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U PAPKE MARY E. PAPKE AN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED AMERICAN MARXIST CRITICISM, 1920-1941: FROM DOGMA TO DYNAMIC STRATEGIES As interest in and development of North American theories of Marxist literary criticism increases, the necessary re examination of existing criticism begins, a process curiously echoing Van Wyck Brooks's early attempts at rediscovering a usable American literary past. That this body of critical work is large and deserves attention is indisputable; the recent bibliographical works of Lee Baxandall and David Peck merely hint at the vast amounts of articles and books written in and pertaining to that period and the influence such work would have had on later developments in critical theory, both Marxist and non-Marxist. That much of this criticism is no longer read— save by literary and social historians— also cannot be denied. Much of the writing in question is, in part, stultifyingly dogmatic, imbued with a cloying revolutionary romanticism that is essentially dictatorial, and of seemingly little relevance for critics whose interests lie in the more sophisticated Marxist formulations of the present day. At the same time, however, this body of critical work forms a literature of commitment, a peculiarly American breed of Marxist critical thought, a rare example of critical theory consciously aligned with literary practice and, more importantly, with social practice. As Jack Conroy, a 30s proletarian novelist and critic, said (quoting Daniel Aaron) thirty years after the fact: Yet surely a movement which involved so many intelligent and generous men and women cannot be barren of significance . . . The strong impact of Communism's program [Marxist critical theory] upon even those writers who opposed it must be reckoned with . . . We who precariously survive in the sixties can regret their inadequacies and failures, their romanticism , their capacity for self-deception, their shrillness, their self-righteousness. It is less easy to scorn their efforts, however blundering and ineffective, to change the world.1 So it is left to the survivors of the sixties — with its rejection of the Old Left by the New Left— to reconstruct a critical tradition and to re-evaluate the materials that, however one might want to deny or qualify them, form such a critical past. Four methodological approaches to early Marxist criticism can be hi THE MINNESOTA REVIEW derived from the secondary sources used in this project. The first is the total denial of the worth of such criticism, these analyses following fast upon the heels of the anti-Stalinist furor already present in the 30s which was then exacerbated by the political atmosphere following World War II. These studies are not criticism of criticism but, rather, political and personal vilifications and must be treated as such. Unfortunately, such analyses were aided and abetted by certain ofthe 30s critics themselves.2 A second approach is practised by the majority of contemporary liberal and radical critics and is one that rejects in a more subtle fashion. It would consign early Marxist criticism to the literary provinces, an attitude best exemplified by Fredric Jameson's summation of 30s criticism in his Marxism and Form: The criticism practiced then was of a relatively untheoretical, essentially didactic nature, destined more for use in the night school than in the graduate seminar, if I may put it that way; and has been relegated to the status of an intellectual and historical curiosity, as which, in the form of an occasional stray reprint of an essay by Plekhanov or a passing reference to Christopher Caudwell, it is presently maintained.3 Close to this method and at times overlapping with it is a third tradition of criticism, that of the liberal social and literary studies which attempt explication of Marxist criticism within its historical context. The classic example of such an analytical work would be Daniel Aaron's Writers on the Left which, up to this time, has served as the standard textbook on critical development in the 30s. While such studies do not ostensibly reject 30s criticism — since such a repudiation would negate the contemporary writers' own work— there are still major critical problems within this approach. The most obvious ones center upon the researchers' biases and their critical abilities beyond the sphere of historical discourse. For...

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