2.3. Some Theoretical Undercurrents: Brecht, Benjamin and Lukács

Georg Lukács, one of socialist realism's theoretical advocates,88 presented a model of realism which provided an important theoretical target for both Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht. Lukács suggested that the bourgeois realist novel, the classic literary form with its closed text and typifications of character 'which organically bound together the particular and the general,'89 was a suitable model for contemporary realist practice. Very much in keeping with a Leninist understanding of cultural development,90 this form represented for Lukács a continuation of the cultural foundations laid by the 'former' bourgeois to 'create a picture of human relations in all their roundedness'.91 For Lukács this was unachievable by any of the possibilities opened up by modernism, hence not only did he see its attitude as unwelcome but saw in it the potential to be highly reactionary to the point where it could be viewed as a fellow traveller of fascism: a Trojan Horse within the socialist camp.92 For Lukács all modernist works were falsifications which both reflected and reproduced 'the anomie and cynicism of capitalist relations'.93 The techniques of montage- the fragment and interior monologue- were described as formalist and therefore translated into a sort of political retreat. For Lucács the documentary/factography approaches to art (epitomised by Heartfield's practice) were inappropriate because they blurred 'the line between art & science and fetishising facts' and that these 'abrupt shifts were to be avoided in favour of gradual passages and developments.'94 Heartfield's anti-fascist montage practices were thus seen by Lukács as, at best, no more than a 'good joke' and at worst 'intellectually unable to penetrate the surface of life's reality.'95

This position was virilantly opposed by both Brecht and Benjamin who accused Lukács's version of socialist realism as a 'deluded and timeless formalism.'96 With a reliance on outdated methods this realism was inappropriately based upon the cultural products of a class whose relevance and radicality had been lost and superseded by the very dynamics of capitalism itself. What it meant to live in the constantly transforming 'modern world' could, in both Benjamin's and Brecht's eyes, never be adequately engaged by the 'historical forms of individuality of the Balzacian or Tolstoyan type-hence to refurbish such figures in new conditions would actually be a signal flight from realism.'97 For them it was fragmentation, the interruption and re-ordering of reality by some sort of montage technique which seemed to offer the most effective approach to creating a relevant realist practice. The dissolving of contradictions so desirable for Lukács realism of imaginary resolution was again the converse of Brecht's and Benjamin's position. Roberts explains: 'it wasn't the imaginary totality that would lead the artist to realism but the fragment....for if the artist is truly to inhabit the contradictions of the bourgeois order, bourgeois reality had to be made available in a form that actually embodied these contradictions.'98

Benjamin's unfinished 'Passagen-Werk' (Arcades Project) clearly reveals his understanding of need to use contemporary forms in order to challenge the 'false consciousness' of dominant ideological relations. For Benjamin it was through fragmented representation that this realm of dreams99 could be penetrated and effect 'the dialectic of awakening.'100 The need to organise and produce work which could engage with reality in a contemporary and therefore relevant way is central to Benjamin's position. The cultural effects of industrialisation which 'caused a crisis of perception due to the speeding up of time and the fragmentation of space'101 could only be overcome by constructing 'synthetic realities'102 out of the very conditions from which they are produced. In other words, the most effective way to overcome the fragmentation of bourgeois reality via technology is not to re-employ out-moded methods of representation but to emulate the very effects of the technology and thus 'give back to humanity that capacity for experience which technological production threatens to take away.'103

It was thus the photograph which both Benjamin and Brecht identified as the most appropriate medium to engage with reality. Moreover, it was through the technique of montage, the potential of the 'semiotic fragment....to estrange familiar objects and identities by drawing the disparate and disconnected phenomena of social relations together'104 which seemed to provide the key to the impasse of the ambiguous nature of the 'straight' photograph. Brecht's now famous remark that a photograph of the Krupp's factory tells you nothing about the conditions and relations that lie within and Benjamin's observations that straight, 'documentary photography ran the risk of turning a rubbish heap..... into an object of aesthetic contemplation'105 pointed towards the importance of a montagist strategy.

Benjamin characterised Heartfield's work, with its free association and re-combination of unrelated elements, 'as delivering the constant shocks and interruptions in the viewer's associative processes that marks the coming of a new form of art'.106 This is also evident in Eisenstein's work with his 'ploughing up the psyche' of the spectator and in Brecht's own notion of Epic Theatre. Brecht's thoughts on realism translated into his own theatre productions where he employed the device of montage to re-represent 'conditions by allowing the actions to be interrupted.'107 This interruption was crucial to his conception of realism- the aim was not to reproduce conditions (as in the case of bourgeois art) but rather disclosing and uncovering them through this method.

Lukács, in failing to acknowledge the importance of the notion of contemporary and popular engagement allowed him, according to Roberts, to close

down the possible representation of social contradiction by not so much instrumentalising content but by instrumentalising form and lacked a critical sense that artworks are made out of the social contradiction that they seek to represent.108

But it also must be stressed that Lukács himself was certainly no narrow thinker. Given that the first and foremost priority of Soviet policy was the survival of the Soviet Union itself, Lukács's position could be seen as a tactical one. The main enemy of the Soviet Union was seen to be the expansionist threat of Nazi Germany and not traditional bourgeois democracy. Socialist realism in a Lukácsian sense was effectively a strategy to forge allegiances with the most progressive sections of this bourgeois to ensure its survival. We saw how the Popular Front in France was based upon the alliance of revolutionary communists with the most progressive liberal democrats as it seemed to many to offer the most effective political resistance to the rise of fascism. By ignoring serious political differences in the name of a 'common cause' the formulation was thus: only after the fight against fascism was successful could there be any talk of resuming the struggle for socialism. In the light of this we can see that Lukács's realism was in part based on this attempt to forge 'alliances with mature bourgeois-classical heritage'109 and goes someway to explain his fervent hostility to 'offensive' revolutionary proletarianism, represented by the leftist avant-garde and the likes of Heartfield, Brecht, and Benjamin, which might upset potential allies in the bourgeois camp.

A realist theory and practice which represented either a transformational concept of the artwork's relations to production or as producing a general critical effect went against the ideological needs of the Soviet state. This is a crucial point- socialist realism represented a closing down of the ability of artists to intervene to produce counter-hegemonic descriptions of reality, the practices which were at the core of Brecht's and Benjamin's position. It is this function of socialist realism which is at the centre of both Brecht's and Benjamin's hostility to it. Brecht, in discussing the socialist realists, observes that

They are, to put it bluntly, enemies of production. Production makes them uncomfortable. You never know where you are with production; production is the unforseeable. You never know what is going to come out. And they themselves don't want to produce. They want to play apparactchik and exercise control over other people. Every one of their criticisms contains a threat.110

It is clear then what is at stake in this aspect of the realist debate. Realism for Benjamin and Brecht was not about applying this or that pre-given form which would then mechanically 'reveal the real.' Rather, it is an inherently unstable category, itself full of the contradictions of reality itself, and which transforms itself as reality itself is transformed. Montage, in the context discussed, was seen by the practitioners and leftist modernists as the most suitable technique at this given point in time. Nowhere was it argued that inherent to montage was a realist capacity. The main problem with the socialist realist position is that it becomes a naturalistic and formalist position which detaches from realism its flexible and critical nature. Although Lukács himself cannot be lumped together with those who reduced socialist realism to a form of naturalism, his position under the ideological umbrella of the Soviet Union prevented him developing any identification with or a recognition of a contemporary and complex notion of an effective realist practice.

2.4. Summary of Part Two

The montage practices discussed in this section can be seen to differ considerably in how they relate to the concept of realism. Léger's rather deterministic and abstract realism, reflecting the relative isolation of the leftist avant-garde in 1937, stands in sharp contrast to Heartfield's immediate interventionist approach, facilitated by the theoretical positions of the German Communist Party and the existence of a receptive workers movement. Eisenstein's highly developed theoretical foundations allowed him to produce innovative filmic work which centralised a dialectical understanding of 'the multi-faceted world', reflecting in turn the early Soviet Union's own close register with, and control of, reality. Central to each of the practitioners discussed is the use of montage as a tactic, a strategy which allowed an engagement with the material world. As I have sought to point out, montage was not an inherently realist device but it did provide these practitioners with what seemed to be the best means to engage with the real at that point in time. There was no illusion that montage practice in itself equals realism- one only has to look at the late montage work of former radical Gustav Klutsis who was co-opted to propagandise for the first (and brutal) Five Year Plan as the Soviet Union reinvented itself as a major competing capitalist power.111 Indeed, it is clear that montage can be just as easily used to hide the real as to reveal it. Brecht himself was adamant that realism itself 'has to be won and re-won in the new conditions'112 in which it finds itself. As Terry Eagleton points out,

Brecht's rejection of Lukács nostalgic organism, his traditionalist preference for closed symmetrical totalities, is made in the name of an allegiance to open, multiple forms which bear in their torsions the very imprint of the contradictions they lay bare.113

Thus it is not a technique but an attitude which is informed by theory developed elsewhere. The conditions for this have to be artistic freedom, ('art is not capable of turning artistic ideas dreamed up in offices into works of art'114), albeit a highly informed one, which chooses its own devices in which to be 'realist.'

Realism for both Brecht and Benjamin can be described as a dialectical, transformational and ultimately a context dependent approach - using the most suitable methods and techniques in both the production and dissemination of the artwork at the time in question. During the inter-war period montage seemed to offer the left modernists the possibility to intervene in a world which was becoming dominated by pre-described forms. It was here that realism proved to be a rallying point for the most politically advanced sections of the leftist anti-Stalinists, anti-fascists of the period, with prescriptive socialist realism on the one hand and the re-invention of classical mythologies on the other. But it must also be made clear that the formulations that were developed during this period in terms of the techniques used for realism should not become universal ones. As Brecht comments:

We must not derive realism as such from particular existing works, but we shall use every means, old and new, tried and untried, derived from art and derived form other sources, to render reality to men in form they can master. We shall take care not to describe one particular historical form....of a particular epoch as realistic...and thereby erect a merely formal...criteria for realism...Our realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions.115

 Footnotes

88 Although Lukác's ideas in many ways coincided with the strategies of Stalinism, it has to be made clear that he was very resistive to the closed-down practice embodied in the Zhdanovist variety of socialist realism, which he codedly castigated as Naturalism. See Jameson, F, 1992, p 202

89 Roberts, J, 1992, p 198

90 At its is simplest, Lenin (and Trotsky- see his book Literature and Revolution, Redwords, 1991. p 213-242 for a detailed account) saw socialist art as a continuation of the best elements of bourgeois culture, not a complete rejection of it.

91 Roberts, J, 1992, p 198

92 It has to be remembered that Lucács saw his theoretical position originating from within an already established socialist state and therefore that the defence and consolidation of that state was paramount -over and above that of any thought of spreading the revolution westwards (see Hallas, D, 1985, pg. 60-86). Lukács point about 'modernism as fellow traveller of fascism' is more than slightly ironic considering Hitler's own appropriation of various forms of totalising bourgeois culture ('Der Krieg') and his own extreme aversion to modernism which he saw as 'Degenerate'.

93 Roberts, J, 1992, p 198

94 Wood, P, 1994, p 320

95 Lukács, G quoted by Pachnike, P, in Morally Rigorous and Visually Voracious, John Heartfield, op.cit. p 43

96 Livingston, R, Anderson, P, Mulhern, F, Aesthetic And Politics, 1992 p 63

97 Ibid., p 63

98 Roberts, J, 1992, p 200

99 By this he meant the 'dream cast' by the phantasmagoria of bourgeois commodity culture, a society based upon the abstract exchange of products which has no conception of their origins. This can also be interpreted to refer to the role of ideology in manufacturing and perpetuating the (false) consciousness of this reality.

100 Walter Benjamin quoted by Susan Buck-Morss, 1989, P 261

101 Buck-Morss, S, 1989, p 268

102 Walter Benjamin quoted by Susan Buck-Morss, ibid. p 268

103 Buck-Morss, ibid. p 268

104 Roberts, J, 1992, p 200

105 Benjamin, W, Quoted by P. Wood, 1994, p 300

106 Roth, N, in Pachnicke, P & Honnef, K. 1991, p 26

107 Benjamin, W, 1992

108 Roberts, J, 1992, p 199

109 Wood, P, 1994, p 320

110 Brecht, B, quoted by Benjamin, W, in Aesthetic and Politics, 1992, p 97

111 The Nazi's hostility to modernism did not prevent themselves from at times utilising montage themselves. Also we can see in Mussolini's fascist Italy the incorporation of a futurist style which made extensive use montage to support its ideological needs.

112 Brecht, B quoted by Wood, P, 1994, p 325

113 Eagleton, T, 1976, p 161

114 Brecht, B quoted by Wood, P, 1994, p 325

115 Brecht, B, in Aesthetic and Politics, 1992, p 83