Socialism and the Avantgarde in the Period of the Second International

Abstract

There is no necessary or logical connection between the two phenomena, since the assumption that what is revolutionary in the arts must also be revolutionary in politics (or the other way round) is based on a semantic confusion of the various senses of the term >, or of analogous terms. On the other hand there is or was frequently an existential connection, since socialists (marxist, anarchist or other kinds) and the artistic and cultural avantgarde were both outsiders, opposed to and by bourgeois orthodoxy. We may also mention the youth, and quite often relative poverty, of many members of the avantgarde and boheme. The poverty may be exaggerated, but the economic insecurity of young or heterodox artists and writers, petty producers of commodities for which no established market existed, is not to be underestimated, even though for many avantgardists of bourgeois origins the choice of insecurity over a secure bourgeois existence was deliberate.