Thread by @TheLitCritGuy

I've been rereading Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Modern Man Under Socialism" for #MayDay - a work that looks forward time when workers can be set free from the drudgery of work

"Under socialism what will you do without the motivation of wages?"

For Wilde, the answer to this was quite simple - freed from work man would be able to spend their time on self-cultivation.

In Wilde's writing self-indulgence carries with it a glimpse of a utopia, where all might be so free...

For Wilde, the goal of socialism was a kind of glorious individualism and, whilst Marx wouldn't have put it like that he wouldn't have necessarily disagreed.

In the Grundrisse Marx looks forward to "the absolute working out of creative potentialities...with the development of all human powers as such the end in itself."

A simple truth for Marxists generally - you are not what you do (thanks to the alienated nature of labour you can't be) but you are SO much more than this.

In Capital, Marx writes of the 'blossoming forth' of human energies for its own sake that REQUIRES the shortening of the working day.

As Eagleton puts it, "socialism, in short, is about leisure, not labour"

Wilde writes movingly of his regret 'that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful & delightful in him"

And as a result, under this configuration of society, man "misses the true pleasure and joy in living" (Wilde again)

Under socialism, culture, that pleasurable effort of self-cultivation could be somewhat separated from the realm of economics, of labor for the necessity of survival.

The more of a surplus that can be generated, the more we could be freed from the hellish necessity of toil.

Here Eagleton compares socialism to psychotherapy - the economic exists to do itself out of business.

We could be freed from the relentless monomania that is capitalist accumulation only through the economic revolution of socialism.

It's Utopian, yes, but Wilde remarked that a map of the world which did not include utopia was not even worth glancing at.

Wilde argues that it is private property which is incompatible with true individualism and, in the interests of the rich, private property must be done away with

He also goes on to argue that altruism stands in the way of abolishing poverty, historical progress comes through revolt, the poor are rightly rebellious and the family must be repudiated.

Yet, as Eagleton notes, whilst Wilde is a socialist he is also an elitist who sees the general populace as bereft of culture and he tells the artist to ignore them.

But the distinction between elitism and socialism is a split between the present and the future, between what is and what could be.

Or, in other words, where art WAS there shall humanity be.

Its only when the individual has been freed from the desperate, crushing burden of material conditions can they flourish as free, cultured individuals.

Eagleton points out the neat paradox that for Wilde, the less art busies itself with current social problems, the more political it becomes

Good art is also moral too, in the autonomy of its form it foreshadows the coming kingdom of freedom that is within the current realm of dire necessity.

The divide he enacts is a little too neat, but Wilde takes seriously the question of the material conditions needed to for as many people as possible to be free.

Culture may transcend material conditions, but it is material conditions which determine how far this is possible.

Or, as Wilde writes, "it is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair."

So, happy #MayDay comrades.

A final point

1. What is: marketwatch.com/story/one-thir…

2. What could be: marxists.org/reference/arch…