Socialist
realism
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Thesis from 1984.
According to historical materialism the different domains of human life interact in a whole, The development of which is ultimately dominated by economic factors. However, there have been great differences of opinion among the proponents of tlus thesis. On one side there is marxism, that underlines the relative autonomy of different domains, and maintains that each instance of their interaction has to be analyzed in order to understand it. According to marxism, the proletariat will create the future, and therefore it must itself clearly understand the complex, dialectical conditions of life. Only when it has made the revolution and created the new world of socialismJ can a new culture arise in it. This was the contention of such leading marxists and revolutionaries as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Castro and Guevara. They therefore emphasized that the common people must appropriate the cultural heritage although it is suffused with attitudes contrary to their class interests. For especially then it gives a unique opportunity to comprehend these attitudes and how they work, impregnating society everywhere. Furthermore, the joy of life to be had from good art highlights the narrow limits a class society imposes upon people. This politics is called the revolutionary appropriation of art.
On the other hand we have various kinds of mechanistic materialism. Its proponents hold that economic life directly forms social life, which in its turn directly forms culture, so that for example literature directly reflects the thinking of the social class that the author belongs to. Therefore the advocates of this position rejected contemporary art as a whole, as being of a bourgeous nature. Instead they advocated a new culture based on the thinking of the proletariat.This position was formed around 1900, in the 2nd Socialist International, as part of their revisionism, that is, the policy of abandoning revolution as a strategy for taking power. Instead, they envisaged a steady development within contemporary society. For, as the working class grows and becomes increasingly organized in trade unions and political parties, it will grow independent enough to create its own culture within capitalist society. Even more so after its socialist revolution, said the rulers of the Soviet Union after 1928 since now socialism was being created within one country, and a new kind of humanity as a result. (the latter is a legacy of .Futurism).
In definitions of this new proletarian culture,
it is commonly stressed that it should be easily accessible to the common people,
showing them what capitalism is really like, and how
it can be changed; it should even try to show the coming world of socialism.
Often a rational and traditional
representation is advocated. This is particularly true of how revolutionary art is defined; from 1934 onwards under
the name of socialrealism. However, socialdemocrats advocated very similar
positions, such as the Dane Julius Bomholt in 1932. The difference
lies solely in the policies that were advocated concerning how the proletariat
should take power, suddenly or gradually; they do nonetheless agree on how
literature and art should serve politics. But this naturally leads to conservatism
in culture, as it
had to be easily accessible. And it often leads to authoritarianism; writers
and artists should lead the people, but then a socialist thinker was needed
to lead the writers and artists in how to do it. Although the most extravagant
examples of this are to be found in the Soviet Union, milder variants are
to be found many places, also in the Icelandic movement described in the following
The Icelandic working class grew quickly in the beginning of the 20th century, and voting results, as well as accounts of the growth of trade unions, indicate that an important part of it went in for a working class struggle, even for socialism, as early as at the end of the first world war when Iceland became autonomous (in 1918) and new political parties were based on social classes. A very considerable section of the intelligentsia, writers and artists increasinglyalso advocated socialism') in the period between the wars, when working class militancy steadily grew. On the other hand, the international differences between socialdemocrats and communists seem to have little impact in that period.
According to the movements leaders, Einar Olgeirsson and Kristinn E. Andrésson, the literary movement of the left in Iceland had itsbeginning in the year 1924, with the publication of Bréf til Láru (A Letter to Laura), an incongrous conglomerate of essays and autobiographical accounts by Þórbergur Þórðarson. But this seems to be eccessive modesty on their part. That book certainly is an attack on capitalism and an advocacy of socialism.. But this part of it is similar to magazine articles, and hardly a novelty. As a whole, this work is so very different from the literature the movement advocated and instigated, that it cannot be seen as part of it. We are not dealing with a spontaneous movement of writers, but with an organized initiative of magazine editors and politicians, also it started with manifesto-articles and reviews, later with the organizing of writers in a society with the common goal of socialist realism, finally in the making of magazines, editions and a book-club with this common goal.
The Icelandic communists, few in numbers, had started their own political propaganda in 1924, and organized themselves seperately within the socialdemocratic party in 1926, when they also started independent work in trade-unions and cultural affairs. Their literary movement starts with their taking over a small biannual political magazine, Réttur, and a relatively important cultural quarterly, Iðunn. These two magazines both had a rather small distribution, but were the forum of the literary movement during the following decade. In that period of little book publishing and less book selling magazines were the main forum for Icelandic writers.
The movement had a slow starts in the twenties it is within the movement of the modernists, in their battle against the conservatives in cultural affairs, who feared for the fate of the centuries-old traditions of Icelandic culture in the turmoil of mpdern times. The innovators wanted modern culture to be concerned with the life of modem man, as did the radicals in their aforementioned magazines. They too acclaim the dominant mode in lyrics, symbolism. In prose-writing they acclaim the dominant mode of realism. The works should be about modern people, who are portrayed in a convincing manner dealing with situations the readers can accept as real, according to their own experience. The plot should follow logically from these premises, and the work should be free from direct interference from the author's opinions, Reviewers criticize unnatural happy endings familiar from the popular works of Einar Kvaran. Furthermore, modern novels should be in the natural comtemporary language of the readers.
These views were generally accepted in Iceland, but in 1926 Einar Olgeirsson, the leader of the \ \ v*\d\ Communist Party, and editor of Rettur, proclaimed that realistic literature should also show the class struggle of the proletariat, as an example to follow for proletarian readers. But this is an exception in the twenties, the choice of poems and short stories, as well as reviews mostly reflect the afore-mentioned general views, albeit with a predilection for social criticism as practised in Icelandic literature since the 1880's
In 1930 came the final break between the Social-democrats and the Communists, who founded their own party at the end of the year. And that changed their cultural policy. As late as 1931 Einar Olgeirsson was still advocating the aforel-mentioned marxist policy, that the working-class should critically appropriate the best of bourgeois culture. But thereafter the Mouvement is dominated by the opposite policy, reject modern culture as/inherently hostile to the proletariat. This is especially done in Rettur (edited by Einad), and with a readership more or less limited to the
Communist
Party, while Idunn had a broader target group of culturally interested
people. There, socialist realism mainly appears in articles, together with
other views, whereas in Rettur it also dominates in traditional Icelandic verses
and translated short stories from The International Union of Revolutionary Writers* both genres
criticizing ' capitalist society and calling for class struggles against it. In the fall
of 1933 an Icelandic section of this International Union was created, with 12-15 members,
mostly novices at writing. The first year and a half was dedicated to schooling
the
members, who read their works aload at meetings, whereafter they received
collective criticism, both from a literary and political point of view. There is no sign of this activity
having lead to the forthcoming of new writers in any noticeable degree, whereas
the members' understanding of literature became more and more in the spirit of socialist
realism. ,
In 1935 the Association turns ptitwardsfby publishing the yearbook Raudir
pennar (Red pens), where "the new course" is most clearly manifested
in an attempt to combine literary quality and propaganda. The sequel was surprising,
no sooner was this yearbook published than the Association received a letter from the direction
of The International Association of Revolutionary Writers, informing the Icelandic
section, that the •direction' had disbanded the International
Association (without the formality ofj holding a congress!). Now, the IcelandersYalsoTshouIa^disband
their section to participate in a broad Association of Writers for the defense of
culture against Fascism; an International Association of that order
having been formed at a conference
in Paris in June 1935. The Icelandic Association however did not disband
(until
1,943), as it felt itself to be fully capable of realizing this new course.
And indeed the magazines Rettur and Raudir pennar
already the following year, as well as the publishing house Heimskringla,
that the movement had established