Art and Society: Essays in Marxist Aesthetics

296 Pages·1973·9.855 MB·English

by  Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez

NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE
THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY
TRENT UNIVERSITY

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Art and Society
Essays in Marxist Aesthetics
by Adolfo Sánchez Vasquez
Translated by Maro Riofrancos
*
Monthly Review Press
New York and London
Copyright © 197 3 by Monthly Review Press
All Rights Reserved
Originally published as Las ideas estéticas de
Marx: ensayos de estética marxista, copyright
© 1965 by Ediciones Era, S.A., Mexico
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sánchez Vázquez, Adolfo.
Art and society; essays in Marxist aesthetics.
Translation of Las ideas estéticas de Marx.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Communism and art. 2. Communist aesthetics.
I. Title.
HX521.S313 Hl.8’5 72-92025
ISBN 0-85 345-269-5
Monthly Review Press
116 West 14th Street, New York, N. Y. 10011
3 3/37 Moreland Street, London, E. C. 1
First Printing
Manufactured in the United States of America
*
Contents
Foreword 5
Part I
In Returning to the Aesthetic Ideas of Marx
and the Problem of a Marxist Aesthetic
1. The Vicissitudes of the Aesthetic Ideas of Marx 9
2. Contemporary Marxism and Art 23
3. The Ideas of Marx on the Source
and Nature of the Aesthetic 47
4. Aesthetics and Marxism 96
5. On Art and Society 112
6. The Concept of Tragedy in Marx and Engels 121
7. A Kafka Hero: Joseph K. 136
Part II
The Fate of Art Under Capitalism
8. The Hostility of Capitalist Production to Art 157
9. The Artist and Bourgeois Society 163
10. The Socio-Historical Nature of the Relationship
Between Artist and Public 168
11. Material and Artistic Production 181
259508
4 Art and Society
12. Art as Concrete Labor:
Aesthetic Value and Exchange Value 189
13. The Productivity and Unproductivity
of Artistic Labor 197
14. Wage Labor and Artistic Activity 202
15. Creative Freedom and Capitalist Production 209
16. The Development of Art Under the Hostile
Conditions of Capitalism 217
17. Production and Consumption
(Creation and Enjoyment) 223
18. Aesthetic Creation and Enjoyment
as Forms of Human Appropriation 230
19. Art and the Masses 238
20. Capitalism and Mass Art
253
21. A Dilemma: “Minority or Mass Art” 259
22. Truly Popular Art
266
23. Cultured, Individual, and Professional Art,
and Popular and Collective Art
276
24. The Social Division of Artistic Labor
and the Development of the Personality 281
Concluding Remarks
287
*
Foreword
This volume will attempt to analyze the aesthetic ideas of
Karl Marx, little known and studied, and examine several
questions vital to a Marxist aesthetic. Aesthetic problems are
of increasing interest to Marxist thinkers. There is a general
need to go beyond, in this field as well as others, the dog¬
matic and sectarian conceptions which were prevalent during
the years of the Stalinist deformations—theoretical and
practical—of Marxism. We must not forget that those defor¬
mations were particularly grave in the realm of artistic theory
and practice. Furthermore, as aesthetic problems have be¬
come increasingly important, the content of Marxism has
been enriched, and its humanist character—which includes
the essential aesthetic relationship—has increasingly been
emphasized. There is also the need to overcome old, one¬
sided views of the artistic phenomena of our time. Modern
art, apart from the place we assign it socio-historically—as
part of an ideological superstructure—and regardless of the
value we attribute to it on an aesthetic plane, is a rich, com¬
plex, and contradictory phenomenon which cannot be ap¬
proached with the schematic and simplistic criteria that
dominated Marxist art criticism until recently.
All this obliges us to bring to the fore the true nature of
Marx’s aesthetic ideas, not in order to limit ourselves to an
exegesis and reiteration of them, but to develop them crea¬
tively, in a living and constant relationship with life itself,
with artistic experience, and thus to lay the foundations for a
true Marxist aesthetic. We can find in Marx the roots for a
conception of aesthetics in general, and of art in particular,
5
6 Art and Society
which in my view allows us to deal successfully with the most
complex artistic problems. The essays in this book are de¬
voted both to discovering and examining those roots and to
taking into account artistic experience in its entirety, with
special attention to contemporary artistic experience. These
essays therefore share a common concern, without being a
systematic whole. They are approaches, using different
themes, to one cardinal question: What is the nature of man’s
aesthetic relationship to reality, and of art in particular? It
has been impossible, because of the nature of this book, to
avoid some repetition with regard to this question.
Throughout this study we have kept in mind other Marxist
interpretations which enjoy or have enjoyed a certain author¬
ity, since the debate is wide open and the old dogmatism will
no longer be able to end it. The important thing is to deal
with the various views on this subject critically and creative¬
ly. To the great debate among Marxist aestheticians about
views which differ from or are opposed to Marxism, our book
contributes a voice, however modest, in the Spanish language.
Furthermore, we should add that the author has had the
opportunity to propose and expound some of the fundamen¬
tal theses of this book in his classes on aesthetics and in his
seminar on aesthetics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México, as well as in lectures and at conferences at the
universities of Guadalajara and Michoacán. They were pre¬
sented to, and debated by, a brilliant group of university
professors and researchers in the “Círculo de Discusiones
Filosóficos.” Finally, they were presented in socialist Cuba,
fertile crucible of Marxist theory and practice, where aesthe¬
tic problems arouse vital interest. These presentations and
discussions have been a vigorous stimulus for the author, who
recognizes and acknowledges this assistance.
The author’s ideas now emerge, in printed form, into a
public forum. Before beginning any further work in this field,
we pause and await the helpful words of readers and critics.
Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez
Mexico City, February 1965