Rudi Supek—Freedom and Polydeterminism in Cultural Criticism

Rudi Supek
"Freedom and Polydeterminism
in Cultural Criticism" (1965)
in
Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium
ed. Erich Fromm
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965, pp. 280-298.

---

Culture
is very likely

one of the most
sensitive
areas of

social criticism.

Nowhere else
can

the inadequacy or absurdity of theoretical presuppositions or methodological procedures
be
uncovered so rapidly,

nowhere else
can

human creative activity
overwhelm
erroneous premises and conclusions with such promptitude,

and

nowhere else
can

such harm be
inflicted
upon the creative potentialities of human beings

as when

a dogmatic theory
is
imposed on cultural policy

by means of
social compulsion.

... The creative nature of man,

the mode of human participation in social life,

the relationship between the collective élan and individual creative potentialities,

the establishment of certain social limitations on creativity,

and individual ability to overcome personal and social limitations in the service of one and the same ideal,

are all
most prominent
in
the field of culture.

It is precisely in the realm of culture
in our times

that the contradiction
between
society and the individual,

between
the collective consciousness and the individual consciousness,

and between
the concrete totality represented by society
and
the ideal totality represented by the individual,

begins to sharpen in the most obvious way.

---

Well,
Rank would not accept
that this is a product only of
our or anyone else's times.
Rather, it belongs to all times.

---

We have just encountered,

in the concept of totality,

the first category that is a source of

certain     ambiguities          and                 one-sided interpretations

in social criticism.

This category is interpreted in the social sciences generally,

and in sociology in particular,

in terms of the concept of society as such,

either

in the spirit of

ontological realism

or

in the spirit of

ontological nominalism .

Society in the former sense is

some sort of
higher,
organic,
and closed
entity to which the
individual
is
subordinated
in every respect
;

society in the latter sense is

no more than
a chance accumulation,
an aggregation of interests,
or the locale
in which
individual wills and interests
are
operative
(or join together,
or compete,
or struggle)
.

Both concepts

have deeply permeated

the thought, philosophy, and sociology

of bourgeois society.

While

classic liberalism
(Smith, Hobbes, Bentham)

held to

nominalism,

romantic philosophy

interpreted society

and the people

in the light of

ontological realism.

The latter conception

thus carried over

from

Hegel and Schelling

to
the

theoreticians of the “folk soul”

(Lazarus and Steinthal)

and

organic positivism

(Comte, Spencer, Durkheim)

and thence
to

the most recent

totalitarian doctrines of the

fascist
and

Stalinist

varieties.

---

So,
total conceptions of society are mirrored in totalitarian domination.
This is counterintuitive amidst the Red State-Blue State crossfire,
wherein the notion of society as something

to which the individual is subordinated in every respect

is openly and virtuously claimed by many who fancy themselves
(sometimes quite self-consciously)
antifascist.

Seems to me, though,
that the total-ness of conception
is less at fault than is
the sheer scale
at which we are now forced to contemplate such matters.
The "realist" conception
has very different implications
in a neolithic "community"
than in a post-industrial "society."

---

on this occasion
we will treat only certain theories in the realm of culture,

and in particular the Marxist application
of the category of totality
to
the interpretation of culture and cultural policy.

In this field,
we must face up to
three well known conceptions in the spirit of ontological realism,
which involve
the complete subordination of the creative individual to the social totality.

The first conception in this series falls within the range of
theory of reflection.

By analogy with the reflection of “objective reality” in the subject,
this theory assumes that the cultural superstructure
is only a reflection of
the material foundation of society,

with the entire “social reality” being considered
as
something more real and more primary in terms of value

and with cultural creation being regarded
as
nothing but a more or less adapted reflection of reality proper.

This theory falls back on the Platonist idealization of “objective reality”
and affirms the inferiority of culture and the art that can only reflect
(not to say imitate)
this reality.

Art necessarily lags behind reality.

The best compliment that art can possibly receive
is that it has succeeded in conveying an impression of social reality
“as faithfully as possible”
or
“as characteristically as possible.”

Cultural creation,
along with the whole realm of esthetics,
thus becomes in ontological terms
just an epiphenomenon of material reality.

---

The thing is
with all this business about
the inferiority of culture and its alleged lagging behind reality,
even then
I've never been quite sure
why tf
the imperative to reflect
and to convey an impression
follows necessarily or even directly from all of this.
If art is so inferior for such purposes,
then why apply it in this way at all?

---

Within the bounds of historical dynamics,
the material social foundation
becomes something not only objective
but also causative,

the cultural superstructure
being something subjective
and consequential.

Since the social and political correlative of the material foundation is in the ruling class,
culture is always the spiritual expression of a single class.

When the foundation changes, the superstructure also changes.

When the foundation disappears, the superstructure likewise disappears.

Culture thus retains the characteristic features of an epiphenomenon,
even when the inverse effect of the superstructure on the foundation is mentioned
out of respect for the dialectic.

It is important in a methodological sense at this point to keep in mind that
the foundation and the superstructure are the correlatives of the same historical entity.
The cultural superstructure in this view,
thus remains closed within the bounds of a given foundation
and incapable of transcending this foundation in any way,

i.e., incapable of shifting to another historical epoch in terms of value.

Such a grasp of the whole, or totality,
of a given historical situation
leads to certain consequences in the theory of culture.

First,
the search is on for the class correlatives
or “social equivalents”
of particular cultural themes and artistic styles.

Second,
attempts are made
to explain
changes in cultural creation
exclusively
in the light of
changes in the social foundation.

---

This second consequence
of the theory of reflection
is particularly rejected by Rank
as
failing to account for psychological factors;
and this not
because psychologies necessarily diverge into an intractible diversity
but
in fact because
there is an all-but-universal psychological conflict
which theories of reflection
simply fail to take any notice of;
this being,
for Rank,
the tension between individual and collective concerns.

This is not quite the same thing as merely invoking "individual" diversity or autonomy to push back against attempts to explain changes in cultural creation exclusively in the light of changes in the social foundation. It is, in fact, to hold that at least one significant element of the social foundation doesn't change. And that is not something that self-styled psycho-voyeurs with eager ears to the social ground are likely to accept.

---

The theory of the
progressive and decadent development
of society
as an historical entity

is our second example of
the erroneous application of the category of totality.

This theory is really just a subvariety of the first,
which introduces the ideas
of
the progressive and decadent development of particular phases
into
the relationship between the foundation and the superstructure.

By applying the foundation superstructure scheme

o
n
e
s
i
d
e
d
l
y

to the realm of culture,
this theory projects
the political and social decadency of a society
onto
cultural creativity.

To be sure, this theory soon encounters
certain small difficulties.
It cannot explain
why
the most valuable
cultural achievements
have
so often been produced
in
such decadent epochs
as

the Athenian era after Pericles,
the Roman era after Caesar,
and the Middle Ages after Dante,

not to mention the decadence that is supposed to have set in
with
the appearance of impressionism in bourgeois society.

---

Well, sure.
But
you can always just deny the value.
It seems that this denial merely had to become imaginable
(if not quite plausible)
in order to
pretty much
take
over.

---

This theory has also created
another difficulty
by introducing a purely gnosiological criterion
alongside
the historical criterion of progress and decadence.

---

"Gnosiology" on Wikipedia:
"the philosophy of knowledge and cognition".
In Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy,
the word is often used as a synonym for epistemology.
...
In philosophy,
gnosology
(also known as gnoseology or gnostology)
literally
means the study of gnosis,
meaning knowledge
or
esoteric knowledge.

---

Under the theory of reflection,
the progressive is that which is more objective or realistic
and
the decadent that which provides a more subjective reflection,
i.e., a reflection which is subjectivistic or expressionistic.

The gnosiological criterion being lasting and unalterable,
realism must necessarily be progressive
and
impressionism or expressionism decadent or even reactionary,

the latter art forms being
expressions
of
a subjectivistic attitude toward reality.

From Lukács to Timofeev,
the theoreticians of socialist realism
have
confused
historical dynamics
with
the postulates of cognitional theory
that
are otherwise applicable
only to scientific cognition.

It is a genuine riddle to them
why
the revolutionary bourgeoisie expressed itself

at one time

in a pronouncedly subjectivistic art
and
the revolutionary proletariat
during the time of the October Revolution
likewise
made use of a subjectivistic art
in
the expressionism
of

Mayakovsky,
Piscator,
Meyerhold,
and
so many others.

The “cultural superstructure” obviously fails completely
to respect certain of the fundamental principles
of the theory of reflection.

How else are we to explain
the fact
that

the bourgeoisie expressed itself
in
a romantic and subjectivistic manner
during its progressive phase,

with realism making an appearance
only
by the time of the first serious social crisis after 1848
as
a symptom of crisis
and thereby
of the beginning of decline?

This seems to me the right tactic in one respect:
collect and catalog counterexamples such as these until the master theory starts to look implausible.

The pitfall,
though,
is that now we are playing the enemy's game;
we have been dragged down to the idiot's level,
as it were,
whereby (s)he may now beat us with experience.

Ultimately
it is neither the scientific worldview
nor the desire for economic justice
nor the Materialist view of the world
which must be abandoned.
What must be abandoned,
rather,
is something seemingly more trivial but in reality equally fearsome:
the conceit to "expression."

The accusation of a subjectivistic attitude toward reality
and the parsing of this attitude as decadent or even reactionary
cannot sustain itself without accompanying theories of
transmission,
correspondence,
interpretation,
and the like.

It is precisely the conceit to "expression"
which asserts that the subjectivistic artist has said something about reality,
though they may in fact
have
said nothing,
said something that is less obvious,
said something false with full knowledge of its falsity and with some second-order effect in mind to that end,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.,

Rank is again apt here:

Compared with the idea of the soul or its primitive predecessors even the abstractest form of art is concrete, just as on the other hand the most definite naturalism in art is abstract when compared with nature.
(AnA, pp. 11-12)


In one point modern research is more or less unanimous: that the most vital elements in our culture—the making of fire, agriculture, domestication of animals, measurement of time, observation of the stars—originate in the satisfaction not of practical, but of religious, supersensible, and ideological needs.
(p. 235)

It is not only
scholars, critics, and artists ourselves
who abuse the conceit to "expression"
,
but also
Puritans,
holier-than-thous,
and
of course
all those faux-"realists" who have
confused historical dynamics
with
the postulates of cognitional theory that are otherwise applicable
only
to
scientific cognition
.

Once you claim to be "expressing" something other than what appears to be there, the door is open for you to be accused of "expressing" something you never thought and didn't even know existed.

Realism, freedom, community...all these things are great, but what is really, desperately needed from all concerned is honesty. That is our greatest deficit as measured against our needs. It is for lack of honesty among its exponents that the scientific worldview comes to look so oppressive, or perhaps actually becomes oppressive in concrete ways. A little honesty would upend everything, uncomfortably at first to be sure, but ultimately for the best.

If we assume that decadence set in immediately after the era of realism in painting and literature,

i.e., with the appearance of impressionism and naturalism,

then the only conclusion to be drawn
is that
every further cultural creation
so long as this decadence lasts
( a whole century thus far!)
will amount to
one step further into decadency .

Expressionism will be more decadent than impressionism,
surrealism more decadent than expressionism,
and nonobjective or abstract art the extreme mode of decadence.

The longer the decadence lasts,
the more profound will be the decline in values,
and
the greater the dehumanization.

For these reasons, the more recent cultural achievements of bourgeois society will always be less acceptable than the older achievements, which are then transformed into “the classics.”

In this way,
so far as the cultural inheritance is concerned,
the theory leads to
traditionalism and
to the sole acceptance of
old and outmoded cultural values .

Such an orientation
in relation to the cultural inheritance in a socialist society
must necessarily “go always against the stream and against the era”
and make fresh forces old before their time.

Again,
we are somewhat trapped within the terms of
the Expressionist Fallacy
if
we make this squandering of fresh forces
and the outmoding of cultural values
central to our case.

But
even I wouldn't deny that there are artworks,
particularly "popular" artworks,
where something fresh is unleashed
(though I would deny that
this has anything to do with
"expression"!).

We have already pointed out that this theory leads to
a variety of difficulties in the interpretation of cultural dynamics
and often to absurd conclusions. And

the adherents to this theory themselves frequently contradict each other .

Lukács thus considers
that bourgeois art
was progressive
only during its earliest phase,
e.g., in the Flemish landscapes,
and then fell into decadence with the onset of romanticism
(even though the latter amounted to
a “French revolution in poetic form”!)

On the other hand, the idea is much more common
(shared alike by Plekhanov, Hausenstein, and Hamann)
that decadence set in with the appearance of impressionism,
through which “the petty bourgeoisie attained its culminating position.”

Plekhanov nevertheless noted
the joyous aspect of this art
and considered it to belong
to the society of the future
by virtue of its hedonist unconcern .

On this basis, the Soviet theoretician Matsa has been impelled to doubt that impressionism is decadent art and to ascribe the beginning of decadence to expressionism, which “deforms the external world.”

As we have already seen,
the question then arises
as to how the October Revolution
could have been echoed in expressionism.

The answer is simple.

The shout,
the cry,
the slogan,
and the directive
are always going to be compact in the expressionistic mode like action itself,
for narration is unfeasible in the course of the action.

Yet such an uncomplicated psychological explanation
is
not accepted by the adherents to socialist realism.

To be sure,
there have been
some recent attempts
to
consider nonobjective art alone
as genuinely decadent art.

This opinion has been expressed by the Soviet critic
Lifshits
on only one occasion
but seems to be acquiring a multitude of adherents,
although it has not yet become “official.”

The theory of reification is our third example of the erroneous application of the category of totality in the field of culture.

Much more subtle than the others, this theory has attracted large numbers of contemporary Marxists, for it undeniably contains a fragment of the truth. The weak side of this theory is its historical relativism, conditional upon the enclosure of the cultural historical situation within the bounds of a specific totality.

Like the other theories,
the theory of reification
lays stress on the foundation,
i.e., on the economic relationships
or modes of production in capitalist society.

...

The process of reification
thus consists essentially
of the transformation of
qualitative relations
into
quantitative magnitudes .

The roots of reification naturally lie in a whole conglomeration of secondary phenomena that are inseparable from a system of hired labor...

The process of reification amounts to the foundation of bourgeois society in so far as the creation of market values is concerned,
and must inevitably be generalized or reflected in the superstructure...

Max Weber and George Lukács,
and recently Erich Fromm and Lucien Goldmann
have been particularly insistent
on the fact
that
goods and money production is not only the configuration of the economy in a bourgeois society
but also the “soul” of such a society.

Usefulness,
profit,
money,
quantification,
rationalism,
and instrumentalism
have thus saturated all realms of social life and thought.
Rationalism along with science
in this same circle
has become the enemy of humanism,
instrumentalism along with technology
the chief source of human alienation. ...

In fact,
the application of the category of totality in the social criticism of bourgeois society under the theory of reification
does not go beyond the dependence of the superstructure upon the foundation,
i.e.,
the dependence of the social totality upon a universal process termed reification,
so far as the essential determinism of social phenomena is concerned.

The starting point is an historically closed system,
viz., bourgeois society,
the analysis of which
comes down to a kind of
phenomenological reductionism
of
delusive phenomena
to
a fundamental and essential process of change.

No determinism capable of transcending this particular historical situation has been taken into consideration, either as a preceding series or as a future series.

In what manner ought these theories to be subjected to correction?

First, it is necessary to transcend social, economic, class, cultural, and historical totalitarianism, and thus relativism in two senses,

viz.,
in individual or personal terms,
and
in terms of world history.

In the first instance, the category of social totality deserves to be interpreted in relation to “total social facts” (Marx, Mauss, Gurvitch).

Let us recall no more than the following definition from Marx:
“Hence,
however much a human being should be a separate individuum,
and it is precisely his separateness which makes him an individuum and an actual individual being in the community,
he is likewise a totality,
the ideal totality,
the subjective existence of an imagined and experienced society in itself,
just as he exists in actuality at the same time as the perception and genuine spirit of social existence and as the totality of the human manifestation of life.”
(Karl Marx, Der historische Materialismus [Leipzig: A. Kroener Verlag], Vol. I, p. 298.)

Obviously, Marx has kept in mind the fact that both society and the personality are “total social facts”;

i.e., the whole social reality can be encompassed if we proceed from the one to the other and vice versa.

This reciprocity of perspective is based
in any event
on
a dialectical relationship that imparts full independence to the personality in the sense of an ability to identify with any other personality in the society (any reduction of the art of a given artist to his class origins being thus illusory ),
and an ability to identify with the entire society as a whole
(to transcend in consciousness narrower class or group interests),
and an ability to transcend the present day state of society—to anticipate the future as the “totality of the human manifestation of life,” not only in the name of the negation of that which is in existence, but also in the name of the entire historical experience of mankind.

Well,
people who try to anticipate the future usually fail.
But it is not just the self-important, transcendence-seeking artist
who runs afoul of this limit on our clairvoyance
but also the reductionist social critic
who cannot imagine that the usefulness or appeal of artworks
could be capable of enduring or rearising.

Positivistic organicism is not only incapable of comprehending
the role of the personality in cultural creativity

, but also finds geniuses to be an enigma .

No less a figure than Lukács himself naïvely explains the survival of works of genius solely in terms of selection on the part of the ruling class from whatever in the past should serve the immediate interests of this class!

In point of fact,
great cultural works live on
despite
all barriers of history and class
for the sole reason
that
such works have been created by personalities
distinguished for greatness or genius,

i.e., such individualized social totalities
as have encompassed a maximum of “human totality”
in a personal creative act. ...

...

In other words,

the individual represents a specific determinant of cultural creation
precisely because as an individual he deserves to be a part of the analysis of the culture of a society.

For example,
in terms of the universal process of reification
it is wholly incomprehensible why romanticism should have ignored the processes of reification while the realism that followed with Balzac did not ignore these processes.

Was it only because romanticism was “more reactionary” or less progressive than realism,
or
was it because the romantics as human beings were less progressive than the realists
(e.g., Victor Hugo as opposed to Balzac)?

The answer to the question indicates that to ask it is wrong.

Romanticism had no need to reflect reification,
for its aim was to express what was vital after the bourgeois revolution,
viz.,
a new conception and a new expansion of the human personality,
Promethean and autonomous.

This personal and sentimental expansion of a grand sensitivity proved very soon to be illusory when confronted with social reality,
but lost nothing thereby of its universal human and cultural value.

Let us remember that Romain Rolland went to combat in behalf of socialism via Beethoven.
Marx conducted himself in the same way with Phidias or Shakespeare,
even though the social organization inhabited by these geniuses could scarcely have been pleasing to him.

In other words,
we are obliged to keep track of the fate of human creation equally in the dimension of the class struggle and in the dimension of the human personality,
at the level of human sociality and at the level of the artistic liberation of the personality.

Second,
cultural phenomena transcend the foundation-superstructure scheme and historical relativism in the sphere of world history,
by which we understand a continuous curve with all its internal contradictions throughout the historical epochs up to the present.

Such a curve is assumed to be wholly natural where advances in science or technology are concerned.
It is considered entirely understandable
and even inevitable
in these fields of endeavor
for new discoveries to be linked together with the older ones
and for such new discoveries to multiply increasingly, with the general curve of discoveries or cognition appearing in an exponential form,
i.e., as a curve with positive acceleration.

Positivistic organicism,
historical relativism,
and the theory of the rise and fall of cultures as worlds of their own
are
nevertheless incapable of encompassing such a kind of progressive alteration with constant upsurge within the bounds of their mode of thinking.

We know that estheticians are opposed to the idea of progress in art,
but we also know that they have in mind in this connection solely the perfection of certain forms or the perfection of the esthetic experience itself.

In this sense,
we truly cannot say that esthetic expression actually advanced in terms of “the beautiful” and “the perfect” from the neolithic caves to the classical Greeks and from the classical Greeks to contemporary modernism.

On the other hand,
even if we have not advanced esthetically,
we have not necessarily failed to improve steadily in terms of the creative act proper,

in the discovery of creative potentialities,
in the analysis of expressional devices,
in the discovery of the various laws under which dead matter is configurated.

We would not find it difficult to show that man has advanced as steadily in art as he has in technology,
which some so mystically counterpose to art,
forgetting that art is inseparable from craftsmanship.

Like the dance, primitive art is frequently incapable of esthetic error, but is nevertheless wholly enslaved like primitive realism by a subject that has not yet become the object of critical reflection and is entirely bound up with a syncretic world of magic and mythology .

Only with the Greeks
did beauty begin to be discovered as a separate object of experience
and thereby as a separate theme of human creativity.

Only then were the laws of proportion, symmetry, and rhythm discovered.

Did not the Renaissance discover the laws of perspective for the first time,

Actually, no,
at least not

according to McLuhan
.

just as the Baroque period was to discover light and shadow as the medium of the spiritual existence of an object devoid of sheer mass?

And what of today’s discovery that
“what is deserving of being depicted is not the object but rather the impression which the object makes upon us”
in the form of impressionism,
cubism,
and abstract art?

Actually, this would vitiate most of what is constructive in all that has preceded it.

In point of fact,
can we ever
depict
anything other than our
impression
(as against some ultimate essence or reality)
?

The question
as to which
among these
is
most
deserving
is superfluous.

This is to say,
once someone has dared to ask it explicitly,
we will be lucky if it remains
merely superfluous.

The are no stupid questions,
but there are stupid answers.

Also dangerous ones.

On the creation side,
there are only
impressions.

That is not to say
that
there is no objectivity
on the reception side,
but
if you think you've found some
make sure to ask around
just to be sure.

More careful analysis would show us that we are constantly witnessing genuine discoveries in relation to human modes of expression and to the way in which objects are represented throughout the entire evolution of European art,

and that such discoveries have increasingly multiplied in modern times
(we need only remind ourselves of contemporary “applied art”),
to the extent that the kind of exponential curve found by the sociologists in the field of science and technology
could easily be constructed in the artistic realm as well.

There can be no doubt
that
the cyclic phenomena
of
cultural upsurge and stagnation,
of
progressive élan and decadency,

amount to no more than a separate rhythm within a more general and more universal process of change.

For this reason,
we obviously will not have exhausted the meaning of a particular phenomenon
by
simply placing it within the framework of a process of progress and decadence.

We must instead interpret such a phenomenon within the framework of the general process of historical change,
i.e.,
in terms of world history.

For example,
a phase of decadence in bourgeois art set in with symbolism and impressionism in the light of the earlier ideo-affective expansion of humaneness,

yet the same phase no less surely marks the beginning of one of the most fruitful periods of cultural and artistic creativity in terms of the discovery of new potentialities and in terms of the constant enrichment of human sensitivity and imagination.

And the development of human potentialities,
the development of all the most diverse and many-sided of human capabilities,
should be considered the fundamental law of historical evolution (cf. Marx).

...

Fifth, if it is correct to say that some cyclic processes transcend a given historical epoch, socioeconomic arrangement, or class society, while others do not, then an important methodological principle follows, viz., some contradictions within the bounds of a given social system are resolved in the course of time , but other contradictions arise to take their places .

Some contradictions become simple differences under the law of the progressive differentiation of society and culture, while other differences become new contradictions.

In other words, it is a mistake to make use of such simple contradictions as those between materialism and idealism, subjectivism and objectivism, progressivism and reaction, and the like, in the interpretation of culture. We must instead follow the development of every established contradiction to see whether it is being resolved in the course of time within the bounds of a given social system or not.

Marx had already noted in connection with economic development that some contradictions are resolved within the bounds of capitalism . We ought therefore to anticipate that such would be an even commoner occurrence in the realm of culture , which is more autonomous and is distinguished by a higher coefficient of individual factors .

We are thus faced with a peculiar dialectic that transforms contradictions into contrarieties and contrarieties into contradictions.

Let us attempt to illustrate with an example:

An extremely ferocious campaign is being waged in some socialist countries today against abstract art as the last, “most radical,” and most distorted, expression of bourgeois decadency in art.

This campaign takes into account only certain of the spiritualistic speculations of the early Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian. No consideration is given in this campaign to the actual context and function of the art that is involved, particularly in connection with the appearance of the Weimar Bauhaus and with the analysis of the modern conception of space and pictorial matter.

Nor do these criticisms take note of the fact that abstract art protests against misuse in the name of its concreteness .

The real reason for this failure of understanding is that this campaign and these criticisms are unaware of the fact that a contradictory cultural situation, in the form of an attempt to flee the concrete world, has undergone a transformation contrary to its own original intentions by becoming involved in the concrete world and in the ecological (urban planning) problems of this concrete world.

Abstract art has thus ceased to be a negation of any world, bourgeois, socialist, or whatever. On the basis of contemporary spatial and pictorial concepts, abstract art has become a part of the most real world possible ; that is, it has become wholly neutral so far as differences of class are concerned.

Again, let's be careful. (And honest!) Nothing is wholly neutral . But if the Expressive Fallacy is rightfully and righteously debunked, then it becomes much more difficult (not impossible, just highly improbable) for any artwork to be seen as either distorting or faithfully reproducing objective reality . Works still, even then, are probably quite far from wholly neutral as far as difference of class are concerned , but this non-neutrality is no longer quite so squishy or animistic a concept as it has become in recent times. (Funny how well so-called ontological realism jibes with the "animistic" worldview!) The respect in which they are neutral (or not) is no longer a matter of what they "say" but rather what they (and perhaps also what their authors) do. No one would be surprised if class and abstraction could be at least broadly correlated scientifically. Abstractionists need not fear or deny this. Let's be honest, though, and let's accept nothing less than honesty from any assessor of our actions.

In this way, abstract art may equally be the concern of Catholics and Protestants, socialists and communists. Against the wishes of its initiators, abstract art has become only “one among others.”

The most intelligent theoreticians of abstract art would not defend its exclusiveness in the name of “progress,” going no further than to mention abstract art as one possibility among many.

Sixth, modern cultural criticism in general has not yet acquired the habit of examining the significance or sense of cultural goods from the standpoint of the actual function of these goods in relation to man. Abstract esthetic, ideological utilitarian, or economic commercial criteria are commonly taken into consideration. These criteria, which have a somewhat longer tradition in our civilization, are easier to define . The problem of actual human needs and of determining the values of cultural goods in relation to human needs remains open, although contemporary social and psychological anthropology is beginning to touch on it on an increasing scale,...

Our objections to these theories up to this point suggest that the determinism of cultural phenomena is far more complex than it appears at first glance. In a very general way, it may be said that the existence of differences in historical rhythms points the way to the existence of three fundamental systems in the determinism of cultural phenomena: society in its structuralism; the personality as a separately individualized and universal system of functions and needs; and, finally, the cultural areas proper with their own unique laws of development (science, philosophy, technology, language, art, etc.). There is no dispute today among researchers into culture about the existence of these three specific factors in cultural development. The argument begins when we attempt a closer examination of the significance and interrelations of particular systems. Our research is only now getting underway, but it is already clear that the existence and operation of these three systems will demand a polydeterministic interpretation of cultural evolution.

Seventh, if it is correct that various cycles and rhythms of historical development exist and that these three systems require a polydeterministic interpretation, then we are faced with the problem of defining the methods of cultural research and cultural criticism more accurately. Although space does not permit us to go into this problem, let us at least point out that every one-sided and simplified treatment of cultural phenomena must be excluded . The problem likewise excludes any vulgar materialistic limitation to the foundation superstructure scheme, any enclosure on the part of positivistic organicism within an exclusive course of progress and decadency, and any phenomenological reductionism to a universal basic process such as reification.

In what way ought we to approach the analysis of cultural phenomena?

Stop. First, there has to be a desperate, crying need for analysis if it is to have any justification at all. If the need is anything less than desperate, then analysis is superfluous. Speculation, theorizing, shooting the breeze...all of these things are great. Analysis by its very name, by the very name of the publications in which it appears and the names with which it is thereby associated, analysis has lofty pretensions, pretensions which match those of its intended audience, who lust for truth and certainty to the precise degree that truth and certainty are elusive in the treatment of cultural phenomena . Shooting the breeze is the stuff of life; analysis , to the contrary, harbors death in its very name. Analysis creates dishonesty without liars.

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