Socialist Realism, 2010 style

The shortlist for the annual BBC Short Story Competition 2010 has just been announced. I daresay that some visitors to this blog may have entered this contest at some time or other. However, they shouldn't imagine that the quality of their writing would have carried the most weight in the selection of stories and the award of prizes. One of this year's judges, Owen Sheers, has been explaining (Today programme, 12.11.10) what he has been looking for in the stories submitted. It's that they 'reveal some kind of victory of the human spirit'.
   One could, of course, treat this as just a throwaway remark of no great significance - if it didn't share in a tendency that I've come to notice more and more in recent years from both Left and Right (in this instance, I would surmise, from the Left). But the curious thing about it is that it echoes the notorious ideology of Socialist Realism.
   This was promulgated as the ideal for all the arts (though I shall speak here only of literature) in the Soviet Union, and later in the Soviet Bloc. It's to be distinguished from Social Realism, which conveys what the author intends to be a truthful account of society, and is further distinguished from Naturalism, which depicts surface features accurately without necessarily penetrating to any deeper truth. (A point strongly made by the Marxist critic György Lukács). Dickens was a Naturalist: though described minutely, his characters, especially his grotesques, are very unrealistic.
   In contrast, Socialist Realism was purposive. Its guiding idea was the advance of Socialism, and the writer was expected to be positive (always look on the bright side of life) and optimistic, even when dealing with calamitous events such as wars, and the misery they bring. There's nothing wrong with this in principle. After all, you can make a case for Virgil's Aeneid as Augustan Realism. Whatever Aeneas (the man of destiny) does, or befalls him, is directed towards his divinely appointed goal of founding a new Troy in Italy that will evolve into, and culminate in the Roman Empire and the rule of Augustus. It's just that, with the Soviet Bloc, totalitarian control crushed the imaginative life out of genuine artists and fostered politically correct hackwork. The products of it were unreadable, and have not survived.
   Socialist Realism 2010 style, which I suggest we call Humanist Realism, sets its sights lower than the old article. 'The Human Spirit' could be glossed as Hegelian, but it does not develop. It can be victorious, steadfast, or alternately give way a little and spring back, when it is called resilient. The positive and optimistic imperatives remain, and attach to the conviction that the human spirit will overcome all adversities and that we shall be left with a tolerable world to live in. Finally, though, Humanist Realism lacks (so far, at least) the totalitarian power of Socialist Realism. The worst that can happen to writers who don't conform to Humanist Realism is that their stories won't make it into any shortlists.