The New Movements in Context
Lukács felt that the new movements were evidence that capitalism was being stretched to the breaking point. As he writes:
- Economic reality as a totality is itself subject to historical change … the decisive role of the bourgeoisie in history is to develop the world market, thanks to which the economy of the whole world becomes an objectively unified totality. … As a result of the objective structure of the economic system, the surface of capitalism appears to ‘disintegrate’ into a series of elements all driven towards independence. Obviously this must be reflected in the consciousness of the men who live in this society, and hence too in the consciousness of poets and thinkers. (1036)
That is to say, the focus on individual isolation in these artistic movements is correlated directly with the wholesale integration of capitalist system. This forms one of Lukács' primary arguments against the revolutionary potential of modernism, namely, that these movements portray individual life as disconnected at a time in which capitalism ensures that people's lives are actually more intertwined than ever.
Read more about this topic: Realism In The Balance
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