186
HERBERT MARCUSE
a transparent correlation exists between the respective
class
conscious–
ness and the work of art are extremely rare (Moliere, Beaumarchais,
Defoe). By virtue of its own subversive quality, art
is
associated
with
revolutionary consciousness, but to the degree to which the prevail–
ing consciousness of a class is affirmative, integrated, blunted, revolu–
tionary art
will
be opposed to it. Where the proletariat is nonrevolu–
tionary, revolutionary literature
will
not
be proletarian literature. Nor
can it be "anchored" in the prevailing ("nonrevolutionary") con–
sciousness: only the
rupt'ure,
the
leap,
can prevent the resurrection
of the "false" consciousness in a socialist society.
The fallacies which surround the notion of a revolutionary litera–
,ture are still aggravated in today's cultural revolution. The antiintel–
lectualism
ramp~nt
in the New Left champions the demand for ' a
working-class literature which expresses the worker's actual interests
and "emotions." For example:
"Intellectual pundits of the Left" are blamed for their "rev–
olutionary aesthetic," and a "certain coterie of talmudists"
is
taken
to task for being more "expert in weighing the many shadings and
nuances of a word than involvement in the revolutionary process."l1
Archaic antiintellectualism abhors the idea that the former may
be
an essential part of the latter, part of that translation of the world
into a new ianguage which may communicate the radically new
claims of liberation.
Such spokesmen for the proletarian ideology criticize the cul–
tural revolution as a "middle-class trip." The philistine mind
is
at
its very best when it proclaims that this revolution
will
"become
'meaningful" only "when'it begins to understand the very real cultural
meaning that a washing machine, for instance, has for a working
ciass family with small children in diapers." And the philistine mind
dem~nds
that "the artists of that revolution . . . tune in on the emo–
tions of that family on the day, after months of debate and planning,
that the washing machine is delivered....
" u
This demand is reactionary not only from an artistic but
also
from a political point of view. Regressive is, not the emotion of
the working-class family, but the idea to make them into a standard
for authentic radical and socialist literature: what
is
proclaimed
to
13. Irvin Silber, in
Guardian,
December 13, 1969.
14. Irvin Silver, in
Guardian,
December 6, 1969, p. 17.
