Marxist Aesthetics: Anthologies in English

Bibliography compiled by Ralph Dumain


Marx & Engels

Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick. Marx & Engels on Literature and Art: A Selection of Writings, edited by Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski, with introduction by Stefan Morawski. St. Louis; Milwaukee: Telos Press, 1973.

Some pages from the PDF are missing. See also:

Introduction [to the Critique of Political Economy]: section 4: Means (forces) of production and relations of production, relations of production and relations of circulation, translated by Martin Nicolaus, in Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: Vintage Books; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1973), section 4, pp. 109-111.

Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, translated by S. W. Ryazanskaya (Moscow: Progress Publishers). Also included in The German Ideology [abridged], edited and with Introduction by C. J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970), pp. 149-151.

Marx, Karl; Engels, Frederick. On Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Collective Anthologies

Baxandall, Lee, ed. Radical Perspectives in the Arts. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1972.

Contents:
Acknowledgements
Foreword / Lee Baxandall
Introductory: culture is not neutral, whom does it serve? / Meredith Tax
The arts and capitalism. The deserters: the contemporary defeat of fiction / Carl Oglesby
Art in the one-dimensional society / Herbert Marcuse
The mirror and the dynamo / Darko Suvin
The intellectual physiognomy of literary characters / Georg Lukács
Prometheus Unbound / Carlos Fuentes
The progressive tradition in bourgeois culture / Arnold Kettle
Aime Cesaire's A Tempest / S. Belhassen
The misreading of Milton / John Illo
The arts and socialism. Involved writers in the world / Stefan Heym
Socialism and literature / Jorge Semprun
Budapest interview / Roger Garaudy
Problems of socialist art / John Berger
Symposium on the question of decadence / Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernst Fischer, Edouard Goldstucker, Milan Kundera
Of socialist realism / Cultural Theory Panel attached to the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party
Words to the intellectuals / Fidel Castro
The future of culture: the 'end' of 'culture'? Culture, property and theatre / Hans Mayer
What is a work of art? / Stefan Morawski
Spectacles and scenarios: a dramaturgy of radical activity / Lee Baxandall
Notes

Beaumont, Matthew; Hemingway, Andrew; Leslie, Esther; Roberts, John; eds. As Radical as Reality Itself: Essays on Marxism and Art for the 21st Century. Oxford; New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

Contents:
Matthew Beaumont: Preface
John Roberts: Marxism and Art Theory: A Short Conspectus
Andrew Hemingway: Marxist Art History Now
Esther Leslie: Marxism Against Cultural Studies
Satish Padiyar: Shadow of Agency: Derrida, Marx, David
Mary K. Coffey: Representation, Institutionalization, and the State: Marxist and Post-Structural Approaches to Mexican Muralism and the Popular
Paul Jaskot: Marxism and the Built Environment in the Twenty-First Century: Millennium Park in Chicago and the Question of Private and Public Space
Christina Kiaer: The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism as a Model of Aesthetic Value
Jutta Held: Work as an Artistic Motif: Theoretical and Pictorial Models from the DDR: An Historical Sketch
Wojciech Tomasik: I Demolish Moscow! Acts of Symbolic Destruction in the Post-Communist Period
Anselm Jappe: Were the Situationists the Last Avant-Garde?
Peter Smith: Never Work! The Situationists and the Politics of Negation
Frances Stracey: Consuming the Spectacle: The Watts Revolt and a New Proletariat
David Cunningham: Architecture in the Age of Global Modernity: Tafuri, Jameson and Enclave Theory
Barry King: Modularity and the Aesthetics of Self-Commodification
Drew Milne: Processual Performance: Critical Notes on Adorno’s Autonomous Artwork
Ben Watson: The Theory of Value in Marx and Adorno
Rasheed Araeen: Globalization, Cultural Difference, and the Alternative to the Crisis of Art Today
Geoff Cox: Sub Disorder(). After ‘The Author as Producer’
Gregory Sholette: Dark Matter, Activist Art and the Counter-Public Sphere.

Craig, David, ed. Marxists on Literature: An Anthology. Harmondsworth, England; Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975.

Contents:
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
GEORGE THOMSON
  1. Speech and Thought 25
  2. The Art of Poetry 47
GEORGEI PLEKHANOV
  3. On the Social Basis of Style 76
CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL
  4. English Poets: (1) The Period of Primitive Accumulation 95
G. M. MATTHEWS
  5. Othello and the Dignity of Man 110
DAVID CRAIG
  6. Towards Laws of Literary Development 134
V. G. KIERNAN
  7. Wordsworth and the People 161
KARL MARX
  8. Letter to Lassalle (19 April 1859) 207
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
  9. Letter to Lassalle (18 May 1859) 210
ARNOLD KETTLE
  10. Dickens and the Popular Tradition 214
JACK MITCHELL
  11. Aesthetic Problems of the Development of the Proletarian-Revolutionary Novel in Nineteenth- Century Britain 245
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
  12. Letter to Minna Kautsky (26 November 1885) 267
  13. Letter to Margaret Harkness (April 1888) 269
GEORGEI PLEKHANOV
  14. On ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ 272
GEORG LUKÁCS
  15. Tolstoy and the Development of Realism 282
V. I. LENIN
  16. Articles on Tolstoy 346
LEON TROTSKY
  17. The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism 363
GEORG LUKÁCS
  18. Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann? 380
LU HSUN
  19. Some Thoughts on our New Literature 395
  20. A Glance at Shanghai Literature 400
BERTOLT BRECHT
  21. Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction 412
  22. The Popular and the Realistic 421
  23. On Rhymeless Verse with Irregular Rhythms 429
VICTOR SERGE
  24. The Writer’s Conscience 435
MAX ADERETH
  25. What is ‘Littérature Engagé’ 445
ERNST FISCHER
  26. The Loss and Discovery of Reality  486
Appendix A
  A. A. ZHDANOV
    From Report on the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad, 1947   514
Appendix B
  Extracts from the Resolution Adopted by the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, 1966   527

Eagleton, Terry; Mile, Drew; eds. Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Contents
Terry Eagleton 1
  Introduction Part I
Drew Milne 16
  Introduction Part II: Reading Marxist Literary Theory
1 Marx and Engels 30
  a) Marx/ Engels, Social Being and Social Consciousness (1859/1845-6)
  b) Marx, Uneven Character of Historical Development and Questions of Art (1857-8)
  c) Marx, Poetry of the Future (1852)
  d) Engels, Against Vulgar Marxism (1890)
  e) Engels, On Realism (1888)
2 V. I. Lenin 42
  Leo Tolstoy and His Epoch (1911)
3 Leon Trotsky 46
  The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism (1923)
4 V. N. Vološinov 60
  Concerning the Relationship of the Basis and Superstructures (1929)
5 Walter Benjamin 69
  a) Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia (1929)
  b) Addendum to ‘The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire’ (1938)
6 Ernst Bloch 84
  Marxism and Poetry (1935)
7 Christopher Caudwell 91
  English Poets: The Period of Primitive Accumulation (1937)
8 Alick West 103
  The Relativity of Literary Value (1937)
9 Bertolt Brecht 107
  A Short Organum for the Theatre (1949)
10 Roland Barthes 136
  The Tasks of Brcchtian Criticism (1956)
11 Georg Lukacs 141
  The Ideology of Modernism (1957)
12 Galvano Della Volpe 163
  The Semantic Dialectic (1960)
13 T. W. Adorno 187
  Commitment (1962)
14 Lucien Goldmann 204
  Introduction to the Problems of a Sociology of the Novel (1963)
15 Jean-Paul Sartre 221
  The Objective Spirit (1972)
16 Raymond Williams 242
  a) Tragedy and Revolution (1966)
  b) Literature (1977)
17 Louis Althusser 269
  A Letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre (1966)
18 Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey 275
  On Literature as an Ideological Form (1974)
19 Terry Eagleton 296
  Towards a Science of the Text (1976)
20 The Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective 328
  Women’s Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh (1978)
21 Fredric Jameson 351
  On Interpretation (1981)
22 Aijaz Ahmad 375
  Jameson’s Rhetoric of Othemess and the ‘National Allegory’ (1987)
23 Chidi Amuta 399
  The Materialism of Cultural Nationalism: Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God (1989)
24 Alex Callinicos 408
  The Jargon of Postmodernity (1989)
Index 429

Hemingway, Andrew, ed. Marxism and the History of Art: From William Morris to the New Left. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006.

Contents
Illustrations vii
Series Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
  Andrew Hemingway
1. William Morris: Decoration and Materialism 9
      Caroline Arscott
2. Mikhail Lifshits: A Marxist Conservative 28
      Stanley Mitchell
3. Frederick Antal 45
      Paul Stirton
4. Art as Social Consciousness: Francis Klingender and British Art 67
      David Bindman
5. Max Raphael: Aesthetics and Politics 89
      Stanley Mitchell
6. Walter Benjamin’s Essay on Eduard Fuchs: An Art-Historical Perspective 106
      Frederic J. Schwartz
7. Meyer Schapiro: Marxism, Science and Art 123
      Andrew Hemingway
8. Henri Lefebvre and the Moment of the Aesthetic 143
      Marc James Léger
9. Arnold Hauser, Adorno, Lukács and the Ideal Spectator 161
      John Roberts
10. New Left Art History’s International 175
      Andrew Hemingway
11. New Left Art History and Fascism in Germany 196
      Jutta Held
12. The Turn from Marx to Warburg in West German Art History, 1968–90   213
      Otto Karl Werckmeister
Notes on Contributors 221
Notes 223
Index 268

Kulikova, I[rina Sergeevna]; Zis, A.; eds. Marxist-Leninist Aesthetics and Life: A Collection of Articles. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Aesthetics and actuality
The method of socialist realism
Aesthetics and the personality

Lang, Berel; Williams, Forrest; eds. Marxism and Art: Writings in Aesthetics and Criticism. New York: McKay, 1972.

Contents
Property and alienation ; Production and consumption / Karl Marx
Real men and human ideas / K. Marx and Friedrich Engels
Realism and didacticism / F. Engels
Party organization and party literature / V.I. Lenin
Proletarian culture and proletarian art / Leon Trotsky
Marxism in linguistics / Josef Stalin
On art for art’s sake / Gyorgii Plekhanov
Art and social evolution / N.I. Bukharin
On literature and art ; On the correct handling of contradictions among the people / Mao Tse-tung
What is aesthetics? / G.A. Nedozchiwin
The origins of art / Ernst Fischer
Materialism and art / Umberto Barbaro
Theoretical issues of a Marxist poetics / Galvano della Volpe
Beauty and bourgeois aesthetics / Christopher Caudwell
The artist and his conscience / Jean-Paul Sartre
On socialist realism / Bertolt Brecht
Art as self-consciousness in Man’s development / Gyorgy Lukács
Genetic-structuralist method in history of literature / Lucien Goldmann
Remarks on the method of art history / Frederick Antal
Sociology of art / Arnold Hauser
The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction / Walter Benjamin
The organization of the arts / C. Caudwell
Theatre for pleasure and theatre for instruction / B. Brecht
After Aeschylus / George D. Thomson
A dialectical approach to film form / Sergei Eisenstein
The historical novel of democratic humanism / G. Lukács
Alienation as the key to mannerism / Arnold Hauser
Feudalism and The Dream of the red chamber / Hsu Min
On non-objective painting / B. Brecht
Politics and the English language / George Orwell
Charles Dickens / Franz Mehring
My lady’s visit / Jan Kott
Study of the first scene of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus / B. Brecht

LeRoy, Gaylord C.; Beitz, Ursula; eds. Preserve and Create: Essays in Marxist Literary Criticism. New York: Humanities Press, 1973. (AIMS monograph series; no. 4.)

Contents
          I. Current Directions
Introduction
Lukacs, G. Appearance and essence.
Petrov, S. Realism, the generally human.
Weimann, R. Past significance and present meaning in literary history.
Weimann, R. Point of view in fiction.
Gay, N. K. Truth in art and truth in life.
          II. Late Capitalism and the Humanist Image
Introduction
Mittenzwei, W. Contemporary drama in the West.
Zhantieva, B. G. Joyce's Ulysses (138-172).
          III. The Arts and the Perspectives of Socialism
Introduction
Pracht, E. and Neubert, W. Partisanship.
Mittenzwei, W. The Brecht-Lukács debate.
Pracht, E. Socialist realism.
Simons, E. Socialist realism: development of the theory in the German Democratic Republic since 1955.
Sources—Translators
Index

Rudich, Norman, ed. Weapons of Criticism: Marxism in America and the Literary Tradition. Palo Alto, CA: Ramparts Press, 1976.

Contents
Rudich, N. Preface.
Rudich, N. Introduction.
Part I: Criticism in history:
1. Jameson, F. Criticism in history.
2. Finkelstein, S. Beauty and truth.
3. LeRoy, G.C. Literary study and political activism.
4. Stratman, D.G. Culture and the tasks of criticism.
5. Baxandall, L. Literature and ideology.
6. Robinson, L.S. Criticism and self-criticism.
7. San Juan, E., Jr. Art against imperialism, for the national liberation struggle of Third World peoples.
Part II: Literature in history:
8. Siegel, P.N. Falstaff and his social milieu.
9. Delany, S. Sex and politics in Pope’s “Rape of the lock.”
10. Whitehead, F. William Blake and radical tradition.
11. Rudich, N. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”
12. Rudich, L. Balzac and Marx.
13. Harap, L. Poe and Dostoevsky.
14. Franklin, H.B. Herman Melville, artist of the worker’s world.
15. Rubinstein, A.T. Henry James, American novelist; or, Isabel Archer, Emerson’s grand-daughter.
16. Zelnick, S. The incest theme in The Great Gatsby.
17. Suvin, D. Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle and Marxist figuralism.
18. Fuyet, Herve & Nicole; Levilain, Guy & Mary. Decolonization and social classes in The Tragedy of King Christophe by Aime Cesaire.
Contributors’ Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Illustrations:
   la Los 200
   Ib Daughters of Los 
   II Jerusalem, Pl. 
   III Illustration by Fred Ellis 
   IV Nelson Guiding Leviathan 
   V October, 1917-1920 
   VI The Red Plowman

Solomon, Maynard, comp. Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary, selected and with historical and critical commentary. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Contents:
          Section One: Marx and Engels:
General introduction: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
A reader in Marxist aesthetics – selected texts:
  The prerequisites of history
  History
  Forms of consciousness
  Revolution and utopia
  Art and society
          Section Two: The second generation:
William Morris:
  Art, labor and socialism
Antonio Labriola:
  Historical materalism
  Forms of consciousness
Franz Mehring:
  A note on taste
  Lessing and the drama
Karl Kautsky:
  Art and the conception of God in ancient Israel
Georgi Plekhanov:
  The role of the individual in history
  Art and social life
  Labor, play and art
Rosa Luxemburg:
  On Russian literature
  Stagnation and progress of Marxism
          Section Three: The Bolsheviks:
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin:
  Leo Tolstoy as the mirror of the Russian revolution
  L.N. Tolstoy
  Leo Tolstoy and his epoch
  Party organization and party literature
  On the question of dialectics
Leon Trotsky:
  Art and the party
  Creativity and class
  Art and class
Nikolai Burharin:
  What is art?
  Poetry
Anatoly Lunacharsky:
  Alexander Blok
  Dostoyevsky
          Section Four: Zhdanovism:
General introduction: Zhdanovism
Maxim Gorki:
  Art and myth
Yuri Davydov
  The Tolstoyan view of art
Mao Tse-Tung
  Literature and revolution
Jean-Paul Sartre:
  The novel and realit
W.E.B. Du Bois:
  The nature of intellectual freedom
          Section Five: The return of Marxist humanism:
Antonio Gramsci:
  Marxism and modern culture
Ernst Fischer:
  Productive memory
Sidney Finkelstein:
  Art as humanization
Béla Balazás:
  The visible man
  The face of man;
Mikhail Bakhtin:
  Laughter and freedom
          Section Six: The sources and function of art:
Christopher Caudwell
  Illusion and reality
George Thomson
  Pity and fear
  Improvisation and inspiration
Bertolt Brecht:
  Epic theater
Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler
  The sociology of the musician
  Eye, Ear and the function of music
  Music and film
Georg Lukács:
  The ideology of modernism
  Shakespeare and historicism
  Introduction to a monograph on aesthetics
Max Raphael:
  The elements of the Paleolithic world
  Notes on the nature of art
  Rembrandt: “Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s Dreams”
  Art, opiate, transcendence
          Section Seven: The trajectory of art:
General introduction: Marxism and utopia
Friedrich Engels:
  The overthrow of the matriarchy
Harry Slochower:
  Literature and society
  Malraux – Man’s Fate
  Existentialism and myth
Alick West:
  Form
André Breton:
  Surrealism and historical materialism
  Action and dream
  The cultural heritage
  L’amour fou
Herbert Marcuse:
  The images of Orpheus and Narcissus
  A note on dialectic
Walter Benjamin:
  Fairy-tale and myth
  Dialectics and dream
  The work of art in the Age of mechanical reproduction
  Louis-Philippe, or, The interior
  Three theses on the philosophy of history
André Malraux:
  The work of art
Ernst Bloch:
  On The Threepenny Opera;
  The meaning of utopia;
  Utopia in archetypes and works of art
Contributors’ Bibliographies
Supplementary Reading
Sources for Selections
Marx and Engels: Editions Cited
Acknowledgments
Index follows page 650

Bibliography

Baxandall, Lee. Marxism and Aesthetics: A Selective Annotated Bibliography; Books and Articles in the English Language. New York: Humanities Press, 1968.

Bullock, Chris; Peck, David R. Guide to Marxist Literary Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

Peck, David R. American Marxist Literary Criticism, 1926-1941: A Bibliography. New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1975.


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Library of Congress Subject Headings:
Communism and art
Communism and literature
Communist aesthetics
Communist aesthetics—Bibliography
Marxist criticism
Socialism and the arts (yields only one or two anthologies)

Digital Libraries:

Literary Criticism: Marxists Internet Archive

Note: Except for Marx and Engels, anthologies of writings of single authors are not included here.


Critique of Taste (Contents + note)
by Galvano Della Volpe

Recherches dialectiques
(Table des matières, Bibliographie, Postface)

par Lucien Goldmann

Marx, Literature, and the Arts: Select Bibliography

British Marxism in Philosophy, Science, and Culture Before the New Left:
Essential Historical Surveys

Evald Ilyenkov & Mikhail Lifshits:
Aesthetics, Symbolic Mediation, & the Ideal:
Selected Bibliography

‘World Literature’: A Bibliography

Marx and Marxism Web Guide


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