nist militant culture introduced in chapter 13 through the embodied habitus of
agitprop and examined here through the literary debates in the KPD journal,
Die Linkskurve.
Hans-Joachim Schulz has perceptively described the literarycriticism that
defined the increasinglyantagonistic relationship between SPD and KPD as a
form of excessive discursivization. The conflation of literature with literary theo-
ry and, ultimately, Marxist theory,heobserves, was unfortunatelyreduplicated in
the leftist scholarshipfrom the 1970sthattendedtotreat theory asasuperior
form of knowledge.²With ideologythus reduced to questions of hermeneutics,
one unintended outcome has been the affirmation of two kinds of canons,
with Marx and his exegetes on the one sideand the literary classics on the
other; another has been the overvaluation of the role of the literarycritic in
the left’smajor and minor ideological battles. Schulz rightlywarns against con-
fusing the programmatic statements on literature with the actual writingsofreal
workers,recommending that scholars insteadconcentrate on normative func-
tions and disciplinary effects. His diagnosis of “excessive” makes perfect
sense within an analysis of Marxist orthodoxy.With regard to the underlying as-
sumptions about emotions that are the main concern here, it might be more use-
ful to call these debates productive–because they create powerful fictions in
their own right.
AfterWorld WarI,the discourse of community allowed Social Democrats to
build on the associational culture established duringthe Wilhelmineyearsand
to reaffirm their commitmentto cultureand education under thevery different
conditions of their party’sactive participation ingovernment.The reformist po-
sitions promotedinthe name ofKultursozialismus(cultural socialism) found an
almostperfect platform in the Leipzig-based journal, titledKulturwille: Monats-
blätterfürKultur der Arbeiterschaft(1924–33). As the official organ of the Arbeit-
er-Bildungsinstitut(ABI, Workers’Educational Institute),Kulturwille(literally:
the willtoculture) continued the nineteenth-century project of education as
self-cultivation that,asargued in chapter 8, long sustained Social Democratic
narratives of class and community.Valtin Hartig (1889–1980), the editor ofKul-
turwille,was an outspoken proponent of the so-called three-pillar theory that
conceivedofcultureasthe third column, next to party and unions, in the so-
called big houseofsocialism. Praising the advantagesofthis division of labor,
he explained how“such adivision within the movement isagain for the
partyto pursue politicalgoals politically;itisagain for the cultural movement
Hans-Joachim Schulz,German Socialist Literature1860–1914: Predicaments of Criticism(Co-
lumbia, SC: Camden House, 1993), 1–8.
Marxist Literary Theoryand Communist MilitantCulture 257