Culture and Revolution

Extract

This collection of essays discusses the issues that are important for Catholics and others who find in neo-Marxism, at least in some of its varieties, something that speaks to their condition. The situation is slightly complicated in that some of the writers, notably Terry Eagleton and Raymond Williams, are also affected by a densely and peculiarly English background, that of the tradition constructed (if a tradition can be said to be constructed) by Raymond Williams and his circle out of their reading, in both senses of the word, of Cobbett, Arnold, George Eliot, Tawney, Lawrence, Leavis. I am not sure that I have ever wholly understood the theses advanced by these writers. In part this is because I find their style opaque. Certain terms seem to be terms of art, but one is left to pick up the sense as one goes along. ‘Totalization’ is one that is coming in; ‘structure’, of course, both as a substantive and a verb, but this is perhaps the influence of American sociological writing; losing and making connexions between ‘cultural meanings’ seem to be important but elusive processes; we have ‘praxis’, and so on.

One would wish to press for examples. One of the great lessons of Wittgenstein’s later writings is the need to measure formulations against examples. At any rate, we are given by Mr Williams himself and by Mr Eagleton one of the theses over the interpretation of which I remain confused. Summarily it is that if we want to have or to bring about or to realize more fully a common culture in England—and it is always taken for granted that there is a moral imperative to work for this end—then we must strive for revolution or socialism or both as the only way of bringing this end about.