GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

68O ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
capitalist civilization, and most contemporary art is
modelled upon the structure within which it arises, and
reflects the environment ih which it is engendered. It is
therefore bad or non-significant art. But the communist
society of the future is, in accordance with die concepts
of the Hegelian Dialectic, already stirring within the
womb of the declining capitalist society of the present,
and an art appropriate to this new society, an art which
points towards the future instead of being content merely
to reflect the present, is already being thrown up as a
by-product ofthe new forces which are making for economic
change. Such art does not merely point
forward to the
birth of a new society in the future; it actually assists it
to be born. Such is good or significant art
The Change from Capitalism to Communism Must
Be Violent (5) To resume the exposition of Marxist
principles, the Dialectic, as we have seen, teaches that
each phase of society carries within its matrix the seed
of its own dissolution. "The means of getting rid of the
incongruities that have been brought to light must,"
Marx says, "also be present, in a more or less developed
condition, within the changed modes of production themselves.'
1
"The means" are, in effect, the next phase of
social development which, potentially present from the
first in the womb of its predecessor, is brtmght to birth by
its predecessor's triumphant maturity. Thus slavery is
superseded by Feudalism for which it had prepared the
way, and Feudalism gives way to the Capitalism which
it itself had fostered. Similarly the contradictions inherent
in Capitalism, to which we have already referred, must
eventually bring about its own overthrow through the
agency of that very class, the exploited proletariat, which
Capitalism has brought into being.
The changes involved are, however, not gradual, but
violent, for the reason that the political, legal, and moral
systems which rise upon the foundation of an economic
substructure, generate a life of their own which gives them