Art and Class | libcom.org

The most important conditions of life and essential characteristics of contemporary art are determined by the existing class relationship. They can therefore only be abolished through revolution and can ultimately disappear only with the class relationship itself. Today’s “culture” as a whole is bourgeois property. For several centuries, the bourgeoisie, initially under the dominance of the prevailing culture it created, and later under its own dominance—as Trotsky explains in his work Literature and Revolution—has ensured that “the proletariat has not even been able to appropriate the basic elements of bourgeois culture.” Bourgeois society “has barred its path to culture.” Above all, art belongs to this monopoly culture.

Almost all art has been created by the bourgeoisie for centuries. In comparison, so little has been produced by proletarians that it hardly counts. A few worker-artists and poets—none of whom, measured by the standard of a century, would matter—that is all. The class relationship thus proves to be the most powerful cultural force. It is not creative. But it relentlessly binds and unbinds the forces within class groups. It dominates both the material conditions and the intellectual forces. Artistic creation requires, above all, a minimum of external formative education, as well as some degree of calm and existential security, particularly physical and mental freshness. People who work hard or even moderately hard are ill-suited for it. This is the class fate of the proletariat. As a result, many works of art that could have been created based on the innate potential of all those born are not realized: these potentials are stunted by the class relationship. On the other hand, it is untrue to claim that the proletarian “by nature,” due to physical inheritance, lacks the talent for artistic creation. This is, of course, only asserted to make the injustice of the class relationship seem less severe. But it is not true. If one were to place proletarian infants into every bourgeois family instead of the children born there, and raise and educate them in a bourgeois manner, just as much art would be created as there is today.

Currently, art is almost exclusively created for bourgeois recipients. Less consciously than out of habit and instinct. Consider the average artist. As mentioned, they are of bourgeois origin. They are educated in bourgeois schools. They are familiarized with bourgeois science; in their family and youth, alongside some universally recognized world art, they come to know bourgeois art. Their experiences—part of the material they later artistically process—are “bourgeois.” Now they begin to draw, to write; they learn from bourgeois teachers. Gradually, they produce noteworthy works. They can exhibit, see their work printed. They continue working. Who do they envision as their audience? The bourgeoisie! They unconsciously assume bourgeois education, intellectual formation, and interests. They know there is a proletariat: they have heard something about “folk art.” But they have no connection to any of it. Just as they are bourgeois, they create for the circles closest to them. An example might be the painter W. Krain with his “poor people’s art,” which comes across as sentimental. Three-quarters of contemporary art, therefore, has nothing to do with the proletariat; its content is either indifferent or alien to them, and its artistic form is difficult to understand. It speaks a bourgeois language, an unproletarian dialect. It is refined, sophisticated, intellectually demanding, individualistic, delicate, psychologically intricate, and so on. It constitutes a kind of luxury, a time-wasting self-reflection of society with hairsplitting questions, tortured answers, and aimless minutiae. Over time, the artist becomes well-known, their works generate income and “find a market,” naturally among the bourgeoisie. This often makes them unfree. For if they were suddenly to create “unbourgeois” works, they would lose part of their income and fame. If the proletariat nonetheless understands and loves some contemporary art, it is because a portion of it is consciously created for proletarian recipients, such as the works of Sinclair, Jack London, Gorky, and others.

Little is “created” for the proletariat. Only a few artists, like Dix, George Grosz, or those mentioned above, likely think of the proletarian viewer or reader while working. But the bourgeoisie glosses over this: they criticize the proletarian taste for cheap oil prints, poor plaster figures, ugly furniture, cinematic kitsch, pulp novels, and street ballads (the non-proletarian petit bourgeoisie shares this taste and amplifies its effects; the proletariat alone, out of its own efforts, makes far more significant attempts to overcome this taste than the petit bourgeoisie does!). It is explained as inherited “instincts,” an inherited cultural incapacity. A proletarian child “must” have bad taste, while a bourgeois child “naturally” gravitates toward good art. This, too, is a fundamentally false notion! Taste is acquired, not inherited. What does the pseudo-art industry offer: film production, pulp literature, the manufacture of oil prints, and cheap, art-like bazaar items? It’s a mass business, profitable with little risk. And its bourgeois owners do not hesitate to corrupt the taste of the “uneducated.” After all this, one is tempted to speak of bourgeois and proletarian art! But this has its reservations. For, in truth, there is no proletarian art, at least not in the same sense as there is bourgeois art. Bourgeois art presupposes bourgeois culture, education, and lifestyle. It emerges, as we know it, from the affirmation of these preconditions. It reflects not only the tradition that bourgeois individuals naturally acquire in style and form but also affirms bourgeois life. — Now, on the proletarian side, there is no second artistic culture, no proletarian one. The proletariat is rather “excluded from culture”; at best, it can appropriate some of its fruits. And the proletarians certainly do not affirm their condition. Rather, they deny it. They strive for a classless society where there are no more proletarians. Thus, they do not affirm it in art either—the possibility of a true proletarian art does not exist. However, one can speak of revolutionary art, in a certain sense, and that will now be addressed.

The decisive characteristics by which we recognize the bourgeois or revolutionary nature of a work of art are: the attitude it radiates, which is that of its creator; if this attitude is conscious and emphatically, propagandistically, or agitatively expressed, it becomes a “tendency”; then we speak of tendentious art. The boundaries between art of attitude and tendentious art are fluid, not precisely definable, but the difference is distinctly felt. An example: A cartoonist creates fifteen caricatures of officers, professors, headmasters, officials, policemen, rich women, industrialists, etc. Each one is “venomous” and highlights the worst traits of the caricatured figures. Beneath them, he writes: “Bourgeois Audience 1929.” This, too, is tendentious art, anti-bourgeois. It aims to provoke, to revolutionize minds. Another form of tendentious art receives a “fatal” objection: it is said not to be genuinely bourgeois, not true art, inferior. This is false and unprovable. Art is expression and also representation. Expression of personality and representation of the world—sometimes just one, sometimes both. Why should it not be allowed to express our strongest passions, political convictions, and class-based desires? Why should the artist restrict themselves artistically if they have a passionate, agitational, tendentious, didactic personality? They need not be a lesser artist than others. Many significant works of art have been and are tendentious, possessing full artistic value and strong tendentious power. However, one should not confuse matters or engage in counterfeit by praising a work as the highest art, despite its artistic failure, simply because one favors its tendency. The discerning and sensitive would not believe us anyway…

Why is tendentious art constantly criticized in the bourgeois world? Because it is aimed solely at revolutionary art. There is not much bourgeois tendentious art. Since most contemporary art radiates a bourgeois attitude without overt tendency, there is no need for tendentious art. Thus, that “fatal objection” is directed almost exclusively at revolutionary tendentious art. From the bourgeois side, the concept of “tendentious art” is deliberately stretched to include revolutionary art of attitude as well—while bourgeois art, whether intentionally or out of ignorance, is not scrutinized as closely. In this way, all revolutionary art is tarnished and made repulsive to the naive and credulous—and there are plenty of those even in socialist circles, indeed very many. The entire “objection” is a conscious or unconscious act of class struggle: protection for the bourgeoisie, paralysis, and defense against any revolutionary influences.

The claim about the absence of tendentious art fits perfectly in the mouths of those weak personalities who enjoy art as something detached, far removed from life, existing for its own sake, who believe in the notion that “art exists only for art’s sake” and—usually as pensioners or at least in secure professional positions—create for themselves an art-pleasing, apolitical life in which they immerse themselves in pleasurable enjoyment. That is to say: in the mouths of the “aesthetes,” as these people are called. For them, tendency means the intrusion of real life into the realm of their pleasures. This disturbs them, for it reminds them of the uncomfortable duty of adults to take a stand on reality and contribute to shaping it. A socialist would say: This duty is precisely the highest and most significant one for every adult, and whoever evades it for the sake of art enjoyment deserves to be dismissed rather than taken seriously. The most important thing in life is—life itself, the struggle, not “art and its purity.”

At times, the artistic form, or the “style” of a work, carries revolutionary power. For at certain times, certain artistic forms correspond, in the majority of cases, to certain attitudes. Attitude can manifest in any style. But at times, it finds it easier in one style than another. This is a complex relationship… Let us look for examples. Since the bourgeoisie renounced all revolution, does it not prefer to view art not as a grand, vital, life-permeating experience, but as enjoyable relaxation, entertainment, and pastime? At times, art adapts to this attitude. It avoids everything difficult, contemporary, problematic, unpleasant, favoring historical rather than current themes, romantic tales of elves and mountain spirits, saccharine poetry, student pranks, and “aesthete” experiences. This happened, for instance, from 1870 to 1885. While real life saw the rise of high capitalism, full mechanization, social movements, class struggle, poverty, and misery, art lured people back to romanticism and history (e.g., Scheffel, Geibel, Dahn, Heyse, Grosse, etc.). The bourgeoisie lagged behind the times.

Then writers and poets pushed forward. They “conquered” living reality through imitation. It was a “revolution” in literature. No longer the struggle for Rome, but the struggle for daily bread. No longer Egyptian princesses, but Berlin street children, marching, demonstrating workers, and the social question. No longer Dahn and Scheffel, but Gerhart Hauptmann and others. The revolutionary impact of the new lay in its “modern” attitude, amplified by themes drawn from the here and now. To these moderns, a modern style joined as a fitting, necessary expression: Naturalism, an art form that mirrored reality with a “new” rhythm. The artistic means were adapted to the task, capturing the mood, tempo, tone, gesture, sound, and character of the real, the living. As long as it was new, this style itself was outrageous, revolutionary. It seemed contrary to art. It was perceived as the malicious tool that alone could master those revolutionary themes and attitudes. Something similar occurred recently with Expressionism. Naturalism was reluctantly accepted by the bourgeoisie, but eventually without resistance. Bourgeois attitude had seized the technique. The troublesome themes—poverty, misery, strikes, etc.—were eliminated. And lo and behold, the artistic form, transformed into tame “Realism,” now served bourgeois art excellently. There was no longer a “new” reality to conquer through imitation. Yet the style proved perfectly suited to gently rounding off and validating what existed, characterizing it as excellent. Realism became the style of meek, politically distant, submissive attitudes that accepted everything as it was.

Then a movement emerged that declared: “Art is not imitation, but expression. Not submission, but defiance, critique, contradiction; not copying, but creating anew from imagination and thought. Nature and reality are not worthy of standing alone—what we feel, think, and desire is more beautiful, more important, and more worthy of art”—Expressionism. This was again “revolution.” It aligned with the war-born radical “pacifism” and “social revolution.” Once more, a “new” attitude prevailed—not absolutely new, but new for the present. It, too, brought new themes and multiplied its impact: war and revolution. And it, too, employed a new style, the expressionist style. Language was used not as imitation but as an expressive tool with its own force, as an outlet for passion. And at first, passion itself was anti-bourgeois—no joke: “Calm is the first bourgeois duty!” Passion is suspect, revolutionary—and so this language was felt to be provocative and revolutionary, even when it did not express a revolutionary attitude. This feeling persists; it is very hard to imagine an expressionist artwork with a bourgeois attitude and theme, though there are thousands of realist ones; it is also much easier to envision the most powerful revolutionary works in an expressionist style, while realism always produces somewhat duller, slower, tamer effects.

There is also class-neutral art. Humans are not merely class members. They are also lovers, sexual beings, bearers of emotional experiences, family members, natural beings, and much more. And in each of these qualities, they can produce art. Thus, songs, nature paintings, many portraits, nearly all music, and some other art forms are neither bourgeois nor revolutionary. Especially when their artistic form is widely familiar and no longer has a revolutionary effect. Moreover, a creative individual can rise so far above their time that temporal concerns, like class struggle, hold only secondary significance in their world and almost vanish in the artistic reflection of the external and internal world.

Once again, it must be noted that revolutionary and proletarian art are not the same. Speaking of “proletarian art” is, in fact, a misnomer. But even undeniably revolutionary art does not always serve the socialist proletarian movement. Often, it is merely an “anti-bourgeois” revolutionary attitude among classless writers and artists of bourgeois origin. Many bourgeois youths bitterly and loyally loved the authoritarian paternal state with its “bourgeois interior,” complete with all bourgeois moral constraints and bourgeois existential anxiety. When they later write novels, novellas, and dramas, they express fierce hatred of everything bourgeois.

They write “patricide” poetry (Hasenclever, Kaiser, Werfel, etc.) or biting, passionate social critique. In later years, especially since their anti-bourgeois works usually bring fame but not a livelihood, they calm down again. The classless are, in various cases, allies of the proletariat, as they hasten the decline of the bourgeoisie; but they rarely turn to socialism, as their deepest desire is freedom as such—including freedom from party discipline—and they do not feel proletarian, living and dressing at most half-proletarian. Accordingly, their art often remains somewhat aimless and unclear. It is usually apolitical, often dealing only with family, school, and ideologies, without considering the broader social structure.

Just as art itself, so too is the cultivation of art deeply influenced by the class relationship. Most branches of art cultivation are capitalistically organized and serve the bourgeois class: theater, concert halls, book and art trade, including exhibitions. Everywhere, prices exceed proletarian purchasing power. And everywhere, there is much bourgeois art, only reluctantly unbourgeois art, and in the rarest exceptional cases, revolutionary art. Alongside this, there are cheaper options like cinema and radio. Here, the use of art cultivation as an actual tool of class struggle begins. The bourgeois side buys up film studios and cinemas to spread bourgeois attitudes through cinematic art. They neutralize radio and declare it a monopoly, though this is legally untenable and could be changed with a simple law—neutralizing, however, means making it nine-tenths bourgeois, doubly effective since nine-tenths of the listeners are proletarians. This is called “folk art cultivation,” and idealists and more dubious figures busy themselves with it. These intended effects are compounded by those from schools and the press—the former perhaps forty percent, the latter certainly eighty percent bourgeois, even in artistic matters. Legal measures, such as the persecution of revolutionary poets, censorship, and sedition laws, play the same game. And proletarian-socialist art cultivation? It is very feeble. The class struggle is not truly “fought” here but merely “softened.” The leaders content themselves with nicely guiding existing forces but do not summon them forth. Revolutionary artistic attitudes are hardly cultivated at all. The means that could be used for this remain untapped. Workers have no radio of their own, no cinema or theater of their own, and their own publishers are weak; in book publishing, they are almost entirely dependent on the bourgeoisie. True, they have little money, and what little they have is needed for political propaganda. Still, much could be done if there were a determined will.

The valuation of art in the two camps is very different and must be so. The bourgeois individual has both a real and an imagined-ideological valuation of art. In reality, art is a pleasant relaxation and entertainment for them. Ideologically: a “blossom” of culture, a highest and ultimate value worthy of great sacrifices, for whose sake life exists. This ideology is un-socialist. For us, life does not exist for the sake of art, but art for the sake of life. We see culture less in “works” (which are mostly bourgeois anyway and not convincingly valuable for millennia to the bourgeoisie) and more in a shaping of life that first makes all people—however simply they live—happy, secure, fearless, and healthy, and provides them with the most necessary goods of civilization (technology). This question can naturally only be resolved by the class-conscious proletariat, and only if it holds power in the state.

Thus, the art of the future will undoubtedly be different from what we know today. In the transitional period to a socialist economy, bourgeois art will slowly die out, and revolutionary art will grow significantly. Trotsky aptly remarks about the culture of the future: the proletariat will “cease to be proletariat” before it has outgrown the stage of cultural apprenticeship, meaning before it can produce a proletarian art. The art of the future will instead be “socialist.” What this will look like is a matter of specific utopian speculation.

The convinced socialist will approach art with some restraint. The bourgeois valuation of art—namely its overvaluation—and its ideology—namely the deification of art—concern us as little as most contemporary art does. The revolution concerns us far more. It is our vital cause. Yet whoever does not wish to be a wholly one-sided fanatic will never be able to do without art entirely. It springs from innate, innermost human drives and is a part of life. Therefore, the politician, too, must engage with it if they are to fulfill their duty—to understand life in its full development.