Ian Schatzberg

Position Paper

 

Marcuse’s “The Aesthetic Dimension” attempts to recuperate the concept of a Marxist aesthetic. Such a revision comes as no surprise considering the relatively recent disappointments in leftist politics. Written nine years after the failure of the 1968 revolutions, Marcus’s work can be read as a necessary reformulation of Marxist theory in light of the rise of advanced capitalism or postmodernism.

 

In contrast with classical Marxism, Marcuse teases out the inherit tensions that exist in privileging the proletariat as a subject free of societal values. He states: “according to this conception, the consciousness of the proletariat would also be the consciousness that validates the truth of art” (29). Consequently, such a formation suggests that the truth of art always resides in relation to the proletariat and thereby discredits any artistic expression that may have bourgeois overtones. Marcuse’s work seeks to dispute such claim as he comments, “…there may be more subversive potential in the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud than in the didactic of plays of Brecht” (xii).

 

Two interconnected imperatives structure Marcuse's revision of Marxist aesthetics: first, the ability to define a clear class structure within late capitalism has become difficult if not impossible; secondly, the Kantian notion of the artwork as a universal experience must be reconciled with Marxism.. The word must has a particular meaning within this sentence, one that reveals the symbiotic relationship between imperative one and two. Most simply, if class can no longer be distinguished within advanced capitalism, then a revolutionary aesthetic must make itself available to all members of society.  

 

Marcuse draws out these separate imperatives in succession. He remarks, “this theory [that of the proletariat free of societal values] corresponds to a situation which no longer prevails in the advanced capitalist countries” (30). Such a comment extends from a historical perspective that, as Marcuse points out in relationship to Goldmann’s text, witnesses the proletariat as an integrated class within advanced capitalist society. In regards to the Kantian notion of artistic universality, he states: “But even if the proletariat were not integrated, its class consciousness would not be the privileged or the sole force which could preserve and reshape the truth of art” (31) and continues in an earlier passage, “the universality of art cannot be grounded in the world and the world outlook for a particular class, for art envisions a concrete universal, humanity which no particular class can incorporate, not even the proletariat, Marx’s ‘universal class'” (16).  Clearly Marcuse’s concern lies, as his hypothetical suggests, in the latter imperative, mediating the universality of art with Marxist theory.

 

Marcuse advances Marxist theory into the postmodern as it       seeks to account for the breakdown of traditional class structures. More specifically, his contribution lies in fusing Marxist politics with a universal subject. In this capacity, Marcuse accounts for the potential of art to illuminate what has become the explosion of the political beyond the modernist borders of class struggle.

 

Questions:

 

1)      Do you agree or disagree with my final statement:

In this capacity, Marcuse accounts for the potential of art to illuminate what has become the explosion of the political beyond the modernist borders of class struggle.