Marxist aesthetic thought has dominated Chinese literary life for half a century, but little is known about how this distinctive Western school of thought came to be accepted. Paul G. Pickowicz fills in the gap, tracing the evolution of Chinese Marxist literary thought by focusing on Ch'u Ch'iu-pai, China's most important Marxist literary intellectual of the twenties and thirties. Ch'u and his contemporaries interpreted the writing of Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Lafargue, Trotsky, Lenin, and Lunacharsky in ways that would answer important questions about the relationship between art and society, the moral obligations of the writer, the manner in which revolutionaries should perceive the literary treasures of the past, the impact of capitalism on artistic culture, and the nature of art in the socialist society of the future.

Paul G. Pickowicz finds that Chinese writers responded to Marxism in a variety of ways. Some stressed voluntaristic themes, some emphasized deterministic elements, others, like Ch'u, attempted to synthesize conflicting strains. Moreover, the transition to Marxism did not constitute a radical break from the liberal traditions associated with the May Fourth literary revolution. Instead, leftist writers interpreted Marxism in ways that were compatible with their deeply ingrained May Fourth intellectual predispositions.

Ch'u was the first to make a Marxist critique of the May Fourth generation of literary intellectuals and to analyze the failings of the leftist literary movement itself. His writings are of contemporary relevance for the issues he raised, such as the failure of leftist writers to place the revolutionary literary movement on a mass base. Ch'u's writings influenced the literary thought of Mao Tse-tung, and the issues Ch'u raised continue to be debated with emotion in China today.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.