AccordingtoLepeniessrather broad interpretation of the same nineteenth-’
century developments, the heightened German investment in cultureaspart of
these processes functioned not simplyasasubstitute for anysustained engage-
ment with politics but must in fact be seen as evidence ofadeepaversion to
(parliamentary) politics.²⁸The bourgeois revolution establishedanew culture
of progress (e.g.,inrelation to industry and technology), of liberty (e.g.,in
the ideologyofbourgeois liberalism), and of science (e.g., in its Social Darwinist
applications).At the sametime,TheSeduction of Culture in German History,to
cite the title of the2006 book,impeded Germany’sbelated rise asamodernna-
tion and democracy and legitimated the cultural elites’disdain for political life
in general. Lepenies’scharacterization of German cultureasboth apolitical and
antidemocratic describes parts of the educated middle classduring specific his-
torical periods.Yetthe implicit equation of Germanculturewith bourgeois cul-
ture not onlyignores the uniqueand very different status of cultureand educa-
tion in the lifeworld of Social Democracy and the workers’movement; it also
fails to consider the emancipatory function of cultureasformation, or refine-
ment,inthe highlypoliticized contexts of socialist and communistmovements.
Evenacursory overview of the debates on socialist aesthetics and proletar-
ian culture, includingthe ones to be discussed in chapter 18, offer plenty of evi-
dence of their intenselypolitical nature–aqualitythat,toemphasize again, re-
sides less in anyparticularworks orauthors but in the self-understanding of the
workingclassasthe legitimate heir of the bourgeois tradition. In fact,the claims
to this heritageare most political not wherethey promotetendentious art but
wherethey advocate foraclear separation between art and politics. Thus the so-
cialists’argumentsagainstapoliticization of culturebring into sharp reliefBol-
lenbeck’sand Lepeniessnarrow definitions of culture, and confirm in what’
ways the discoursessurroundingcultureand education always involvedomi-
nant,residual, and emergent class-based cultures in changingconstellations
of power and influence.Accordingly, the bourgeois defenseofhumanisticeduca-
tion duringthe Wilhelmineyears makes sense onlyinlight of its oppositionto
the workers’educational associationsand what they represent: the feared de-
mocratization of knowledge and learning.Similarly, the bourgeois conception
of culturelong after the fall of empire acquires its distinct function as the oppo-
site of politics onlyinresponsetothe demands on the bourgeois heritagebythe
representativesofSocial Democracy.
Wolf Lepenies,TheSeduction of CultureinGerman History(Princeton: PrincetonUniversity
Press,2006), 5–6.
The Socialist Project ofCultur eand Education 171