
The Marxistcriticismof literaturebegins, naturallyenough, with
KarlMarx,althoughhe himselfwrotecomparativelylittle specificallyon
literature.2Its theoreticalbasisis the relationshipof literatureto society
definedby Marxin the Introductionto the Critiqueof PoliticalEconomy:
In the socialproductionof their means of existencemen enter into definite,
necessaryrelationswhich are independentof their will, productiverelationships
which correspondto a definite stage of developmentof their materialproduc-
tive forces. The aggregate of these productive relationshipsconstitutes the
economic structureof society,the real basis on which a juridicaland political
superstructurearises, and to which definite forms of social consciousnesscor-
respond.The mode of productionof the materialmeans of existenceconditions
the whole process of social, political and intellectuallife. It is not the con-
sciousnessof men that determinestheir existence, but, on the contrary,it is
their social existencethat determinestheir consciousness.
Literature,then, like the rest of culture,is a superstructure
of socialcon-
sciousnesserectedon productiverelationships.However,as Marx points
2All but a few of the writings of Marxand Engels referredto below, as well as much
additionalmaterial,are now available,in better and smoothertranslation,in Litera-
ture and Art, an anthology of selections from the writings of Marx and Engels,
published by InternationalPublishersin I947. Although it contains many of the
importantdocuments,the book is much skimpierthan such equivalentsas Lifschitz'
8oo-page job in Russian, and the publishers announce an additional volume in
preparation.

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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
out elsewhere,like the rest of culture,throughdialecticalinteractionit
then modifiesand conditionsproductiverelationships.
Littleof Marx'swritingdirectlydiscussesliterature.He quotesSopho.
cles (in Greek), Balzac,Dante,and Timon of Athens in Capital,but only
theirattackson the evils of money.He discusses"literature" in SectionIII
of The Communist Manifesto, but it turns out to be the "literature"of
socialistpamphleteering.The Introductionto the Critique of Political
Economy discussesGreek art, literature,and mythology,but in no real
detail.Marx'smost detailedcriticalwritingis probablyThe Holy Family,
a discussionof speculativeaesthetics,includinga lengthy analysisof Eu-
gene Sue'sThe Mysteries of Paris. In it, Marxdefinesthe worstfeatureof
bourgeoiswritingas tendentiousness("Romanticism is alwaystendentious
poetry,"he had writtenin an article)resultingfrom an Idealisticattitude
towardreality,which transformsliving charactersinto automatadesigned
to provethe author'sabstractideas.In an unfinishedmanuscript,Political
Economyand Philosophy(writtenin I844, whenMarxwasjuston the
verge of Communism,not publisheduntil 1932, and not yet translated
into English), Marx quotespassagesfrom Timon and analyzesthem at
greatlength and with remarkablesubtlety,but againonly as insightsinto
the power of money. Marxwrote a numberof lengthy book reviewsin
collaborationwith Engels, includinga scorchingstudy of Carlyle("the
whip imaginesthat it has becomefull of genius")that showsa real sense
of literarycraftin its commentson his style.It is hard to say how much
of these productionsis Marx's,however,and except that the sarcasmis
morebitter,they very much resembleEngels'independentreviews.Most
of Marx'sdirectreferencesto literatureare asidesin books or articleson
other subjects,or come in personalletters, mostly to Engels. He sent
Engelsa copy of Diderot'sRameau's Nephew, describingit as a "unique
masterpiece"(Freud,incidentally,also thoughtvery highly of it); wrote
him about"goodold Heine,"abouthis furiousdislikeof Chateaubriand's
work,abouta RussianwriternamedFlerowskyhe had discovered;advised
him to read "two little masterpieces" by Balzac.One of Marx'smost de-
tailedcriticismsof literarytechniqueoccursin a letterto FerdinandLas-
salle, commentingon the latter'splay Franz von Sickingen;and one of
Marx's most brilliant literary observations,that the French classical
dramatistsdid not so much misunderstandthe Aristotelianunities as
understandthem "in accordancewith their own art needs,"also occurs
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
in a letter to Lassalle.With the additionof a commentto his daughter
on Shelley as a truerrevolutionarythan Byron,a few brief remarksin
his work on the subjectsof style,beauty,and literarymovementsin Eng-
land and Germany,these constitutejust about all of Marx'swriting
directlyconcernedwith literature.
Marx was tremendouslywell-read (although he and Engels were
hardly,as Earl Browderonce announced,"thetwo most culturedmen of
history"),and his tastewas surprisinglygood for an activepolitician.Paul
Lafargue,his son-in-law,reportsthathe consideredAeschylusand Shakes-
peare "the two greatestdramaticgeniuses of all time," that he read
Aeschyluseveryyearin the Greekand had studiedShakespeareexhaus-
tivelyand seento it thathis threedaughtersknew him by heart,and that
he was a greatreaderof novels.
He liked above all those of the eighteenth century, and especiallyField-
ing's Tom Jones. The modern authorswho tempted him most were Paul de
Koch, CharlesLever, AlexandreDumas and Walter Scott. . . . His favorite
novelistswere Cervantesand Balzac.
Franz Mehring,his biographer,adds:"In his literaryjudgmentshe was
completelyfree of all politicaland social prejudices."He also thought
highly of Goethe,Lessing,Homer, and Dante; learnedRussianin order
to be able to readRussianliteraturein the original,particularlyPushkin;
and learned Spanishin order to be able to read Calderonand other
classics.In his youthhe had been a Romanticpoet (not a verygood one),
and when he and Engels,who both loved Heine'swork, were disturbed
by Heine'spoliticalfoibles,he remindedEngelsthatwe couldnot demand
of poets what we demandof ordinarypeople.
Nevertheless,in his youthas a discipleof Hegel he had acquiredthe
Hegeliandoctrineof the inevitabledecadenceof art in moderntimes,as
an inferiorway of freeing the spirit,better suited to the childhoodof
mankind.This idea stayedwith him, unconsciouslytransformedinto a
conceptof the inevitabledecadenceof art under capitalism."Capitalist
productionis hostile to certainbranchesof spiritualproduction,such as
art andpoetry,"he wrote,and his bitterestfury was reservedfor the bour-
geois view of art as a commodity. One of the charges against the
bourgeoisiein The Communist Manifesto is that it has convertedpoets
into "paidwage laborers,"and Marxwritesin an ironicarticle:"eventhe
highestformsof spiritualproductionare recognizedand forgivenby the
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
bourgeoisie"becausethey representwealth.As bourgeoiscivilizationpro-
gresses,Marxfelt, art mustinevitablydecay,and the artistcomesto think
of his work as a means,or a trade,ratherthan a sacredend. Nevertheless,
in the classlesssociety,with the disparitybetweensocialand artisticde-
velopmentremovedand the emphasistaken off specialization,art could
again flowernaturallyas it had in the primitivepast. "In a Communist
organizationof society there are no painters,"he and Engels write in
The GermanIdeology; "at most there are people who, among other
things, also paint."
At the same time, Marx carefullyavoidedthe suggestionof a too-
simple correspondence betweenart and social relations.Along with his
statementof the relationsbetween the two in the introductionto the
Critiqueof PoliticalEconomy,he includeda numberof importantde-
murrers,writing:
It is well known that certain periods of highest developmentof art stand in
no direct connection with the general developmentof society, nor with the
material basis and the skeleton structure of its organization. Witness the
exampleof the Greeks as comparedwith the modern nations or even Shakes-
peare.
And this art then goes beyondits socialrelations.Marxadds:
The difficultyis not in grasping the idea that Greek art and epos are bound
up with certain forms of social development.It rather lies in understanding
why they still constitutewith us a sourceof aestheticenjoymentand in certain
respectsprevailas the standardand model beyond attainment.
It was in this senseof greatart transcendingboth the limitationsof
its social origins and the artist'sviews that Marx thought so highly of
Balzac,who in termsof the decadenceof bourgeoisart and his own mon-
archical-Catholic-reactionarybeliefs,shouldhavebeendestestableto Marx.
In Capitaland in his correspondence, enthusiasticreferencesto Balzacare
frequent,and Lafarguereportsthat "he proposedto write a criticalwork
on La Come'dieHumainewhen he had finishedhis economicwork."His
economicworkwas neverfinished,and this bookon Balzac,which might
have been the Marxistaestheticto prevent,if only by authority,nine-
tenthsof the idiocyof laterMarxists,was neverwritten.
Marx'sco-worker,FrederickEngels,not only wrotemorespecifically
on the dangersof oversimplesociologicalanalyses,but devotedthe most
famousof these warnings,the i888 letterin Englishto MargaretHark-
ness, to the topic of Balzac.He wrote:
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
Balzac,whom I considera far greatermasterof realismthan all the Zolas,
past, presentor future, gives us in his Com6dieHumaine, a most wonderfully
realistichistory of French "society,"describing,chronicle-fashion,almost year
by yearfrom i8i6 to I848, the ever-increasingpressureof the rising bourgeoisie
upon the society of nobles that establisheditself after I8I5 and that set up
again,as far as it could (tant bien que mal), the standardof the vieillepolitique
franraise.He describeshow the last remnantsof this, to him, model society
graduallysuccumbedbefore the intrusionof the vulgar money upstartor was
corruptedby him. How the grande dame, whose conjugalinfidelitieswere but
a mode of assertingherself, in perfectaccordwith the way she had been dis-
posed of in marriage,gave way to the bourgeois,who acquiredher husband
for cash or costumes;and around this central picture he groups a complete
history of French society from which, even in economic details (for instance,
the rearrangementof real and privatepropertyafter the French revolution) I
have learnt more than from all the professionalhistorians,economistsand
statisticiansof the period together. Well, Balzac was politicallya legitimist;
his great work is a constantelegy on the irreparabledecay of good society;his
sympathiesare with the class that is doomed to extinction.But for all that his
satire is never keener, his irony never bitterer,than when he sets in motion
the very men and women with whom he sympathizesmost deeply-the nobles.
And the only men of whom he speaks with undisguisedadmirationare his
bitterestpoliticalantagonists,the republicanheroes of the Cloitre Saint-Merri,
the men who at that time (I830-I836) were indeed the representativesof the
popularmasses.That Balzac was thus compelledto go against his own class
sympathiesand political prejudices,that he saw the necessityof the downfall
of his favorite nobles and describedthem as people deservingno better fate;
that he saw the real men of the future where, for the time being, they alone
were to be found-that I considerone of the greatesttriumphsof realism,and
one of the greatestfeaturesin old Balzac.
As violently as Marx, Engels opposed mechanical tendentiousness in lit-
erature. "The more the opinions of a writer remain hidden, the better
for the work of art," he wrote in the Harkness letter, and in a letter to
Minna Kautsky:
I am by no means an opponentof tendentiouspoetryas such. The father
of tragedy,Aeschylus,and the fatherof comedy,Aristophanes,were both very
clearly poets with a thesis, as were Dante and Cervantes.. . . But I believe
that the thesis must inhere in the situationand action,without being explicitly
formulated,and it is not the poet's duty to supply the readerin advancewith
the future historicalsoltutionof the conflicthe describes.

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Most of Engels' writings on literatureare attacksagainst"vulgarsoci-
ology,"in defenseof aestheticvalues.3His Anti-Dfihringincludesviolent
sarcasticabuseof Diihring'sprojectfor a "people'sschoolof the future"
purifiedof the humanities.He writes:
As for the aestheticside of education,Herr Diihring will have to fashion
it all anew. The poetryof the pastis worthless.Where all religionis prohibited,
it goes without saying that the "mythologicalor other religious trimmings"
characteristicof poets in the past cannot be toleratedin this school. "Poetic
mysticism,"too, "such as, for example, Goethe practicedso extensively"is to
be condemned.Well, Herr Diihring will have to make up his mind to produce
for us those poetic masterpieceswhich "are in accordwith the higher claims
of an imaginationreconciledto reason,"and which representthe pure ideal
that "denotesthe perfectionof the world."Let him lose no time about it! The
conquest of the world will be achieved by the economic commune only on
that day when the latter, reconciledwith reason,comes in at double time in
Alexandrines.
His commentaryon Goethe'sambivalence,his letter to Paul Ernst on
Ibsen,his letterto Schliuterexplainingthat revolutionary poetryand song
do not tend to be lastingart becausethey reflect"the momentarypreju-
dices of the people,"are all warningsagainstthe easy politicalizingof
literature.The Ibsenletter,chidingErnstfor his oversimpledismissalof
Ibsenas a typicalpetty-bourgeois writer,is particularlyinteresting.First
Engels warns that "the materialistmethod is convertedinto its direct
oppositeif insteadof being usedas a guidingthreadin historicalresearch
it is made to serve as a ready-cutpatternon which to tailor historical
facts."He then goes on to define the differencebetweenthe Norwegian
petty bourgeoisieand the German;to point out that, petty bourgeoisor
not, the Norwegian literaryrenaissanceis important;and to conclude
with the statementthatwhateverthe weaknessof Ibsen,his dramasreflect
a real world of human beings "possessedof characterand initiativeand
the capacityfor independentaction."
Engelsproposedto MissHarknessthe depictionof "typicalcharacters
in typicalcircumstances," but it was characteristicof the skepticaland
3Engels illustratedthis admirablyin his own work on such occasionsas his accept-
ance, in The Origin of the Family, of Bachofen'sbrilliant reading of the Oresteia
of Aeschylusas a conflictbetween "mother-right"and "father-right."Engels calls it
"this new and undoubtedlycorrectinterpretation"and "one of the best and finest
passagesin the whole book,"despitehis fundamentalquarrelwith it and Bachofen's
work in general as philosophicIdealism.

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 MARXIST CRITICISM
elastic-mindedman who had written in the Theseson Feuerbach "that
which is recognizednow as true has also its latent false side which will
later manifestitself, just as that which is now regardedas false has also
its true side,"not to believethat any rigid principlecouldbe imposedon
art. His final warningwas the letterto J. Blochin I890. He wrote:
Accordingto the materialistconceptionof historythe determiningelement
in historyis ultimatelythe productionand reproductionin real life. More than
this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.If thereforesomebodytwists this
into the statementthat the economicelement is the only determiningone, he
transformsit into a meaningless,abstractand absurdphrase.... Marx and I
are partlyto blame for the fact that youngerwriterssometimeslay more stress
on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasizethis main prin-
ciple in oppositionto our adversaries,who denied it, and we had not always
the time, the place or the opportunityto allow the other elements involved
in the interactionto come into their rights. But when it was a case of present-
ing a sectionof history,that is, of a practicalapplication,the thing was differ-
ent and there no error was possible.Unfortunately,however, it happensonly
too often that people think they have fully understooda theory and can apply
it without more ado from the moment they have masteredits main principles,
and those even not always correctly.And I cannot exempt many of the more
recent"Marxists"from this reproach,for the most wonderfulrubbishhas been
producedfrom this quartertoo.
After Marxand Engels,the greattheoreticianof Marxistcriticismis
the Russian,GeorgeV. Plekhanov.A typicaland very influentialwork
is the essay Art and Society,written at the end of the last century,in
which he attacksthe shifting relationshipbetweenart and societyfrom
the viewpointof historicalrelativism.He showswith abundantevidence
that art is always conceivedof as utilitarianwhen "a mutual bond of
sympathyexistsbetweena considerablesectionof societyand thosemore
or less activelyinterestedin artisticcreation."The doctrineof art-for-art's
sake, on the otherhand, with its consequentobscureand esotericforms,
arises"whena hopelesscontradictionexistsbetweenthe artistsand their
social environment."The most importantfeatureof this historicalrela-
tivism, and Plekhanov'smajor contributionto Marxistcriticism,is the
basicrecognitionthat artistsreflecttheir classand time, not anotherclass
and time Marxistswould like them to reflect.He writes:
I do not say that contemporaryartists must seek inspirationin the eman-
cipatorymovementof the proletariat.Not at all. Just as apple trees must give
forth applesand pear treespears,so must artistswho sharethe bourgeoispoint

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of view struggleagainstthis movement.The artof a decadentepochmustbe
decadent.This is inevitableand it would be futile to becomeindignantaboutit.
Plekhanovwrote a numberof otherworks on literatureand art, in-
cluding French Drama and Painting of the Eighteenth Century,His-
toricalMaterialismand the Arts, his brilliantlong essay "Ibsen,Petty
BourgeoisRevolutionist"in Die Neue Zeit (which perfectlyillustrates
his relativisttheoriesin Art and Society) and others.In addition,a num-
ber of his politicalwritings deal extensivelywith the arts, particularly
7TheRole of the Individualin History.In all of them, the depth of his
historicaland aestheticknowledge,the relativismof his point of view,
the unblinkinghonestyof his observation,and the power and flexibility
of his mind, gave Marxistcriticismthe soundestdocumentationand ex-
tensionit had yet had. He was the first Marxistcritic to studythe rela-
tionshipbetweensocialrelationsand artisticform, as in his discussionof
Ibsen'sabstractand symbolistformsin relationto the classbasisof Scan-
dinaviansociety.Plekhanovdrew enthusiasticallyon the best of non-
Marxistsociologicalcriticism,Taine and Brandes,just as he anticipated
tlle bestof laterMarxistcriticism,particularlyCaudwell,in his use of the
most advancedscientificknowledge (in his day, chieflyanthropology),
in his undogmaticrelativism,in his insistenceon the importanceof the
artist'ssense of socialfunctionat any given time, and particularlyin his
vast love and respectfor literatureand art.
The otherMarxisttheoreticians, outsideof SovietRussia,have added
little to Plekhanovin the applicationof Marxismto literature.Franz
Mehring,Marx'sbiographer,has been called"theoriginatorof historical
materialistcriticism"and of Marxistaesthetics,but the only criticalworks
of his with which I am familiar,The LessingLegend,I892, an articleon
Ibsenwrittenin I900, and "A Note on Taste,"I898, which appearedin
Dialectics4, abstractedfrom a review of an obscurebook, seem much
more interestedin literatureas a reflectionof politicalhistorythan in
political history as a clue to literature.One of the most importantof
Mehring'sideas,and one which he sharedwith Plekhanov,is the concept
in "A Note on Taste,"that thereis an objectivebasisof taste,and that it
lies in historicalrelativism.Rosa Luxemburg,another great German
Marxistwho was deeplysensitiveto aestheticvalues("In a novel I don't
look for the point of view, but primarilyfor its value as art") wrote a
good deal in her lettersand articlesaboutliterature(includinga wonder-
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
ful criticismof the style of Marx'sCapital,"overloadedwith rococoorna-
ments") but as far as I know contributedlittle of a theoreticalnature.
Of the HungarianGeorg Lukacs,whom Slochowerhas called "possibly
the keenestand most learnedMarxistcriticsince Franz Mehring,"I am
familiarwith too little work to be able to venturean opinion.

III
"The philosophershave only interpretedthe world,"Marxwrote in
Theseson Feuerbach;"ourbusinessis to changeit." This turnedout to
be not quite so sound a principlewhen appliedto literatureby contem-
poraryMarxistcritics (only a few of whom, for lack of space,can be
touchedon here). In Americait led chieflyto the straightpoliticaldis-
tortionrepresentedby men like V. F. Calverton,GranvilleHicks, and
MichaelGold. Calverton,the firstand worstof the local Marxistliterary
historians,publishedin I932 The Liberationof AmericanLiterature,
which tearsthroughour literatureslaughteringEmerson,Thoreau,Mel-
ville, and Hawthorne,to announcethat Whitmanwas our firstpoet and
Twain our first importantprosewriter,and the only importantcontem-
porarywritersare the "exponentsof the proletarianoutlook":John Dos
Passos,MichaelGold, and CharlesYale Harrison.GranvilleHicks'sThe
Great Tradition,publisheda year later, is the same sort of thing, me-
chanicalclass-anglingsbasedon the politicalcriteriaof the I930's rather
than on those of his subjects'own time, culminatingin the same paean
to writerslike Dos Passosand Gold. If betterinformedand less nervy
than Calverton'sbook, it is more given to cheap cracks like calling
Faulkner"the Sax Rohmerof the sophisticated." Hicks's secondbook,
Figuresof Transition,a study of Britishliteratureat the end of the last
century,is moremodestand sensiblebut evenlessconcernedwith aesthetic
values,and generallyno improvement.MichaelGold has neverwrittena
bookon literature,but the collectionsof his Daily Workerpieces,Change
the Worldand The Hollow Men, make it clear that not only is he the
most ignorantand provincialof all the Marxistcritics,a heroicwarrior
againstGilbertand Sullivan,but probablythe leastadequateMarxist.He
is rathera sentimentaland idealisticbourgeoisradicalof an earliercen-
tury, and the pictureof Marx'sreactionto his passionatelove for Rous-
seau, "the father of Democracy,"or Eugene Sue's "epic melodramato
strengthenthe heart and hand of the revolutionaryworkers"(which
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
Marxput acrossthe barrelin The Holy Familyas cheapbourgeoisroman-
ticism) is interestingto contemplate.Other contemporaryAmerican
Marxistlog-rollersand strait-jacketers of literatureincludeJoshuaKunitz
and Joseph Freeman,prominentin the '30's, and Samuel Sillen and
Samuel Putnam,prominentin the '40's.
A much more importantgroup of Americancritics,either Marxist
or much influencedby Marxism,havecombinedsociologicalcriteriawith
an appreciationof aestheticvalues.The most distinguishedwork pro-
ducedby this group,and probablythe bestbook yet writtenaboutAmer-
ican literature,is F. 0. Matthiessen's AmericanRenaissance.Matthiessen
deals with the work of only five writers,Emerson,Thoreau,Melville,
Hawthorne,and Whitman,over a period of only five years,from I850
to I855. Nevertheless,his bookis on so monumentala scale,with so much
concernboth for ideasin a socialcontext (drawingon Marxistinsights)
and for detailedformalanalysis(drawingon his own greatliterarylearn-
ing, sensitivity,and fine taste) as to representperfectlythe amplification
of Parringtonhe visualized.(It is amusingthat Matthiessen,an admirer
of the dialectic,shouldcome to the methodas a synthesisof his thesis-a
sociological,Brooksianstudyof SarahOrne Jewett-and his antithesis-
a relativelypure aestheticstudy of T. S. Eliot. Matthiessen'ssubsequent
book,a studyof Henry James'last periodtendingto slight socialcriteria,
would presumablybe the new antithesishis new thesisprovokes).New-
ton Arvin's Whitmanrepresentsa similar combinationof Marxistin-
sightsand aestheticawareness,on a smallerscale,but almostas successful.
Conceivedfrankly as a job of "scanningthe . . . past for whateverre-
sourcestheremay be in it on which a socialistculturemay draw,"Arvin's
book studiesthe political,social,and economicideasin Whitman'spoetry
with honesty,literaryawareness,and keen sensibility.
Othercriticswho have at one time or anotherattemptedto combine
Marxistinsights and concernwith literaryform include: Harry Sloch-
ower in Three Waysof ModernMan, ThomasMann'sJosephStory,and
No VoiceIs WhollyLost. . .; Edwin BerryBurgumin The Novel and
the World'sDilemma; BernardSmith in Forcesin AmericanCriticism;
David Daiches in New LiteraryValues, The Novel and the Modern
World,and Poetryand the ModernWorld;MalcolmCowleyin a num-
ber of uncollectedarticlesand reviewsand a forthcomingbook on Amer-
ican literature;IsidorSchneiderin a numberof uncollectedarticlesand
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
reviews.A veryfew examplesof Marxistor near-Marxist criticismof this
sortby otherwriterscanbe foundin Scienceand SocietyandNew Masses.
Except under Communistauspicesor influence,not much Marxist
literarycriticismhas been writtenin America.PartisanReview,the chief
literaryorgan of the anti-Stalinleft, has printed almost no Marxistor
sociologicalcriticismof literaturesince its first years, although it has
printeda good deal of criticismotherwiseuseful,as well as a good deal
of faddism,hobby-horseriding, and simple spite. Meyer Schapiroand
Harold Rosenberghave perhapscome closestto traditionalMarxisthis-
toricalcriticism,althoughalwayson the vergeof veeringoff into philos-
ophy; William Troy has made brilliantuse of Marxistinsightswithin a
largerintegration;WilliamPhillipsand PhilipRahv,the principaleditors,
still retainoccasionaltracesof Marxistanalysis,althoughin recentyears
their criticalwork has becomelargelya kind of ethicalnail-biting;and
a numberof the youngermen, among them DelmoreSchwartz,Randall
Jarrell,and RobertGorhamDavis,have writtenexcellentcriticismin the
magazinemakingsomeuse of politicalcriteria(in Davis'case,effectively
combinedwith psychoanalytic).The only PartisanReviewcriticwho has
so far publisheda Marxistaestheticis JamesT. Farrell,in A Note on
literary Criticismin I936. It begins with the apologythat Farrellis an
amateurcriticand amateurMarxist,and then goes on to demonstrateit
at somelength,with Farrelldemolishingthe oversimplifications of critics
like Hicks and Gold, to set up his own oversimplifications in theirplace.
His volumes of collectedpieces, The League of FrightenedPhilistines
(I945) andLiterature andMorality(1947), makeit clear,in pieceslike
the studyof Dreiser,that his deficienciesincludean absolutewant of ear
(explaininghis own execrablestyle) and a sentimentalismand naivete
vast enough to insulatehim from most literaturealmostcompletely.

IV
The pictureof BritishMarxistcriticism,with the exceptionof Caud-
well, is aboutas bad as that of America.None of the straightpolitical
criticsis as egregiousas Calvertonor Gold, and they are all much better
read,but,on the otherhand,none of the men combiningMarxistinsights
with aestheticconcernhave producedbooks of the calibreof American
Renaissance.Of the firstgroup,typicalexamplesareJohnStrachey,Ralph
Fox, and T. A. Jackson.Strachey,the firstof them,in the "Decayof Capi-
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
talistCulture"sectionof The ComingStrugglefor Powerin 1933, showed
insteadonly the decayof Marxistsensibility,misreadingThe WasteLand,
reducingProustto simplesnobbery,and fantasticallyoverestimating Hux-
ley and his "tragicview of life"; and in Literatureand DialecticalMate-
rialismin I934, he projectedhis own sins of distortionand oversimplifi-
cationonto GranvilleHicks as a scapegoatand killed them off (as Hicks
was later to do in his turn, with Parrington). Fox, in The Novel and the
People in 1937, bent the history of English fiction to the slogan of "social-
ist realism," and as DeVoto does, from another point of view, assigned
"epic" and "heroic"subjectsfor novelists. Like Caudwell, Fox was killed
fighting for the Loyalists in Spain in I937, and A Writer in Arms, an an-
thology of his work published posthumously in I937, containing tributes,
fragments of his books Genghis Khan, Communism, Lenin, and Storm-
ing Heaven, as well as letters and periodical pieces, shows an aesthetic
sensibility capable of breaking through the fetters of his straight political
criticism, had he lived. Jackson'sstudy of Charles Dickens, subtitled "The
Progress of a Radical," is probably the worst of the lot, a ridiculous,
ignorant, and sectarian book, mechanically presenting Dickens' develop-
ment and mood in exact sequence with the development of Chartism,
and noting each occasion on which Dickens shows the proletariat in an
admirable light or comes close to recognizing the class struggle. Other
British critics whose Marxism results in straight political distortion in-
clude F. D. Klingender, an authority on English caricature,whose pamph-
let AMarxismand Modern Art in I944 carried on the worst traditions of
Marxist absolutismn,ignorance, and parochialism of the '30's; Edward
Upward (temporarily) who achieved what is probably the most stupid
single piece of Marxist criticism ever written, an argument that the way
to become a good writer is to become a good Marxist, in his essay "Sketch
for a Marxist Interpretationof Literature"in C. Day Lewis' symposium,
The Mind in Chains; and Douglas Gorman, a literary hatchet-man
equivalent to Samuel Sillen in this country.
Typical of the British critics who have used Marxism, not as a dis-
torting-glass,but as a sociology with which to understand and appreciate
literature more deeply, are Alick West, George Thomson, and Philip
Henderson. West is far and away the best, similar to Caudwell in every-
thing but scope, and his small book Crisis and Criticism, published in
1937, includes probably the most sensitive detailed reading of texts in
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Marxistcriticism.The book surveyscontemporaryliterarycriticismfrom
a dynamicand relativisticMarxistviewpointsimilarto that of Caudwell,
and with a comparableliteracy,generalsoundness,and informedindebt-
edness to areasof knowledge like aestheticsand linguistics.The book
exposesthe criticallimitationsof men like Eliot,Richards,and Readwith
neatnessand dispatch,and concludes,like Caudwell,affirmingthe rela-
tionship of literatureto productionas its essentialformal determinant.
To illustratehis prescriptionfor criticism,West makesbrilliantincidental
readingsof The WasteLand, a Shakespearesonnet,and ParadiseLost,
and concludeswith an appendixconstitutingthe toughest test of his
metlhodpossible, a long and absolutelyfirst-rateanalysis of Joyce's
Ulysses.Thomsen,a professorof Greekat the Universityof Birmingham,
admitshis directindebtednessto Caudwellin his chief work, Aeschylus
and Athens,a studyof the socialoriginsof Greekdramautilizing a com-
binationof Marxismand the Cambridgeanthropologicalapproach,and
avoidingoversimplification from both directions.(His forthcomingbook
on earlyGreeksocietyis to deal comparablywith Greekepic.) His pam-
phlet Marxismand Poetry,a studyin the origin and evolutionof poetry,
amountsto a popularizationof Caudwell,with the additionof Thomson's
knowledge of Greek and primitiveIrish literatures.Thomson tends to
go wrong when he veersfrom Caudwell,leavingthe basicsoundnessof
his theoryof the originof poetryin the collectiveritualof primitivefood
productionto fall for ProfessorChadwick'selaborateeuhemerismand
see Homer as the improvisationof the Homericbards,or finding Eliza-
bethandramaan expressionof the risingbourgeoisie,but his work gen-
erally is informed,brilliant, and invaluable.Henderson,although ex-
tremelyliterate,as his editionof Skeltonand scholarlyintroductionsfor
Everyman'sLibrarydemonstrate,is frequentlydisappointing,and his
books, Literatureand a ChangingCivilization,Poetryand Society,and
The Novel Today, tend to be somewhat mixed, capable of sensitive
analysisand appreciationalongsideblind dogmatismlike the statement
that since William Morriswas a real Marxiansocialist,he was able to
write "the only really successfulepic of the nineteenthcentury."
Britishcriticsmore or less combiningMarxistinsightswith aesthetic
awarenessinclude:JackLindsay,in John Bunyan:Makerof Mythsand
The Anatomyof Spirit(in his case,alongwith Freudianinsights); A. L.
Mortonin Languageof Men; RandallSwinglerin a numberof uncol-
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
lectedperiodicalpieces;and severalmembersof the Scrutinygroup,par-
ticularlyL. C. Knights,in Dramaand Societyin the Age of Jonsonand
Explorations.Two classics professors,Benjamin Farrington (in The
Civilizationof Greeceand Rome, Science and Politics in the Ancient
World,and GreekScience) and C. M. Bowra,(in SophocleanTragedy,
Traditionand Design in Homer, and Greek Lyric Poetry) have, like
Thomson, applied Marxistconcepts (Bowra somewhattentatively) in
their scholarlyfields. Other BritishMarxistcriticismof value can occa-
sionallybe found in The ModernQuarterly,both the old and the new
series,The Left Review (which cameto an end in I938) and Our Time.
A specialcategoryof Englishcriticsaffectedby Marxismis the group
of poets that first came to notice in New Signaturesin 1932, including
W. H. Auden, StephenSpender,Cecil Day Lewis, John Lehmann,and
(a later affiliation)Louis MacNeice.Day Lewis, in A Hope for Poetry
in 1934 and The Revolutionin Writingin 1936, combinedmanifesto-
writing, ancestor-chasing, and praise for himself and his friends with
incidentalsociologicalliterarycriticism,someof it quite shrewd.Spender
turnedout some first-rateMarxist-aesthetic criticismin The Destructive
Element in 1935, particularlyhis captureof Henry Jamesfor the Left,
and has been working very hard since to unwrite it. MacNeicewrote
ModernPoetryin I938, largelyan accountof the genesisof his own taste,
with stabsat social analysis,and a tepid study of Yeats'poetryin I941
(both praisedCaudwellbut remainedunpollutedby his ideas). Leh-
mann'swork of criticism,a pamphleton New Writingin England,is
literaryjournalismof a high order.Auden, the most importantpoet of
the group)has done the leastcriticism,chieflyfugitivepiecesand reviews
of a theologicalnature (he once attackedJoyce Kilmer's "Trees"as
heretical),untouchedby Marxismand socialcriteriaeven when he called
himself a radical.(Auden'sreal criticismappearsin his poetry,in works
like "The Sea and the Mirror:a Commentaryon Shakespeare'sThe
Tempest,"and it is very good.)

V
Someaccountof SovietMarxistliterarycriticismis essential,although
any estimateon the basisof what little of it has been translatedinto Eng-
lish is bound to be both fragmentaryand misleading.To understandit,
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
somethingof the work of a group,almostunknownto the English-read-
ing public, that has influencedit tremendously,the nineteenthcentury
pre-MarxistRussian "enlighteners":Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky,
Dobrolyubov,and Pisarev.VissarionG. Belinsky,whom Mirskycalls"the
father of the Russianintelligentsia,"in the I830's and '40's propagated
the conceptof literatureas a weaponin the socialstruggle,tracingdemo-
craticideas in contemporarywriterslike Pushkin and Lermontov,and
bitterlyattackingreactionaryonesin writerslike Gogol and Dostoyevsky.
AlexanderHerzen, an idealisticsocialistwho spent most of his life in
exile, was chiefly influentialin the decade following Belinsky'sdeath,
callingin his works,particularlyFromthe OtherShore,for realisticrevo-
lutionarythinking and writing. Nicholas Chernyshevsky, who inherited
their influence,publishedhis doctoralthesis,The AestheticRelationsof
Art to Reality (reprintedin InternationalLiteraturein I935 as Life and
Aesthetics)in I853, defining art as the reproductionand interpretation
of life and its functionas the diffusionof knowledge.In Studiesin the
Age of Gogolin I856, he appliedhis aestheticto the valuationof literature
in terms of social utility. His disciple,Nicholas Dobrolyubov,in a tre-
mendouslyprecociousliterarycareerthat ended with his death at 24,
extendedthe methodfurtherand did a very influentialseriesof articles
on literaryworks, using them only as texts for criticismof Russianlife
(Goncharov'sOblomovbecame"Whatis Oblomovism?"Turgenev'sOn
the Eve became"WhenWill Real Day Dawn?"). He flatlyignoredthe
literaryaspectsof the workshe was discussing,makinghis only aesthetic
criterionthe qualityof "beingtrueto life."Dmitri Pisarev,an even more
polemic radical journalistwho also died in his twenties, pushed the
methodeven further,rejectedout of hand all art exceptthat immediately
usefulfor educationalpurposes,"uncrowning" writerslike Pushkin,until
ultimately,in the moderatewordsof Plekhanov,"he carriedthis concept
to the point of caricature."(It should be obviousthat the inheritorof
this line of progressivehardeningof the aestheticarteriesis Tolstoy,who
from a differentstandard,religiousmorality,continuedin his own criti-
cism the narrow social functionalismand aestheticunconcernof the
"enlighteners.")
All thesetendencies:the Marxistview of literature,the Russiancrit-
ical traditionof socialutilitarianismin art,even some of Tolstoy'smoral-
ism, cameto a focus in VladimirIlyich Lenin, along with the character-
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istics of his own mind and the necessitiesof his life as a revolutionary
leader and head of the new socialiststate. Lenin's approachto art is
vitallyimportant,since so much of laterMarxistcriticismdependson it,
and it is an incrediblycomplex approachin which at least six separate
emphases(at differenttimes and under differentcircumstances)can be
distinguished.One is the attitudeof simple functionalismthat he takes
in his 1905 article,"PartyOrganizationand Party Literature";that art
is a weapon in the class struggleand must be recruitedto help make a
revolution.Lenin believedin an absoluteobjectivetruth,as his Notes on
Dialectics and Materialismand Empirio-Criticism make clear, and he
believedthathe andhis partyhad it, so thata writercouldonly find truth
and freedomwithin or alongsideof the party.Another attitudeis the
analyticMarxistview that art reflectssocialrealitybut in many respects
transcendsboth it and the creator'sviews, shown in the six tributesto
Leo Tolstoy (five of them availablein English in Dialectics6, 1938),
that Lenin wrote in the yearsaroundTolstoy'sdeath,tryingto reconcile
the contradictionbetweenTolstoy'sgenius and his reactionaryviews. A
third is a Puritanicresistanceto the "sinfulness"of art, relatedto that of
the "enlighteners"and Tolstoy and very like St. Augustine'sattraction-
repulsionto Virgil. It is best shownin a statementLenin madeto Gorky,
explainingwhy he loved the "miracle"of greatmusicbut couldn'tlisten
to it very often:
It acts on my nerves, makes me want to talk amiable stupidities and stroke
the heads of these beings who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty.
But today you can't stroke anybody on the head-they'll bite off your hand.
You've got to pound them on the head, and pound them ruthlessly.
A fourth is the tired businessman'sphilistine conceptionof art as a
soothing relaxation,shown in his generallyacademictaste (he wept at
Bernhardt'sCamille,liked Jack London and Upton Sinclair,saved the
GreatTheatreafterthe Revolutionbecause"a theatreis necessary. . . to
rest hard workersaftertheir daily work,"proposedthat the Sovietstate
arrangemass distributionof reproductionsof painterslike Rubensand
Murillo) combinedwith his strong dislike for the modern (he experi-
enced"nojoy"from modernistpainting,wantedto know, like any philis-
tine, whetherthe artistwasn'tconcealinghis inabilityto draw,admitted
thathe couldn'tunderstandMayakovskyand alwaysfell asleepafterthree
lines of his poetry).A fifth is the socialutilitarianview that art is a form
of wealth, to be made accessibleto the massesunder socialismlike any
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
other form of wealth, typifiedby his statementsto ClaraZetkinthat art
must belong to the people and be comprehensibleto them ("Mustone
offercaketo an infinitesimalminorityat a time when the massesof work-
ers and peasantsare crying out for bread?").A sixth is a number of
reservationsand hesitanciesaboutthe otherfive, compoundedof his own
rich personality,personalrespectfor the creativeartist,devotionto toler-
anceand personalfreedom,and senseof humor (typifiedby his marginal
commenton someone'smemo,"Thecreationof a new fundamentalclass
culture is the fundamental goal of the Proletcult":"Ha, ha!" and
"Bunk.")All six of these attitudes,despitetheir contradictions,were to
be majorfeaturesof Soviet-criticism,markedby Lenin'sstrongperson-
ality,and were to be adoptedas partof the inheritanceby Marxistcritics
elsewhere.
Comparedwith Lenin's views, the criticismof other early Soviet
leadersand literarythinkersis a fairly simplematter,merelypickingup
one or anotherstrandof his thought.Leon Trotsky,in his collectionof
essayspublishedin I923 as Literatureand Revolution,revealsa genuine
sensitivity to aesthetic values, but is, nevertheless, chiefly concerned with
criticizing Soviet writers in terms of the political needs of the Soviet state.
As late as 1935, in the Atlantic Monthly, he was using an article ostensibly
about Celine for a lengthy discussion of French governmental politics.
Joseph Stalin, as far as I know, has never written on art and literature.
He has been responsible for a number of slogans: that culture must be
"proletarian in content and national in form," that "the writer is the
engineer of the human soul," etc., and he is supposed to have named
"socialist realism." His taste seems to be about as academic as Lenin's,
with a particular interest in music; if newspaper reports can be trusted,
he likes classical ballet and Russian opera of the Glinka-Borodin sort, he
walked out on Shostakovitch'sLady Macbeth of Mzensk with the com-
ment that the music was difficult and unmelodic and that he didn't care
for the story, and he directed Soviet composers to produce tunes that
people can whistle on their way to work. In one respect at least Stalin
has bettered Lenin: he seems to have a very high estimate of Mayakovsky,
describing him as "the outstanding poet of the Soviet era" and writing
in Pravda in I935: "Indifferenceto the memory and works of Mayakovsky
is a crime." Maxim Gorky, a major influence on Soviet criticism, reveals
a tremendous critical sensitivity in brilliant snatches of his Reminiscences
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of Tolstoy, Chekhov,and others,but his formal criticismand literary
pamphleteering,publishedin English in On Guardfor the SovietUnion
in 1933 and Cultureand the People in 1939, is greatly disappointing;
wholly politicaland unimaginative.Other Soviet criticismby the older
generationrangesfrom the militantleftism of Karl Radek,announcing
that Joyce'swork is "a heap of dung,"to the moderationand good sense
of AnatolLunarcharsky, cuttingthe Gordianknot of a Sovietcontroversy
over whetherShakespearewas a spokesmanfor the feudal or the bour-
geois classby announcingthat he wasn'ta spokesmanfor any class,but
a greatand conflict-riddenartistliving in a greatand conflict-riddentime.
For many years,Soviet criticismwas largely devoted to battlesbe-
tween Lefts and Rights, Futuristsand Formalists,Constructivistsand
Proletcultists,On-Guardistsand At-Your-Postites,Social-Commanders
and Anti-SocialCommanders,a man announcingthat Eugene Onegin
would have been writtenwithout Pushkinand anotherman countering
that anywayno literaryworks could comparewith revolutionarymani-
festoes,so that it was a rare literarycritic who got a piece of criticism
written.Within the past decade,however,Sovietcriticismseemsto have
improvedsomewhat,and the recentcontroversiesby the youngercritics
have at leastbeen on issuesof seriousconcernto Marxistcriticism,defi-
nitelytranscendingSovietliterarypolitics.The chief of thesewas the cam-
paign against "vulgarsociology"in 1936 and 1937 which soon turned
into a much more fundamentalcontroversyover relative vs. absolute
standardsin Marxistcriticism.It warrantssome space.
The critics of "vulgarsociology"defended absolutecriteria,under
the aegisof Lenin,Chernyshevsky, and Dobrolyubov;proposingthe eval-
uationof worksof art in termsof timelesspoliticalvalues:i.e. were they
"for"or "against"the "people"?The group was more or less led by
Mikhail Lifschitz of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute,the compilerof
Marx'swritingson art and authorof a summary,The Philosophyof Art
of Karl Marx,which, althoughgenerallyuseful, distortsMarx to make
him an absolutistand enemy of "vulgarsociology"(neglectingeven to
mention, say, his views on Balzac). His camp included V. Grib, the
authorof an equally simplifiedstudy "capturing"Balzac;Mark Rosen-
thal, editor of the monthly LiteraryCriticand sponsorof the deathless
syllogism that since great artistswere anticapitalistat any time, and
Timon'sspeechesagainstgold show that Shakespearewas anticapitalist,
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
thereforeShakespeareis a great artist;and I. Satz and V. Kemenov,of
similarviews.
The "vulgarsociologists"defendedrelativecriteria,under the aegis
of Taine, Belinsky,Plekhanov,and Mehring;that is, the evaluationof
worksof artin termsof the writer'srelationto the socialforcesand issues
of his own day.They were moreor less led by ProfessorI. Nusinovof the
Instituteof Red Professors,compilerof a Soviet edition of Hugo and
comparableworks, a sound man insistingin his articleson Plekhanov's
point that in a decadentperiodthe greatestwriters(Proustand Joyceare
his examples)areboundto be decadent;that wicked and antisocialideas
can producegreat art; that truth is relative and subjective;that "the
writeris no photographiccamera,a work of artis no snapshot,and litera-
tureis no mirror."DespiteNusinov'sideas,his team includedsomefairly
poorcriticsslantedtoward"rejection": D. S. Mirsky,a Czaristprincewho
had gone backto Russiain the early'30'san enthusiasticCommunist,and
ran to such criticalexcessesas finding Joyce'sexactitudeof descriptiona
"classstyle"showing "an aesthetico-proprietary desirefor 'things'" (just
as an equallymechanicalFreudianwould find it "anal");A. A. Smirnov,
whosebook on Shakespeare is the low point of Sovietcriticism,analyzing
The Tempestas a treatiseon the colonialquestion,etc.; and ProfessorM.
Kravchenko,whose studiesof Gogol are similar,if not quite so extreme.
What muddled the controversyalmost unbelievablywas, first, that
neitherside would fly its properbanners;both sidesclaimedLenin (and
had properLeninquotes),disclaimedPlekhanovand Taine,chargedeach
otherwith the influenceof Trotsky,etc. In addition,a politicalissuewas
involved,in that the "vulgarsociologists"were "leftist,""sectarian," in a
PopularFrontperiod when the aims were "moving-in-on," "broadening."
It seemsobviousthat the "vulgarsociologists"were actuallyattempting
to be Marxists,and their opponentsonly utilitarianpoliticians,capturing
writerslike Shakespeare and Pushkinfor the workingclass.Neverthelcss,
the use the "vulgarsociologists"made of their social analyses(which
were not terriblyaccurateas a rule) was generallyto rejectgreatwriters
indiscriminately,while their opponentshad a framework,of no matter
what validity,for acceptingthem. The solutionhere seemsto be the ap-
proachof Feodor Levin, who took a median positionbetweenthe two
campsin the controversy.He slappeddown the absolutistsfor renouncing
Marxistanalysisin terms of social classesand historicaldevelopment,
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
simplifying the past to the point where they could not conceive of a ruling
class ever standing for anything but parasitismand exploitation, and "cata-
pulting" present politics into the past. At the same time, he slapped down
the relativistsfor their actual vulgarizations and rejections.Quoting Marx
on why we still enjoy Greek art and Engels on Balzac (to flavor the
ubiquitous Lenin quotations of the controversy) he concluded that both
camps were actually vulgar sociologists, and that a serious Marxist criti-
cism would want to know what social reality a great work of literature
arose from and why it was great. From Levin's articles, it is possible to
get a clear view of the controversy, to see both sides picking up aspects
of Lenin's thought and using them in a vacuum, to see each side perform-
ing half the process of sociological criticism and coming out with absurd
results. The hope would seem to lie in a Marxist criticism using the his-
torically relativist standards of critics like Nusinov, applied with the dis-
crimination and appreciation shown for artists by critics like Lifschitz.
That is, Marxist analysis without consequent rejection; seeing greatness
as best expressing class, rather than contradicting it. Such a criticism
would also, of course, stop using names, slogans, and Lenin quotations
as arguments, discard its pieties, and start looking at literature.
A few examples of Soviet criticism of this sort give cause for hope.
One is an essay called "Bacon in ShakespearianSurroundings,"by Luna-
charsky, part of an unfinished book on Bacon, (published posthumously
in International Literature, 1936, No. i). It is a brilliant and imaginative
study, very much in the tradition of modern criticism, defining two
Shakespearianprogressions,the "melancholy,"Jaques to Hamlet to Pros-
pero, and the "cynical,"Richard III to Edmund to lago, and then inter-
preting Bacon's mind and character against the pattern of those two
movements. A piece even more impressive is J. Kashkeen's "Ernest Hem-
ingway" (International Literature, I935, No. 5). It is a really remarkable
study of Hemingway's work, perhaps the best written to date, revealing
a thorough knowledge and understanding of American literature (Kash-
keen deals with the influence of writers from Thoreau to Gertrude Stein
on Hemingway); a brilliant comparative method (he discusses Heming-
way in terms of Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Celine, Eliot, and innumerable
others); great sensitivity to style; and a genuine understanding of the
nature of Hemingway's power and depth as well as of his limitations.
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
In the decade since the "vulgarsociology"controversy,almost no
Sovietcriticismhas been publishedin English.A volumeof anniversary
tributesto Pushkinpublishedin Englishin Moscowin I939, principally
the work of Sovietprofessors,is as uninspiredand academicas its equiva-
lent elsewhere.During the war, the few articlesby Soviet critics that
appearedin InternationalLiteraturewere almostentirelyconcernedwith
problemsof war writingand morale,and of little generalliteraryinterest.
Since the war, the chief criticalmanifestationhas been the depressing
attackby Andrei Zhdanovon two writersnamed Akhmatovaand Zos-
chenko,as well as on generalaspectsof Sovietculture.Zhdanov'sattack
appearsto marka returnto the senselesstraditionof the politician'slaying
down a literary"line"that so much inhibitedSovietcriticismin the past,
and seems an unhappyomen. He announcedthat the "greathistorical
mission"of Soviet literatureis "strengtheningthe moral and political
unity of the people"; resurrectedscapegoatsdead for a quarterof a
century,like the manifestoof the SerapionBrotherhoodin I922; and
even revivedthe old turkeyof scornfor the "outwardlybeautiful-form"
of inwardly"rotten"bourgeoisculture.Despitethis setback,and with no
particularevidenceto go on, we can only hope that Sovietcriticsof the
typeof Levinand Kashkeen,the legitimatesuccessorsof Marx,Plekhanov,
and Lunacharsky, have somehowcontinuedover the last decade,and are
continuingnow, to build the truly MarxistSoviet criticismtheir work
promises.
VI
The faultsof Marxistliterarycriticism,the fact that so muchof it has
been writtenin the last two decades,and so little of it has come to any-
thing, thus stem from a numberof sources.Someof them are implicitin
Marx and Engels; that is, in Marxisttheoryitself: the rosy nineteenth-
centuryteleologicalevolutionismof Hegel, wherebythe worldwould get
progressivelybetterand better,artdroppingoff somewherealong the line
with otherimperfecthumanexpressions;the concentrationon what men
have in common at any given time, tending to slight their differences,
which are the seeds of art; the constantconfusionbetweeninterpreting
the world and changingit, betweenthe inevitabilityof socialismand the
necessityof bringingit on by revolutionary
action,betweenunderstanding
the class natureof literatureand making writersenlist in your class or
party.Manyof them comein with Leninand to a lesserextentwith other
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
leaders: the revolutionist'sunyielding absolutism,the busy politician's
untrainedphilistine taste, the dedicatedman's puritanicresentmentof
the temptationsof art.Some of them are accidentalRussianfeaturesthat
have been foolishly adoptedby Marxistsin other countries:the critical
moralismand narrowfunctionalismof the "enlighteners"and Tolstoy,
the specialeducationalnecessitiesof a new socialistcountrywith a largely
illiteratepopulation.The principalfaults, however, are none of these
things,but the personaldeficienciesof most of the Marxistcritics.These
arechieflythree.First,as Arnoldsaidof the Romantics,they do not know
enough,eitherenoughhistoryor enough literature.As Plekhanovwrote,
noting that Michelangelosaidhis teachingwould procreatea greatnum-
ber of ignoramuses:"Nowadaysit is Marx'steachingwhich is procreating
ignoramuses." Second,most of them do not reallylike literature,or wide
areasof it, and use Marxismas a weaponfor killing it offl.Third, they
do not have enough imagination;their categoriesare too narrow,and
theirviewstoo simpleand mechanical.Examplescouldbe obtainedalmost
everywhere,but perhapsthe clearestillustrationis V. F. Calverton'sThe
Liberationof AmericanLiterature.He didn't know Americanhistory,
and he hadn'tread,let alone understood,much Americanliterature.He
didn't much like it, either,particularlyits great artists,its Hawthornes,
Melvilles,and Thoreaus.Finally,his categorieswere far too narrowand
his thinkingchildish.He announcedthat we had no Puritanart and that
Franklinwas opposedto art,thinkingof the Greekarts,whereasParring-
ton and ConstanceRourke,with a broaderdefinitionof art, recognized
the "drama"in Indian treaties,the "lyric"in sermons,and the "art"of
Franklin'sfine printing.Finally,he was obsessed,as almostall the bad
Marxistcriticshave been, with the term "escape"and "escapist."
It is abouttime someonepolishedoff the term "escape"as a critical
concept.Used as a Marxistterm of abuseby such men as MichaelGold,
it tends to mean that any writing aboutthe past is a wicked avoidance
of contemporarysocialreality.As F. 0. Matthiessensensiblypointedout
in The Achievementof T. S. Eliot, "Only the narrowestconceptionof
realismcan hold that an authornecessarilyacquiresany sovereignvirtue
by recordingthe surfacedetailsof a middlewesterncity insteadof those
of eighteenth-centuryPeru." As generally used, however, the charge
smugglesin a much more absurdassumption,actuallythe height of flat-
tery to the reviled author,that it really is possiblefor him to "escape"
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 MARXIST CRITICISM
the problemsof his life and time in his work if he wants to, ratherthan,
as Kenneth Burke has devoted much of his criticismto pointing out,
facing them inevitablyon anotherlevel, in anotherform, generallyone
on which they are less capableof realisticsolution.In Permanenceand
Change, Burkewrites:
Properly used, the idea of escape should present no difficulties. If a situa-
tion is unsatisfactory, it is quite normal and natural that people should want
to avoid it and should try any means at their disposal to do so. But the term
escape has had a more restricted usage. Whereas it properly applies to all men,
there was an attempt to restrict its application to some men. . . . In the end,
the term came to be applied loosely, in literary criticism especially, to designate
any writer or reader whose interests or aims did not closely coincide with those
of the critic. While apparently defining a trait of the person referred to, the
term hardly did more than convey the attitude of the person making the refer-
ence. It looked objective, as though the critic were saying "X is doing so-and-
so"; but too often it became merely a strategic way of saying, "I personally
don't like what X is doing."
Marxistcriticismwoulddiscardmeaninglessbattle-crieslike "escape,"
"ivorytower,"the pejorativeuse of "decadent,"and the rest, if Marxist
criticsrecognizedthat their sociologicalanalysisis a tool for the under-
standingof literature,not the debunkingof it, "unmaskingits ideology,"
etc. In a sense,this would violatethe whole Marxisttradition,which, as
a theoryof interpretingsocietyinextricablyboundup with overthrowing
it, sees all analysisin terms of presentstrugglesand weapons.It would
requiremaking the "essence"of Marxismfor literarycriticismneutral,
not polemic.Nevertheless,in a deepersense,the sensein which the truth
is always political, is always a revolutionaryweapon, it would violate only
shortsightedMarxism,the sacrificeof truth for immediateexpediency.
It was this that Marx and Engels saw in Balzac,as later Marxistshave
seen it in writerslike Proust:that the truthfulnessof greatart resultsin a
portrayalof socialreality,whateverthe classor views of the artist,more
valuableto Marxismthan all the pious slantingsof propagandaartists.
Like Freud and psychoanalysis,Marx and Marxismcan be of tre-
mendoususe to criticismif the critichas a cleardelimitationof what the
methodcan and cannotdo. Psychoanalysis, Freudadmitted,can dealwith
the personaloriginsand psycho-symbolic interrelationsof the work, but
not with its formal artistictechniquesand its aestheticvalue. Similarly,
Marxismcan deal with the socialoriginsand socio-symbolic interrelations
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 THE ANTIOCH REVIEW
of the work,but it can,in addition,dealwith its formalartistictechniques
to someextentin socialand historicalterms,and in the sametermsit can
make ratherlimited statementsof aestheticvalue. What it cannotdo is
use its social analysisas a techniquefor debunking,erect reflection-of-
social-realityas the major criterionof aestheticvalue, or dismiss the
author,his psyche,and his personalartistryas factorsless importantthan
socialand historicalfactors.It is within these strictlimits that the critics
who havemadethe mosteffectiveuse of Marxismin moderation-Burke,
Empson, Matthiessen,Knights, etc.-have operated.The best Marxist
critics,from Plekhanovto ChristopherCaudwell,haverecognizedsimilar
limitatlons.

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