In a passage of the Grundrisse, Marx makes the following remark on the Romantic perspective:

«It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.»(1)

This passage is interesting not only because it reveals Marx’s attitude towards Romanticism (he acknowledges the essence of the Romantic critique, even while in a dialectical stance situating himself beyond the antithesis), but also because it suggests that the Romantic perspective will only disappear with its antagonist, capitalist society.

Moreover, the implicit definition of the Romantic viewpoint given in the passage–the aspiration to return to an original plenitude–constitutes the germ of the conception of the Romantic «worldview» that we have developed elsewhere.(2) Yet while for us the essence of the Romantic vision is the rejection and critique of industrial-capitalist modernity, in the name of values drawn from the pre-modern past, that vision is by no means always purely past-oriented.

There exists a whole spectrum of left-wing Romantic positions –including a Marxist Romanticism– which seek in the past inspiration for the invention of a utopian future. Capitalism never came to its «blessed end,» as Marx had hoped. Consequently there occur throughout the twentieth century renewed manifestations of the Romantic vision, in diverse political colorations and in all fields of culture, including the social sciences.

England, with a particularly influential Romantic current in its contemporary human sciences, is a striking example. Concentrated in economic and social history on the one hand, and literary, artistic and cultural studies on the other, it is often strongly interdisciplinary. It also stems from a long and rich tradition of nineteenth-century Romantic social criticism –the tradition of Carlyle, Ruskin and William Morris.

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