MJoRXISM .dND THE HERITAGE OF CULTURE
31
the writers of other countries, but the English cultural heritage is so
"literary," is literary in so narrow a definition of that term that the unity
of human culture, the fact that economics, philosophy, science and litera–
ture are only four different expressions of the same essential human reason–
ing faculty is often lost sight of. This, of course, was not always so. In
the England of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century
the unity of culture was still preserved, but in the last fifty years or so
literature has tended to float off, to detach itself from the rest of human
life and thought. Thus, I believe, that for us in England it is actually
necessary to make the simple point that literature
is
part of the rest of
human knowledge and enlightenment and stands or falls with it.
I wish to say one thing else today. It may be that some of those
present will-in part at any rate--agree with the view that capitalism is
turning against the European cultural heritage. They may even agree
with the explanation which I have suggested for the fact. But, they object,
is not Marxism itself also an enemy of that heritage? Would not the
triumph of Marxism destroy that culture just as effectively (even if by
different methods) as would the triumph of Fascist capitalism? I believe
that no more extraordinary mistake as to the nature of Marxism can be
made, than this.
It
is, of course, impossible for me to attempt to describe Marxism
in a few minutes this afternoon, but it is worth pointing out that that body
of theory and knowledge which we call Marxism did not fall from the
skies; nor was it suddenly developed out of nothing in the minds of Marx
and Engels. On the contrary, these two men were, perhaps, more thor–
oughly soaked in the cultural traditions of Western Europe than any
other two men of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the new cultural
traditions to which they gave birth would have been-as they themselves
pointed out a hundred times-utterly impossible if it had not been built
upon the existing body of human knowledge. In fact Marxism, or dialecti–
cal materialism, as the philosophy of Marxism is usually called, rests upon
three great achievements of European culture, viz: English policical economy
from Petty to Ricardo, French materialism of the eighteenth century and
German classical philosophy.
The very idea that Marxism is not the logical continuation of the
European cultural tradition must seem bewilderingly strange to anyone
who has read over even a few works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. And yet
this idea is constantly being voiced not only by the hack apologists of
capitalism-for whom any stick is good enough to beat the dog with-but
by genuine friends of culture who have never happened to make any study
?f
Marxism and who are, therefore, startlingly ignorant of what Marxism
's ·really like. For example, we often hear, and I hazard the guess that
