The Marician Aesthetics

Most of the new ‘Marxian’ critics use these terms interchangeably, as if they were synonyms, and as a result some very strange things happen. Still more abusive is the use of ‘bourgeois’ in a double sense to mean a person of a certain economic status or a non-communist. A communist, on the other hand, is a person who, regardless of his economic position, holds a certain definite set of opinions. Most of the new ‘Marxian’ critics use the terms interchangeably, as if they were synonyms, and as a result some very strange things happen. The Marxist means by communist literature, literature which serves the communist purpose, and by bourgeois literature, literature which hinders it. Perhaps the best evidence of its influence is the fact that even Leon Trotsky, who in general stands head and shoulders out of it in the clear air, thinks that if someone should come along who could “grasp all the new generalizations” of physical science.