A reactionary writer can grasp historical forces better than a socialist one

Evidence

Yet in his examples of such engagement, Lukács follows his materialism through to a further and even paradoxical conclusion: if it is the material substructure, the social situation that takes precedence over mere opinion, ideology, the subjective picture someone has of himself, then we may logically be forced to conclude that under certain circumstances a conservative, a royalist, a believing Catholic can better seize the genuine forces at work in society than a writer whose sympathies are relatively socialistic. This is the ultimate force of Lukács’ comparison between Balzac and Zola. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Lukács’s materialism in History and Class Consciousness and the base/superstructure priority; this is the classic totalization problem — the subjective position doesn’t determine access to totality.
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion that materialism about history can license — class position and ideology detach from epistemic access to the totality — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting move a reader returns to.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what Lukács’s ‘materialist’ priority of substructure over opinion actually entails for knowledge.