Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.
There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
The situation of the Old Left was the theory of Socialist Realism, etc. It seemed pointless to argue. We stayed carefully away from people who wrote for the New Masses.
If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.
We need writers who will joyfully impose upon themselves the discipline of understanding and acting upon working-class-theory.
He was one of the Hollywood 10 of the McCarthy blacklist period.
What is very troubling is that people who have tried to write literature, even, for example, proletarian writers, seem to write within the norms of the dominant class.
Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.
With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair.
I am one of those authors who consider it their highest honour and their highest liberty to have a completely untrammelled chance of using their pens to serve the working people.
I love 19th-century Russian literature, the avant garde, the Soviet period.
I do not see a necessary connection between proletarian literature and some set percentage of words which bring the blushes to a maiden's cheek.