94
RICHARD WOLLHEIM
anew Orwell's political and cultural predilections. The most per–
suasive, in any case the most poignant, expression of this point of
view is in Richard Hoggart's
The Uses of Literacy,
and it finds a
recurrent echo in the lively pages of
The University and Left Re–
view.
If
this school of thought is ever to progress beyond a kind of
antiquarianism, it must
try
to resolve what looks like an inherent
paradox in its thinking. For traditionally nearly all socialism, indeed
nearly all reformism, accepts to some extent at least a theory of the
dependence of cultural on material conditions: it is difficult to see
where it would draw its inspiration from if it totally abandoned any
such conception. And yet
if
it does adhere to such a conception, it
is hard to see how it can envisage and advocate as the working-class
future thorough-going reform in the material field along with
total conservatism in the field of culture. The workers, it seems to
suggest, have only their chains to lose: for everything that goes
with their chains they must preserve.
It is no part of my case to suggest that a critic of working-class
conditions ought to believe in the superiority of bourgeois culture,
or that it is unreasonable to feel concern about the extent to which
socialism in practice has come to mean the progressive assimilation
of the more intelligent members of the working class into the
middle class. My real point is that it is unnecessary for a socialist to
have any very strong or precise views about the kind of culture
that a socialist society should incorporate: and not merely unneces–
sary but unwise. A common argument used by thinkers of a reac–
tionary kind is that a certain earlier period of history, say the
Middle Ages, was not inferior to the present because the people
who lived then were not evidently or articulately discontented with
their circumstances. To this argument the evident retort is that
they weren't discontented because they didn't know better: whereas
people who live nowadays and have some knowledge of both forms
of culture wouldn't revert. The principle of the argument is this:
that cultural preferences are of interest only
if
they are expressed
between cultures both of which are known or familiar. And the
principle has relevance for those interested in the future of society.
With what right do we try to impose upon some yet unborn society
