“…The intellectuals sneer at the idea of a proletarian literature. They will acknowledge the possibility of nationalist cultures; but they have not reached the understanding that the national idea is dying, and that the class ideologies are alone real in the world today.
“I believe I was the first writer in America to herald the advent of a world proletarian literature as a concomitant to the rise of the world proletariat. This was in an article published in the Liberator in 1921, called ` Towards Proletarian Art.’ Mine was a rather mystic and intuitive approach; nothing had yet been published in English on this theme; the idea was not yet in the air, as it is today; I was feeling my way…
“Thousands of books and articles on the theories of proletarian literature have been published in…Russia, in Germany, Japan, China, France, England, and other countries. There is not a language in the world today in which a vigorous bold youth is not experimenting with the materials of proletarian literature. It is a world phenomenon;; and it grows, changes, criticizes itself, expands without the blessing of all the official mandarins and play-actor iconoclasts and psalm-singing Humanists of the moribund bourgeois culture. It does not need them any longer; it will soon boot them into their final resting places in the museum.
“No, the bourgeois intellectuals tell us, there can be no such thing as a proletarian literature. We answer briefly: There is…
“We have only one magazine in America, the New Masses, dedicated to proletarian literature. And there is no publishing house of standing and intelligent direction to help clarify the issues. Nearest is the International Publishers perhaps, but this house devotes itself solely to a rather academic approach to economics and makes little attempt to influence either the popular mind or our intellectuals. It is as stodgy and unenterprising…as the Yale University Press, and similar organizations.
“If there were a live publishing house here, such as the Cenit of Madrid, for instance, it could issue a series of translations of proletarian novels, poetry, criticism that might astound some of our intellectuals…
“For proletarian literature is a living thing. It is not based on a set of fixed dogmas…
“In proletarian literature, there are several laws which seem to be demonstrable. One of them is that all culture is the reflection of a specific class society. Another is, that bourgeois culture is in process of decay, just as bourgeois society is in a swift decline.
“The class that will inherit the world will be the proletariat, and every indication points inevitably to the law that this proletarian society will, like its predecessors, create its own culture.
“…Proletarian literature will reflect the struggle of the workers in their fight for the world. It portrays the life of the workers…with a clear revolutionary point…
“My belief is that a new form is evolving, which one might name `Proletarian Realism.’ Here are some of its elements, as I see them:
“…Proletarian realism deals with the real conflicts of men and women who work for a living…Proletarian realism is never pointless. It does not believe in literature for its own sake, but in literature that is useful, has a social function. Every major writer has always done this in the past; but is necessary to fight the battle constantly, for there are more intellectuals than ever who are trying to make literature a plaything…
“As few words as possible. We are not interested in the verbal acrobats—this is only another form for bourgeois idleness. The Workers live too close to reality to care about these literary show-offs, these verbalist heroes…
“Away with all lies about human nature…Everyone is a mixture of motives; we do not have to lie about our hero in order to win our case…No straining or melodrama…”
(New Masses, September, 1930)
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