{"product_id":"2026100011051-secondhand-unaddressed-letters-art-and-social-life","title":"Unaddressed Letters + Art And Social Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Poor\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Previous owner\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: pages can have notes and\/or underlining\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGeorgi Plekhanov — the founding father of Russian Marxism — argues with characteristic rigour and passion that art is never created in a vacuum, but is instead an organic expression of the social forces that shape human experience. This volume brings together two essential works: Unaddressed Letters, a series of penetrating essays in which Plekhanov dissects the relationship between aesthetics and material life, and Art and Social Life, a bold theoretical treatise that challenges idealist conceptions of art and insists on the primacy of social conditions in determining artistic form and content.\n\nTogether, these texts represent the cornerstone of Marxist aesthetic theory, establishing a framework that would influence generations of critics, artists, and philosophers throughout the twentieth century. Plekhanov's prose is polemical yet disciplined — marshalling historical evidence and philosophical argument with equal authority — as he dismantles the notion of art for art's sake and repositions creative work as a mirror of class struggle and social transformation. Published in Moscow in 1957, this edition by the Foreign Languages Publishing House stands as a testament to the enduring relevance of his ideas. For anyone seeking to understand the intellectual roots of socialist aesthetics, these pages present an indispensable — and still provocative — starting point.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50572794527963,"sku":"2026100011051-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/507b7fa4-6465-4a00-8739-e95cc54e7a42.png?v=1791167429","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100011051-secondhand-unaddressed-letters-art-and-social-life","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}