18.
HERBERT MARCUSE
will
it develop new forms and techniques? This is the case of the
controversy: while Lukacs (and with
him
the then "official" Com–
munist line) insists on the validity of the (revamped) tradition
(es–
pecially the great realistic novel of the nineteenth century), Brecht de–
mands radically different forms (such as the "epic theater") and
Benjamin calls for the transition from the art form itself to such new
technical expressions as the film: "large, closed forms versus small,
open forms."
In a sense, the confrontation between closed and open forms
seems no longer an adequate expression of the problem: compared
with today's antiart, Brecht's open forms appear as "traditional"
literature. The problem is rather the underlying concept of a
prole–
tarian world view
which, by virtue of its (particular) class character,
represents the truth which art must communicate
if
it is to be
authentic art. This theory
presupposes the existence of a proletarian world view. But precisely
this presupposition does not stand up to an even tentative
Canna–
hernde]
examination.
l1
This is a statement
of
fact - and a theoretical insight.
If
the
term "proletarian world view" is to mean the world view that is
prevalent among the working class, then it is, in the advanced cap–
italist countries, a world view shared by a large
part
of the other
classes, especially the middle classes. (In ritualized Marxist language,
it would be called petty bourgeois reformist consciousness.)
If
the
term is to designate
revolutionary
consciousness (latent or actual) ,
then it is today certainly not distinctively or even predominantly "prole–
tarian" - not only because the revolution against global monopoly
capitalism is more and other than a proletarian revolution, but also
because its conditions, prospects and goals cannot be adequately
formulated in terms of a proletarian revolution. And if this revolu–
tion is to be (in whatever form) present as a goal in literature, such
literature could not be typically proletarian.
This is at least the conclusion suggested by Marxian theory. I
recall again the dialectic of the universal and the particular in the
concept of the proletariat: as a class in but not of capitalist society,
its particular interest (its own liberation) is at the same time the
11. Ibid.,
p.
73.
