WHA.T IS A PROLETARIAN NOVEL'!
9
the first tends to be supplemented by the second, and the third reflects the
rise
of fascism:
i.e.,
in the third type certain aspects of contemporary
society are recognized with disgust and then distorted by the optimism of
an
idealistic ( N ietzschean) int.::rpretation.
Insofar as the bourgeois novel is concerned with the
prol~tariat,
it is
pessimistic: insofar as the proletarian novel is concerned with the bour–
geoisi·.::, it is pessimistic; but though the bourgeois novel may be pes–
simistic about the bourgeoisie, the proletarian novel is never pessimistic
about the class-conscious proletariat. This is by reason of the fact that
both by observation of American life and by Marxist theory the proletariat
is defined as class-conscious when it acts in the belief that only its conscious
cooperation is necessary to promote the immediate direction of history
towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore at the present
moment in American history the proletarian is synonymous with the revo–
lutionary novel:
i.e.,
the revolutionary novel is the proletarian novel
considued from its political rather than its social or its <esthetic aspect.
But I agree with Edwin Seaver that the proletarian novel is not
necessarily and is not at the present moment ).ISually a novel for the p.role–
tariat or by the proletariat. In some cases it may not even be chiefly
of the proletariat. (The distinctions made so far are not <esthetic, and
therefore apply equally to other forms of literature than the novel:
i.e.,
a
disturbing example of the third category is the poetic drama
Panic,
which
is written primarily about bankers, by a man who has had almost no
proletarian contacts, and for an audience that is not proletarian, but which
is neverthetless closer to our definition of proletarian art than to that of
bourgeois).
We must consider at this point some disconcerting facts. Historically
the novel is the chief bourgeois contribution to literary forms. It arose
with the rise of the bourgeoisie (as the bourgeoisie rose with the rise of
capitalism), and it has flourished with their flourishing. At present the
greatest Europ·ean works of literature are bourgeois novels: Mann, Proust,
Joyce, Gide; but they are all novels of the second bourgeois type, cynical.
In fact there have been few great bourgeois novelists who have failed either
to satirize or to escape from their class. Stendhal and Balzac are examples
of the former; Hardy and James of
th~
latter (the first sought to take
refuge in the peasantry, the second in an aristocracy).
At the present time, the proletarian novel is usually not ·read by the
proletarian, whether class-conscious or not, and it is seldom written by a
proletarian. We must remember that at present a class-conscious prole–
tarian may not be either a science-conscious or an art-conscious proletarian,
though he will invariably be groping in these
dir~ctions
in proportion as
he has the time and the training. A "novel" by a proletarian tends now
