esthetics und Polities By Ernst Bloch and ochers New Left Books, 16.50 WAS ONCE obliged to be a Marine. VITICE remember the part of our ing, I hared most. If was an exercise called milling, invented by some idior brass hat to increase the agressive spirit among the troops. You had to get into a boxing ring and spend three minutes trying lo knock out anther Sparring was Torbidden, Lonsdale rules were ignored, and onc was expected to go berserk.
1 must confess that Aethelic and Polities did once or twice remind me not least in its frequent lack of fraternity and its occasional savagery. But contrary to my Marine training, the end-result here is good. This is vital reading for anyone the relationship between art and socialism.
The mill takes place between sombe heavy weights of the intellectual left, bouts take the form of a series of key Ernst Bloch versus Lukacs, versus Lukacs, Benjamin Brecht, Adorno versus Benjamin, Adorno versus Lukacs, and Sartre. excention (Adorno Henjamin, tough going withour a knowledge of the texts they are discussine) the controntations are well chosen and belpfully introduced: and the whole epic debate is shrewdly summed up in a final esauy by Fredric Jameson.
It is not for nothing that the central foure the one most alleran the tiog (and heing battered), is Lukacs, since LaECo HUd COFECCI Marxist attitude to art, or lo put it more precisely, the correct attitude in the perennial esthetic guerrilla wat between Ancients and Moderns Lukacs, in ail his phases, slood tor thereoresays ihe man to bcar. His conservative faults, his orissions. bis self-contradictions are mercilessly exposed here especially by Adorno, wao purs on a per lomance that, in the termis of my comparison. recalls All bee-stinging best. He call.
LUKACS: the elephant Lukass an cephanr at one point, but the intaphor holds in ways he did aor mcal LosHes Is ciurs: he can bu pain tully dome denice l gre denunced Expressiemen onr purely ltcrary grounds, completely igoring its much more signilicart artistic contribution).. and yer he temains a massive fighter and on his feet, still posing the vital question, after all the assaults on bim.
Wbat is the vital question? Il is this: can a trily socialist artist emplos modernist techniques and theories of For. Adoree the SUISWEL M25 (passionately) 3e. For him 'reflective actuality-mimicking classical forula ('critical realism') advocated ly Lukacs WaE abomination. a flagraot artempe lo revalop the essentia iv netty-hous scois theory of "hay-meets-tractor' Only form-breking, however nihilistic the content, could adequately reflect the alicnation of modern man.
Adorno argues persuasively that art philosophical or political assertion but in that of subjective expression which ailows him to find a socialist Justification in the work of such mulikely writers as Proust and Beckett (both anabema Intelcctually convincing: yet somehos one feels his mental acrobatics, fall though they are of clever insights into all the arts, BODE IA TUE stratosphere of his own mind, URLSI GSSRTO TUN'I sumanity. For all lis pouderousncss SELASS contact with thar vague, but very real, Ir is the same with Brecht and Sartre, both of whom Adorno would BRECHT: cul lo shreds prove to he, alang with "committed" art in general, self-defeating contradictions. characterisbc aside triuro Li to shreds, he berate Chaplin for "absorne" becausc he allowed n Jewish girl in The Great Dictator to hit a line of storm troopers over the head with a pan without being torn to pieces b ¿becu'. This, be claims, destroys ta satirical force Obe wonders where the satire is in watching Jewish girl being toch to pieces: what comody, in allowing an atrociousl victimised race al least one little STOO O TETERIE socialism SnEuS LIBOU!
abounds) differs all that much from a MULT older heresy, puranism thinker, thinkers, nor without an ugly Streak of the prig as well Ithe faut of the Germanic mind is its implacable need to doematise and piscontit cots hirt tor establishing principle. Aestheties and Politics constitutes, in effect, enormousty rich discussion not only of the duries of 20th century art, but UTHE SECEELOSAAC TEILENMVTS E..
desensions and problems.
tank ol a setter book co pur tn an: young artist', hands, a clearer guide io the sort of choices he or she will have to face if they meat to be serious ADDIT TAAIE ROTER (knos many British socialists of all persuasions have anr anciear — and to my mind stupid and insular — belier that contemporary "high' art and its Theories are profoundly irrelevant to actual political necde and priorities They are the ostriches who really niced to Tead books Craig' recent Pelican, Marxista +n1 Literature Kalka or Thomas of Lukac's SALLIEIT tough I dan't suppose they will Adorno relis a pertinent anecdole DOrre TRe SeTTER CACUrauUl D France, » Nazi officer found himself front Ticissso5 Picasso was there. turned to him. "Did you pain this?
No. said Picasso. the Ar.. however modernist, THOT ULM ISETTAIT society — and at its hest. a hetter ong tham science has ser invented. Only frols could think this subtle prolonged Europcan Marxist analyses el hos that mirror functioas.
should function, is irrelevant to a sune praxis. the business of scientific.
A to Lukacs). can very WELLILSE ar a described ITOII OXI WOrK МІГКІПЕ bundles CIn A while cutting LOLLETE triviality is so dreadful, in a and whether production so withoul a restige of (hough saracasm that implications of Adorno is a brilhant but like so manis brillant Hungarian thirs claimed, an work' I caubot makine mone!
dupe but the Ref change:
like this (or David which commins Franz Munn.. a key position), -LlCTMIS3. and the Nazi You did. acknowledging CIsterteE and however subjective and artisan , mirror of secrelly and and crealve Hork RECENTLY-PUBLISHED Pensuin deas aich TC expericnce of workers on VALLEIEU. .LUBLI many evocative descriptions of the experience, such as the following: 1 ain ou piece-rates. And that changes everythone. Labour is turned into its opposite. Every possibility is turned And chis: "Al work, 1 dou't lase time to check the piece-rate, because l am on one.. In the cad, the only way oul is to become a machine mese? of course, this: "In a way. SUC BUN feel that our union official is really par. pf'a trade-union apparator at al the union is our paid enemy Il won't be surprising for the reader to learo that this book is written by a Ma US, DOL, Lors C presen aad even Isrically written, hy a poet. What may be a shock is that the lactory in the book is in the People's Republic ol Hungary, and that its author received a suspended prison sentence for writing it.
Miklos Haraszti, twice expelled Budapest University for suspected "Maoist' activities fon the second occasion he was accused of InCEL, accompanying comments -l, based A Worker In a Workers" Stale on bis experience. depressing book, because there is, SULCIS however critical they may be of the Fascern European regimes, a kind of instinct that the socialisation of the meus ol brocu han, whether In a deformed, degenerated or even state TAOUC must have SiAme effect on the relations of workers to thoir product, Haraszli dispells chis sentimental illusion. As he writes:
"He who sells his mime, his strength his abuites for wages, whether bit by bir for piece-rates transparent, total forci, knows thar he does not work for binself. He has sold everything.. Anyone who worke in a factory know. without nood of statistics, that for those who work to norms, complex arguments about Whether ar not they own the meuns of are nothing but Ir is thic insight into the political work-systeins tha makes Harascti's book more than i documentar wiia Is and a good one) of factory work, in the Fas or che West. Early on, he guntes a "Management science expert who claimed that payment br results was the ideal farin for socialis wager". It was, the comrade expert *the embodiment DE prineiple "from cach according to his capacity, to cach accordine to his Haraszt Does bot beed to linger or that breahtakiog al oa taisn The Implications are all oo clear. worker's work-life under piece ra.es it dominated by an absesion about Thie obsession wath carines servesto disguise the realit ol Jus or her soreation: When he has a The helieves, trom the bottom of his heart, that he is not the Finails. course, the workers" experience dulls even the amareness uf ihe possibility *We accept the tact of competirion and in spirit, and so we cannot even pose the question of waether it could be replaced by oo-operation in life or in work, or why compertion has come ts dominate our condisons of life The only activity of meaning left t0 the worker, an activity which Haraszli describes with ambivalent affection, is the creation O naUcrs SITSE domestic objects made on the firm machines with their materials Whe the element "nostalgis for-he dassof the domestic Haasti affires the negeisity of homers and their power The humble trile homer, made seele, wit no sterier motie lt •30U through Here the pascon is for notting other than work, work as an end in irschf
cuitural Güran Therborn it Rules? What Does the Ruling Class Do When A comparative sode of sase sh sature which