Literature and varieties of history

[Part 4]

In today’s column I wish to discuss the Marxian approach to history and its implications for the study and analysis of literature. Of all the varieties of history currently in vogue, Marxian history has perhaps exerted the most significant and far-reaching influence on Sri Lankan literature and criticism. For example, in the case of Sinhala literature, writers such as Martin Wickremasinghe, Ediriweera Sarchchandra and Gunadasa Amarsekera have seriously engaged Marxist approaches to history and culture if only to point out its characteristic deficiencies.

When we examine the various literary movements that have arisen and fallen during the past fifty years or so in Sri Lanka like the Peoples’ Literature moment, we see clearly the shadow of Marxist thinking lying thickly over the deliberations. It may not have been a deeply informed and enlightened view of Marxian history; however, its presence was undeniable.

Karl Marx has written on many subjects, but one of his most consequential has been on the topic of history. Indeed, it occupies a position of pre-eminence in his corpus of writing. His approach to history has had a profound impact on various fields of study including literary studies. Marxism’s approach to literature has been glossed in diverse ways by commentators such as Trotsky, Plekhanov, Lukacs, Lucien Goldmann, Pierre Machery, Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton with varying degree of success.

In today’s column I would like examine the distinctive perspective on history proposed by Karl Marx and his subsequent interpreters, and how it could stimulate more innovative thinking about literary and criticism. As I write these words, I have at the back of my mind certain desiderata associated with modern Sinhala literature.

It was the French thinker Voltaire who put into circulation the idea of a philosophy of history in the eighteenth century. And it was the distinguished German philosopher Hegel who highlighted the salience of a philosophy of history. Hegel, in keeping with his idealistic strain of thinking, argued that human history progressed in a detectable direction conforming to certain dialectical moves. In his analysis of history, Hegel focused on the idea of history as a narrative that focuses on the unfolding of spirit.

He was of the view that history needs to be understood as the attempt of the sprit to conquer the impediments that lie in the path of freedom and self-liberation. Marx drew on the broad outlines of Hegel’s philosophy and turned it on its head. He focused not on the spiritual aspect of history but the materialist aspect. That is why Marx’s approach t history is referred to as historical materialism, although he himself did not use this phrase.

Despite the fact that later commentators and interpreters have written at length on the philosophy of history espoused by Marx, it needs to be remembered that he himself did not offer a comprehensive, neatly-rounded and systematic account of his philosophy of history. This is not to suggest that his vision of history does not permeate his writings; it clearly does. However, we as interpreters of his philosophy of history need to construct it out of his diverse writings, in this regard, some of the more important works are The German Ideology of 1845-7, The Communist Manifesto, Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. Once we construct this philosophy of history, on the basis of Marx’s far-flung writings, we would realize that it is one that is as innovative as it is complicated.

Hegel believed there is conflict and contradiction in the unfolding of history, and Marx subscribed to that notion as well. However, there is a significant difference. While Hegel focused on the disembodies spirit and abstract ideas, Marx focused on human beings struggling to achieve their ambitions against a backdrop of material forces .As Marx memorably stated, ‘history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.’ This indeed stands in sharp contrast to the worldview of Hegel. The approach to history suggested by Marx is generally referred to as the ‘materialist conception of history.’ – this phrase was coined by his faithful collaborator Friedrich Engels. This was a strategy of differentiating it from Hegel’s idealistic concept of history.

The material forces that impinge on human lives constitute a cornerstone of Marx’s philosophy of history. As he himself remarked, ‘I was led to the conclusion that legal relations, as well as forms of state, could neither be understood, by themselves, nor explained by the so-called genera progress of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life which Hegel calls…..civil society. This anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.’ The political economy is a vital animating force in history.

History, according to Marx moves through conflict and here what is of paramount importance is class conflict; indeed, it is this class conflict, in his view, that galvanizes historical change. He pointed out that in all societies subject to class division, it is the dominated class that is in a majority and the dominant class that is in a minority. However, as this minority controls the levels of power they are able to exercise their dominion over the rest. The dominant class does so not only through brute force, but more importantly through hegemony, where through mis-education and mis-representation their consent is secured.

Classes are the social collectivities which promote social change in relation to their critical engagement with the economic base of society. It is interesting to note that the opening words of the communist manifesto are;’ the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.’ It is evident that the notion of class functions as a master-concept for max, although nowhere do in his writings does he examine systematically this concept in a way that discerning readers may have wished.

Class antagonism

In discussing class antagonism, Marx primarily focused on two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As he wrote in the communist manifesto, ‘society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great classes directly facing each other; bourgeoisie and proletariat.’

Therefore, when we seek to construct Marx’s philosophy of history we need to give pride of place to this class conflict and is efficacy as a driving force of history. It is important to bear in mind the fact that Marx believed that a class functions only when it is aware of itself as a collectivity, and what this means is that it has to recognize its difference from a contending class. As Marx himself remarked, ‘the separate individuals form a class in so far as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors.’

It is true that Karl Marx posited a linear movement of history with the preferred destination being the communist society of perfect equality. However, he also recognized that his full of paradoxes and ironies. His view of history is intimately linked to the rise and fall of capitalism and according to him capitalism contains its own seeds of destruction and self- demolishing logic. As he remarked, ‘the advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association.

The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. ’Here Marx points to ironies of history; they are produced by unintended and unanticipated consequences.

What is interesting about Marx’s philosophy of history, as I see it, is that it is both descriptive and prescriptive. What I mean by this is that his vision of history lays bare the way history moves through time and society, noting the important interplays in the process. At the same time, Marx is also interested in securing total freedom for all and hence he advocates the replacement of the dominant bourgeoisie. The trope that he used in describing his role in the process of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie is that of a mid-wife; his aim was to minimize the birth pangs by speeding up the process of social transformation.

Forward movement

Marx had a clear idea of the dynamics of the forward movement of history and the concomitant social transformations. The economic crisis within capitalism will inevitably lead to the further impoverishment of the proletariat which in turn would pave the way for the rise of a revolutionary class consciousness. a consequence of these moves there will occur a seizure of power of the state. His in turn would serve to create a dictatorship of the proletariat, as the state withers away and a communist society with full freedom is establishes.

In this classless society, Marx believed that freedom from exploitation and alienation would be eliminated and human beings will have the opportunity to realize their potentialities to the full. This is how Marx had mapped the progress of history and the attendant social changes.

Another way of describing this philosophy of history advocated by Marx is to say that it was his intention to allow and encourage the workers of the world to seize the reins of history. This was an act of self-empowerment and self-liberation.it was his belief that once this goal was attained, the dynamics of communism would spell the end f one type of history, and mark the commencement of a new history of human liberation.

Therefore, when we discuss Marx’s vision of history it is important to bear in mind that it was guided by a utopian vision regarding the equality of human beings. It was both a map of a territory and plan of action at the same time.

Very often Marx’s approach to history is characterized as the economic interpretation of history. This trend of thought is expressed most clearly in critique of political economy. ‘in the social production of their life men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of the will, relations of production which correspond to a definite state of development of their material productive forces.

The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.’ He then goes on to make his famous statement that it is not the consciousness of men that determine their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

This approach to history and society has been subject to diverse interpretations, some maintaining that Marx proposed a mechanical and overly deterministic relationship between the base and the superstructure.

Consequently, Engels was moved to remark that, ’According to the materialist conception of history, the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phase.

The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, constitutions established by the victorious class struggle and its consequences, constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc. – forms of law- and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the combatants; political, legal, and philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma – also exercise their influence upon the course of historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form.’

Marx and Hegel in their approach to turned their backs on a non-differentiated universal account if it, and instead focused on a series of modes of production that constitute history. These include tribal, ancient, feudal, capitalist and communist modes of production, each of which reflected different forms of social relationship with nature. Consequently, at each stage of production we see the emergence of different modes of life. These transformations can best be understood not as simple determinations of the forces of production or the base bur as a more complex and nuanced interplay that the quotation from Engel that I cited in the earlier paragraph suggests

Diverse interpretations

Marx’s philosophy of history has been subjected to diverse interpretations, sometimes even by his staunch admirers. This is because, he did not lay out a systematic exposition of his philosophy; in addition there are inconsistencies and contradictions within and across his texts that prompt a plurality of interpretations. For example does the base shape the superstructure or does it condition it or interact with it? This issue has lent itself to differing explications. Similarly while some gloss Marx’s notion of productive forces as things while others maintain it refers to the system whereby raw materials are converted into products.

Moreover, some of the commentators seem to fall into a kind of error that literary theorist refer to as an intentional fallacy – that is, to say try to decipher what Marx actually intended. This is justifiable so long as it is kept within bounds, while the intentions of the author are important, a reconstruction of them cannot be regarded as an assurance of the meaning of the text or as the limits of meaning.

As a student of literary theory I believe that the meaning of a text, whether by Karl Marx or anyone else, cannot be posited as some essence that resides within the text; it is, rather, the outcome of an act of reading. Hence the role of the reader is paramount. This is indeed the approach to Marx’s texts that I prefer and advocate. As S.H.Rigby says, ‘the shift of attention away from the author, and towards the reader’s creation of meaning, opens up a number of possible interpretations of a given text.’

The author, in our case, Marx, ceases to be an imaginary unity and becomes instead,’ a space where a number of discourses intersect…..to interpret a text is not merely to reconstruct the unity of its author’s intentions. It is also to identify the text’s contradictions, absences, and silences, the problems which the text papers over or leaves unresolved.’ Therefore, the internal inconsistencies that one finds in Marx’s texts are understandable but also invite acute reading.

Vision of history

It is against this general discussion of Marx’s vision of history that I wish to focus on some British Marxist historians. They are, for historical reasons, closer to us than French or Italian historians. In addition they write in an accessible style as opposed to some of their European counterparts.( I could have, of course, selected some Marxist-inspired Indian historians like D.D.Kosambi and Sumit Sarakar).

There have been a number of British historians influenced and guided by Marx such as E.P. Thompson, Ronald Hilton, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, V.G, Kiernan, Geoffrey Barraclough. Here, in the interest of space, I would like to focus on the works of two of them. They are E.P. Thompson (1924-1993) and Christopher Hill (1912-2003)- two writers I have enjoyed immensely because they are acutely aware of the ways in which the social world is held together by words.

In terms of our immediate interests, they are important because both of them have displayed a deep and abiding love for literature. For example, Thompson once remarked that,’ I was teaching as much literature as history. I thought how do I, first of all, raise with an adult class, many of them in the labour movement – discuss with them the significance of literature. And I started reading Morris…Morris took the decision that I would have to present him.

In the course of doing this I became much more serious about being a historian.’ Similarly, Christopher Hill stated his deep love for literature, and in his many work he examines literary works with great sensitivity. Thompson wrote a book on Blake and Hill wrote a book on Milton, both generated a great interest. Thompson, of course, apart from being a distinguished historian was also a poet.

There are, it seems to me, a number of interests that Thompson and Hill share in common. First they were inspired by Marxism, and for a time they were both members of the British communist party. Second, they are fascinated by the idea of people’s history, history from below.

Their writings vividly testify to this fact. Third, they both sought to connect Marxist thinking to traditional British culture and experience in interesting ways; they wanted it to be a native flowering of thought. Furth, as I stated earlier, both of them were deeply interested in literature and saw its many potentials in historical inquiry. Fifth, as opposed to many contemporary historians, they write lucidly in an accessible style, their objective meaning not to pander to a coterie of readers but to appeal to as large a circle of readers as possible.

Historian

First let us consider the work of E.P. Thompson. He is the author of such widely discussed books as The Making of the English Working Class (it enjoys the status of a contemporary classic), The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. In addition, he wrote a large number of papers.

Thompson was a historian, a poet, a social activist and a fighter for peace. His diverse interests find a unifying echo in his historical writings. The Making of the English Working Class had a profound impact not only on historians but also on scholars in adjacent fields. It stressed the importance of exploring history from bottom up.

In this book, Thompson said that, ‘I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the obsolete hand-loom weaver, the Utopian artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott from the enormous condescension of posterity.’ This radical approach to history, as I hope to demonstrate later, has great implications for the study of literature.

The Making of the English Working Class is a book that displayed the significance of a number of themes – class consciousness, culture, experience, radicalism – and how they are fruitfully intertwined. As a commentator astutely pointed out this book underscores the fact ‘that it is possible for people to make something of themselves other than that which history has made of them.’

It opened the way to examining the experiences of the working classes, their agency and radicalism, through fresh eyes. This book also played a major role in facilitating the emergence of cultural studies under the guidance of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall.

Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class as well as in his other books focused on the presence of moral imagination in socialism and a radical outlook in popular culture. In his book on William Morris, he directed our attention to the important fact, to use his own words, that, Morris was ‘the first creative artist of major stature in the history of the world to take his stand, consciously and without the shadow of a compromise with the revolutionary working class.’ Similarly, in his book on Blake he demonstrated the bold radical imagination that animated his writings.

Class consciousness

The way Thompson describes class and class consciousness in his book is most interesting and it has ramifications for literary study. He says that, ‘the class experience is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born – or enter voluntarily. Class-consciousness us the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms; embodies in tradition, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms.’

This is line of approach that can prove to be particularly interesting in investigations into modern Sinhala literature; contradicting standard understandings of class he asserts that ‘I do not see class as a structure, nor even as a category, but as something which in fact happens…in human relationships.’ For us, students of literature, his vision of class is especially relevant because he says that it is in the space of culture, interpreted in its widest sense that classes seek to establish their distinctiveness in relation to each other.

Thompson’s ideas on tradition are equally relevant to us. It is his belief that cultural traditions are chosen, re-blended, constructed, challenged, subverted, as classes assert themselves. What this means, according to him, is that traditions need to be understood as sites of struggle, narratives of conflict. This is an approach to tradition that is usefully applicable not only to historians but also to literary scholars.

A task of the historian, and by extension the literary scholar, is to come up with a descriptive and analytical vocabulary that is adequate to explicating this dynamism of cultural traditions. Similarly, the way in which he did focus on the idea of experience as being central to historical analysis should find a ready echo among literary scholars. He sees experience as mediating between relations of production and consciousness of class. There are, to be sure, some critics of Thompson who argue that his concept of experience is a little too vague to be useful analytically.

Marxist thinking

The second British historian who was influenced by Marxist thinking that I wish to focus on is Christopher Hill. He was for many years a professor at Oxford and made a name for himself as a radical historian. He is the author of such books as the English Revolution, Lenin and the Russian Revolution, Milton and the English Revolution, and The World Turned Upside Down. Let us stay for a moment with this last mentioned book as it displays the signature features of Hill. The subtitle of the book is Radical Ideas during the English Revolution and it examines how within the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century there were radical groups, inadequately studied and underrated, who invite closer study; Hill focuses on their activities.

He opens his book by saying,’ popular revolt was for many centuries an essential feature of the English tradition, and the middle decades of the seventeenth century saw the greatest upheaval that has yet occurred in Britain. The present book does not attempt to tell again the story of how the army of the long parliament overcame Charles I and his supporters’.

Instead, his aim is to tell a different and forgotten story. As he remarks,’ This book deals with what from our point of view are subsidiary episodes and ideas in the English revolution, the attempt of various groups of the common people to impose their own solutions to the problems of their time…’This attempt to look at history from below, to construct a people’s history, is one tat was one of the privileged aims of Christopher Hill. In an essay titled, history and the present, he claims that the most fruitful transformation in historical approaches in our time has been the rise of ‘history from below.’ The notion that ordinary citizens possess a history, that they may have played a crucial role in shaping the historical process than is commonly realized needs to be recognized. As he remarks, ‘this new emphasis, I suppose, must be related to the emergence of a more self-consciously democratic society. History no longer deals with exclusively with kings and their mistresses, prime ministers and wars, statues and debates in parliament..’

Demanding

Christopher Hill admits that writing history from below, to be sure, is much more demanding than writing from on top. This is because historians are forced to adopt a new attitude to historical change and ordinary people; history cannot be shacked to the great man concept of history. In this attempt to write history from below, Hill has found literary texts most helpful.

When we read Hill’s books dealing with the changes in the seventeenth century England, we realize how liberally he has drawn on literary texts. Indeed, his readings of Milton’s poetry and other related works, to my mind, are as good as any by acclaimed literary scholars. In his historical and literary analysis, it is evident that he is ready to obey a revolutionary impulse that allows his emotions as well as his inquiring mind to stay fully engaged.

Hill suggests that, ‘study of literature is relevant to the arguments about history from on top or history from below. For political historians state papers and parliamentary debates are their primary source. Some historians dismiss literary sources as insufficiently objective. But state papers and parliamentary debates call for close reading and analysis of the same sophisticated kind as do literary sources.’

The important point that Hill is making here is that not only literary sources as incredibly valuable to historians but also that they can deploy techniques of literary analysis in historical investigations – something that Hill has accomplished with great skill.

Concept of history

What I have done so far is to discuss Marx’s concept of history, its distinguishing features and how two eminent British historians drawing on the work of Marx, have cleared new pathways for historical inquiry. My immediate goal is to explore how the writings of these thinkers and historians can help us to think through better some of the problems associated with literary understanding and analysis.

My primary interest, of course, is in Sinhala literature; therefore, let me make some connections that I think are important. First let us take the question of class. As I pointed out earlier this is indeed a central concept in Marxian analysis. E.P.Thompson took this concept and expanded it in interesting ways to reach areas of concern that had been hitherto neglected or under-emphasized. He focuses on the idea of class-consciousness and the cultural formation associated with class; hence, the dialectical interplay between economics and cultural values, structure and agency, technological and social dimensions of existence acquire a great significance.

This is indeed a mode of thinking that can be productively applied to modern Sinhala fiction. In the case of the novels of, say, Gunadasa Amarasekera the idea of class is subtly present as a subterranean waterway.; however, so far, we have applied this idea in a somewhat mechanically way deploying the standard structural sense sanctioned by traditional Marxist thinking. What Thompson’s approach, with its focus on social relations, cultural values, ideas of agency allow us to do is to approach the idea of class in Sinhala fiction within a broader and more fruitful frame of reference.

Second, the idea of history from below and the related density of peasant consciousness can be made use of in literary analysis with great profit. Let us consider Sinhala folk poetry; some of it is vitally connected with different professions and activities of livelihood as for example –‘pathal kavi’- (poetry related to mining). These poems may not be outstanding works of literature in terms of subtlety of expression or complexity of experience or the bold use of tropes. However, they can provide us with an entry into peasant consciousness and its workings and how they interact with the larger social discourses..

Third, let us consider an example from classical Sinhala literature. The Saddharma ratanavaliya stands out as a unique work of Sinhala prose for the way it combines and articulates a peasant consciousness within an elitist framework. The tension between the two can be fruitfully explored in the way a historian like Christopher Hill has written about Milton, Defoe, Richardson, Marvell and others. In addition, just like the historians I have cited have done, it is possible to explore the wider social discourse that resulted in a text like the Saddharma ratanavaliya. An interesting idea suggests itself here; what expectations of the potential responses of readers and listeners shaped the narrative discourse of the book? In this regard, it seems to me that Christopher Hill’s approach to Restoration literature can prove to be a useful stimulant.

( To be continued)