The course of the twentieth century has seen art and culture become increasingly subsumed into the logic of capital. A crucial element of a base-building strategy must be to foster an alternative proletarian culture outside the sphere of commodity production for the cultural enrichment and self-expression of workers, argues Cliff Connolly.
“The culture of the proletariat struggling to free itself is a class culture, sharply defined, and based on strife. We must bear in mind that the struggle is one for an ideal: that of the culture of brotherhood and complete freedom; of victory over the individualism which cripples human beings; and of a communal life based not on compulsion and the need of man to herd together for mere self-preservation, as it was in the past, but on a free and natural merging of personalities into super-personal entities.”
-Anatoly Lunacharsky, 1918
Capitalism allowed the creation of great cultural works that never would have been possible under previous modes of production. However, it has outlived its role as champion of the humanities and now serves only to smother the working artist. Authentic artistic expression can only be practiced by those free from its shackles. Artists in every medium are subject to soft censorship from their corporate benefactors and contractual obligations to produce particular content. While this enables them to share their creations with a mass audience, it compromises their integrity and precludes them from freely developing their ideas. Many regard “authenticity of expression” as a measure of originality, but this view does not hold up to close investigation. Completely original and unique ideas untainted by the input of others do not exist. No one is entirely isolated and unaffected by their environment. The self is created socially; it can only be found in and expressed with others. Thus, a certain degree of conformity with the ideas of others is not an automatic indicator of inauthenticity. It is not, as John Merrill puts it, “individual authenticity“1 being sacrificed to conform with capital, but social authenticity.
The legal protection of “intellectual property” is another means by which capital stifles artistic expression. The internet is filled with creative and innovative new takes on existing film series, video games, and other works that will never find an audience due to copyright. While some may claim that this serves to protect the artist’s work from adulteration, it in fact serves to ensure the property owner’s ability to profit from merchandise and advertising. This creates an artistic environment in which large corporations like Disney can buy legal rights to an idea such as the Star Wars series, declare forty years of literature noncanonical, and sue any artist who attempts to write the next great Star Wars book or film without their approval. With all artistic expression made subservient to the profit-mongering of a few capitalists, how are working people to find their voice? Socialization of artistic expression must be realized for the vast majority of humanity, the working class, to live freely and authentically together.
The music of Ariana Grande, for example, can be liked or disliked, but by no means can it be considered authentic once the property relations wrapped up in it are considered. While it is the author’s opinion that Grande’s incredible talent is beyond reproach, the music is tailored to and marketed at a specific audience and thus confined within certain norms. There is a safe formula that will reliably produce revenue for the media conglomerate with rights to the music and all income it generates. Experimentation would inevitably decrease Republic Records’s revenue, affecting the financial health of its parent company Vivendi (founded in 1853 by Napoleon III, currently worth roughly 34 billion dollars). This dynamic exists everywhere that art is chained to capital.
Authentic art, then, can only be found in artists who either lack access to capital or consciously struggle against its control. Although it may be tempting for the class reductionist to assert that authenticity is only possible for those alienated from capital, this is not reflected in reality. There are those who have access to private funding but do not allow it to control their artistic decision-making. A prime example of such artists is those found among the creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day pitched their low-budget pilot to many networks and ultimately signed with the one that ceded them full creative freedom. In an interview filmed shortly after the show’s second season, McElhenney explained: “I wanted to lay out exactly what it is that was gonna happen if they bought the show. The only way that we’ll do it is if I’m the showrunner and executive producer, Glenn and Charlie are executive producers, and we write the show and we act in the show and you can’t change the cast. So, I wasn’t really sure what anybody’s response was gonna be, and a couple networks’ responses was: get out.” After successfully negotiating terms with FX, they went on to garner a cult following and are now approaching their fourteenth season.
It is of utmost importance for communists to understand the value of nurturing artistic authenticity both for healthy socialization and as a propaganda tool in societies dominated by the Frankenstein popular culture of capitalism. This process can help build healthy, independent proletarian communities where disparate groups of alienated individuals were once estranged from each other. Agitating against the domination of art by capital, in addition to its domination of people, can bring the working class together in a common struggle against artificial, meagre life within the confines of property relations. Genuine collaborative spectacle can replace premeditated celebrity beefs and manufactured romantic comedies in the minds of workers. We cannot fall prey to the pessimistic lament of the Frankfurt School, insisting that the workers have been conquered by the culture industry of capital and are no longer capable of revolution. Numerous acts of heroism from mutinous soldiers in Vietnam, the Black Panthers, and countless others demonstrate a continued commitment to revolution. Nor can we accept the Situationist assertion that the workers can simply use detournement and elaborate pranks to overthrow the bourgeoisie through spectacle alone. Were that the case, Eric Andre would have seized power and legalized ranch by now. The way forward is concrete political organizing coupled with a conscious effort to foster an alternative proletarian culture. Progress towards one task will advance our work in the other.
A historic example of this phenomenon can be found in the early Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Russian revolution, theatre became mass media in a way never before seen. Once reserved for the well-to-do, it was brought to the streets of Petrograd and Moscow before being exported all over the country. The stage became a place of both recreation and political struggle for workers and peasants who had been excluded from artistic pursuits under the old order. Millions of people whose only option for an aesthetic experience had been the church finally had access to expressive activity. In his introduction to Three Soviet Plays (1966), Michael Glenny writes:
“This explosion of activity began with the revolution, as being virtually the only media for addressing large numbers of people simultaneously. The theatre also moved out of doors to deliver the revolutionary message to vast crowds who had never seen any kind of dramatic performance. The methods used were inevitably crude, but they were highly effective as a means of democratizing the theatre and of awakening a taste for drama and spectacle among the masses. Life was often hard and drab, but there was always the theatre, now available to all.”
The new Soviet government made a conscious effort to change the role of art in civil society, and found massive success. What had been a decadent ornament of the ruling class became a powerful instrument of the people. The masses of Russia, spread across eight million square miles and alienated from one another for centuries, were now forming a common community.
The revolutionary left in the United States once had mass cultural institutions to augment its political organizations too. In 1929, writers at the New Masses newspaper formed the first John Reed Club: “The purpose of the Club is to bring closer all creative workers; to maintain contact with the American revolutionary labor movement. Discussions, literary evenings, and exhibits will be organized.” This is not an obsolete historical footnote, but a strong example for us to follow in present circumstances. Our artists can and should be rallied around a common program to promote proletarian cultural development.
Communists today have to grapple with the task of promoting authentic proletarian culture just as the Bolsheviks did. However, we must remember that a new culture cannot be forced into existence without the participation of the masses we strive to serve. A healthy atmosphere of artistic experimentation must be fostered so the people can work out for themselves what their culture will look like. While we cannot prescribe a dry regimen of artistic pursuits to achieve this, we can take inspiration from working class artists exploring their craft today. The Chicago-based collective Neo-Futurist Theater provides an interesting example. Their mission is to create “theater that is a fusion of sport, poetry and living-newspaper. Non-illusory, interactive performance that conveys our experiences and ideas as directly and honestly as possible. Work that embraces those unreached or unmoved by conventional theater– inspiring them to thought, feeling and action.” Fellow traveler and playwright Kevin Michael Wesson envisions how this style of theater can be utilized by the workers’ movement:
“It is within the proletariat’s budget, interest, and future to make performing art honest and authentic[…]If the same feeling can be evoked in a $50,000 budget, three hour[…]play, as a zero budget two-minute[…]play, what is the point of capital if only to starve the honest artist?”2
These artists show us how innovation can compensate for a lack of funds in developing alternative proletarian culture.
In overcoming the limitations of capital and intellectual property, we should remember the lessons of the 20th century. The restrictions that previous socialists put on themselves must be avoided if a healthy culture is to be built. Censorship is a dangerous tool that is best employed with a light hand. Only the most heinous organs of reaction should be suppressed, and even then as a last resort. Open debate is always preferable to censorship in the realm of ideas; in the realm of action, other strategies are necessary. History shows the consequences that come with the bureaucratization of art: stifled creativity, conformity to official genre requirements, and state persecution of artists guilty of deviating from the norm. Recounting the demise of the free Soviet theatre, Michael Glenny writes:
“To circumscribe the writers’ freedom even further, Zhdanov defined the official doctrine of ‘Socialist Realism’ at the first Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. From now on they were required to write nothing but stereotyped pieces on a few officially approved themes.”
Many great socialist artists were harassed, arrested, and even pushed to suicide by the Stalinist bureaucracy. In addition to the loss of life and freedom, these tragic instances were the beginning of the end for authentic proletarian culture in the Soviet Union. The proletariat today cannot lose sight of those mistakes; we must vigilantly guard our movement from their repetition.
Perhaps the most impactful tool in the communists’ belt for cultural development is education. Lunachasky’s insight is again worth noting:
“We must never lose sight of the fact that the chief aim of education is the knowledge of the various forms of human culture, which, in its turn, includes all forms of mental and manual activity. The artistic and physical education must be the fitting completion of the technical. There must be educational freedom and freedom in the school. We hope to see the birth of an art completely in touch with the emotions of the modern world: of an art that will lead us to further conquests for liberty.”
Workers taking education into their own hands is nothing new in the United States — our movement has a long history of organizing workers’ night schools and party education centers. Moreover, these institutions were often on the cutting edge of progressive pedagogy for their time- with the New York Workers School being a prime example. According to Richard H. Rovere,
“By…1938, the Workers School had developed its own pedagogic method, forsaking the traditional academic format of lecture and recitation for a variation of the Socratic method in which short lectures were made with a view to posing of key questions for joint discussion by students. This teaching method, borrowed from a small set of elite liberal arts colleges in the New England region, was intended to shift the responsibility for learning to the students themselves.”3
This example should be exciting to anyone committed to the project of socialist base-building. The infrastructure and resources required to put such a school together are minimal, and certainly within the realm of possibility in the near future. A hundred or so dues-paying members of workers’ and tenants’ unions could easily find the money, location, and staff to host a weekly lesson or two. The American working class speaks countless languages that should be learned by organizers, our history should be taught to fill in the omissions in public school textbooks, and the finer points of Marxist theory should be made easily understandable to those of us who can’t afford a graduate degree. These tasks cannot be accomplished without a strong communist focus on education. Moreover, these schools will inevitably bring together budding proletarian artists and give them a space for collaboration and experimentation.
Whether it be red theater in the streets, workers’ night schools, or unionized cafes with domino tables and 99 cent coffee, new spaces for healthy socialization among workers must be created. It is in these spaces that communists can advocate our ideas and organize our institutions. Our dual task is to nurture an alternative proletarian culture and a democratic proletarian party. Achieving these aims will lay the foundation for a new century of class struggle that will shine brighter than the last.
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