The German left and aesthetic politics : cultural politics between the Second and Third Internationals The German Left and Aesthetic Politics examines the articulation of contending materialist aesthetic practices within the ideological fractures of the German Left between the Second and Third International. It is hinged on the major literary critical contributions of Franz Mehring representative of the Second and Karl Wittfogel and Georg Lukacs representing the Third. Both parties focussed on the bourgeois revolutionary cultural heritage and how it might provide examples for emulation. However post the 1918 November Revolution a radical politically avant garde challenged that tradition and through figures like the Berlin Dadaists Piscators proletarian theatre and later Brecht with contributions from dissident Marxist intellectuals like Karl Korsch and Fritz Sternberg asked other questions and proposed other answers. Revisiting the contexts and contents of these exchanges allows one to understand the serious role allocated to the cultural in constructing the third pillar of socialism its integrative dimension Franz Mehring : literary practice as a socialist form Political spontaneism and cultural practice Märten and the development of a theoretical position : from reformism to the November Revolution The German October and reconfiguration Wittfogels critique of Thalheimers introduction.