14
PARTISAN REI/JEW
reveal a crass determinism. Thus they seem to treat this complex network
of relationships as if it were a simple algebraic equation with a proper and
easily mastered formula for its solution. They make the relationship be–
tween culture and economics direct and immediate, and this is an inade–
quate assumption, and it is foreign to the thought of Marx, as I understand
Marx's writings. In fact, Marx, in his final note in
A Treatise
on
Political Economy,
states the precise opposite. In substance he states that
it is a well known fact that in periods of highest development in art, there
is not a direct relationship between art and the material relationships in a
society, and cites Greek: art as an example.
It
is both easy and dangerous to draw unwarranted implications from
Marx's writings. Thus when Marx and Engels emphasized economic
factors as they did, they did not do so, to exclude other factors that in–
fluence social processes, ideals and culture for instance. And so, their
writings must be taken in relationship to their purposes. Thus, they both
wrote at a time when the tradition of philosophical dualism was a power·
tul
intellectual current in Germany. German philosophers were concerned
with such questions as what is the ground of the universe and in answer–
ing it in long and heavy tomes that would torture the eyesight and brains
of future generations of students. And the answer was spirit. And spirit
meant an extra-experiential force, or in other words, a new word for the
old conception of God. An implication of this doctrine of philosophical
dualism is that spirit is the motive force in the universe. Marx's rna·
terialism was a revolt from this doctrine, and rather than indulge in gra–
tuitous descriptions of what causes social processes to wo k, he investigated
the material world. He discovered that a basic and preponderantly in–
fluential one was economic relationships. And since he was writing at a
time when dualism still held the day, it was necessary to make his emphasis
on economics extremely strong. By so doing, he did not mean that eco–
nomics was a sole factor. For he conceived societies as in process, and he
perceived that there is ever present the factor of changes in social relation–
ships. And because there is this factor of change, the effects of one set
of relationships become the causes of the next set, and there is ever evolving
a whole network: of influences. So that cultural manifestations which are
directly related to the basic material conditions upon which a society is
founded in one era, evolve away from that set of relationships as the process
unfolds in the passage of time, and they in turn become causal factors in
the general stream of social tendencies and forces.
This being the case, a number of the statements in revolutionary
criticism are, to say the least, unwarranted.
Earlier in this paper, I have made a ·reference to critics indulging
themselves in manifestoes asking for an American Maxim Gorky, or in
