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.

Aaccording to the movements leaders, Einar Olgeirsson and Kristinn E. Andresson, 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 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 aforementioned 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 aforementioned marxist policy,  that  the  working-class  should  critically  appropriate  the  best  of bourgeois culture. But thereafter the Mouvement is dominated by the opposite policy, that of rejecting modern culture as being inherently hostile to the proletariat. This is especially done  in Réttur (edited by Einar!), and with a readership more or less limited to the Communist Party, while Iðunn 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 in terms of their writing experience. The first year and a half was dedicated to schooling. The members read their works aloud 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 promotion of new writers in any noticeable degree, whereas the members understanding of literature developed more and more in the spirit of socialist realism.
In 1935 the Association turns its attention towards communicating outwardly fby publishing the yearbook Rauðir 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 governing board had disbanded the International Association (without even holding a congress!). Now, the Icelanders should also 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 it set its mark on the magazines Réttur and Rauðir pennar already the following year, as well as the publishing house Heimskringla that the movement had established in 1934 to publish its writers. Now they say that the common front to defend bourgeois culture against fascism will renew and elevate literature to the same degree that the revolutionary rejection of bourgeois culture was supposed to do the year before. Now, they start publishing apolitical works together with the socialrealistic ones. This change of course was easy for the radicals, as it was a return to simple sympathy with the common people and to the universal nationalism they had grown up in, but which they had tried to reject in the name of internationalism, as they were supposed to try to show the class struggle of the proletariat in a literary way. But the raw material for that was scarce in Iceland.

As the radicals now approach the bourgeois-minded, the struggle against them is intensified. Their opponents must have feared that now they could reach the masses. As indeed they did. In 1937 they created the first modern book-club, Mal og menning (MM), that within a few years attained a great circulation, 4000 members already the following year, 5000 in 1940 (the communist party set all sails to enlist subscribers around the country). The books most often went to a family, and were lent amongst relatives and friends. A conservative estimate in my view is that each copy may have attained 4-5 readers. That would make a quarter of the population.

The reaction was swift. Already in 1938 the soetal democrats started their own book-club, MFA with six yearly books like MM, but at 20% lower price, owing to the fact that the trade-union movement was taxed, and the state subventioned this club. In 1940, the state started its own book club with seven yearly books (when the competition had forced MM to half their offer) at a price that was a third lower than MM's. The war-time inflation killed the social-democratic MFA, but the other two although in reduced form. All three excelled in popular education, and published some modern literature in translation. But the fierce competition led them to similar choice of publication, nationalistic and traditional. In fact, MFA was more "socially" slanted than MM. The literary life of the country was politically split for decades, but more about camp thinking and international politics than national (one was for or against the Soviet Union).

The movement continued to publish socialrealism, for example a series of translated soviet novels of that kind in the fifties. But this is a receding wave. Formerly a group should be the collective hero of novels, but now an individual hero becomes more prominent. All this follows the development of the Icelandic United Socialist Party, founded in 1938 in a merger of the Communist Party and the left wing of the Social-Democrats. It grew steadily more nationalistic and collaborated with the Conservative party in founding the republic of Iceland in 1945, and in organizing very large  post-war investments in a fishing fleet and industry. The United Socialist Party  left a coalition government with the Conservatives because of its opposition to USA-military bases in Iceland. This populistic nationalism led the Socialist party and the literary movement to oppose, not only modernism, but even free verse and suchlike that they had accepted as late as the middle thirties, when the politics of the common front led communists to collaborate with leading bourgeois personalities of traditional culture. Literary innovation thereafter had few defenders, and was subjected to much fiercer attacks after the second world war than after the first.

In trying to estimate the movement's influence on Icelandic literature, there is some kind of socialist influence in about fifty literary works, concentrated in the period of 1930-43, especially the first five or six years; in all approximately one fifth of the works published in those years. But only a few of those met with the requirements of socialrealism, mostly they are social criticism from a socialist point of view. And these fifty works are mainly beginner's works by writers that later turned to something else, often to a nostalgic celebration of folk life at the beginning of the century (which then met with social criticism!). Also, generally, their former socialist works were little appreciated by the movement's critics, and even less by others. If they were not found politically deficient (in not portraying revolutionary struggle), then they were found to be deficient artistically.

A few of these works however, are fine works of art, made by the movement's -and the nation's - leading writers, who also continued in the socialist vein much longer than other writers, well into the fifties. But again, it is social criticism, rather than socialrealism. Here, of course, we are talking about the great novels of Halldór Laxness in the thirties and forties. Halldór Stefánsson and Sigurður Helgason also wrote novels and short stories, that by their form question traditional values, and thus may be called revolutionary. The same may be said about the poetry of Jóhannes úr Köítlum and Steinn Steinarr. Foreign influence may be spotted, from American populists and from German expressionism in Halldór Laxness' works, from expressionism in Halldór Stefánsson. Of course this literary radicalism was stimulated by the political struggles in Iceland and abroad, but it is difficult to see a direct influence from the literary movement of which all these writers were members; their works also were constantly criticized for not portraying revolutionary struggles.

Among the movement's finest achievements was literary interpretation which clearly demonstrated the interworking of different elements in a literary work. Thus, at the beginning of the thirties, Halldór Laxness introduced Marxist literary criticism of Passíusálmarnir (The Passion psalms) of Hallgrímur Pétursson (1650) showing how its idea-complex expressed the social conditions of common people in that period. Kristinn E. Andresson also gave some fine interpretations, especially of poetry from the 19th century.. But after the first world war, when socialism came on the agenda, the movement's view of the function-of-Hterature becomes less differentiated.

When "The Epoque of The Red Pens" is acclaimed as a great period of literature, it  is  by  an  amalgamation  of  different  things.  Outstanding  achievements   of popular education, the diffusion of good translated literature and a few fine literary works of social criticism as well as a few fine interpretations, are used to justify niveliing demands of literary "engagement" that really was idealistic in a philosophic sense, as antiliterary as it was antimarxistic.

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