Artists and Potboilers. A Chapter on the Incentive of Gain. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let Us Forget !

Little apology is needed for the scanty mention of the European War in this chapter. In the contest every kind of cannon has now been used ; every variety of dismemberment and death been suffered ; the whole thing is now grown monotonous and dull. When the French plains and the Flemish fields, the hills of Russia and the hills of Italy have been sufficiently dunged with rotten death to please the masters, the fighting nations will see that, far from any good coming to them from the bloodshed, it has resulted in a silly national division of the workers, which is not good, nor anywhere near good.

Let people for a moment forget all the ephemeral “Commissions,” “Reports,” “Investigations,” “Leading Articles,” ”Booklets, and “Volumes” that are born of the war, and turn to matters of permanent interest ; let people turn from the Newspapers to the Classic Books, from Cannon to Galleries, and they will see that the old delicate dramas, the fine new stuff, the sweetness of the masters in painting of Spain and France and Italy, the sunny Dutch work, the pallid Japanese, all the singular inspiration of China, the philosophy of Germany, all do, not merely at one time or another, but all times, peace or war, show the harmony of talents and disclose the comradeship of genius. The greatest of all nations are brotherly, and their fraternal work will help to bring peace permanently at last on earth : it will not be done with siege-guns, no matter how massive they be nor what powder they spittle. All Art nourishes the spirit of revolution ; against the shape and cut of a book or chair or house as Morris did ; against the shape or cut of the earth, as in Shelley.

Our masters know this and have in all ages endeavoured to alter the vital secular character of Art into a something vapid and servile ; it must be changed, they said, from the passionate and wayward to the didactic and mechanical : they spoke with tongues of fire and their syllables were prisons. Artists were driven into all kinds of occupations quite alien to them : chiselling ships and barrels of muskets, allegories, chapel-altars. Samaritans, Virgin Man’s, colouring monasteries, till a daring Italian boy of the thirteenth century started dreaming by his flock on the hills of Padua, and in the end found that the sight of his pregnant ewes was quite as inspiring as a pregnant Virgin. A new, self-reliant epoch commenced for Art, and the masters’ fires, prisons, and titles since then have only scared the unsound, bribed the less keen and valuable, and filled the archives Paying of Art with chronicles of sorrow.

Paying the Price.

Whether they be ancient or modern, whether they be Russian novelists, Dutch or French landscapists or English poets, they have prepared, and must prepare, in youth, for a life of affliction and a ceremonious funereal ; must have thought, must now think, that if the funeral ostentation is forgotten or neglected, posterity will, with bronze busts and posthumous marble, compensate them for the dismal doom they suffered and the misery they endured.

Marvellous boys like Chatterton, are not prepared to suffer the fate that the stupid and mercenary arrange ; rather than a piecemeal death they end it all at once with a little acid. They think the worst acid better than the best editor. Some live on and fight. For this crime Dostoievsky is, in Russia, sentenced to death. The sentence is afterwards mitigated ; instead of death he is sent to Siberia (which he named the House of the Dead) for ten years. Out of Norfolk we get a hard instance. Old Crome, “the glory of the English landscape school” as he is now called by preface writers, was set on coach painting in Norwich. In the evenings and on Saturday afternoons, when he was not lining spokes and yellowing wheels, he did, in oils, the moons over Norfolk pastures, over massive scalloped cows ; shipping by the riversides he did after the manner of Hobbema, and Mousehold Heath with its chalk pits, donkeys, characteristic mills, as only Crome could—the lot to be sold for not many shillings. That picture of his in the London National Gallery was once divided in two and the the halves, when separately sold, brought him four guineas. It is very hard when a Preface Writer cannot say an artist’s unhappiness is due to a girl. Gainsborough, too, had to leave his “Market Carts,” his “Stricken Oaks,” his “Pools,” his “Sunsets over Devonshire Moors,” and for his pence, with his oils, flatter the fussy Duchess and the soft Earl.

The Martyrdom of Genius.

Also there was a Dutch painter born in a windmill some few hundreds of years ago Rembrandt van Ryn. He put his hand to the pallette and passed many a terrible day, for he did as his genius dictated. The feudal owners of much of the Dutch wealth did not like his Rabbis and washerwomen and singular mills and did not buy them. He was in the end driven from his Amsterdam shanty ; he took his wife, children, and paints from house to hovel and then along to humbler hovel. His name is now highest on the auction-room price list.

Last century a sad French boy worked a plough in Normandy. Until he was twenty, in his little leisure, he did, with charcoal only, snatches of beautiful country or the raw-boned, decrepit Frenchmen on the neighbouring’ farms. Eventually this mighty ploughman lived in Barbizon, a sad, colourless village jostled by massive, dark woods. He did then, as Rembrandt in Holland, follow where his talent of sorrow led. The Frenchman’s end was similar to the Dutchman’s. If joy isn’t yet, persecution is international. No one for many years would buy his “Dung Spreaders,” his “Peasants Reposing,” his “Potato Diggers”; so his suffering was distinctly hard, even in the catalogue of the hardships of artists. “My wife will be confined next month and there is nothing in the house. I do not know where to get my month’s rent” he wrote to Theodore Rousseau. He was found without fire or food. He was praised a little in the Press, but critics “Charm ache with air and agony with words.” Christy’s and Agnew’s know the man—they have lately sold one of his six-inch by five canvasses, of a “Shepherdess knitting,” for a thousand guineas. He painted “The Gleaners” and “The Angelas”—his name is immortal, Jean Francois Millet.

An Odious Comparison.

Under capitalism the man with colour schemes is no match in the market for the man with financial schemes : it is the nightingale against the vulture.

I could give instance after instance of the sorrow and pain which the talented in an enslaved community must endure if they watch or listen to the loveliness of the earth and then in any way tell it to others. The good men will cross the world, and, while a masterful class holds factory and field, while the democracy is content to be put off with an education, incomplete, suitable for commerce and nothing more, they must go without encouragement from the mass, without money from the opulent ; their telescopes will be broken in two, they will be sent, starved and pale, to their pallettes, and in rags to their violins.

But where in this record does the incentive of gain crop up ? If, as the merry masters say, it is for gain the best and the worst work, why do not the greatest leave their permanent, sincere work (which leaves them lean) and win gold with the transitory, the false, and the easily understood ? To hear our rulers speak one would think the poet sings because he wants butcher’s meat and wholemeal bread. He sings for nothing of the kind. He sings, as he draws breath, naturally, and he would die if he did not. It is idiocy to think he sings because it is hard to live, because engines and lands are privately owned, and would cease to sing to a wider world under Socialism. It is impertinence to say he sings at the bidding of silver and gold magnates and wouldn’t sing to a supreme democracy. As long as skies are blue and hills are green he will compose, whether dividends change or do not, whether money is or is not, whether the world listens or does not.

That, too, is the secret of the strength of the influence of minorities.

One Word about Potboilers.

One word about potboilers : we must never let them take up too much time. The artist is only hard hit when he stands tenaciously by his ideals. Some are, however, forced into apostacy or monotony, endeavour to repeat old masters, not because they are born rogues, not through any natural or youthful desire to emulate what is glorious, but because potboilers pay better. So we have a houseful of Academicians like La Thangue, with his geese, puddles, and red-hot, boozy-looking suns, his grizzly stacks with one star out beside a skinny, stippled moon ; a host of others doing silly, whitish Samaritans on shivering rags in a somewhat English, damp Egypt ; Leader who decorates Devonshire property with honeysuckle, spin and span labourers, Flaxman china, best food, best wives, best children. It will not profit us much to consider the yellow lies and pink apostacy of the other fellows who settle or pervert the national learning or taste in art. I need only say that a literate democracy would not have repetitions of dead masters, being familiar with the originals ; being atheistic, would not care whether the pallid Nazarene was in Egypt or out of it; being intimate with the fields would detest Leader’s landscape puddings. Under Socialism we will with our schools banish ignorance, with our Science banish Paradise, with our Art banish Academy sunsets and in consequence banish Academicians.

The work of the potboilers is made to be understood : it is fitted for dronish intellects ; it prospers under the hand of the aristocrat. On the other hand the work of the artist is always bewildering to the characterless slaves of his own particular generation and becomes the wonderment and delight of a remote posterity. But through illiteracy, which the Board Schools of the masters are instrumental in perpetuating, the worker takes small interest in Art. By cunning he is deprived of intellectual health and liberty, as he is of bodily entertainment and rest ; he is separated from Beethoven and Corot as from his loom and meadow.

It will be seen from the few illustrations I have given that while a few millions master the wonders and riches of the earth, the pictures, like the plough, the beautiful and the useful, will be the property of those who have too much gut to be satisfied with food and too little brain to be edified with Art.

The poem like the engine, the landscape picture like the land, to do good must be freely held by the democracy. To get this we must, by the unity of the workers of the world, destroy the tyranny of those who have not enough intelligence to produce any music nor sufficient diligence to sow wheat. Socialism means the ownership, by the community, of all society’s vital machines and land, and a redistribution, in consequence, of that possession, of books, pencils, and violins. With these things, and the life-long love of comrades, we will become the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon.

H. M. M.

Tooth, Nail and Tiger-Skin (1953)

From the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain’s traditional cultural intercourse with Europe has in the past hundred years been supplemented—and possibly, to some extent, supplanted—by a transatlantic inter-traffic. Having no barrier of language to surmount, the exchange between Britain and America has included popular as well as academic culture; aided by radio, talking pictures and, most recently, the long residence of thousands of American servicemen in Britain, the features of everyday life in America have impinged more and more upon British custom.

National culture in America has no long history preceding the mechanization of work and leisure, and so the slick, trashy product is more easily accepted there, while its importation into Britain has frequently caused concern to those who stand as guardians of public taste and morality. The adjective “American,” is often one of disapproval; and never has the disapproval been stronger than for a contemporary art-form which, hard as the moralists try, keeps on growing in popularity—American comics.

American comics are not comic. Their subject- matter is cowboys, crime, horror, adventure, sex and space-travel. Something over fifty million copies are sold every month in the United States, and since the war there has been a growing readership in this country. They are marketed by syndicates which operate on both sides of the Atlantic, and are produced by artists working in assembly-line fashion—one drawing the figures, another doing the lettering, and so on. America calls them “squinkies,” and their stock-in-trade is beatings, bludgeonings and fee faw fums.

The beginnings of strip drawings are ancient Egyptian rock tombs have sets of pictures recording the phases of wrestling bouts and acrobatic feats. The modern comic strip began in the American popular press near the end of the nineteenth century and, until recent years, drew its material almost wholely from workaday and domestic life; the awful child, the henpecked husband and the pert stenographer were its dramatis personae. With humour as the chief intention, the technique and conventions of the strip were perfected.

It was during the great depression that humour gave way to adventure, suspense and muscle-parade; possibly everyday life was too grim to be funny any longer. Tarzan and Superman took over, and the comics turned to worlds where nobody asked: “Brother, can you spare a dime?” The squinkies were born. Their theme was action, and they were uninhibited in portraying it; the war stimulated them to greater extravagances.

The aim of the squinkie artist is to create arresting, vigorous movement and easily recognizable character-types; the limitation of the small squares—and part of them is taken up by the speech “balloons’’—prohibits fastidiousness or subtlety. Technical quality varies considerably, from slick, stylish work to that of talentless amateurs. All characters are clearly labelled. Villains have black hair and thin moustaches, scientists are lean and bespectacled, and heroes have a superabundance of muscle (Ka’anga, Lord of the Jungle, has calf muscles slightly larger than his head). Heroines are wasp-waisted, but otherwise pneumatic.

Musical comedy costume is everyday wear in the squinkie world. Janga, Flower of the Wilds, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and Tiger Girl all appear in chic animal-skin swimsuits, while Dara of the Vikings prefers a two-piece, with helmet. The jungle men keep to trunks, of course, and the skymen—Superman, Captain Marvel and the rest—go about in long red underwear. There are rigid conventions of speech, too. In the jungle and other far away places, including outer space, they use archaic English, while all spies talk with strong foreign accents. Girls in danger have to scream “Eeek!” and villains coming to their inevitable sticky ends are obliged to shout “Aarghhh!”

These are the superficial conventions of the American comics. They present, for the most part, fantasy worlds. Into these, however, they project beliefs and customs of the actual world; thus their real content is not in their local colour but in their themes, and carries a much more significant set of conventions.

The simplest, broadest and most obvious of these conventions is that good—which is equated with law and patriotism—must always triumph over its opposite. The squinkies are as determined about this as all other juvenile literature, but infinitely more ruthless; when Captain Thunder or Tiger Girl grapples with evil, the end justifies any means. In the crime strips, the violences of the gangsters and killers are exceeded by those of the police, while the various jungle lords and space conquerors manhandle wrongdoers in ways which make all-in wrestling look soft stuff.

The only circumstances in which good does not always win by a knock-out are those in which unearthly powers are involved. The squinkies have great respect for the supernatural, and make it score freely off the lay population. “The Monster from the Pit," for example, a shaggy, shark-toothed immortal from Transylvania who changes into a New York policeman by day and goes out for blood at night, is last seen taking a large bite at his would-be slayer’s throat after a graveyard fracas. The postscript asks: “How many more lives will be snuffed out by the evil Grakhu . . . before he is once more sent to the pit of evil which spawned him? None can tell.” The moral clearly is that witches, warlocks, boggarts and long-leggity beasties are a different thing altogether.

If supernatural beings are the highest class of villains, foreigners are the lowest. To be foreign in the squinkies is to be a suspicious character. Spies and saboteurs are easy game, while the perversity of murderers, mad doctors and jungle marauders is explained from their lack of fluent English. Easterners are horrific unless they are the faithful servants of jungle princesses, in which case they are simpletons, or unless they are young women, in which case they are exotic but sinister. The credulous reader can hardly avoid being persuaded that the English-speaking nations breed the best types.

Love is virtually taboo in the squinkies, but they have a high sex content The exploits of the heroines lead them into comprehensive displays of their startling universal physique. Senorita Rio, a Government counter-spy, spends much of her working time being up-ended. Most of the jungle nobility have mates, whom they continually rescue and occasionally call "my love.” Much of the paraphernalia of perversion—inter-woman fights, whips and so on—finds places in the comics, and brings to mind that their era of popularity has also been that of the Hadley Chase school of novelists.

Since their introduction to this country, squinkies have been continually under fire. Educationalists, clergy and the press have united to denounce them as a danger to morals, an incentive to mental laziness, and a cause of delinquency. As has been remarked, that has not reduced their circulation and may even have increased it. Obviously, there is something about American comics. What cultural and social significance have they? And are the charges against them true?

In the hands of accomplished or thoughtful writers and artists, the least agreeable subject-matter can be presented to some value. That cannot be said for the comics. Their situations, dialogue and characterization are crude; their drawing is never better, and usually worse, than competent; they are badly printed in gaudy colours on the cheapest paper. On their intrinsic merits, they could be written off as contemptible or laughable, or—more correctly—classified with lavatory-wall graffiti. Their paramount element, however, is one to which the lavatory wall never pretends: they present ideals and patterns of behaviour.

The principal ideals promoted by the comics have already been noted. Summarized, they are that good always wins in the end, the end justifies any means, being good means being strong, foreigners are nearly always bad. the supernatural is to be respected, and women are to be judged in terms of physical desirability. None of these is a new or unconventional proposition, though the loudest cry against the comics is that they are subversive to morality. These are, in fact, the commonly accepted standards of our society at the present time; it is significant that the last war, which established in public consciousness that ends justify' means, also brought forth the squinkies. The ethics of the strip are the ethics of dropping atom-bombs on Japanese cities. It is not a case of saying that the brutalities of the comics are insignificant compared with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though that is true; the important point is that the morality which accepted the atom-bombs as regrettable but necessary means for a “good” cause to subdue an “evil” one is precisely the same as that of the comic, down to the inclusion of such details as the anthropologists’ explanation that the Japanese are not quite the same as other people—scarcely human, in fact.

The behaviour-pattern of the comics, therefore, is an effect primarily and not a cause of modifications in morality, and—more important still—the modifications themselves are produced by the ever-changing stream of social necessity. Morality is the scheme of behaviour needed to safeguard the institutions of a social group; our society, in which the nation-state is constantly preoccupied with war and its preoccupations, has had to modify its scheme to meet the needs of increased belligerency.

The question of sexual morality is not distinct from that of morality generally. The family, the institution which it protects in our society, has in recent years weakened as a coherent and durable group; the result has been a sharp slackening in the formerly rigid code of sexual morals. The carnality of the comics mirrors rather than promotes this trend; in fact, there are few popular papers and magazines which do not deem it necessary for their circulations' sake to titillate their readers' sexual imaginations. The juxtaposition of venery and violence in the comics has additional significance. Popular fiction and the films show an increasing addiction to this sort of subject-matter; its emergence as a dominant theme in the past has preceded the ends of social epochs—the decline of Rome, the seventeenth century in England, and the years before the revolution in Russia.

The anger against American comics, then, is anger against the changing conventions of our time—in some cases, perhaps, the rage of Caliban at seeing his face in the glass. It remains to consider the other charge against them, that they are encouragements to mental laziness. If this were true, it would apply also to the popular press and most of the agencies for supplying information and entertainment. The publishers of comics, like the press and the entertainment industries, give the public what the public can cope with. The truth is that the education given to a great number of working people provides them with neither the verbal skill nor the critical outlook necessary to serious reading. They are equipped to read comics, tabloid newspapers, simple-phrased stories, and very little else. A great deal is heard about the near-illiteracy of Army recruits (one hears nothing, however, of illiteracy among young women—presumably because they are not conscripted for anything); their lack of simple verbal mechanics being known, it seems hardly consistent to accuse them of mental laziness because they like comics.

The squinkies, then, are part of the cultural pattern of our time, and reflect its consciousness just as the popular domestic novel reflected that of Victorian England. Their simple function is to provide escape, but their illusory or distant worlds form backgrounds against which the modern morality play is acted; that the morality is brutal and prurient is a comment upon our society, not upon the passing phenomena which mirror it. The exclusion of American comics from this country would mean no loss. Neither, however, would it contribute to the re-establishment of moral standards which are no longer compatible with the driving forces of society, or to an improvement in the literacy of Army recruits. The sincere, worried people who want the comics banned have failed to understand the relationship between a popular art-form and its irreversible social environment; if they could do so, there would be less concern with the rash on the face and more with the organic causes of the malaise of our society.

Robert Barltrop

Letter: Not amused (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not amused

Let’s be serious. . .

After reading SC’s wide-ranging expose of the entertainment industry (“We are not amused,” Socialist Standard, August 1979) I felt I was being a real traitor to the working class when, against my better judgement, I was conned by the Two Ronnies into emitting a tiny snigger.

Waves of guilt led me to tear my favourite Picasso print from the wall. I made sure that The Onedin Line was switched off immediately I walked into the sitting-room. And I became really nasty when they tried to condition me with a spot of catchy reggae on the jukebox in my local pub.

In short, I realised what a naive and philistinic twit I have been all these years for deluding myself that we shall still be able to enjoy silly jokes, trendy art, TV serials, songs, dances and general merriment—even, dare I say it, fat ladies wobbling their bums-when socialism is established.

Tom  Price, 

Daventry Northamptonshire

Letter: [Also] Not amused (1979)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Also] Not amused

I am writing because I take very strong exception to an article in the August issue of your party journal, “We Are Not Amused” by SC. It is anti-working-class.

If SC wants to announce that entertainment is commercially based: that isn’t news. But he presents this profound information in the form of one long sneer at the working class. Anything they enjoy is mindless and only “someone else’s values” pushed at them by the capitalists. “Some kid themselves that they’re cultured”—of course, the workers are incapable of any culture of their own!

I’ve read and heard all this before, from middle-class “intellectuals” of whom SC obviously thinks he is one. He even puts in “bloody” and “bum” to show he knows how to talk down to ignorant workers who (between visiting strip clubs and watching “Crossroads”) might read the Socialist Standard.

“Someone else’s values”? Sorry, but I can’t see the difference between ITV’s and SC’s.

However, my question is; Are they endorsed by your party as the publishers of the Socialist Standard.

J Wolveridge 

London E1

Reply:

One task of the Socialist Standard is to expose the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system. Many articles deal with what capitalism is, why it cannot run in the interest of the working class and what it must be replaced by. We also spend a considerable amount of space exposing the means through which mystifying ideas are expounded, such as the political parties, the churches, the schools and the universities. The intention of the article, We Are Not Amused (August 1979), was to demonstrate not only that ‘entertainment is commercially based’, but that its “values are only put before a mass audience by courtesy of a class whose interest is hostile to yours, whose values will be hostile to yours”.

A number of commercial TV stations, theatres and newspapers are run at a loss and paid for from profits accumulated by capitalists from other industries. This occurs because the entertainment industry has valuable political, as well as simply commercial, advantages for its owners.

It is not necessary to be a “middle class intellectual” (whatever that may mean) to express the view that the working class does not possess a culture of its own. The ruling culture of any property society is that of the ruling class; The only meaningful culture for the subject class is that activity which leads to the erosion of the ruling ideology. Crossroads, The Two Ronnies and strip clubs do not constitute an independent working class culture. There can be anti-establishment entertainment (the article mentioned the satire programmes of the 1960s), but that is insufficient without a commitment to political action.

It is wrong to deduce from the article that jokes, art, TV serials, songs and dances will not exist in socialist society. The difference then will be that people will freely create these activities not buy and sell them.

On the matter of values, it is significant that ITV is currently involved in an expensive battle with its employees which largely relates to the control of programme output; we hold the view that the means of communication should be the common property of the people.

Editors.

Blogger's Note:

'J. Wolveridge' was Jim Wolveridge, who co-wrote the book Muvver Tongue with SPGB member, Robert Barltrop.

The assassination of art (1975)

From issue number 1 (1975) of The Western Socialist

In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweep away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

Victor Jara, Chilean play producer, singer guitarist, was a supporter of the Allende regime. In the military coup that followed he was assassinated on 15th September 1973. They broke his guitar fingers before breaking his spine. Bullets were then shot into his body.

He is one more addition to the many creative people in history who have become too dangerous to live. For the arts are not amusements, ornamental skills, diversions, comforts for tired businessmen or social polish for the pretentious. At least, not to the men who wield political power. The arts communicate and communication is the most potent force for progress and change.

History is full of the power of the arts, not the overt expression of dissatisfaction nor the blatant clarion call to rise and fight but the uniquely potent expression of ideas which show that man is ready for change. Art is a barometer and a celebration, a mirror to the emotional and intellectual development of man. The artist says, “This is man, how he feels, how we feel,” and once said, it can never be repealed. The ideas catch fire in the minds of men, not because they are new and logical but because they express clearly what people feel but cannot quite themselves make known.

George Bernard Shaw provocatively said that art is propaganda. It is this but far more. In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweeps away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

This does not mean that artists are consciously political in the modern use of the term. In fact, the moment an art becomes consciously political, it usually ceases to be art. The pamphleteer is not an artist because he knows rationally exactly what he wants to say before saying it. He may express new values but they are communicated on a mechanically logical level. There is no bridge of feeling between the old and the new for the mass of the people, still struggling to understand their own feelings, to make the crossing. Art does not lead the needs of man; it expresses them and man, whose evolution is on a social and economic level rather than a physical one, can develop further because he then knows clearly where he is. He recognizes as his the values expressed by the artist.

But some artists do not communicate in their own time. They may lead the way for other artists to follow but they themselves may be a little too far ahead of their time. These artists are sometimes called “important” as distinct from “great”, the universally recognized artists who signify a whole epoch or “celebrate” a common feeling.

Both kinds of artists can be dangerous to the established powers but the “important” artists are more easily destroyed than the “great” ones. They are less supported, less recognized and their deaths provoke less reaction.

The Un-American Activities Committee could not destroy Charles Chaplin or Arthur Miller nor could the Soviets destroy Yevtushenko but artists with less recognition, ahead of their time and people, are frequently destroyed in the power struggles of the world.

President Allende did not have the control of the Chilean parliament or of the army and his own political programme did not have the understanding of the peasants. He was supported as a leader and all this suggests that he was not really the spokesman for the people. The intellectuals and artists who supported him were therefore not truly representative of the people; they were a little before their time. Victor Jara died because his death meant a delay in his ideas developing among the people. Had he been expressing true national feelings, his martyrdom would have been too dangerous because of the possible reaction. More importantly, his martyrdom would have been irrelevant because his values would already be held by the majority of people anyway.

Throughout the world, the fate of the Allende administration has been hailed by the left and the right wings as an illustration that a majority of people cannot change society by democratic and constitutional methods. In actual fact it merely illustrates the futility of a vanguard group trying to lead an ignorant mass of followers into a change which the majority do not understand. When you can destroy a leader and destroy a cause, destroying a leader is obviously the best solution.

A second moral can be drawn. We must learn to respect and protect our artists whatever their political opinions. A society which neglects them is destroying its capacity to change.

Mark Fury, 

S. P. of New Zealand

Thoughts on art and artists (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the market system, art is often a commodity like any other. Art, as a skill, expression of an idea, attempt to move others, or simply a means to create beauty for its own sake, is in constant friction with commercial values.

On the one hand, art happens all the time outside of the market system. It is often not sold. Millions take part in creating tapestry or in knitting for gift-giving, in painting or making music as a hobby, in acting in local drama productions where payment will be minimal or totally absent, and so on. Thus, art seems almost a central characteristic of the human animal, even when money is not involved.

Likely, much art created by homo sapiens has been lost, which is understandable given it was created with natural substances that could decompose without trace. However, art from about forty to sixty thousand years ago has been found, such as Venus figurines worn as necklaces; Lion Man, the first figurine with animal features; the Borneo cave paintings depicting cattle, cupules (or cup-like indentations in rocks) which anthropologists have suggested may have served in a game or been used like musical instruments; and beautiful ostrich eggshell engravings, to name just a few of many other key discoveries. Humans from the earliest days possessed aesthetic sensibility, and may have worked to produce items that were intrinsically beautiful, or which possessed magical or other symbolic value. These were made by humans who lived in freedom, before the rise of states, exchange, and private property, and whose creative talents were developed in tandem with the development of tools and language.

Today, much art serves the needs of power and commerce. Students in art and design today will typically not be spending their lives beautifying our world, but rather living as workers to develop the design of packaging, posters, graphics, signage, fashion, animation, makeup, interiors, textiles, websites, and industrial goods, among other applications. Art today is therefore a prized skill that millions study for the purpose of serving industry. One could imagine many of these in use in even a classless society, but this also means that today’s art expresses the ideas, needs, and values of the rich. Our entire culture is based on appealing to the spending habits of the working class, or of the elite, to realise profits for the owning class. Most of what you see, touch, and use in your human world has been designed with money in mind. To that extent, our culture is creatively shaped by the needs of money itself. This is not simply a world designed according to techno-industrial development, rather it is a world designed by the needs of impersonal profit-making. We, flesh and blood humans of passion, emotion, aesthetic sense, and inspiration, live in a world in which art is distorted to serve the coldness of buying and selling.

Art is the expression of life, and you as a blue- or white-collar worker as well have been designed by our culture to live a particular one serving the unique needs of the owners. You have been moulded like so much plastic, thanks in fact to your neuroplasticity, into shapes that will feel excited by all the rubbish that the capitalist class sees fit to sell you. You have been designed as a worker who can fit into a corporate culture for five days of the week; you have been forged to consume commodities rather than live a true, authentic life of freedom and creativity. Despite such programming, it is in your nature to seek out and enjoy beautiful music, colourful paintings in the museum, and objects whose sleek, tainted, smooth, and sexy designs you covet. Meaning has been reduced to consumption. Not just that, but the artists involved have themselves been turned into machines whose creative spirits serve the capitalists in the attractive display of their goods.

In pop music, just as an example, the need to sell often leads to crass conventionality for no other reason but the hope of selling. Thus, after the first hits of Merseybeat, a hundred bands from around the world reproduced the identical style, especially with major labels courting anybody who could sound like the Beatles or Gerry and the Pacemakers. The same was true with almost any popular musical style: the rock’n’roll blues revivalists, folk-rock, psychedelia, hard rock, singer-songwriter, prog, metal, punk, dance, post-rock, and the list goes on. Many of these styles involved incredibly talented musicians, but they also inspired a generation of mediocre copyists. This was all due to a culture based on monetary values which distorted musical talent as it distorts everything to its image.

The music papers and radio stations also distorted talent by endlessly hyping one bad band after another as the greatest, latest, thing. Musicians are often evaluated by both the media and consumers according to how much they sell or to meaningless features of their personalities or lifestyles. While some famous bands were indisputably great, many famous acts remain indisputably have-beens. But even within the world of music, styles are themselves commodified, with fans devoted to classical competing with rock enthusiasts, who must then compete with followers of jazz, and so on. The reality is that all styles contain both a minority of the brilliant and a majority of the less inspired or inspiring. Many of the musicians were themselves aware of this, sampling the best of every genre even while the media were busy putting them into a box.

Conformity replaces individuality, artists who simply want to create what their heart dictates, although most artists who make no money probably don’t care about the marketplace and just continue according to their creative desire. It is often argued that capitalist competition was required to inspire the greats, however the reality is more likely the opposite, that many great artists failed to see the light of day, that competition generated commonness as much in art as in all commodities, that excessive resources were spent promoting rubbish, but that even the character of the art, for instance endless love songs about how much you want or need someone, was determined by what was viewed as sellable, as opposed to having reinforced originality and brilliance. Standards remain poor, everything produced is just ‘good enough’ for the masses.

Art in the service of commerce exists primarily to take your cash. It is impossible to even imagine what our world could look like without this distortion of our aesthetic sense serving the needs of the rich. Our cities serve the appearance and necessity of power, although they remain exciting places in which to live. There is just as much likelihood that a democratic society would have created futuristic cities far ahead of today’s capabilities that are limited by cost, than that it would have decentralised our living spaces so that we reside much closer to the living world. When the needs of human beings and the natural world come first, art will express freedom, community, nature, the universe, and those existential concerns that remain after the endless problems of a money society have been resolved.

Freed from today’s slavery in which we are required to serve the master class for most of our lives, perhaps more time will be spent in creativity. Perhaps even work will become more creative. Organisation will become more creative. How people may live together to establish the greatest joy will become a central creative venture. Art, in such a world, would not be expressed only in the artefacts or designs produced by artists, although those would also presumably continue to be valued, but art may be redefined as the creative life itself, as William Morris, Oscar Wilde, and many others have speculated.

In such a world, art will hold hands with science, and everyone’s life will be a form of art.

Dr. Who

Cant and culture. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rheins, Louvain, Statuary and Architecture! Art, Science, and Culture! How extremely interested our masters are in the defence of art! And what interest, too, the workers have evinced in these remarkable relies of medieval craft!

Lives are being lost—workers’ lives. Blood and tears are being shed—the blood of working men and the tears of working women. Children cry for bread; deep despair numbs the brain of wife and sweetheart; hospitals are filled with the maimed and the crippled, but we must steal oar hearts to such things as these, for such is the toll of war.

But “our” churches and “oar” cathedrals are being destroyed and desecrated by the unholy hand of the hated Hun. The German has dared to eat his filthy sausage from the sacred altar, and to use the statue of the Holy Virgin as a peg upon which to hang the washing.

This is indeed s matter to call for the immediate attention of the working class. We can stand the lose of life—there are plenty more workers. The bereavement of the husband can be borne (there are others). The loss of a limb—well, there are crutches, and, as in the past, our generous masters will come forward to our aid with a licence to sell matches. With calm and philosophic mind we can tighten our belts when we are hungry, but rob us of our art treasures, and like enraged tigers we, the working men of Britain, will slay the despoilers, or, as at Deptford recently, break the windows sod smash the furniture of peaceful civilians whom the authorities have taken the precaution previously to disarm. The workers are, above all, lovers of art.

There are works of art in London, and it is surprising how few of these lovers of art visit them. Some, it is true, attract attention if well advertised —the crown jewels for instance, the greatest pleasure from which is derived by estimates as to how much they are worth. Certain palatial buildings, too, are visited mainly because they belong to the King, or possibly did belong to some other royal gentleman; and such artistic delights in architecture as the bank of England will hold in awe the twenty-four-bob a-week toiler because of the gold in its vaults. But of the real art treasures and rare buildings in London, how many are known to the average worker? Of the proletarian visitors to the Abbey, St. Pauls, the Galleries and Museums, how many can appreciate their beauties ?

Why should we, and if honest, how can we, generate a feeling of indignation at the destruction of those things that, however beautiful they may have been, we would never have seen, and possibly would not have appreciated if we had seen ? Why join in the howl of holy horror at their destruction, while dumb to the greater crime ever being perpetrated upon the toilers by the destruction of their powers of appreciation? Have the toilers time to develop culture?

The German, we are told, lacks culture. Perhaps this is true, but have we “anything to write home about" in that matter? Is the smashing of windows and the looting of shops a sign of culture?

Rolls of toilet paper are bring sold in the streets of London, upon each slip of which is a photo of the Kaiser, and the hawker’s cry of: “ What to do with the Kaiser,” raises a grin on the faces of passers-by. Is this culture ? or is the cry of “German Kultur” just cant?

The Socialist deplores the uncultivated mind of the worker, and is conscious of the intellectual satisfaction lost thereby; but who are we to blame for the loss?

The monuments of art and skilled craftmanship in this country stand untouched by the hands of the destroyer, but they might as well be a heap of ruins as for as the average worker is concerned. Our board-school education stopped at the “three r’s,” with the possible extension to some technical training that would be of use to our masters. So soon as the child of the toiler is old enough to learn and understand he is hauled off to the field and factory to sweat for an employer. He is “educated" enough to pull a lever so many times a minute, to label jam jars or work s machine to stamp oat blacking tins, until he becomes exhausted; or maybe he views London architecture fourteen hours a day while hanging on to a strap behind a carrier's cart. And the magnificent wage of seven shillings per week does not allow him to cultivate his mind by trips to the Continent of Europe in search of “old masters."

In short, the horrible grind from morn till night, with occasional intervals of “rest," seeking for a master; the constant petty worries as to how to make ends meet on twenty-four bob a week, banishes for the working man all desire for intellectual advancement, and the few standing out from the rest find little encouragement in the surroundings and conditions of a toiler's life.

To talk to the worker of saving art treasures is as intelligent as to expatiate to the deaf on the beauties of music. The labourer who at a meeting held to debate the question of whether the earth is spherical or flat, sized up the situation when he said: “Let us get hold of the world first, and then it might be interesting to know whether it is round or not” That labourer was wise. The world is not the workers' world, neither are art treasures for the workers. Their domain is the factory and the slum. Their art is the poster hoarding and the prints in the ½d. illustrated or “Pears Annual”. How can we get excited about art treasures ?

And as to culture, how is the following as a specimen; this too, in times of peace? It is from the report of Roger Casement, British Consul in the Congo, and relates to the “Domains de la Couronne,” Belgian Congo, published 1904.

“I asked them (the natives) why they had left their homes . . . All, when the question was put, women as well as men, shouted: ’On account of the rubber tax levied by the [Belgian] Government posts.’ . . . ‘ How much pay did you get?’ ‘We got no pay. We got nothing. It used to take ten days to get twenty baskets of rubber (twenty baskets of rubber had to be delivered four times a month). We were always in the forest, and when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and further into the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved . . . When we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came up to our towns and shot us. Many were shot; some had their ears cut off . . . Our chiefs were hanged . . . The white men [Brave Belgians] told their soldiers ‘You kill only women: you cannot kill men.’ So when the soldiers killed us’ (here he stopped and hesitated and then, pointing to the private parts of my bulldog—it was lying asleep at my feet) he said, ‘then they cut off those things and took them to the white men, who said’: ‘It is true you have killed men.’ ‘You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to be mutilated like that, and those parts of yon carried to them?' (All shouting) ‘Yes. many whits men.’ ‘You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being shot?’ (All shouting) ‘Ukoto! Ukoto!’ (Very many; very many.)”

German, British, and Belgian “culture” are much the same pattern when profits are at stake. Atrocities are denounced when committed by the enemy, but the foul and fiendish slaughter of the worker in the Congo, and the equally bloody murder by British capital in Peru; the Russian butchery on the Lena Goldfields in 1912; the outrages of Paris in 1871; the many and various deeds of shame and brutality perpetrated by the Capitalists of all countries when profit is to be made or territory to be annexed, when property is to be defended or stolen: all these things are to be forgotten, and we, the workers, upon whom fall all the evils and horrors of modem mass murder—we are to cheer and wave our sweaty caps, and shake the bloodstained fiat of the erstwhile allies of our slave-drivers.

The Socialist cannot do it if he would. He remembers that these deeds have been done in the interest of the Governments of the various countries. Governments representing the interests of the master-class, our enemy. He- keeps in mind the Class Struggle, and is determined to fight it to the bitter end.

Twel.

Mass Production and Mass Minds (1954)

From the October 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have we developed a mass-mind as a result of the development and extension of mass production? There certainly seems evidence to support the contention. Mass-production has not only affected the factory worker but also the office workers, who now normally specialize in one small part of the accounting system, as invoice typists, comptometer operators, filing clerks, etc. Again with the extension of the multiple shop and departmental store the assistants now spend their working lives handling a very limited range of commodities. This trend towards greater degrees of specialization is consistently the case throughout society and seems to keep in step with the development of mass production.

Fifty years ago, a man’s occupation could be fairly accurately guessed by a glance at his clothes. The navvy wearing corduroys and with his lunch wrapped up in a spotted red handkerchief, the workman with a choker round his neck, the farm labourer with his distinctive dress, the cab driver, etc. Their occupations could be easily seen. But with the development of mass-production it would seem as if our tastes are similarly affected. Choice of clothes, for instance, seems to have become standardised. The felt hat, collar and tie, are worn by men irrespective of whether they have a “white-collar job.” Even the differences of dress between national groups have largely been obliterated. When we are in the cinema we find difficulty in guessing the nationality of men and women we see' in the new films by reference to the clothes they are wearing.

Millions choose the same leisure-time occupation of filling in football pool coupons. Holiday camps where many of the amusements remind one of a factory are becoming the thing for a growing number of people. The most widely read newspapers are those that could be criticized most. Book-printing has become a mass-production business turning out large numbers of escapist publications with a mushroom like existence. In this trade an author has a number of noms-de-plume. Under each one he writes a constant stream of books which are but variations of a single theme which his readers have come to expect

All of which seems to underline the charge that the last 50 years of technical development have succeeded in creating a population who think en masse. This is not merely a national phenomenon but applies to the whole world of capitalism. It would seem at first sight as if the group herd instinct of primitive man has developed into a world-wide herd instinct

But further examination of the subject may make us form a different diagnosis of this developing pattern of human behaviour.

There was a time when primitive man was unable to identify himself apart from the herd. Then there were taboos. Experience in the form of continual sickness or death of the members of a tribe living in a certain place might indicate that such an area was unhealthy and, without understanding the reasons for such calamities, the tribe would institute a taboo preventing their people from living in the area. The reason for this prohibition would in the passage of time be forgotten and the taboo would then assume a magical significance. By the method of trial and error taboos were enforced without the need for thought. But contrast this state of affairs with what goes on to-day. Ask any worker why he is interested in football pools and he will probably make a reasoned and logical statement to the effect that he could badly do with the prize money that is offered and that this is about the only chance he has of acquiring such wealth. Moreover interest in football results create a hobby for him, perhaps the only one he considers he can afford. It will also be apparent that an individual decision was made to “invest in” the pools in each case and that that decision was reached only after some thought. The mass-produced newspapers clinch the argument of the existence of the mass-mind as far as some are concerned but if the contents of the papers that were read 50 years ago were compared with those of today perhaps different conclusions would be reached. For instance, the argument used then to rally working-class support for war was crude and jingoistic. But now the workers are called upon to defend trade union rights and democracy against the dictators who are represented as enemies of the working-class. The ruling-class, in the arguments that they use now today in their newspapers, pay tribute to the advanced level of working class power of thought.

As regards the books that are read, while it is true that a vast quantity of escapist material is printed, it may come as a shock of surprise—and pleasure—to learn that the classics have a popularity nearly as great, as The Times of 28/11/52 points out. This trend has been stimulated by the reprints that mass production has turned out at low prices. There is in addition a great sale of scientific and instructional books of which many have been best sellers. Even popular magazines, which are so criticised by the pessimists, are found to contain instructional and scientific articles covering a wide range of subjects. Fifty years ago such articles would have appeared only in the technical journals of that particular field of science. These popular magazines, which look like proof of a mass-mind, are really evidence of spreading interest among the people.

If 100,000 people are ready to buy a book on the nature of the universe, there is a mass demand at the bookshops. This mass demand is not a proof of falling standards; it means that thousands are being educated, who, 50 years ago would have been left in the illiterate mass.

Minds are creative, mankind today thinks, and thoughts cannot permanently be suppressed by dictators, concentration camps or lying ruling-class propaganda. People are educated primarily to think for the purpose of making them more efficient wage-slaves but the process does not stop there.

Fifty years of technical development have surely had an effect on the mentality of man, but the change that is taking place may well encourage the efforts of the Socialist movement.

Frank Offord

Mike Wayne's Marxism and Media Studies (2003)

Book Review from the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and Media Studies. By Mike Wayne. Pluto Press.

The big media are owned by big companies, so naturally enough they present a pro-capitalist view of the world. You might think there wasn’t much more to say about the media, but in this book Mike Wayne says quite a bit more. Be warned, though, that it is intended as a university textbook, and this is presumably what makes it so full of jargon (reification, ideologeme, for instance). The second half, in particular, is strong on jargon but remarkably weak on insight.

Wayne begins by wrestling with the question of whether “cultural workers” (writers, actors, etc.) are working class or not. He accepts that they produce commodities that realise surplus value, and notes that scriptwriters on Coronation Street had to increase their productivity when the soap changed to three episodes a week (as the actors had to as well). He has a point that actors and musicians who are established faces/voices cannot be simply replaced with other wage workers, but draws from this the odd conclusion that “intellectuals” are somehow located between capital and labour. The fact is that, leaving aside a small number of very highly-paid performers, those who work in the media are dependent on selling their ability to work and so count as wage workers. Even film directors can get sacked if they step out of line.

So-called public service broadcasting (the BBC, for instance) is often seen as motivated by considerations other than profit. But Wayne remarks on the political context in which such organisations were set up: the 1920s and 30s were a time of increased state intervention in the economy, and “public” broadcasting arose in line with such developments, designed to serve the overall interests of the capitalist class. The overtly commercial media, of course, are run on straightforward capitalist lines. The amount of advertising on TV has increased, to a permitted average of eight minutes per hour (next time you watch ER, check how much advertising the show’s 60 minutes contains).

Media conglomerates such as Disney are almost a law unto themselves, and their companies repeatedly plug films made by other Disney subsidiaries. Disney’s boss Michael Eisner and the ubiquitous Rupert Murdoch lobbied for China to be allowed into the World Trade Organisation, as both have their eyes on the potentially enormous Chinese market. But many governments regard their country’s media as a special case, not to be open to overseas takeovers and so needing “protection”. US capitalists, in particular, have been pressing for the WTO to enforce “liberalisation” of European media, so that they can be sold to the highest bidder. For instance, when the Kirch media group in Germany collapsed in 2002, Murdoch was prevented from acquiring a controlling interest.

Wayne presents an analysis of Big Brother in terms of the base-superstructure model. But we’ll refrain from quoting any of the more pretentious formulations in this, on the grounds that it would be too easy a target.

Paul Bennett

Are We “Proud” of our Class? (1942)

From the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

A controversy is raging in the columns of the “New Leader” on the burning question of Keir Hardie’s famous Cloth Cap. Two rival theories clash, one, that the hat (variety doubtful) originally intended to grace his temples was inadvertently left at home; the other theory, stoutly maintained by a relative, is that the rock of offence to a scandalised House was in the nature of a grand gesture, a proletarian signal of defiance of the “Here stands a Post” pattern.

There is an alternative explanation. The ostentatious adoption of a badge of social inferiority savours at best of theatricality and at worst of inverted vanity. The man who could publicly announce “My experience of the Labour movement in all its phases is second to that of no other man alive in England” (5/5/1910, at Browning Settlement) was hardly a model of modesty. His insistence on the importance of the text, “Come unto me all ye that labour,” was subconsciously an exaltation of his one-story Cap into the Triple Tiara of Labour’s Pope. Hardie’s mental outlook was typical of the Labour leader; the last war revealed the Hodges and the Barnes for what they were worth to the working class movement. Will the present war undeceive the worker ? The ruling clique has hired abler men from the workers’ ranks than in 1914, and a decisive Allied victory will probably effectually blur recollection of their slaps in the face to factory, field and mine worker. There is a faint hope that some of the latter will remember the solid backing their Trade Union bosses have accorded the “Go To It”-ers. The Chairman of the T.U.C. Conference kicks off with a hymn of praise to Churchill.

Much sentimental nonsense goes around in Labour circles about “pride” in belonging to the working class. The informed Socialist finds no reason for “pride” in his quite involuntary membership of that class. A consoling satisfaction, perhaps, is the reflection that his class is the sole instrument which can eventually deliver the world from the horrors of capitalism. An aspect of this “pride” business is the blether summed up in the word “Proletcult.” Broadly speaking, the ruling class in any given society and age dictate “culture,” and until comparatively recent times has alone been able to command the means for expression of that culture, whether in song or verse, in marble or paint on rostrurn, pulpit or stage. In “democratic” Athens an Aeschylus owed his just fame to a rich citizen. Virgil’s genius was hired by the astutest politician of his age to act as his propaganda minister and literary high priest. The black specks of sycophancy which tarnish the glory of a Shakespeare in later ages were the product of a fundamentally similar social basis and resultant outlook; (“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed”).

Attempts have been made by the Cloth Hat Brigade of critics to exhibit ballads and “folk-songs” as emanating from the “great heart of the people” ; the simplicity of diction deceives. The “artiness” of the best ballads is hard to beat. As to “folk-songs,” the genuine articles to-day are the products of the music hall, and these can hardly be ranked as high art.

Hobbes dismissed the life of the savage as “poor, nasty, brutish and short”—an accurate description of the life of a huge mass of the working class, and under conditions which amply justify the description, what kind of “culture” can arise? The lewd dance, jazz, dreary tom-tom “spirituals”—these are some of the contributions to modern “culture” by which ages of negro slavery revenges itself on society. Augustus banished his daughter for a way of life contracted in a Rome saturated by the worst vices of gladiator and slave.

True, modern capitalism has evolved a section of relatively better placed “black-coated” workers, and the more far-seeing of the governing class have made it possible by scholarships to utilise the abilities of this section. But pay piper, call tune. How they dance to the tune !

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never boasted of its proletarian origin and membership; it is so “proud” of its class that it is out for its abolition. “Spite of the gloomy days made for our searching,” there are glimmers of sunshine. In the party itself, there is a growing spirit of sober hope. We shall continue to pursue our immediate task—political education, never swerving from our adherence to the principle of delegation of executive work and abhorence of leadership; in short, to the principles of Socialism and all that Socialism implies.

Augustus Snellgrove

Letters: Pendulums & Dynamos (1975)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard welcomes letters for
 publication, putting questions about the Socialist case
or commenting on articles.

Pendulums & Dynamos

For many years now I’ve heard the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s case, but it is still hard to determine whether the Socialist pendulum swings on the importance of the economic factor or on the political factor in society.

To hear one Socialist speaker, one begins to think that the dynamo of the socialist case is the understanding of the wage-labour, value, price and profit relation, while one can think the dynamo of the Socialist case is its object—namely Socialism (common ownership, production for use etc.) (idealism).

One minute we are told that capitalism exists because people vote for some respective party, i.e. Labour. Liberal or Conservative while the next minute we are told capitalism exists because the majority of people support the institutions of capitalism—money, buying, selling, wages and profit-making, by actively taking part in actions associated with such institutions on the domestic and industrial front.

I await your reply.

R. Ramshaw

Manchester.

Reply:

Without the development of a potential for adequately meeting the needs of a world community Socialism could not be possible. This might be called the economic factor, and is, in our opinion, already here.

What has not yet developed is the Socialist majority, understanding their class position under capitalism, and ready and willing to undertake the transformation of society from capitalism to Socialism. This is the political factor. In its absence capitalism will continue to exist because workers, lacking the necessary Socialist knowledge, will continue to support political parties dedicated to the continuance of present day society.

Both factors are equally important for in the absence of either Socialism is not possible.

Editors.

Progress and Leadership

I admire and support the beliefs and objectives of the SPGB to a great extent, but I remain unconvinced about certain points.

Firstly the practicality of achieving Socialism. The Party has existed for 70 years but has made little progress in that time, and it is rare to meet anyone who has even heard of you. The capitalist media will always be unwilling to give airing to your views, and I cannot believe that a handful of members will be able to spread the Socialist word to any significant extent in a society dominated by capitalist education and culture. How can you break this situation and persuade a majority to vote for you?

Secondly, you seem to spend a great deal of time criticising the so-called Communist countries of the world, but surely you must admit that the standard of life for the vast majority of people in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China has been made infinitely better since the respective Revolutions, compared with their conditions previously. Despite the shortcomings of Communist regimes, their planned economies have enabled the basic needs of the working class to be rationally met, their material standard of life successfully improved, and social services provided on a large scale. How many generations more would these people have had to live in misery if these revolutions had not occurred?

All this leads to the question: is it not better in practice that an enlightened minority take action on behalf of the majority of oppressed people, rather than face the almost insuperable, and extremely lengthy, task of persuading the majority to vote for Socialism?

F. Ansell, 

Leeds.

Reply:

We are only too well aware that progress towards the establishment of Socialism is slow. Nevertheless progress is being made. We know of no short-cut around the necessary task of agitation and education for Socialism.

Capitalist propaganda cannot remove the problems suffered by the working class; neither can it solve the basic contradictions within society. In their efforts to solve the problems and contradictions the workers must eventually turn to Socialism as the only solution. Since the SPGB was formed we have seen a seemingly endless array of attempts at alleviating the problems thrown up by capitalism, and we have seen them fail as they must. If all those who in the past said, as you do, that they “admire and support” our objectives had joined with us in our task of making Socialists that task would have been made easier. Unfortunately such workers still persist in futile reformism, or in advocating minority action by “enlightened” leaders.

We are opposed to this. The outcome of minority-led revolutions, even if ostensibly to establish Socialism, must inevitably lead to some form of capitalism. In the absence of a Socialist majority consciously understanding the implications involved in the establishment of Socialism there is nothing the leadership (no matter how enlightened) can do other than administer capitalism.

The Russian and other state-capitalist revolutions (e.g. China, Cuba etc.) have set back the Socialist movement by at least fifty years, by side-tracking workers. Only now is the realization that they have nothing to do with Socialism—something we said at the time.

The fact that living standards have improved in these countries is no reason whatsoever for advocating that system of government. Indeed the same claim could be made for avowedly capitalist governments—is this a reason for workers continuing to support them? Of course not.

Your contention that they “have enabled the basic needs of the working class to be rationally met” is unfounded. Workers in state-capitalist countries suffer from the same problems as workers here. Poverty, inadequate housing, inflation and a constant struggle to make ends meet while a privileged minority live in luxury and comfort are features of Russia and East Europe as much as Britain. The waste of armaments, the rape of the world’s resources and pollution of the environment exist in “rationally planned” Russia. Look at the facts!

State plans come unstuck with the same monotonous regularity as do private enterprise ones. The Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1961) promised Russian workers that government plans would increase agricultural production by 150 per cent in ten years. This would mean that “In the first decade the Soviet Union will outstrip the United States in output of the key agricultural products per head of population.” The intervening period has seen Russians entering the world markets in order to purchase massive amounts of grain (mainly American) to feed her people. Eastern Europe has been no more successful in this respect. Food shortages are common and what is available is costing more. Indeed many East European countries are relying more and more on what is left of the private sector in agriculture by giving cash grants to stimulate production.

State capitalism retains class divisions and solves no working class problems. The only escape from exploitation and subjugation remains Socialism.

Editors.

Art & the Ruling Class

The article “Art and Civilization” claims that only the social and economic environment explain how man acquires certain aesthetic tastes and conceptions. I certainly cannot agree with this view all the way. Some people have very little taste for art at all. The vast majority of workers would be bored stiff if they were made to go into an art gallery. You just cannot explain all art through economics.

Economic phenomena and intellectual phenomena are just not one and the same thing. The ruling ideas of any age may be the ideas of the ruling class of the time, but the ruling class did not paint the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo did. Certainly he had to have the material to work with, but it was his creation. A poet must have something to work with as well, but to say Schiller would never have written Laura am Klavier if no piano and no Laura existed would be nonsense.

A windmill cannot make meal unless it is fed with grain, but it is not the grain that runs the mill, but the wind. Some people could study aesthetics from now to doomsday and never produce a work of art. Beethovens and Wagners do not grow on trees; and did they get their ideas on how to compose their music from the ruling class? Burns’ “Tam O’Shanter” could be enjoyed and appreciated in a Socialist society as well as a capitalist society.

Ron Smith,

Dundee

Reply:

You are confused as to what is meant by "the social and economic environment”. Of course large numbers of workers do not care for classical arts: the ruling class does not pay to have them educated for that.

“Aesthetic tastes” generally require some leisure and comfort, both to be formed and to be pursued. That is why they are traditionally upper-class enjoyments and are held to be the “higher” ones. On the other hand, nearly all workers use taste and discrimination in their gardens, in appreciating sports, and when possible in their work. It is also true that working-class products and enjoyments are often despised but later appropriated by “the higher culture”; for example, folk art and the silent film.

Your historical examples do not support your argument. Michelangelo, like the other artists of his time, did religious paintings because a section of the ruling class — the church — paid him to. When patronage shifted from the church to the new commercial class, artists painted them instead. The impetus to musical composition has come most strongly from technical innovation, and in that respect composers are obviously dependent on social and economic change. Your windmill analogy in fact illustrates our point; the wind is still there, but windmills are no longer required.

If the ideas embodied in Beethoven’s music — or Shakespeare’s plays or Burns’s poems — did not come from society, where did they come from? The belief that the capacity to create and appreciate art is a thing apart from social development fails to explain why Beethoven is a row to Indians and Chinese, and their music to us. Only historical materialism gives an adequate explanation of these phenomena; without it people can, as you say, “study aesthetics from now to doomsday”.

Editors.

Getting round the world 

I have been an advocate of Socialism for many years now, in pre-war days I enjoyed listening to Harry Martin on Tower Hill. There is one point on which I would like some information. How is Socialism going to be established throughout the world at the same time? Seeing that one of the fundamental aims is the abolition of money. I cannot see that it is possible to establish it in one country at a time. I should be very grateful if you could put me right on this.

R. Phillips

Reply:

We agree with your view that Socialism cannot be established in one country at a time. As capitalism is the dominant form of society today, the problem created by it are also apparent throughout the world. Members of the working class internationally are therefore having similar problems to one another. However they are constantly misled by non-revolutionary political organisations that capitalism will, at some time, begin to work in their interests.

We can see no fundamental differences in the problems facing the working class in, say, the United States, Russia or Australia, but assuming that large numbers of workers in one part of the globe began to reject the false arguments of the capitalist parties and recognised the need for Socialism ahead of other workers, there is every reason to believe that interest in their ideas would be generated in a very short space of time among members of the working class in different parts of the globe.

One of the techniques which capitalism has developed to a tremendous degree is the facility of high-speed global communications. Socialist-conscious workers would use such facilities to the full in order to propagate their ideas to workers in other countries. They will do so recognising that Socialism can only be introduced by a united international working class. They will also do so in the knowledge that the solution to capitalism’s problems is the same for themselves as for fellow workers throughout the world.

Editors.

Old Time Music Hall (1963)

From the March 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

A gulf of time separates the original working class entertainer who amused his fellows with rough song and dance, from the plushy, awed restraint of the present- day Command Performance. The Music Hall of yesteryear is gone, never to return. Its roots were in the unsettled, lucre-mad savagery of the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century. All that then remained of the abundant regional folk song and music of the English countryside went into the melting pots of the industrial towns to emerge in a uniform pattern of urban culture.

The rural culture, smothered in the slums of the towns, managed to find an outlet for fragmented skills and techniques in the drink-sodden atmosphere of the “pub.” In those days, the public house was new and quite distinct from the ancient inn. It had cut glass, fine woodwork and gas lighting, and offered more comfort and social contact than the home. It was to the early Victorian worker what the coffee bar is now to the Earls Court bed-sitter.

As industrialisation increased, the skilled worker obtained some change in living standards. Some of his wages remained after his basic needs had been met and the brewing trade had a fairly free field in mopping up this surplus. In time, the larger public houses had halls where beer, food and tobacco were helped down by the mixed talents of the entertainers, with the very necessary chairman in control.

It should be remembered that prior to the Theatre Emancipation Act of 1843, straight dramas were allowed only in Crown-chartered theatres of which there were but two in London. This law was evaded by wedging musical comic and acrobatic turns between drama and sketches—“Variety,” in other words. By the time the theatre was freed of restriction, the prolonged effects of State control had already funnelled variety into some form of theatre or hall, and here its ultimate flowering took place. The halls, along with the theatres, were the principal suppliers of performers in growing numbers. In the very poor areas a much lower standard existed in the form of the gin shops, where the “penny gaff” provided crude doggerel, larded with a hefty helping of bad language.

In the early days, the main halls charged admission, which was repaid in food and drink (wet money). This was an encouragement to spend more as the evening wore on. The entertainers were often employed on the premises in some other capacity and received a supplement for their extra efforts. Hence the development of such people as singing waiters. Many publicans were themselves capable performers, such as Collins of Collins Music Hall fame.

But it was Charles Morton who took a big step in the establishment of the music hall. In the 1850’s he enlarged his hall at The Canterbury by demolishing an American skittle alley and created what was for those days a super-modern theatre. Women were eventually allowed in—a good box office draw—and “wet money” was abolished in favour of set admission prices. This meant that artists could now be paid salaries and become specialised—an important change.

Morton himself was very conscious of the need to improve working class taste. Capitalism, after all, needed something more than just a mass of degenerate proletarians. So The Canterbury even sported a picture gallery and selections of opera and ballet were included in the programme; in fact, the first performance in Britain of Gounod’s Faust was performed at The Canterbury. Nor should we forget that in the I860's such halls as Turnham’s White Lion and the famous ’’Met” in Edgware Road, London, had their full-time ballets. Workers who frequented these places did not regard such art form as being above them or effeminate, and although one must allow that standards then were much lower than those of modern choreography, working class acceptance of ballet in its introductory form doubtless played a fair part in its subsequent development.

In the next few years, the halls separated from their public house origin and only the names continued to bear trace of the site of their birth. Laws were passed in 1870 ordering the closing of places of entertainment by midnight and prohibiting the sale of food and drink in the auditorium. This put paid to the Chairman, and correct theatre procedure took his place. But by then capital was flowing into this expanding business and a whole army of song writers, costumiers and small timers were earning their living at it. The audiences still sung, cried and thrilled with the performer, and the personal contact was still a factor, even though it was getting more remote.

By the I930’s, the music halls were in decline. A devastating world war and generally changing conditions saw to that, and it was not to be long before memories were all that remained.

It is interesting now to look back over the years of their heyday and compare them with the present. The most outstanding change is in the type of popular songs) Almost exclusively modern lyrics lean on a theme of sexual love and centre on the young, whereas the old music halls produced songs about almost every human emotion and experience. Love, bravery, misfortune, poverty, snobbishness, death and patriotism they were all there. Workers were still closely knit, even in the large towns, and the isolation behind the lace curtains of suburbia had yet to come. Personal misfortune was eased by the direct mutual aid of one’s neighbours. Today, the state has moved into this field.

As industry develops, every aspect of our lives becomes affected by it, and no field of human activity is left unscrutinised in the search for profit. So the trend in modern songs is not surprising. Who is much bothered if the fervour of young love is aroused by pop singers who, even by general standards, are poor, so long as the money keeps rolling in? Anyway, the ruling class are probably thankful that their young workers spend so much of their spare time shuffling and mooning about broken hearts and frustrated passions. Their minds will not then so readily turn to more awkward aspects of the system.

But modern capitalism has produced something else the quite untenable assumption on the part of many teenagers that we have moved into an era of slickness and high-toned quality in song production. A comparison of the pop songs of today with those of the old music halls will show the falsity of this. There is a difference between the two, yes, but a subtle, one; both are reflections of poverty not only in wealth itself but in the understanding of the capitalist world.

Private property society has divorced its workers from the means of wealthy production and has reduced many of our tasks to simple manipulation. It has also brought about a uniformity of taste, ideas and general behaviour which social reformers may wail about but which none of them can alter. We hope we have said enough by now to show that only a classless, property-less society will make any radical change in this state of affairs. It will be then that we can express ourselves fully and encourage variety in the truest sense of the word. But it is only the working class who can ring up the curtain on this new world.

Jack Law