Prophetic — Leon Trotsky

I had thought to give readers the entirety of Leon Trotsky’s letter of support to the FIARI, but reading it I find that the greater part of it is to focus on the betrayal of André Malraux, which I have written about in this blog earlier in the year; I am instead using some passages from it to clarify Trotsky’s position on the relationship between politics and art, particularly in this last statement of Partisan Review, Vol. 6, No.2, Winter 1939.

Opening with a comradely greeting to Rivera and Breton (remember that Trotsky wrote a good part of the manifesto of the FIARI, though he didn’t sign it — Rivera did): “With all my heart I congratulate Diego Rivera and yourself on the creation of the FIARI — a federation of truly revolutionary and truly independent artists.”   even as the government of France tries to ‘ape’ the heroes of fascism.

“The duller and more ignorant the dictator, the more he feels called upon to prescribe the development of science, philosophy, and art. The sheep-like servility of the intelligentsia is, in turn a not unimportant sign of the rottenness of contemporary society.” 

“The unhappy Soviet press evidently on orders from above, complains bitterly in these latter days of the ‘impoverishment’ of scientific and artistic production in the USSR, and reproaches Soviet artists and writers with lack of sincerity, courage and vitality.”

One can’t believe one’s eyes: the boa constrictor delivers to the rabbit a homily on independence and personal  dignity. Hideous and ignoble picture, but how worthy of our time!

The end of the letter is the affirmation of values that preceded this period and will continue to describe the  work of the artist: 

“The struggle for revolutionary ideas in art must begin once again with the struggle for artistic truth, not in terms of any single school, but in terms of the immutable faith of the artist in his own inner self. WITHOUT THIS, THERE IS NO ART. “YOU SHALL NOT LIE! THAT IS THE  FORMULA OF ALL SALVATION.”

Trotsky doesn’t melt politics into the work of art; it was the failures of the Soviet Union, with both its programmatic positions about art, and its bad investment in Popular Frontism, that has led to a state of deterioration of the Communist movement, and its art.

So Trotsky turns back to this new organisation — the FIARI —  he opens the last part of the letter by suggesting that, “Properly understood, the FIARI is not an aesthetic or political school and cannot become one.  But FIARI can oxidise the atmosphere in which artists breathe and create.”  It will be the works of art that will change EVERYTHING.

“In our epoch of convulsive reaction, of cultural decline and return to savagery, truly independent creation cannot but be revolutionary by its very nature, for it cannot but seek an outlet from intolerable social suffocation.  But art as a whole, and each artist in particular, seeks this outlet in ways proper to himself — not relying upon orders from outside, but rejecting such orders and heaping scorn upon all who submit to them. To encourage such attitudes among the best circles of artists — this is the task of the FIARI, I firmly believe that its name will enter history.”

For many who have been reading and writing about politics and art over the past 25 years, Trotsky’s position may seem old-fashioned, pious, and tangled in the web of over- determinations, constructions, ideological mistakes and traps….the suffocating fabric of Deconstructive and Foucauldian arguments for how it has all come to be as it is. (Baudrillard, I’d say makes the better case,  for the spectacularisation that substitutes for reality).  But Trotsky’s sense that there is an urge toward freedom, above all, that makes art revolutionary and that revolutionises art, is one that can still be recognised as inspiration, as the call to create, as the voice of a Muse, as the search for Truth, and as newly born over and over from our desire for freedom:

 Inspired — Robert Rauschenberg

Next Week: Dwight Macdonald– “Our Quarter” Vol.6.NO.3