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author | phoebe jenkins <pjenkins@tula-health.com> | 2024-08-23 12:00:35 -0400 |
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committer | phoebe jenkins <pjenkins@tula-health.com> | 2024-08-23 12:00:35 -0400 |
commit | a570747f4d5b71bf3013e2080c44a99615d36a3d (patch) | |
tree | a91c623d5ecc56d216678aa372b6763f58e571bf /extra/communists_must.tex | |
parent | 9a29b3adf0602d370fc584f0ff33930367c62c60 (diff) | |
download | blueprint-a570747f4d5b71bf3013e2080c44a99615d36a3d.tar.gz |
folks i believe that's the base style structure for the whole dang thing
Diffstat (limited to 'extra/communists_must.tex')
-rw-r--r-- | extra/communists_must.tex | 39 |
1 files changed, 37 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/extra/communists_must.tex b/extra/communists_must.tex index ac44bb7..89d2af6 100644 --- a/extra/communists_must.tex +++ b/extra/communists_must.tex @@ -10,6 +10,9 @@ \chapter[Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)][Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture]{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)} +\fancyhead{} \fancyfoot{} \fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{1111111111}} + \vfill \section*{1} @@ -19,7 +22,10 @@ revolutionary, would come to nothing. The culture of the future would be fascist barbarism. The discussion of revolutionary cultural leadership is contingent upon this state of affairs. +\clearpage \section*{2} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{2222222222}} + \uline{For clarity}, \uline{somewhere}, \uline{sometime}, the \uline{best possibility} in culture for the present period has to be defined. As an analogy, with respect to religion Communists have to state somewhere, sometime that we @@ -45,7 +51,10 @@ and to pay for the his industry; but in the production of Soviet films begin wit socialist documentaries, and require that they appear on every film program along with the melodramas. +\clearpage \section*{3} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{3333333333}} + The following three conditions for revolutionary cultural leadership are the ones I will argue from. I will refer to them by letter throughout the text. \begin{enumerate}[label=\Alph*., nosep, itemsep=0.5em] @@ -54,7 +63,10 @@ I will argue from. I will refer to them by letter throughout the text. \item To satisfy the workers' desire, during a flood tide of class struggle, to come to grips with reality and to be done with escapism in culture. \end{enumerate} +\clearpage \section*{4} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444}} + The following is the best possibility in culture for the present period. (The many tasks pressing on me allow time only to sketch it.) It is important to remember that implementation of the best possibility @@ -67,6 +79,8 @@ films. \subsection*{\enquote{Applied Arts}} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- Applied Arts}} + These include architecture, automotive products, appliances and utensils, furniture, graphics, and clothes. Actually, they are nothing but fields of design engineering which are particularly \uline{retarded} @@ -121,6 +135,7 @@ should replace stylization and decoration. Further, people can be educated to primitive decoration. \subsection*{\textsc{Music (Dancing, \enquote{Poetry})}} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- Music (Dancing, \enquote{Poetry})}} In this area the most oppressed classes and nations have a crucial traditional culture of their own. For the United States, there are the country blues, @@ -253,6 +268,7 @@ music is already a vital symbol of the most oppressed; all that is needed is encouragement so that it can become more so. \subsection*{Film} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- Film}} Leaving aside the \enquote{applied arts}, the three areas of culture which have the greatest mass significance are music, the film, and the @@ -353,6 +369,8 @@ that we have to demonstrate against it, we must publicize our own films in the demonstration.} \subsection*{\enquote{\textsc{Theatre}}} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- Theatre}} + The Legitimate Theatre, Broadway and off-Broadway, is a culture of the luxury-consuming \'{e}lite. It is a luxury analogous to handwoven clothes. As soon as Legitimate Theatrical productions are a success, they are filmed. The film is far more efficient than the Legitimate Theatre. Even though the Theatre is more original and intimate than the \uline{theatrical} cinema, it will tend to be replaced by films of itself, because of their greater efficiency. The Legitimate Theatre survives to the extent that a luxury-consuming \'{e}lite supports it. Vaudeville has reappeared, but on television, on videotape. Even the comic nightclub monologue, which is not being filmed, is being recorded. @@ -362,6 +380,8 @@ As for the feudal and \enquote{folk} theatres, Noh, the Japanese puppet theatre, Thus, the Legitimate Theatre is a highly inefficient luxury compared to the film. It is revolutionary leadership to do everything with the film; to replace the Theatre, including performances of old Dramas, with the socialist film. (\uline{Condition A}: higher labor productivity; \uline{Condition B}: against \'{e}litist luxuries.) \subsection*{\enquote{\textsc{Visual Arts}}} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- \enquote{Visual Arts}}} + Before the invention of photography, much Art involved representation, from Chinese silk painting to the French Academy to Indian sculpture. As photography was developed in bourgeois society in the 19th century, and rapidly achieved widespread popularity, Serious Artists progressively lost interest in representation. The decline of representational Art resulting from the invention of photography is an accomplished fact. The acceptance of this irreversible technical advance is obligatory for revolutionary leadership. (\uline{Condition A.}) As for calligraphy, it is replaced by the Roman alphabet and typography; and as for decoration in the \enquote{applied arts}, I have already dealt with it, @@ -375,6 +395,8 @@ To conclude, the film's general superiority for culture, in the era in which the The only variety of drawing which symbolizes rather than documents, which the oppressed have shown they want, is the socialist political cartoon. But the political cartoon is an element of journalism; it doesn't have leading cultural significance as does the film. \subsection*{\textsc{Fiction}} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- \enquote{Fiction}}} + The best-seller novel is a \uline{middle-class} art. Its \enquote{equipment}, the ability to read, pen and paper, the prose fictional narrative, is simple. Mass paperback publication and monopolistic distribution of the best-seller make it much more efficient, much less of a luxury then the theatre. However, the film is more immediate, more accessable to the oppressed. Many bourgeois intellectuals are becoming more interested in film than in the novel. Even so, the middle classes may continue to demand the best-seller. If they do, the best-seller will present a dilemma. The whole experience of the best-seller shows that it can only have flair, \enquote{freedom}, \enquote{life} when it is irresponsible to the correct political line, to Communist virtuousness. That is, when it is cynical about revolution, scatological, or the like. The novel that approximates the Party line, Marxist historiography, the Socialist Realist novel, can only be stodgy, inept, and dull---and is not a \enquote{best-seller}. There is no getting around it: Dostoevski is more \enquote{alive} than any Soviet novelist; the political cynics, Hemingway, Mailer, Baldwin, and their kind, make the most \enquote{alive} novelists, The reason is precisely that the best-seller violates Condition C. The flair of the best-seller, even the \enquote{true-to-life} best-seller, comes from its fictionality, its fantasy, its escapism, @@ -383,16 +405,20 @@ No doubt the fiction of Proust, Joyco, Samuel Beckett will die out. (Condition B At best, if the workers' pressure for a revolutionary political line in the best-seller becomes great enough, it may be possible to divert them from the best-seller to the socialist journalistic book and film. (By the \enquote{journalistic book} I mean the book-length account of current events by a writer-participant, such as John Reed's \uline{Ten Days.}) -\CF{ To implement this, U.S. Communists should encourage filmmakers, not novelists; because we can get so much more out of the film in the short run, as well as the long run. It is wisest for us to leave the writing of the best-sellers to the cynics, who do it so well.} +\CF{To implement this, U.S. Communists should encourage filmmakers, not novelists; because we can get so much more out of the film in the short run, as well as the long run. It is wisest for us to leave the writing of the best-sellers to the cynics, who do it so well.} Can as much established culture as I have said really be exhausted? It is extremely significant that during the same early Soviet period I have referred to, all of the famous cultural specialists, even Eisenstein, even Mayakovsky, believed that Art would ultimately disappear; as every honest history of the period admits. In general, this period was the most revolutionary yet in cultural history; there must be some truth in the unanimous belief of its celebrities, -\subsection*{\textsc{Theory of Culture}} +\subsection*{\textsc{Theory of Culture}} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4444444444 --- \enquote{Theory of Culture}}} + Two topics particularly need study. The most important is: Culture as the instrument of an economic class. The overwhelming evidence that culture is a class instrument must be assembled. The other topic is the finances of culture, of the multi-billion-dollar cultural institutions: patronage and commissions; Opera boxes; book sales; ticket sales; the Art market; record sales; the banks and the cinema monopolies; the financing of Broadway plays; sponsorship of TV dramas; private endowment of Orchestras, Museums, Concert Halls; state-monopoly capitalist support, which is increasingly important. Top published studies of the finances of culture are Francis Haskell's \uline{Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society In the Age of the Baroque}; investment banker Richard H. Rush's \uline{Art As An Investment}; and bourgeois critic Harold Rosenberg's \enquote{The Art Establishment}, in Esquire, January 1965; because they elaborate with Machiavellian frankness on the relation of culture to the ruling class, for a large area of culture. These revealing studies need only be placed in context to have revolutionary implications. Unpublished material of mine which I am collecting under the title \uline{Class and the Development of Culture} will provide an adequate general theory of culture. +\clearpage \section*{5} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{5555555555}} In many cases a reference to one of Conditions A--C has been a sufficient argument for revolutionary leadership. For example, a reference to Condition A is a sufficient argument for prefabricated architecture. @@ -414,11 +440,20 @@ An event which illustrates the role of snob culture in the proletarian dictators European popular music is the exception in the culture Condition B excludes, in that it was a revolutionary symbol in 1789. But now that the European and European-American workers have come to have a position in the world proletariat above the colored workers, the \enquote{idea} of European popular music is that it is higher and purer than low, \enquote{racial} street-Negro music. This white-supremacist conception will persist as long as \enquote{white} music does; European popular music now symbolizes white supremacy. Further, the whole idea of \enquote{folk music} and \enquote{folk ballet} is \enquote{cleaned-up n------r music and dances}, European popular music and \enquote{folk music} consolidate white supremacy among the workers. +\clearpage \section*{6} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{6666666666}} + A general remark on implementation of the best possibility for theatre and film. In the early stages of the replacement of the Legitimate Theatre and the novelistic cinema, some more plays and some neo-novelistic cinemas may be produced. These dramas and cinemas present a dilemma exactly analogous to that of the best-seller. They can have \enquote{life} only when they are irresponsible to the correct political line. The more they approximate the Party line, the more they will fall flat. LeRoi Jones against the Chinese \enquote{proletarian drama}: that is the dilemma. The politically irresponsible drama and novelistic cinema may have to be permitted for a while. But a more hopeful possibility is that workers' dissatisfaction with their politics will help to displace them. +\clearpage \section*{7} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{7777777777}} + I have so far limited myself to the present period, but I would like to make one remark with respect to the period after the defeat of the U.S.-European bourgeoisies. Music-dancing will then be an amusement rather than a class-struggle symbol. In the present period, street-Negro music is permeated through and through with \uline{competition}. There is competition between the singers and combos. There is competition on the dance floor. The conceptions of one's superiority to another, one's getting ahead and leaving another behind, or of one's mediocrity or inferiority, are involved. Thus, disappointment and failure are possible in this music-dancing. Now competition is inimical to amusement, I think the people of the future will turn against this competition. They will find a way, in music-dancing and other amusements, for everybody to be \enquote{best}. +\clearpage \section*{8} +\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Communists Must Give Revolutionary Leadership in Culture (1965)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{8888888888}} + If the bourgeoisie could keep control indefinitely of the world's most productive economies, the U.S. and West Europe, then all cultural leadership, no matter how revolutionary, would come to nothing. |