mv following our discussion the other day

The idea of a socialist, or proletarian art was for him a nonsense, not only impossible in the period of transition and in a country where even the working class was culturally backward, but quite simply because the proletariat could only realize itself by abolishing itself and a new art, a new culture could only exist in a classless society. What was possible and should be the intelligentsia's objective, was a revolutionary art and literature, of which Trotsky gives two possible definitions corresponding, one might say, to two stages: "the works whose themes reflect the Revolution, and the works which are not connected with the Revolution in theme, but are thoroughly imbued with it, and are Colored by the new consciousness arising out of the Revolution".

For Trotsky, art and culture in general are in no way a kind of "decoration" on life floating above it for the benefit of the powerful alone. They are the wealth of life, its culmination and this gives them their value: "man does not live by politics alone".

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The first half of this collection contains theoretical pieces, mostly concerned with the relationship between art and politics. In extracts from Literature and Revolution and Culture and Socialism Trotsky eschews the vulgar Marxist reduction of art to economics, writing "A work of art should, in the first place, be judged by its own law, that is, by the law of art". He lambasts the excessive claims made on behalf of "proletarian art" and presents theoretical (Marxist) predictions of the future of art. Also included is the text of a speech defending artistic freedom before a communist party committee, complete with interjections. Written between 1923 and 1926, with references to then current literary controversies, these selections provide an interesting complement to Zamyatin's criticism from the same period. Later works, written in exile, attack the ruinous effects of totalitarianism on Soviet art and praise independent revolutionary artists such as Diego Rivera and Andre Breton.