THE FOUNDING FATHERS
mode of Marxist criticism-a mode which is applicable not only to
early Soviet literature but also to the general esthetic questions of our
time. The fact is that Trotsky has never made a formal attempt to
work out the problems of Marxist criticism.
The Method
So much for the myths and dogmas which have to be cleared
away before we can consider even the possibilities of Marxist criticism.
To this end Edmund Wilson, who is one of the most intelligent left-
wing critics writing today, in an article on
Marxism and Literature
(The Atlantic Monthly,
Dec. 1937) has exploded that fetishism of
texts, according to which the answer to any literary question is to be
found in some hidden remark by one of the founding fathers.
But Wilson goes further: for he dismisses not only the isolated
texts but the Marxist philosophy itself as an effective instrument of
literary analysis. "What Marxism
can
do, however," says Wilson, "is
to throw a great deal of light on the origins and social significance
of works of art. ... Marx and Engels further deepened this ("faine's)
study of literature in relation to its social background by demonstrating
inescapably for the first time the importance of economic systems."
And Wilson goes on to emphasize that Marxism, though it may
enlarge the background of a critic, offers no methodological guidance
to the study of literature: "Marxism by itself can tell us nothing
whatever about the goodness and badness of a work of art. A man
may be an excellent Marxist, but if he lacks imagination and taste
he will be unable to make the choice between a good book and an
inferior book, both of which are ideologically unexceptionable."
Taken literally, there can be no quarrel with Wilson's conclu-
sions: since no philosophy or method, in itself, can tell us anything
about the specific problems of literature, nor is a critic who lacks
imagination and taste worth listening to, whether he be a Marxist,
a Thomist or a formalist. And if, as Wilson implies, Marxism in
literature is merely a preliminary research into social origins, we should
be forced to admit that there can be no Marxist criticism-unless we
regard as Marxist criticism the grafting of some traditional approach
to art onto a Marxist analysis of society.
But is this not begging the qucstion?-for
what we want to
know is whether a critic with taste and imaginati.on is able to make
more profound and more valid observations about literature through
a use of the Marxist method; whether the Marxist philosophy so
alters a critic's entire outlook that he approaches the subject, the form,
the values, the sensibility, the tasks, of literature from a new angle;
whether Marxism provides a method of perceiving the unique qual-
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