Marx On Ideology and Art

Marx on Ideology and Art
Author(s): O. K. Werckmeister
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 4, No. 3, Ideology and Literature (Spring, 1973), pp.
501-519
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/468532
Accessed: 22-10-2018 10:47 UTC
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Marx on Ideology and Art
O. K. Werckmeister
MARX concerned himself with the history and theory of art

only at the beginning of his career. In 184I and 1842
he wrote short polemical treatises on art directed against
Hegel, which are now lost.' He never wrote a theoretical or histori-
cal text that dealt with art as an issue after that. Neither did Engels.
Both repeatedly commented on questions of literature, but not on
the visual arts and architecture, or on art as a generalized concept
of philosophical aesthetics. Hence the place of art in later Marxist
theory of history and society remains uncertain. Official Soviet scholar-
ship has tried to fill the gap by abstracting any one of Marx's and
Engels' scattered and casual remarks on art and literature from the
context of their numerous writings, and systematically compiling them
into two huge volumes entitled On Art and Literature.2 It claims that
these texts contain both the elements and the methodical guidelines for
an aesthetic theory.3 Large, more or less systematic handbooks on
"Marxist aesthetics" have been written on this assumption,4 and such
an aesthetics is being taught in communist academic institutions. On
the other hand, scholars in capitalist states have concluded that if Marx,
in his sustained effort to substantiate his theory of history and society
through decades of methodical research, never returned to his early
interest in aesthetics, he must have considered that art did not form
any part of the primary material in which the historical progress to-
I M. Lifshitz, The Philosophy of Art of Karl Marx (New York, 1938), p. 24.
2 K. Marx and F. Engels, Ober Kunst und Literatur, I-II (Berlin, 1968). This
is the most recent and most comprehensive edition of the collection: cf. the preface,
I, 8 f.
3 E.g., G. Lukics, Probleme der Asthetik (Werke, X [Neuwied and Berlin, 1969]),
I32 f.; H. Koch, Marxismus und Asthetik, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1962), p. 12.
4 Akademia Nauk SSR, Grundlagen der marxistisch-leninistischen Asthetik
(Berlin, 1962 [tr. from the Russian]); Koch, Marxismus und Asthetik; E. John,
Probleme der marxistisch-leninistischen Asthetik (Halle, 1967).
502 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
wards a socialist future could

munist aesthetics conceives of art as a cultural institution with a rele-
vance for the continuing process of bringing the classless society about.
The protracted effort to back up this conception with statements from
the "classic" authors has led to exasperated academic and political dis-
cussions which so far have remained all the more inconclusive since
they were often doctrinally preempted.6 Yet it can be shown that the
scarcity of statements about art in Marx's writings is a matter of neces-
sity, deriving from the very notions of art which they contain.
The discussion is inevitably thrown back at the few short text pas-
sages, quoted and interpreted time and again, where Marx directly
comments about art, referring to historical examples. Two apparently
contradictory notions of art, one idealistic-utopian, the other historical-
deterministic, seem to emerge from them. Are they just aspects of a
dialectically ambivalent conception which is consistent in the final
analysis, as official communist aesthetics maintains,7 or are they in fact
so irreconcilable as to defy the formation of a coherent aesthetic theory?
The idealistic notion of art in Marx's thought may be deduced from
the famous passage on the art of the Greeks, contained in the draft for
the Critique of Political Economics (1857-58).
It is known that certain heydays of art are not at all related to the general
development of society, and neither, therefore, to the skeleton, as it were,
of its organization. For example the Greeks, compared to the moderns,
or also Shakespeare. Of certain art forms, the epics for example, it has
even been recognized that they can never be produced in their epochal,
classical shape when art production as such occurs; and that consequently
within the realm of art itself certain important creations are only possible
on the basis of an undeveloped stage in the development of art. If this is
the case with regard to the relationship of the various art genres within
the realm of art itself, it is already less striking that it should be the case
with regard to the relationship of the realm of art as a whole to the
general development of society. The difficulty consists only in the gen-
eralization of these contradictions. As soon as they are specified, they are
already explained.
Marx then poses the notorious problem that past works of art like those
of the Greeks continue to be appreciated with immediacy under social
5 W. Oelmiiller, "Neue Tendenzen und Diskussionen der marxistischen Asthetik,"

Philosophische Rundschau, 9 (1961), 181-203, cf. 183 f.; H. Lehmann-Haupt, Art
under a Dictatorship (New York, 1954), PP. 5 f.
6 Socialism and American Life, ed. D. D. Egbert and S. Persons, II (Princeton,
1952), 422.
7 Lifshitz, Philosophy, pp. 67 f.
MARX ON IDEOLOGY AND ART 503
conditions that are advanced beyond

were made:
... the difficulty is not to understand that Greek art and epics are tied to
certain stages in the development of society. The difficulty is that they
still yield artistic pleasure to us, and in a certain way count for a norm
and for unattainable models.
Marx proposes to solve the difficulty with an analogy between the

organic development of the human individual and the history of man-
kind as a whole, which he similarly conceives of as a straightforward
"evolution." In this scheme, the historical epoch of the Greeks takes
the place of infancy, and their works of art express this stage.
Why should the historical infancy of mankind where it is unfolded most

beautifully, not exert an eternal fascination, as a stage that will never
return? There are rude children and precocious children. Many of the
ancient peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children.
The fascination of their art for us does not stand in contradiction with the
undeveloped stage of society from which it grew. On the contrary, it is the
result of this stage and is inseparably linked to the fact that the immature
social conditions under which it came about, and only could come about,
can never return.8
8 K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Berlin, 1953), PP.
30 f.; also in K. Marx and F. Engels, Werke, XIII (Berlin, 1964), 640 f.: "Bei
der Kunst bekannt, dass bestimmte Bliitezeiten derselben keineswegs im Verhdiltnis
zur allgemeinen Entwicklung der Gesellschaft, also auch der materiellen Grundlage,
gleichsam des Knochenbaus ihrer Organisation, stehn. Z. B. die Griechen
verglichen mit den modernen oder auch Shakespeare. Von gewissen Formen der
Kunst, z. B. dem Epos, sogar anerkannt, dass sie, in ihrer Weltepoche machenden,
klassischen Gestalt nie produziert werden k6nnen, sobald die Kunstproduktion als
solche eintritt; also dass innerhalb des Berings der Kunst selbst gewisse bedeutende
Gestaltungen derselben nur auf einer unentwickelten Stufe der Kunstentwicklung
mbglich sind. Wenn dies im Verhliltnis der verschiednen Kunstarten innerhalb
des Bereichs der Kunst selbst der Fall ist, ist es schon weniger auffallend, dass es
im Verhiiltnis des ganzen Bereichs der Kunst zur allgemeinen Entwicklung der
Gesellschaft der Fall ist. Die Schwierigkeit besteht nur in der allgemeinen Fassung
dieser Widerspriiche. Sobald sie spezifiziert werden, sind sie schon erklirt .
die Schwierigkeit liegt nicht darin, zu verstehn, dass griechische Kunst und Epos
an gewisse gesellschaftliche Entwicklungsformen gekniipft sind. Die Schwierigkeit
ist, dass sie fiir uns noch Kunstgenuss gewithren und in gewisser Beziehung als
Norm und unerreichbare Muster gelten. ... Warum sollte die geschichtliche
Kindheit der Menschheit, wo sie am schSnsten entfaltet, als eine nie wiederkehrende
Stufe nicht ewigen Reiz ausiiben? Es gibt ungezogene Kinder und altkluge Kinder.
Viele der alten V61ker geh6ren in diese Kategorie. Normale Kinder waren die
Griechen. Der Reiz ihrer Kunst fiir uns steht nicht im Widerspruch zu der
unentwickelten Gesellschaftsstufe, worauf sie wuchs. Ist vielmehr ihr Resultat und
hingt vielmehr unzertrennlich damit zusammen, dass die unreifen gesellschaftlichen
Bedingungen, unter denen sie entstand und allein entstehen konnte, nie wieder-
kehren k6nnen."
It is well known that Marx de

and "classical" from Germa
Hegel.9 The idea of classical ar
perfection has once been real
comes into conflict with Ma
history. Man's production of h
the social organization of his w
er stages, but in art the highe
been attained again. On the c
society it can no longer be m
"art production," that is, art
feudally repressed or capitalis
which is opposed to "art prod
manity which, far from bein
ganization of production, is o
production" is no longer tru
Greeks is perfect, although th
munist commentators recog
Marx's and Engels' general
structure" is determined by
oncile the contradiction by
with its plebiscitary democra
could not be maintained in
the material basis resides in
organization. He never decla
Greece as anything of an id
way he here declares Greek ar
of his text is to state that suc
either in the historical situation
of a perfect art that can be der
Already in the notes and exce
cle "On Religious Art" (1842
realism of Greek art as a true
it to religion, thereby radicali
if subsequent forms of human
writings of idealist art historian
service of religion is alienate
9 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 71; Lukacs, Probleme, p. 136; Oelmilller, "Neue

Tendenzen," p. 182.
Io Lifshitz, Philosophy, pp. 67 f.; Grundlagen, pp. 168 f.; John, Probleme, p.
401; H. Lefebvre, Beitrige zur Asthetik (n.p., n.d. [Berlin, 1956]), pp. 41 f. Cf.
Oelmilller, "Neue Tendenzen," p. 182.
I E. g., Lukacs, Probleme, pp. 136 f., 290 f.
realism; religious art of ancient and

distorts human images into those of f
ural features into the terrorizing e
mission of believers is enforced.12 T
be sacrificed to its religious functi
means for kings and priests to main
insincere relationship of religious ar
early excerpts is the same as that of
later writings. On the basis of his r
thought that such a relationship con
which for him meant the undistorted revelation of true human nature.
This contradiction is carried over into the opposition between "art"
and "art production" in the later text of 1858.
Marx's early confrontation between art and religion hinges on the
term "fetishism." It denotes the use of human images contrary to their
true meaning, as fictitious deities, tools for dominating men. In Marx's
later economic theory, the same term denotes the transformation of the
products of human labor into commodity form, contrary to their genuine
purpose of serving the needs of men's lives.13 Art, according to Marx's
original conception, is by implication free of any social purpose, an
object of contemplation or enjoyment, perhaps in line with Kant's
definition of disinterested aesthetic experience. On this assumption,
any art which becomes part of culture and is thereby ultimately pro-
duced by and for society, runs the danger of being estranged from its
essence. Marx sustained this conception in his later philosophical writ-
ings, where he set out to demonstrate that any and all products of
culture are dependent on the socially organized "base" of material
production. Now he subsumed art, together with "morals, religion,
metaphysics," under the term "ideology," as one of the "fog formations
in the brains of men."14 All of them are made to appear autonomous in
relation to the primary, material production of life, while in fact serv-
ing its social organization. Marx's still later text on the art of the
Greeks is consistent with this view, yet sets art apart from the other
products of ideology. Whereas religion, law, and philosophy in its tra-
ditional understanding, are exclusively and adequately defined by the
12 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 27.

13 Ibid., pp. 28 f.
14 Die deutsche Ideologie, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Werke, III (Berlin, 1962),
26. Without any doubt the conception of the "geistigen Produktion, wie sie in der
Sprache der Politik, der Gesetze, der Moral, der Religion, Metaphysik usw. eines
Volkes sich darstellt," includes art among "usw." In Kritik der politischen Oko-
nomie (Werke, XIII, 9), Marx explicitly speaks of the "juristischen, politischen,
religi6sen, kiinstlerischen oder philosophischen, kurz, ideologischen Formen," and
there is no reason to believe that the list has by then changed in scope.
socially conditioned dependence of id

maintains an essence of its own, from
estranged by its recurrent ideological f
art of the Greeks is the one historical
contemplated in its purity, since it a
ideological relationship to its economic
medean point from which to judge mo
essence. The most extreme judgment
as a whole as detrimental to art.15 If
nature under capitalism is given as a reas
clear how much it depends on the ide
captures the essence of nature.
The text presents obvious difficultie
"Marxist" theory of art. It projects th
historical ideal which cannot be recap
from the ideal of human emancipation
progress towards the future. The id
projected into an emancipated society o
plies that it should not be affected by
As for the "art production" of the pas
relation of art and truth, the ultimate
ics. It can only be subjected to a histor
A text from The German Ideology
project the Archimedean point, from w
with its ideological dependence on org
future as well as into the classical past.
Raphael, as well as any other artist, wa

vances of art which had been made be
society and the division of labor in his lo
of labor in all the countries with which
Whether an individual like Raphael de
upon demand, which in turn depends u
educational conditions of men which result from it. . . . The exclusive
concentration of artistic talent in single individuals and its suppression in
the broad mass of people which this entails is a consequence of the division
of labor.... With a communist organization of society, there ceases, in
any event, the subsumption of the artist under local and national limita-
tions, which ensues solely from the division of labor, and there ceases
the subsumption of the individual under one determined art, whereby he
is exclusively a painter, a sculptor, etc., and already his designation
15 Lifshitz, Philosophy, pp. 77 f.; Lukics, Probleme, pp. 212 f.

I6 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 74.
sufficiently expresses the limitation of

pendence on the division of labor. In
painters, but at most men who, among o
The close relationship of this text to

the Greeks is an indication of how c
remained. Already here, professiona
a deviation from the human potentia
to the needs and conditions of a wor
detrimental to the nature of man. It
human capacity, which has to be em
in order to be practiced according t
emancipation from social organizatio
In the later text, Marx acclaims G
similar reasons: because it is not lim
it directly expresses human nature. B
years of Marx's writing, are the ide
the same sweeping judgment on art
work. By implication they declare th
art an alienated activity. This is in l
ing statements about art as just anot
to the socialist society of the future, t
virtually calls for the cancellation of
ated work in general. Art as a basic
socially determined function, and ac
potential of human nature, will con
tent, its purpose, and the conditions
visage in terms of any art we know,
society. Conditions under which vir
17 Die deutsche Ideologie, pp. 378 f.: "Raf

war bedingt durch die technischen Fortsc
waren, durch die Organisation der Gesellsch
Lokalitdit und endlich durch die Teilung
seine Lokalitdit im Verkehr stand. Ob ein Individuum wie Raffael sein Talent
entwickelt, hiingt ganz von der Nachfrage ab, die wieder von der Teilung der
Arbeit und den daraus hervorgegangenen Bildungsverhkiltnissen der Menschen
abhiingt. .... Die exklusive Konzentration des kiinstlerischen Talents in Einzelnen
und seine damit zusammenhiingende Unterdriickung in der grossen Masse ist Folge
der Teilung der Arbeit. ... Bei einer kommunistischen Organisation der Gesell-
schaft ftillt jedenfalls fort die Subsumtion des Kiinstlers unter die lokale und
nationale Borniertheit, die rein aus der Teilung der Arbeit hervorgeht, und die
Subsumtion des Individuums unter diese bestimmte Kunst, so dass es ausschliesslich
Maler, Bildhauer usw. ist und schon der Name die Borniertheit seiner geschSiftlichen
Entwicklung und seine Abhiingigkeit von der Teilung der Arbeit hinliinglich
ausdriickt. In einer kommunistischen Gesellschaft gibt es keine Maler, sondern
h6chstens Menschen, die unter Anderm auch malen."
as an artist, yet no one will be limi

reminiscent of that generalized aesth
to Kant and Schiller is to characteriz
whose nature and freedom coincide.
construction of idealist aesthetics into
for the historical future. It is so radical that it cannot but invoke the
idea of the end of art according to its past definition, with its inevitable
aspect of socially useful work. That idea had already been formulated
by Hegel when he conceived of a stage of human intellectual emancipa-
tion for which art is no longer an adequate means of objective communi-
cation. It is an idea incessantly pondered and finally rejected by con-
temporary German dialectical philosophers who follow Hegel and
Marx.'8
Looking back on the art that did and does exist, the philosopher's
task, according to Marx, will be to point out its constant estrangement
from its ideal or utopian perfection. He will demonstrate that the
"semblance of autonomy" projected into ideological products19 is by
definition a fictitious one. As an exception, the notion of an autonomy
of art is not fictitious; on the contrary, it is fundamental for both the
art of the Greeks and the art spontaneously created by the emancipated
individuals of the future. But history shows art tangled in ideological
concerns. Time and again, it can be shown how the semblance of its
autonomy under these conditions was in fact contrived to serve par-
ticular interests of socially organized material production. This is the
historian's task. "We know only a single science, the science of history,"
wrote Marx and Engels in The German Ideology.20 It is an all-com-
prehensive science which will endeavor to relate every human activity
or product to the socially organized material conditions of men's lives.
The historical investigation of art, like that of any other human product,
is bound to go beyond its confines and to reach the basis of these con-
ditions. Taken by itself, art has not even a history of its own.21 Marx
and Engels insist that the only viable method of demonstrating the all-
embracing historical context is "empirical observation."22 They oppose
it to philosophy, which "through the historical representation of reality
loses its medium of existence" as an autonomous discipline.23 Theory is
I8 0. K. Werckmeister, Ende der Asthetik (Frankfurt, I97I), pp. 29 f. (on

Theodor W. Adorno), p. 54 (on Ernst Bloch); for Marcuse, see below.
I9 Die deutsche Ideologie, p. 27.
20 Ibid., p. 18: "Wir kennen nur eine einzige Wissenschaft, die Wissenschaft der
Geschichte."
2 Ibid., p. 27.
22 Ibid., p. 25.
23 Ibid., p. 27.
thus reduced to "a synthesis of the

be abstracted from the observation
However justified such a radical co
reality may be, taken on its own t
there can be no science which exp
than a historical way, much less an
about such products. As far as
aesthetics. Abstraction is Marx's
empirical knowledge. They admit i
constructions for the incomplet
Abstract terms and concepts are m
actual results which they recapitul
value at all if taken by themselves, se
struct from them schemes and sy
meaning is the fallacy of philosoph
the historical basis of human cond
selves ideological,26 for the semblan
mount to ideology. As a result, co
bound to destroy any such sembla
ideology.
II
Marx's quest for a radical historical critique of culture as a condition

for emancipation from ideology is correlated with his conception of a
revolutionary change in the economic base. By contrast, Marxists in
the twentieth century strive for a revalidation of culture, because they
have been forced to abandon the goal of revolutionary change, and in-
stead accept a politically stabilized, static socioeconomic order-with
ostensible enthusiasm in the Soviet Union and other communist states,
with unaverred resignation in the capitalist states of Western Europe
and in the U.S.A. It is in this later stage that full-fledged theories of art,
or even "aesthetics," were developed out of Marx's writings. Their
authors had to go beyond what Marx himself had written, not only be-
cause there was so little of it, but also because it had to be brought into
line with the changed historical situation. In the communist states, it is
supplemented with the writing of Lenin and Stalin, with the results of
official party scholarship, and with the policies of cultural administra-
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., p. x8.
tion. In the capitalist states,

velopment unforeseen by Ma
and the ensuing expropriatio
ing class has not taken place
meant to tally with Marx's ow
side, where the compilation
cal manual. How do they tak
on Raphael, in which Marx's
clearly than in any other?
Marx's notion that art de
accepted without question, b
part of ideology has met wit
part of Marxist writers in b
conclusion at the beginning
attacked in the Soviet Union
At issue was the meaning w
socialist culture of the pres
"feudal" and "bourgeois" soc
produced, and therefore to b
like other forms of ideology
does it on the contrary cont
logical concerns which can
munist authors wanted to p
tended to seek out texts by
of art from economic conditio
The great art of the eighte
forms part of twentieth-centu
lem. In order to deal with it
se inimical to art was dialect
between them. True art was
since, by definition, it contain
presses.29 It cannot be denie
capitalism, but no importa
character."3 From here it was
potential.31 This was done m
27 E.g., R. Garaudy, Marxisme

28 Cf. Lifshitz' long preface to
und die Asthetik, 2nd ed. (Dre
Fragen der Kunst und Literatur
29 Luk~ics, Probleme, pp. 212 f.
30 John, Probleme, p. 395; P. H
Kunstwissenschaft (Leipzig, 1966
31 Cf. Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 68
capitalist states where no real re

expected. For the sake of their a
ideology and art had to be explain
They affirmed that true art is esse
to be so under the social circumstan
state the truth about capitalism, th
convictions of its patrons, its makers
it can become as radical as revoluti
comparable to that of official com
pose of art in the hands of the revo
art with a historic force never envisa
No text by Marx has served this
of art more than the passage on the a
reference to heydays of "art not a
ment of society." That two or thre
of over a thousand pages, which
published text, should have been
context and commented upon, alre
tween his all but complete neglect
terest in art on the part of his later
puzzling and so useful for the elab
ascribed the continuing fascination
its origin to its intrinsic significance
the possibility that it might be th
counts for the exceptional appea
historical conditions from the ver
munist commentators. As a result
ment about reality, subject to n
this static conceptualization, the text
cians with the fundamental contra
fect society, as well as with the co
of the past, to which all later art p
32 H. Marcuse, Counterrevolution and

33 F. Klingender, Marxism and Modern
Beitrlige, p. 77; E. Fischer, Kunst und
marxistischen Asthetik (Hamburg, 1966),
34 The key example for this assumpt
Balzac: cf. Ober Kunst und Literatur, I
35 Marcuse, Counterrevolution, pp. 105
36 Only A. Hauser, Philosophy of Art H
accepts the contradiction as a limitati
Harrington, "A Marxist Approach to
40-49, cf. 41.
including the classless one, w

that conclusion, Lifshitz specul
been followed where it now br
ble new efflorescence of art
academic Marxist tenet that contradiction is the dialectical form of
historical truth and can therefore be accepted without any further
attempt to solve it. Thus the passage could be generalized to mean a
necessarily contradictory relationship between society and art,38 despite
Marx's own statement, in the very same text, that the contradiction
will only remain as long as it is generalized, but will be explained if
specified. For him the individual explanation could only be a historical
one. But communist aesthetics, no less than aesthetics in capitalist states,
tends to shy away from historical research in order to preserve the claim
of its conceptual validity. By a purely academic procedure, Marx's text
was in fact generalized to constitute a universal "principle" or even
"law" of "nonsimultaneity of development of material and artistic
production.""39 No doubt the inconsistency stems from Marx's own
belief that the art of the Greeks could serve as an "example" for a re-
current situation. But his argument is so specifically tailored to the
conceptions of classicism that it is difficult to see how that situation
could be demonstrated to repeat itself historically, and orthodox Marx-
ist aestheticians never give such a demonstration. Instead, the "princi-
ple of nonsimultaneity" enables them to project, in a purely speculative
manner, notions of historical progress and social critique into great
works of past art. The significance of art is thus conceived as inde-
pendent of the historically recorded consciousness of those who lived at
the time when it was made. Aesthetics serves its characteristic social
function to appropriate the art of the past as a vehicle for an accepted
truth of the present. It is part of the official policy of "inheritance,"
whereby art is exempted from the break with the past which had to be
made at the material base, that is, the organization of production and
society. For this purpose, the art of the past had to be severed from its
own material base.
Perhaps the most daring conclusion from the notion of "nonsimul-
taneity" of art with society, and from the concurrent denial of its
ideological character, has been drawn by a Marxist in the United States.
Herbert Marcuse uses the pertinent quote from Marx's text on Greek
art as the motto for the chapter "Art and Revolution" in his book
37 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 89.

38 Ibid., pp. 67 f.; Lefkbvre, Beitriige, p. 45.
39 Grundlagen, p. 379; cf. Lukics, Probleme, p. 211; Garaudy, Marxisme, pp.
208 f.; Just, Karl Marx, pp. 38 f.
Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972)

of orthodox Marxist aesthetics, he as
significance by which it transcends
classes by and for which it was pro
Kant and Schiller, this significance
man in freedom. Insofar as it is pr
which freedom is repressed, art acq
revolutionary, potential. In the bour
early twentieth centuries, artists ti
lished social norms and thereby reaf
cuse therefore refuses to identify th
ideology that bourgeois society oth
appreciation in the present sustains
the changed conditions of advanced
ing to Marcuse, political and soci
even more impossible than before.
dom to culture alone, art becomes
tendencies, at a time when the w
them, according to Marx's theory,
nomic system. According to Marc
pates itself from the base in a mann
theory. It generates a consciousness
can happen in material reality. Bu
can only come in the future. One
consciousness of imminent or nec
changed reality itself. The ideolog
is already apparent in Marcuse's
an active noun, endowed with dyn
of abstraction. Marx himself coul
entity, since he stuck to the concep
Moreover, the term "cultural revol
nates his conception of an emanc
reality, does not mean, in its orth
initiative of change confined to cul
"superstructure" synchronically wit
Much less does it imply that change
about change in the latter. In fact, M
of art to the acknowledgement tha
society, and consequently in its polit
change has been effectively checked
40 Counterrevolution, p. 79.
tion" as an alternative to, b

nation in politics.41 That h
against German idealist phil
Marcuse, who explicitly rel
reenacts their political situat
Did Marx refrain from any
art could have in the histor
he subscribed to Hegel's vie
consciousness has become i
ditions?43 The dialectical s
most of the aesthetics wh
Marxism itself. Obviously,
should, no longer be practi
philosophical and social rel
aesthetics before him. Ma
releases art from the grips
from its traditional defini
separates art completely fr
realm where, according to
would have to be verified.
subjective freedom, it migh
vey objective truth. Appare
the text has been passed ov
aesthetics from East Germa
of attention by other com
emancipation of art which
ety,45 whereas it is meant to
of course persists in a socia
naively assume that it will on
society to inaugurate a new
which the text entails is ne
granted that men and their
communist society. Such v
tions into the future.47 Bu
aesthetics often start from
fend off the suspicion that
41 Ibid., pp. 133 f.

42 Werckmeister, Ende der Asth
43 That is the opinion of Oelmi
44 Koch, Marxismus und A'sthet
45 Lifshitz, Philosophy, pp. 93
46 Ibid.; cf. Lukacs, Probleme,
47 Lifshitz, Philosophy, pp. 81
the notion of an end of art. In a dec

(1958), Marcuse once maintained t
conclusion of a Marxist theory of a
writes, "attributed this obsolescence
sophic spirit, which demanded a stri
that accessible to art. Marxian theor
tween social progress and the obsole
the productive forces renders possib
promesse de bonheur expressed in a
-is to translate this possibility int
enthusiastically proclaimed the ex
Where all work for all [others], wo
produced is art."49 If "the gravitati
itself-in the lines and forms of its o
in the sounds of the factories, produ
and workers' assemblies,"50 then th
into a realm of aesthetic contempla
art comes true squares with the uto
text. It is significant that in that sa
art did not hesitate to view the me
social conditions of its time. Both thes
confidently acknowledged the rad
present required by the revolution.
conservation of culture. And it is a
art and "vulgar sociology" were late
administration and aesthetics. Marc
tion of these policies in terms of M
equivocally aimed at individual hu
of freedom could become superflu
political reality,5' but it could cont
ecstatic conviction of early Soviet a
society was bound to do away with t
modem art and the concept of unin
entailed. In turn, they were confid
such a way for use by the new soci
48 H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (New Yor

49 El Lissitzky, in El Lissitzky, ed. S. L
331. The translation in the English editi
"... work is given free scope . . ."] misses t
50 S. Tretiakov, quoted after F. Schonau
Neue Rundschau, 83 (1972), 585-89, cf. 58
51 Cf. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism, p. I I6.
first forced them to depict political th

assumption that in the communis
issue; then, going further, it assign
the continuing process of bringing
social refunctioning of art is the o
had said in their text about the ema
of labor and from ideological concer
switch towards a positive underst
Soviet Marxism, as an acceptable
contradiction to the exclusively nega
in the work of Marx.52
III
There is a telling emphasis on achievement and quality when orth

dox Marxist aestheticians come to assess the problematical correlat
between the "development" of society and that of art in comparat
terms. Whatever judgment results-sweeping putdowns of art p
duced in capitalist society, equally sweeping praise of "social realis
in the Soviet Union, or more cautious, balanced evaluations of both
art is defined in quantifiable terms, on a unified scale, as it were,
superior or inferior product value. The main artistic criterion, realis
is preempted by the implied correspondence of its content to offi
doctrine. Other criteria of quality, which would derive from
various techniques of making art and their specific effects on view
are not elaborated. To overemphasize them would mean falling und
the spell of "formalism," of l'art pour l'art, anathema to Marx
aesthetics. It tends to define art as a product, the use of which
society is of more concern than the working process by which it
made. The preoccupation with objective truth contained and "r
flected" in works of art and the resulting conception of its "cognit
character similarly refers to consumption of the product. Althoug
orthodox Marxist aestheticians affirm time and again that art has to
considered primarily as work, one would look in vain for any detail
consideration on their part of the specific, concrete working condit
under which art of the past was produced. For these reasons the t
on Raphael in The German Ideology was bound to be neglected
deals with art in the making, not with its reception, truth content,
usefulness for society. It deals with artists, not with works of art,
52 Ibid., pp. 75, Io9 ff.
not with anything that should be

progress. On the contrary, it impli
happened so that art can be made ac
issue of the text is man's subjectivity
freedom which an emancipated soci
true destiny. But the idea of freedo
say cynically, taken for granted in o
was bent on forcing it together wit
duction had to be controlled by th
neglected that idea, along with a hi
work of men.
The basic understanding of art a
Engels envisaged it, rather than as
into question not just Marxist aes
with so much divergence from thei
that, aesthetics itself. For the centr
over and above the arts, transcends t
literature, music, visual representat
one must abstract precisely from
specific perceptions at which these
philosophically compatible.'M Ortho
tion to this rule. It lumps the variou
their specific differences, because m
it can use are about literature and th
to be applicable. But here, the ensuin
working process contradicts the f
theory that any consideration of hu
the working process. This is not just
It is the inevitable quandary of any
under materialist conditions.
Since Kant and Hegel, the term "art" which aesthetics elucidates
has meant a particular approach to truth, parallel with or even antago-
nistic to that of reason, rather than a comprehensive concept about
man's perennial making of buildings and images, texts and sequences of
sound. As we become more and more skeptical towards works of art
of any time as vehicles of a truth compatible with the economic, politi-
cal, and technological conditions under which we live, we take the
traditional correlation between art and truth, on which aesthetics as a
science depends, less and less seriously, and lose interest in such a
53 Koch, Marxismus und A'sthetik, pp. 354 ff.

54 Cf. Hauser, Philosophy, p. 151, with regard to the corresponding philosophical
idea "work of art."
science even before we come to que

converges with a growing perceptio
ditioning of art. The results of art his
without peril, usually invalidate the
into works of art of remote times
known. Even contemporary art is
historical distance. The more histor
of art works from past and present to
for which they were originally in
ideology, by which their seeming tr
the subjective beliefs and purposes o
itself as the fundamental category o
This development away from aesthe
squares with Marx's view of "art pr
to be reasserted against the oblivion
Marxist aesthetics.
Marx's text on Greek art, which has so often been cited as an excep-
tion to that view, may now be reinterpreted in a way which actually con-
firms it. It must be taken for what it is: a problem posed, a perspective
to be clarified by further thought and work, not a dictum that would
attach a final definition to its subject. If it is indeed a contradiction
that there should be perfect works of art which are out of tune with
the imperfect society in which they were produced, and if such a con-
tradiction ought to disappear if specified historically, then it might be
just as well to explain historically how the art of the Greeks acquired
the status of an ideal in Western European culture, and thus to reduce
that ideal to the historical notion that it actually was. Marx may have
accepted it as an ideal at the moment when he sketched out his pre-
liminary text. But since then it has long become doubtful whether
ancient Greek art embodies the brand of human perfection that was
projected into it by idealist philosophy, with its far-reaching moral,
social, and anthropological implications. It has become even more
doubtful whether in turn this particular ideal of humanity really ex-
presses the social and political emancipation at which Marx's own
political theory was aimed. And almost certainly no one can see it as a
meaningful ideal by which contemporary men can live, either under
present conditions or under those of any anticipated social change. If
Marx's contradictions are "specified" in such a way, the explanation
is that the retrospective ideal of perfect art cannot be maintained.
55 Werckmeister, Ende der Asthetik, pp. 57 ff. ("Von der Asthetik zur Ideo-
logiekritik"); K. W. Forster, "Critical History of Art, or Transfiguration of
Values," NLH, 3 (1972), 459-70.
Hence it no longer provides an arg

historicity of art which Marx envis
products of ideology.
Finally, it seems possible to come t
of the "end of art," which seems to
emancipated society is bound to shed
painting, sculpture, and decorative
be practiced by men. What may be
idea of art as a vessel of the truth a
aesthetics as a philosophical disci
aesthetics, Marxist or of any other k
the "end of art" backfires on the science which conceived it: if it
has any meaning, it means the end of aesthetics. Marx may have antici-
pated this when he refrained from writing on aesthetic theory.56
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
Los ANGELES
56 Thanks to Ted Hajjar and Carrol Wells for their close critical reading and
correction of this article.

Marx On Ideology and Art

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Marx on Ideology and Art

MARX concerned himself with the history and theory of art

wards a socialist future could

5 W. Oelmiiller, "Neue Tendenzen und Diskussionen der marxistischen Asthetik,"

conditions that are advanced beyond

Marx proposes to solve the difficulty with an analogy between the

Why should the historical infancy of mankind where it is unfolded most

It is well known that Marx de

9 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 71; Lukacs, Probleme, p. 136; Oelmilller, "Neue

realism; religious art of ancient and

12 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 27.

socially conditioned dependence of id

Raphael, as well as any other artist, wa

15 Lifshitz, Philosophy, pp. 77 f.; Lukics, Probleme, pp. 212 f.

sufficiently expresses the limitation of

The close relationship of this text to

17 Die deutsche Ideologie, pp. 378 f.: "Raf

as an artist, yet no one will be limi

I8 0. K. Werckmeister, Ende der Asthetik (Frankfurt, I97I), pp. 29 f. (on

thus reduced to "a synthesis of the

Marx's quest for a radical historical critique of culture as a condition

tion. In the capitalist states,

27 E.g., R. Garaudy, Marxisme

capitalist states where no real re

32 H. Marcuse, Counterrevolution and

including the classless one, w

37 Lifshitz, Philosophy, p. 89.

Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972)

tion" as an alternative to, b

41 Ibid., pp. 133 f.

the notion of an end of art. In a dec

48 H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (New Yor

first forced them to depict political th

There is a telling emphasis on achievement and quality when orth

52 Ibid., pp. 75, Io9 ff.

not with anything that should be

53 Koch, Marxismus und A'sthetik, pp. 354 ff.

science even before we come to que

Hence it no longer provides an arg

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