Economic Determinism and Reflectionist Critical Theory

[cullinane]

If we are to take the strict view of Marxism, that ideologies of culture, say art, are by-products determined by the economic infrastructure/base.

How much and to what degree is culture economically determined?

Plekhanov was a proponent of the 'reflectionist' position. Its conclusions would be that if art was "decadent" then it must be the product of a socio-political 'decadence'. Art for arts sake is a bourgeois phenomenon since its lack of political content leaves the status quo intact. This was taken further under Zhdanov and Socialist Realism. Artists are little more than engineers of the soul and must reflect the 'social reality'.

Lukacs sees the 'modern novel' as an expression of bourgeois values..the focus on the individual character making his or her way in the competitive world. Constraints placed by a given social class within a given historical context are echoed in the novel and the development of modern culture. Franz Kafka proposes that alienated man exists because of an ineluctable human condition not the social relations man finds himself in. Lukacs was opposed to Kafka's notions, as well as modernism in general, upholding the notions of realism.

Could one conjecture that certain activities in the superstructure, like the arts, have a relative autonomy from the base?
Did a slave-labour economy directly produce Greek art? Is there a sort of dialectical unity between the superstructure and the base, so to a large extent they influence each other?

[vox]

N. A. Cullinane,

I'm not sure how many Marxists take a "strict" view of things. Most of them I've talked to are reconstructed to one degree or another.

However, what you said about Lukacs makes me think, for, while I don't think anyone would argue that Lukacs wasn't a realist, someone might take issue with your statement. When you say "modern novel," are you talking about modernism, as opposed to postmodernism?

Rather than Kafka, I'd refer you to the debate between Adorno and Lukacs. I'm certainly no expert, but didn't Lukacs say that non-organic art was vulgar (perhaps he said obscene) and raged against the "bourgeios intellectuals who could not see the real historical counterforces working towards a structural transformation of society (Sarup, 1993)?

By the way, I'm glad that you're here. I find your posts to be stimulating, and always well-informed.

vox

[DaNatural]

yes i agree with vox, u have definantly dropped some gems cullinane, i am also pleased with your arrival. keep up the good work friend. peace
p.s. forgive me for not responding to this post properly my knowledge on art and its relation is not up to par, nor is my knowledge on kafka and other writers.

[cullinane]

Hello vox,
Yes, I believe your right in saying that most Marxists today do not adhere to a strict and dogmatic Marxism..which is something that can only be welcomed.
I probably didn't make myself clear when I spoke of the strict approach. Marxists like Plekhanov, Zhdanov and to a certain extent Lukacs held a strict view on the relation of art to the economic infrastructure. Zhdanov went so far as to say "socialist realism requires creative artists to follow the Communist Party line, to deal only in subjects approved by the Party and display the correct political attitude..". Artists must reflect social reality as the Party sees it. At couldn't be the preserve of a special art elite separate from the masses. People like the composer Shostakovich suffered from this sort of attitude.

Lukacs is interesting in that, many of the 'strict' marxists saw some of his work as 'idealist' and under the influence of Hegel. His major work, History and Class Consciousness was seen as a metaphysical work by many Communists. Lukacs praised the works of people like Thomas Mann who followed a creed of realism.

Lukacs condemned modernism, (i'm unaware if he had views on post-modernism!) as representing a distorted picture of reality, it was something that inhibited political practice.

Now, interestingly, the writer Berthold (?) Brecht, and a member of the KPD, felt Lukacs view was too narrow. He conceived of an epic theatre..art that had a clearly defined political agenda that self conciously drew the audiences attention in showing exploitation and class antagonisms. It teaches the working class to question its existence. Creative art must be left free to experiment as the culture around them changes. This would be my opinion too.

Adorno saw the realist versions of Lukacs as a negative unreason. Adorno was pretty much opposed to the strict Marxism..in fact he saw the Soviet Union as equally oppressive as the West. He championed artistic experimentation and was entirely at odds with socialist realism. Adorno went so far as to deny dialectics, which is fundamental to marxist thought.

[vox]

I agree that socialist (Soviet) realism was not a good thing. Indeed, it stifled the very impulses in humanity that Marx sought to exalt.

I don't know that Lukacs had ideas on postmodernism, but he did about Adorno, and Adorno believed that late capitalism was stabilized and that hopes in socialism were ill-founded. I've read that Adorno and Derrida are quite similar, and to that all I can do is quote Foucault, "[Derrida] is the kind of philospher that gives bullshit a bad name." Which isn't to say I'm a fan of Foucault, but it's a good quote nonetheless.

Your education in this field exceeds mine, so I've a question. When you say that Lukacs rejected modernism, do you mean philosphically or the way that it was practiced? It seems to me that any Marxist would have to embrace at least the theoretical foundations of modernism, though I can understand the rejection of someone like Eliot, though Eliot could make linotype sing.

I'm afraid you'll have to explain the term "negative unreason." I play and chippy with the arts, but that's all, so specialized terms will sometimes need explanation.

I've always felt a certain sympathy for Brecht, myself. Recently a book came out about Lukacs, I'd have to look to find the title, that seemed to make him more palatable. I now have to wonder if this isn't why.

By the way, do you know Brecht well? I've seen this quote, which I like quite a bit, and when it's attributed at all it's to him:

"Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer."

It certainly sounds like him, anyway.

vox (sometimes rambles)

[cullinane]

hello vox,
What Adorno was expressing, I believe, by the idea of a dark negative underside of 'unreason' was the fact of such ideas of the A-bomb, Nazism, Gulags etc. He saw in the West a deeply repressive adminstered society (suppposedly) and in the East the same thing. He was quite pessimistic about civilisations's "tendency for self-destruction". He was opposed to Marxism, because he was opposed to dialectics. He felt a new thesis creates more conflict..therefore dialetics are negative, rather than positive. Although, the synthesis is the positive outcome of the thesis and antitheis...Adorno was also against totality of Marx's system. Adorno wasn't a Marxist certainly, he felt 'liberation' a word the Frankfurt School were fond of using could come through art.
I know little about Derrida, but I believe he was opposed to Marx's analysis of fetishism in commodities. I would generally have more sympathy toward's Lukacs than Adorno.
I think most of the practices of modernism are generally opposed to the notion of socialist realism. I don't believe Lukacs was opposed to modernism as a therorectical foundation. However, Trotsky believed that art expresses itself in times of leisure and comfort...Its impossible to decide almost how many at that times felt art should be conducted. Would the establishment of a proletarian art follow the achievement of the new society. Neither Lenin or Trotsky from what I know, liked 'advanced' art..Lenin, in so far as he had artistic preferences liked romantic realist subject pictures. Trotsky was interested in Futurism because he saw that it was trying to bring art to the working people. He described it as a closet revolution within a middle class framework; most workers had no appropriate experience to help them evaluate it. Culture depends on knowledge and it was impossible, Trotsky believed, to create a class cluture behind the back of the class.
Understanding the early years of Soviet art means looking at the context in which artists worked and the way political values are reflected in art. Uncertainty over how art would represent the new world the Bolsheviks wanted to create left them caught between highly theorised Constructivism, which was collective and modern but not widely accessible and a fully available realism that often perpetuated moribund art concepts and forms.
I'm only familiar with Mother Courage and St.Joan of the Stockyards by Brecht..I read them about a year ago.
I familiar with Brecht's life and his time in East Germany.

[Anonymous]

man are you two gonna get along =) and i have SO MUCH to read =(

ill be sure to get back to you after i do, or if by any chance i do know what you`re talking about ill also be sure to join in. Till then ill just read.

however i can add my personal belief on something that was said. I think art can be a hammer but i can also be a mirror, depends, on the artist. It must not be restricted or cripled by being forced to comply with the view the party wants to transmit. Nither art nore anything else. And as for the analogy between, the theory that defends that real scientific advances take place when the hole model is trashed and substituted for another rather than when small advances over time happen, and the theory or the implicit sugestion by cullinei that real progress in society take place when revolution also take place. I think that once democracy is reached there is no more room for revolution. or rather there is room but it must ocure in a different way, through democratic means. This also means that it does not happen like that, in a day in a month not even in a year because for it to happen what is needed is not an elucidated few but rather an informed majority. But the analogy may still aply if we consider that although i takes a lot of time for it (the revolution) to come about when it does (if ever) it is still a revolution and thus instant replacement of one sistem by another rather than a complilation of reformes and small progresses that already take place the capitalist nations of today. Maybe the anology does aply and revolution in society as in science are the way foward BUT if there is democracy work on that. does this make sense?

[peaccenicked]

The whole base/superstructure argument is largely misrepresented. The best way to think of it is that there is a dominance of ruling class ideas in any class society.
This is a truism. It applies most when that class society is at it's most stable.
Ideas certainly develop independently of base, not all of
them, property rights for instance, but not fairy tales or poems.
The base can however be the subject of a fairy tale or two.
Economic determinism is a myth. Engels once wrote that he and Marx had not done enough work on the superstructure. He wrote, that he and Marx saw the ultimate cause of societal actions in economics. That is
hardly economic determinism in all areas of cause and effect.
Bourgeois academic historians are always out to
impoverish Marxist theory and make it look silly.
Reflection theory is a later addition in Lenin's philosophical works. Some of my friends believe that
Marx had concepts that correspond to economic relations rather than reflect their nature. I tend to agree with them. If this makes me orthodox, I don't care. I want to hear the arguments .

[Conghaileach]

Anyone know where I can get my hands on a summary of all this? ;)

[peaccenicked]

Looking over this again now I realise that Lenin must have got 'reflection' theory from Plekhanov but I cant remember every reading this outside Lenin. Maybe someone can tell me where it is in Plekhanov.
To CiaranB
The trouble with getting a summary of all this. Is that the previous two writers, have brought together two themes that as far as I am aware been ever been compared, at least in such a manner.
I can not think of a writer who covers the whole ground here. The poverty of 'marxism' is marxists.
You have given me an idea for an essay, I'll keep you posted.

(Edited by peaccenicked at 10:33 pm on Jan. 6, 2002)