Plekhánov e a crítica estética marxista: entre a intenção e o gesto

Abstract

If one wants to understand the history of Marxism in Russia, Georgi Plekhanov is an important and underrated thinker. Besides the introduction of classical texts by Marx in that country, Plekhanov was also responsible for the political guidelines that lead the organized workers‟ movement up until 1914 and the author of several innovative essays on Marxism and aesthetics. This paper will discuss this last aspect of Plekhanov‟s work, with emphasis to his essay “Art and Social Life”, from 1912. I will discuss Plekhanov‟s formulations and the contradictions of a restrictive method, which did not prevent him from making important contributions to the understanding of the specificities of the aesthetic realm. In a dialogue with the bielinskian tradition, Plekhanov explored and started the debates of a Marxist aesthetic theory, an area of Marxism then unexplored.