By MICHEL GOULART DA SILVA*

Realistic or abstract, surrealist or concrete, subjective or descriptive, for Leon Trotsky and André Breton there was no aesthetic limit to art that placed itself alongside the revolution.

1.

This October marks the centenary of the publication of the first surrealist manifesto. In one of the passages of this document, the French poet André Breton extols the word “freedom”, stating that it “[…] undoubtedly meets my only legitimate aspiration. Among so many misfortunes inherited by us, it must be admitted that the greatest freedom of spirit has been granted to us. We must be careful not to misuse it. To reduce the imagination to servitude, even if it were to gain what is vulgarly called happiness, is to reject whatever is, deep down, supreme justice. Only the imagination gives me an idea of ​​what can be, and that is enough to suspend for a moment the terrible prohibition”.[I]

In this passage, the French poet defends freedom and imagination in artistic creation. These ideas were among the elements that brought Breton and other surrealist poets, such as Benjamin Péret, closer to the Trotskyist movement, especially due to their criticism of Stalinism and the aesthetic authoritarianism imposed by socialist realism. In 1938, André Breton and Leon Trotsky wrote the founding manifesto of the International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI), entitled For an independent revolutionary art.

This joint work took place in a context marked by the proximity of a world war, by the political action of the Nazi government and by the politics of the Stalinist apparatus that dominated the main left-wing organizations in the world, also influencing artists and intellectuals in the defense of the bureaucracy that governed the Soviet Union.

Although some parts of the FIARI manifesto have been overtaken by historical dynamics, such as the non-imminence of a world war or its more circumstantial criticisms of fascism and Stalinism, which do not currently have the same political and ideological strength as they did in the 1930s, many of the elements discussed in the document are still relevant today.

The meeting between the French poet and the exiled Russian revolutionary did not happen by chance. André Breton and Leon Trotsky had shown a profound political and theoretical convergence in the previous years. In 1935, Breton wrote that “the activity of interpreting the world must continue to be linked to the activity of transforming the world”, and that it is the role of the poet or artist to “deepen the human problem in all its forms”. This “unlimited conduct of his spirit” carries “a potential value for changing the world”, reinforcing “the need for economic change in this world”.[ii]

The understanding of the artist's activity as an action of transformation of society was also defended by Leon Trotsky: “man expresses in art his demand for harmony and plenitude of existence — that is, for the supreme good of which it is precisely class society that deprives him. Therefore, artistic creation is always an act of protest against reality, conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic.”[iii]

Another point of convergence between Leon Trotsky and André Breton seems to be in relation to the criticism of Stalinism, including its aesthetic model. Leon Trotsky said that “the art of the Stalinist era will remain as the crudest expression of the profound decadence of the proletarian revolution”, where “artists endowed with character and talent are, in general, marginalized”.[iv]

The French poet, in turn, stated: “We rise up, in art, against every regressive conception that tends to oppose content to form, to sacrifice the latter to the former. The passage of today's authentic poets to the poetry of entirely external propaganda, as it is defined, means for them the negation of the historical determinations of poetry itself.”[v]

At the time when the manifesto was being written with André Breton, Leon Trotsky, exiled in Mexico, was one of the organizers of a new international, whose objective was to organize revolutionary militants who had broken with communist parties around the world. André Breton, in turn, as well as the writers who remained faithful to the principles of surrealism, had been dismissed from the French Communist Party.

The FIARI manifesto called for the creation of an international organization that would bring together artists, intellectuals, and scientists, independent of fascism, imperialism, and Stalinism. Leon Trotsky and André Breton proposed an internationalist platform with class independence in art and politics, while also warning of the dangers that Nazism and the Stalinist bureaucracy posed to the arts. Leon Trotsky and André Breton understood that Nazism and Stalinism aimed to eliminate artists who dared to express their defense of freedom to some extent, transforming them into followers of the guidelines advocated by the State. In Germany and the Soviet Union, efforts were made to eliminate or co-opt independent movements and artists, especially those associated with the avant-garde.

In the Soviet Union, there was no room for independent artistic movements to consolidate, as artists were forced to accept aesthetic formulations that fulfilled the role of state ideologies. As stated in the FIARI manifesto, “[…] Hitler’s fascism, after having eliminated from Germany all artists who had expressed in any measure a love of freedom, even if only formal, forced those who could still consent to wield a pen or a brush to become lackeys of the regime and to celebrate it on commission, within the outer limits of the worst conventionality. Except for propaganda, the same thing happened in the USSR during the period of furious reaction that has now reached its peak.”[vi]

2.

Many elements of the FIARI manifesto remain very relevant today. Despite changes in the social and political situation, the capitalist form of production of life still persists and is dominant throughout the world. The FIARI manifesto did not limit itself to predicting that war was coming, but also pointed out that the bourgeoisie threatened the world with its weapons and modern techniques of death, which are still being used on the battlefields. Therefore, even though the manifesto was written in a different context, today a society dominated by capital persists and, even if governments or even political regimes change, class domination persists, which can take on the most varied forms in each situation.

On the other hand, the question of Stalinism, although its state apparatuses have collapsed, has not lost its relevance, since one of its most powerful policies, the governments of class collaboration, still persists. These governments, based on the political unity of workers' parties with sectors of the bourgeoisie, have adopted the position of choosing a "popular" culture in order to transform it into a commodity.

Under the guise of preserving “tradition” — even if it is sexist, chauvinistic, or racist — these governments outline a policy that privileges cultural manifestations that supposedly express the “people” and local forms of “culture.” However, this culture chosen as traditional expresses much more political and economic class domination than cultural manifestations of these social groups as a whole. As a result, only a culture chosen as “popular” is valued, artificially creating identities common to the “people” and ideologies to justify domination, and transforming cultural heritage into a tourist attraction and, therefore, into a commodity.

Another element related to FIARI that remains relevant today is the defense of the freedom of art, opposing any external coercion. The manifesto states that “art cannot consent without degradation to bow to any foreign directive and to meekly fulfill the functions that some believe can be attributed to it, for extremely narrow pragmatic purposes”.[vii] The artist is required to have the freedom to choose themes, without restricting the field of exploration of his creativity: “in terms of artistic creation, it is essentially important that the imagination escapes any coercion, and does not allow any costume to be imposed under any pretext”.[viii]

Furthermore, in the face of pressure for artists to consent to art being “subjected to a discipline that we consider radically incompatible with its means”, the manifesto opposes “an unappealable refusal and our deliberate will to cling to the formula: all license in art”.[ix]

This is the only way to achieve an art that is not content with variations on ready-made models, but strives to give expression to the inner needs of man and humanity. For the founders of FIARI, this art must be revolutionary, “it must aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society”, even if its aim is simply to “free intellectual creation from the chains that block it and allow all of humanity to rise to heights that only isolated geniuses have reached in the past”.[X]

Capitalism does not allow this freedom for art. Its internal logic, of intense valorization of goods and reproduction of surplus value, allows dissidence only to adapt and become a saleable product: “[…] in the current era, characterized by the agony of capitalism, both democratic and fascist, the artist, without even needing to give his social dissent a manifest form, finds himself threatened with the deprivation of the right to live and to continue his work by the blocking of all his means of dissemination”.[xi]

3.

Capitalism in decline is incapable of offering minimum conditions for the development of artistic movements. As a consequence, in capitalist society, what art retains of individuality, “in that which activates subjective qualities to extract a certain fact that leads to an objective enrichment”, all this “appears as the fruit of a precious chance, that is, as a more or less spontaneous manifestation of necessity”.[xii]

In response to this situation of art in capitalist society, André Breton and Leon Trotsky state: “[…] true art, that which is not content with variations on ready-made models, but strives to give expression to the inner needs of man and humanity today, must be revolutionary, must aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society, if only to free intellectual creation from the chains that block it and to allow all humanity to rise to heights that only isolated geniuses have reached in the past.”[xiii]

This art is defined by its relationship with the revolution. The “artistic opposition”, according to the manifesto, is “one of the forces that can effectively contribute to the discredit and ruin of regimes that destroy, at the same time, the right of the exploited class to aspire to a better world and all sense of greatness and even human dignity”.[xiv] In this sense, for Leon Trotsky and Breton, the “supreme task of art” in capitalist society would be the conscious and active participation in the “preparation of the revolution”, but they warn: “[…] the artist can only serve the emancipatory struggle when he is subjectively imbued with its social and individual content, when he makes the meaning and drama of this struggle pass through his nerves and when he freely seeks to give an artistic incarnation to his inner world”.[xv]

These formulations express some of Leon Trotsky's theses about literature, presented in 1924, in Literature and revolution. Leon Trotsky stated that art cannot remain “[…] indifferent to the convulsions of the present era. Men prepare events, carry them out, suffer their effects and are modified by the impact of their reactions. Art, directly or indirectly, reflects the lives of the men who make or live the events”.[xvi]

However, for Leon Trotsky, this understanding does not mean defending an art form along the lines of socialist realism or even of a proletarian culture, as defended by Stalinism. It was “false to oppose bourgeois culture and art to proletarian culture and art”, insofar as the proletarian regime is transitory. For the Russian revolutionary, “the historical significance and moral greatness of the proletarian revolution lie in the fact that it lays the foundations of a culture that will not be class-based, but for the first time truly human”.[xvii]

These statements unfold in the understanding that “[…] the art of the revolution, which openly reflects all the contradictions of a period of transition, should not be confused with socialist art, for which the foundations do not yet exist. It cannot be forgotten, however, that socialist art will emerge from what is done in this period.”[xviii]

This understanding of the development of art under socialism is also expressed by André Breton, especially in Second manifesto of surrealism, published in 1930. Breton claims not to believe “in the possibility of the current existence of a literature or art expressing the aspirations of the working class”. For Breton, “in the pre-revolutionary period the writer or artist, necessarily of bourgeois training, is by definition incapable of translating it”.[xx]

The surrealist poet, in the same sense as Leon Trotsky, states that it would be false “[…] any initiative to defend and illustrate a so-called 'proletarian' literature and art in an era in which no one can claim proletarian culture, for the excellent reason that this culture has not yet been possible to achieve, even under a proletarian regime”.[xx]

4.

Returning to the FIARI manifesto, another relevant aspect of current affairs can be highlighted as the issue of the organization of artists. The authors of the manifesto started from the understanding that “thousands and thousands of isolated thinkers and artists, whose voices are drowned out by the hateful tumult of regimented counterfeiters, are currently scattered throughout the world.”[xxx] In that context, fascism, on the one hand, defamed as “degeneration” any progressive tendency that claimed the independence of art and, on the other, Stalinism declared these same tendencies to be fascist.

Faced with this situation, the authors of the manifesto claim to have as their objective “[…] to find a ground to unite all revolutionary defenders of art, to serve the revolution by the methods of art and to defend the freedom of art itself against the usurpers of the revolution. We are deeply convinced that a meeting on this ground is possible for representatives of reasonably divergent aesthetic, philosophical and political tendencies.”[xxiii]

O The Manifest calls on independent revolutionary art to unite against persecution and defend its right to exist, with such union being the central organizational proposal of FIARI. Realistic or abstract, surrealist or concrete, subjective or descriptive, for Leon Trotsky and André Breton there was no aesthetic limit to art that stood alongside the revolution. It was not up to the revolution to select and censor the aesthetic choices made by artists, in an authoritarian and bureaucratic stance, like that of Stalinism and its imposition of the aesthetics of socialist realism. As stated in the FIARI manifesto, “the communist revolution does not fear art.”[xxiii]

*Michel Goulart da Silva He holds a PhD in history from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and a technical-administrative degree from the Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFC).

Notes

[I] BRETON, Andrew. Surrealism Manifestos. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1985, p. 35.

[ii] BRETON, 1985, p. 184.

[iii] LEON TROTSKY, Leon. Art and revolution. In: FACIOLI, Vicente (org.). Breton & Leon Trotsky. São Paulo: Peace and Land/Cemap, 1985, p. 91.

[iv] LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 95.

[v] BRETON, 1985, p. 184.

[vi] BRETON, Andre; LEON TRÓTSKY, Leon. For an independent revolutionary art. In: FACIOLI, Vicente (org.). Breton & Leon Trotsky. São Paulo: Paz e Terra/Cemap, 1985, p. 37.

[vii] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 40.

[viii] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 41.

[ix] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 42.

[X] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 37-8.

[xi] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 44.

[xii] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 36.

[xiii] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p, 37-8.

[xiv] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 39.

[xv] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 43.

[xvi] TROTSKY, Leon. Literature and Revolution. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2007, p. 35.

[xvii] TROTSKY, 2007, p. 37.

[xviii] TROTSKY, 2007, p. 180.

[xx] BRETON, 1985, p. 130.

[xx] BRETON, 1985, p. 130-1.

[xxx] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 45.

[xxiii] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 45.

[xxiii] BRETON & LEON TROTSKY, 1985, p. 39.

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