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The paper explores Sreten Petrović's contribution to Marxist aesthetics. Petrović developed his theory within the framework of the Yugoslav Praxis School, although he was not a member of it. Petrović followed Danko Grlić, a prominent member of the Praxis School, in explaining art as a specific emanation of praxis – free, creative, autonomous and self-emancipatory activity beyond the commodity form of capitalist society. Art was thus understood as the liberation and emancipation of Being and its essence. However, Petrović also introduced a novelty – he claimed that art can never be fully understood nor explained. According to him, the only true Marxist aesthetics, given our limited cognitive abilities and the capitalist imperative of producing commodities, would be to limit aesthetics to meta-aesthetics and affirm the 'critique of the aesthetic mind'. We argue that by limiting aesthetics to meta-aesthetics Petrović is following the young Wittgenstein and his proposition that the world is unintelligible to philosophy. Accordingly, we claim that Petrović's contribution should be seen as an important contribution to Marxist aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E. P. Thompson's poetry and poetics are rarely considered by commentators on his work, but they are central to his thought. Thompson, who for a long time identified as a poet rather than a historian, struggled to find an alternative to both the Bloomsburian modernism he associated with decadent British capitalism and the chilly philistinism of Stalinist socialist realism. Thompson's unique and ingenious poetics emphasizes the political nature of poetry, yet denies that poets ought to subordinate their work to political concerns. By understanding Thompson's poetics, we can understand his critique of the 'positivism and utilitarianism' which he came to believe were inherent in most forms of Marxism. Thompson's poetics also helps us to understand the peculiar forms that some of his most famous political polemics take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]