TROTSKY ON

Revolut known for the idea of culture'.

Name Address JRE and ion' is best its attack on a 'proletarian Put forward by groups of artists and writers after the Russian Revolution, this idea soon played into the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which tried to give some special historical value to the products of Russia's backwardness and isolation.

This, the theory of 'socialism in one country' and all that went with it, was the bureaucracy's programme of opposition to Trotsky's insistence on the revolutionary role of the working class and the defence and development of dialectical materialism.

The task of the proletariat was and is to create a classless society in which art and all culture will be 'truly human', and its class character surpassed.

In the course of the many years of proletarian revolution, there would be developments in art which would inevitably reflect the problems and achievements of the revolution but even that art which could be called 'revolutionary' (not 'socialist' or 'proletarian') is produced in the context definite artistic traditions, according to the past achievements within each art form etc., and is not freshly baked according to some recipe deduced from the nature of the proletariat:

It is untrue that revolutionary art can be created only by workers' (p. 217).

And what is the dialectic of artistic and literary creations?

Obviously Marxists do not think that each novel, poem, play, painting etc., is simply the unique expression of an individual's imagination. It is that, but, for it to mean something to others, it must express something common those who read, see or hear it.

Historical materialism shows that the characteristic attitudes, assumptions and modes of feeling of any epoch are not 'natural', however much they are taken for granted. These thoughts. and sentiments grow out of (and also then help to give shape to) the necessary economic foundations of life, and especially from the interests of the classes which oppose one another as a result their relation that foundation.

Individual

If Marxists say then that an artist (writer, painter, poet etc.) expresses particular class or section of a class or group of classes under the impact of particular historical experiences, choices etc., does this mean that the individual talent and uniqueness of the artist is set at naught?

That would be a totally undialectical conclusion:

'One of the most important tasks of criticism is to analyse the individuality of the artist (that is, his art) into its component elements, and to show their correlations.

'In this way, criticism brings the artist closer to the reader, who also has more or less of a "unique soul", "artistically"

unexpressed, "unchosen", but nonetheless representing a union of the same elements as does the soul of a poet.

'So it can be seen that what serves as a bridge for soul to soul is not the unique, but the common. Only through the common is the unique known;

the common is determined in man by the deepest and most persistent conditions which make up his "soul", by the social conditions of education, of existence, of work and of associations.

"The social conditions in historic human society are, first of all, the conditions of class affiliation. That is why a class standard is so fruitful in I would like information about THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE: Fill in the form below and SECRETARY, SOCIALIST 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, particular to the general there would be no contacts among people, no thoughts and no poetry' (p. 60).

It is therefore precisely in those attitudes and values which individuals (and artists themselves) do not question, but take for granted' and express naively, in relation to all sorts of questions (the family, love, personal integrity TROTSKY etc.), that their deepest assumptions are expressed, and it is these deepest assumptions that are moulded by the most basic, class-historical interests.

(This illuminates the well-known fact that Marx and Engels, for example, never judged writers by their explicit political opinions, but only by their artistic success in penetrating_to these basic questions. Engels even said that a literary work would be better, from the proletarian standpoint, if it was not politically explicit.)

Opponents of Marxism, in Trotsky's day as now, objected to the Marxist analysis, complaining that it was simply a way of blackening or 'incriminating' a writer by pointing to his class affiliation or interest.

Trotsky, in replying, elaborates on the way Marxists should approach these questions:

'[Marxism] does not at all "incriminate" a poet with the thoughts and feelings which he expresses, but raises questions of a much more profound significance, namely, to which order of feelings does a given send to NATIONAL LABOUR LEAGUE, LONDON, SW4. artistic work correspond in all its peculiarities? What are the social conditions of these thoughts and feelings? What place do they occupy in the historical development of a society and of a class? And, further, what literary heritage has entered into the elaboration of the new form?

'Under the influence of what historic impulse have the new complexes of feelings and thoughts broken through the shell which divides them from the sphere of poetic consciousness?' (p. 170).

The final sentence in this quotation begins to answer our question: what is the struggle of opposites at the root of artistic creation?

As Trotsky sees it, there exists the whole tradition of past literary creation; 'the sphere of poetic consciousness'.

Inevitably, in class society of every type, this 'sphere' has been relatively and often completely isolated from the life and sentiments of the masses.

The breakthrough of a new class in history, and its relation to the lives and feelings of all the oppressed masses, changes all these relationships, and conflicts with the old torms. Under this 'new hisand work out artistic styles.

'Artistic creation is always a complicated turning inside-out of old forms, under the influence of new stimuli which originate outside the art' (p.

179).

The old forms are developed and transformed, not created completely anew by the new stimuli.

Here Trotsky, in a passage which recalls Lenin's exposition of the dialectical theory of knowledge ('Philosophical Notebooks'), insists that the literary forms developed by writers in the past are an acquisition of mankind in handling the problems of life. They must not be thrown away but dialectically overcome:

Literature, whose methods and processes have their roots far back in the most distant past and represent the accumulated experience of verbal craftsmanship, expresses the thoughts, feelings, points of view and hopes of the new epoch and its (p. 180).

This applies to the forms and techniques of all the arts, some of which are now of course (like film) directly associated with the development of science and the forces of production.

Past literature and art, therefore, while having a class character determined by the type of exploitation of the ruling class, also represents the progress of humanity in its contradictory historical course:

'What the workers will take from Shakespeare, Goethe, Pushkin or Dostoievsky, will be a more complex idea of human personality, of its passions and feelings, a deeper and profounder understanding of its psychic forces and of the role of the subconscious etc. In the final analysis, the worker will become richer' (p. 225).

In other words, Shakespeare, Goethe etc., the giants of bourgeois literature, did not only develop literary forms, but through those forms made genuine discoveries about the nature of man. Art and literature thus have a distinct role of enriching man's perception and capacity for life.

For the proletariat to appropriate these cultural gains, it must concentrate all energiesthrough the leadership of a revolutionary party based on Marxism — to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of its political power. This provides the conditions for creating a classless society.

The Russian Futurists wanted to work out an art and literature just from this revolutionary nature of the proletariat, condemning the "individualism' of bourgeois literature. The dangers involved in such an attitude of revolt rather than revolution are indicated by the fact that their fellow-Futurists in Italy found themselves intimately associated with Mussolini's fascists, who also took a new broom to sweep away the 'decadence' and 'individualism' of 'democracy' and the 'old "Thre hold' Trotsky points out that the proletariat, by its revolution, only puts itself 'on the threshold!, culturally speaking.

'When the Futurists propose to throw overboard the old literature of individualism, not only because it has become antiquated in form, but because it contradicts the collectivist nature of the proletariat, they reveal a very inadequate understanding of the dialectic nature of the contradiction between individualism and collectivism.

'There are no abstract truths. There are different kinds of individualism.

'Because of too much individualism, a section of the prerevolutionary intelligentsia threw itself into mysticism, but another section moved along the chaotic lines of Futurism and, caught by the Revolution — to their honour be it said — came nearer to the proletariat.

'But when they who came nearer because their teeth were set on edge by individualism, carry their feeling over to the proletariat, they show themselves guilty of egocentrism, that is, of extreme individualism.

"The trouble is that the average proletarian is lacking in this very quality. In the mass, proletarian individuality IMPORTANTI READING Thei Programme adopter py the Founding Conferènce ofithrer Founth international ohitbe BOLI wow biternatittinal has not been sufficiently formed and differentiated.

It is just such heightening of the objective quality and bulletins to an independent craftmanship of art.

"The proletariat also needs a continuity of creative tradition. At the present time the proletariat realises this continuity not directly, but indirectly, through the creative bourgeois intelligentsia which gravitates towards the proletariat and which wants to keep warm under its wing.

'The proletariat tolerates a else, besides his book, has any Marxist so clearly traced and defined the relationship betioner that future, thereevolue tionary tasks Delore Marxist party, and the fundamental elements of dialectical materialism.

This is what gives 'Literature and Revolution' its great value.