From the British Journal of Aesthetics 37 (1997) THE MARXIST THEORY OF ART GORDON GRAHAM One striking feature of contemporary theorising about art is this: there are not merely competing theories, as is to be expected in any subject, but two quite different ideas about how theories should be formulated. Broadly speaking, modern theoretical approaches to art divide into two kinds. First there are those theories which seek to uncover the defining essence of art. The concern of these might be said to be with the concept of art as such. Although there is more to the philosophy of art than this, I shall call these 'philosophical' theories, because their origin is to be found in the works of Socrates and Plato, both of whom tried to understand things by formulating definitions of them. Second, and in opposition to these philosophical theories, is a rather more recent current of thought which can loosely be called sociological, since it is chiefly concerned with art as a social phenomenon. Sociological alternatives to philosophical aesthetics may be grouped under a variety of labels. Marxist aesthetics, structuralism, critical theory, deconstructionism, postmodernism are all familiar terms in contemporary art criticism. The precision of these labels is slightly misleading because there is a good deal of overlap between the ideas they represent. But the origins of all of them are to be found in Marxism. The aim of the sociological approach is to understand art as an historical phenomenon and a social construction, and it is Marxist theory which sets the terms in which this is to be done. Philosophical aesthetics is profoundly mistaken, if the sociological approach to art is correct, and the sociological approach rests upon the adequacy of certain fundamental Marxist contentions. Accordingly, my intention in this paper is to subject these fundamental contentions to critical examination I Any such attempt is usually deflected by a seemingly important difficulty, namely, that though there may be so-called Marxist theories of art, Marx himself had very