Bird’s Eye View: Democratic, Stateless, Commonwealth (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism: Democratic

‘The curtailment of the rights of local government began back in the 1990s. In 1993, liberal reformers, represented by President Boris Yeltsin, came into conflict with the system of councils that was left over from revolutionary times and given a new lease of life during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika’ (Jacobin, 11 September,).

Actually the rot set in over a century ago with the forceful dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1918. Ironically, one supporter of this measure provided an excellent account of why the Social Revolutionary Party, representing the peasants, who were in a large majority, should be denied their victory:

‘It may certainly appear as a monstrous crime against democracy on the part of a regime which regards itself as Socialist to have suppressed an institution which had been the dream of generations, which the Bolsheviks themselves had been championing ever since the first revolution of 1905 with more enthusiasm than any other party… What better proof could have been furnished that the Bolsheviks were trampling on the people’s will in a manner hitherto exhibited by the worst tyrants in history, that they were afraid of the verdict of the nation gathered through its representatives in the highest assembly known to democracy …?” (The Bolshevik Revolution, Maxim Litvinoff, 1918).

For a contemporary account, see our article ‘The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails’ (Socialist Standard, August 1918). With regard to Gorbachev and life in state capitalist Russia post 1917, this candid comment from journalist Vitali Vitaliev is worth repeating:

‘The main mistake of Western analysts trying to assess Gorbachev’s career is the attempt to treat him as a kind of God-sent Messiah who emerged to save Russia from ‘socialism’. Nothing can be further from reality. Throughout his political career Gorbachev was part and parcel of the apparat. He came not to dismantle ‘socialism’ but to preserve it. I am putting ‘socialism’ into inverted commas because there has never been anything of the kind in Russia. No other country is so far from the ideas of equality and fraternity as the Soviet Union. If there was a socialism, or even a Communism at all, it was only for the ruling elite who lived and are still living in a separate world. It is a world of privileges, starting from birth (special maternity homes) going on all through their lives (special shops, hospitals, hairdressers’ salons, canteens, toilets and what not) and not ending even with the end of their physical existence (special cemeteries). Yes, yes, special cemeteries for the rulers of ‘the first working-class State in the world’, where workers are not supposed to be buried’ (Observer, 11 March 1990).

Stateless

Margaret Thatcher in a meeting with Gorbachev reportedly argued at one stage about the merits of capitalism versus ‘communism’ and she told him ”’We are all capitalists. The only difference is that for you it’s the state that invests, while for us it’s private individuals.” Gorbachev was apparently flummoxed’ (Mission to Moscow, Sunday Times 5 April 1987).

She was correct. Capitalist hallmarks, such as class society, commodity production, profit motive, exploitation of wage labour, markets, etc., exist in Russia, both pre- and post-Gorbachev, as they do worldwide. The very idea of socialism in one country is akin to being a little bit pregnant! People who insist otherwise are living in a world of make believe, which is home, alas, to billions, including fans of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.

‘The North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly gathered for its first session on Wednesday. According to state news agency KCNA, the chamber agreed to adopt laws on landscaping and rural development. However, it also pledged to help turn the nation into a “beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. The two laws are intended to help advance efforts made by the governing party to bring about “a radical turn in the rural community and its policy on landscaping to achieve a rapid development of the Korean-style socialist rural community and spruce up the country into a beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. Kim Jong-un, who did not attend the parliamentary event, also promised to improve people’s livelihoods and boost rural development amid spiralling economic crises. Economic difficulties have been blamed on self-imposed Covid-19 lockdowns, international sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons programme and also natural disasters’ (Daily Express, September 8).

The February 2012 Socialist Standard’s cover features a young-looking ‘Great Successor’ under the title ‘Kim, All Ye Faithful. Leaders in the Land Time Forgot’ and related article ‘Death of a Dictator’.

Commonwealth

‘Everything seems to tick in “Unrest” the latest effort from Zurich-born writer/director Cyril Schäublin. “Unrest” depicts the working lives of 19th century anarchist watchmakers in the Swiss mountains, laying bare the absurdities of the wage system’ (Roger Ebert.com, 12 September). During the interview, Schäublin states: ‘Kropotkin, contra Karl Marx… believed in the abolition of any kind of wage labor whatsoever.’ Au contraire. In Value, Price and Profit (1865) Marx stated:

‘At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”

Rear View: Class War (2018)

The Rear View Column from the October 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class war

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre, one of many brutal battles in capitalism’s ongoing class war, which saw a peaceful gathering of radicals in Manchester charged by a gentry militia and resulted in 15 deaths and 400-700 non-fatal injuries. Those attending had come to hear Henry Hunt, who advocated parliamentary reform and repeal of the Corn Laws, and carried banners calling for Parliaments Annual, Suffrage Universal, echoes of the French Revolution’s Liberty and Fraternity. There was, however, a general lack of political clarity, well illustrated when a band played God Save the King before the meeting started. The Times four days after the slaughter was both candid and clear: ‘The more attentively we have considered the relations subsisting between the upper and labouring classes throughout some of the manufacturing districts, the more painful and unfavourable is the construction which we are forced to put upon the events of last Monday…The two great divisions of society there, are the masters, who have reduced the rate of wages; and the workmen, who complain of their masters having done so. Turn the subject as we please, to this complexion it must come at last’. The anniversary is marked early with the release of Peterloo. ‘Mike Leigh’s period drama has immediacy and a sense of anger. It will ensure that the bloody events in St Peter’s Fields nearly 200 years ago are put back on the radar of politicians, historians and cultural commentators alike’ (theindependent.co.uk, 1 September). The film will be released next month, and if it registers with a less exclusive audience, reminding us that the class struggle, which throws up countless victims – from Peterloo to Marikana, Tolpuddle to Gdansk, and Kronstadt to Orgreave – has not gone away, it should be welcomed. The class war will not come to an end until the capitalists are defeated by the workers. That defeat will not require workers to use violence against the bosses – unless, of course, the capitalists have undemocratic ideas about making martyrs of themselves by defying the will of a conscious, socialist majority.

Star wars

The dailycaller.com (31 August) is one of many conservative websites lamenting loudly that a MOVIE ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY DOESN’T FEATURE AMERICAN FLAG. ‘The upcoming film about Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s iconic moonwalk does not feature arguably the most important moment of the entire event. “First Man,” starring Canadian actor Ryan Gosling and directed by Damien Chazelle, does not feature a scene of the American flag being planted on the moon’s surface because Armstrong’s accomplishment “transcended countries and borders,” according to Gosling. “I think this was widely regarded, in the end, as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it” Gosling argued. “I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again, he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.” “He was reminding everyone that he was just the tip of the iceberg – and that’s not just to be humble, that’s also true.” Gosling continued to say that he doesn’t think “Neil viewed himself as an American hero. From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil.”’ Hear hear! Worth remembering on the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing next year by those who are amazed and enthralled by the recent space-related discoveries or not is the fact that as long as capitalism remains on Earth, its rockets, its space stations, its whole space technology will be used as a means to solve the problems thrown up in the competitive struggle for markets by the major powers. That is, as the ultimate weapons of war.

Peace on Earth

‘The task of creating a coherent and free society is the mightiest to which man has summoned himself, and it is the task which now presses urgently upon us” (Professor G. D. Herron, Why I Am a Socialist, 1900).

‘What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state, and all this history we have told, form but the prelude to the things that man has yet to do’ (H. G. Wells, A Short History of the World, 1924).

‘You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful—to make this life a wonderful adventure’ (Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator, 1940).

Young Karl Marx (2018)

Film Review from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Young Karl Marx. Director: Raoul Peck.

This is a German film by a Haitian director. The timing of the film – 200 years after the birth of Marx – will be intended to piggyback the publicity around this anniversary. It will also benefit from the recent general upsurge in interest in Marx and socialism after almost 30 years in the wilderness following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The film, mainly spoken in German with English sub-titles, focuses upon Marx (August Diehl) and Engels (Stefan Konarske) during the years of the formation of their friendship from 1843 through to their collaboration in the drafting of the Communist Manifesto in 1847; thus dealing with a short but vital period in their lives and stopping short of depicting the revolutions in Europe in 1848. Marx’s wife Jenny (Vicky Krieps) and Engels’ wife Mary Burns (Hannah Steele) have significant supplementary roles, predominantly supporting their men.

The film opens in Germany when Marx is arrested for his criticism of new laws which take away the traditional right of peasants to gather firewood on a landowner’s property. He is exiled to Paris where he meets Engels and then to Brussels and finally London. The film captures their personal and political development as they wrestle to articulate their ideology.

Whilst Marx battles with the authorities and contends with poverty Engels clashes over his father’s treatment of the workers at his mill; the conditions of which are vividly captured in the cinematography. The film illustrates how the two young men develop their economic theory of the social relations of production through personal contemplation and in debates with such figures as Proudhon, Bakunin, and the Young Hegelians. In the process Marx moves away from philosophy - which he increasingly regards as a sterile discipline pre-occupied with interpreting the world – towards his theory of political economy, in order to act upon the world to change it.

The film has the feel of a biopic period piece which would be more at home as a BBC drama than an epic of the big screen. The volume of historical events seems to be turned down, effectively muffling these momentous times. Raoul Peck said that he made the film for young people. Perhaps this is why it has the feel of a soap opera. It was interesting to see these historical figures brought to life on the big screen and humanised through a window onto their private lives, rather than either lionised or demonised for their political beliefs; but overall the film was enjoyable, rather than spectacularly informative or stimulating.

It ends with a montage of video clips from the twentieth century depicting momentous events of social upheaval, to the musical accompaniment of Bob Dylan’s: ‘Like A Rolling Stone.’ Perhaps this is a further nod to the Millennials, although a more twenty-first century resonance for this audience might have been provided by Marx’s quote from the nineteenth century: ‘There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.’

Given that it is a rare event for the film industry to grasp such a difficult and controversial topic it feels like a missed opportunity. Perhaps there will be a sequel; in celluloid and in real life.

Tim Hart

Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker pt.2 (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the second part of our study of the work of Peter Watkins, we look at how his career as an independent film-maker challenged conventional trends. (Part 1 of the article is here.)

Frustrated by the poor reception to Privilege, Watkins left Britain for Sweden to make his next film. The Gladiators (1969) continued the theme of the elite using the media to divert aggression, but instead of music, as in Privilege, here violence is the catalyst. Soldiers representing different states are sent to arenas to fight and compete against each other in missions. These ‘Peace Games’ are televised to massive international audiences. From the comfort of a country mansion, the generals of each side sit together watching the battles and amiably take turns to influence what their soldiers do. One of the strongest messages in The Gladiators is that soldiers of any side have more in common with each other than they do with their leaders.

By the start of the 1970s, Watkins had relocated to America, where tensions between the state and the radical political scene were focused on the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, and threats to ‘civil rights’. Watkins’ response was to adapt the setting of The Gladiators – a remote arena run by the military – to create a scenario where the views of those disaffected and at risk from the state could be expressed.

Punishment Park (1971) followed two groups of militants – civil rights activists, poets, protest singers and draft-dodgers – held by the American police under the 1950 McCarran Act. This piece of real-life legislation allowed the government to detain people expected to cause subversion. Some of the characters were loosely based on those involved in the ‘Chicago Trials’ which followed countercultural protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the sets of militants is on trial from a nationalist tribunal already sure of their guilt. The other prisoners have been sentenced, and have chosen to spend three days in ‘punishment park’ instead of lengthy prison stays. This is a torturous trek through 53 miles of desert, to reach an American flag within three days while being hunted by trigger-happy cops.

The drama was improvised by non-professional actors, mostly giving their own views in character, whether playing activists, police or draft-board judges. This approach gives the film a raw authenticity which led some viewers to assume that it depicts real events. From this point in his career, Watkins’s films would feature only non-professional actors, often improvising their dialogue.

Punishment Park received mixed reviews, variously describing it as a ‘chilling prognosis’, ‘hypnotically gripping, and ‘the pornography of hate’ (pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm). Most film distributors decided that it would be too volatile to screen, and consequently it was denied the impact it deserved.

Watkins’ next film, released in 1974, was a biopic of Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch. He first discovered Munch’s work only a few years before, and felt that the marginalisation of his own work echoed Munch’s experiences. The anger of his earlier films is more measured, targeted against repression rather than oppression. Munch’s life and work was shaped by the strict social norms of the late 19^th Century, as well as a constant threat of illness. The pace is more sedate than in Watkins’ previous films, gradually building up a layered picture of what influenced Munch.

Watkins’ films acknowledge the presence of the camera crew, especially in Punishment Park where they influence events, and even when this would be impossible within the drama, as in Edvard Munch and Culloden. His intention here was to remind the viewer that film-makers don’t objectively and passively record events, but interpret them according to their own agendas. Watkins himself ‘appears’ in his films as a narrator.

Through the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, Watkins remained in Scandinavia, where he developed his theory of the ‘Monoform’ and produced films to counter its approach. The Monoform is the standard style of editing and directing films and television programmes, which only presents the film-maker’s capitalist ideology, and stifles alternative interpretations. His films in this period studied ‘modern stress’ among Danish families (The Seventies People, 1974), radioactive waste produced by consumerism (The Trap, 1975), protests against nuclear submarines (Evening Land, 1976), and public awareness of the threat of nuclear war (The Journey, 1987). As always, reviews and reactions were largely hostile, coming from those who supported the oppressive society which Watkins was attacking.

In the early 1990s, Watkins worked with students at the Nordens Folk High School in Sweden on a biopic of radical writer August Strindberg. The Freethinker ‘has a complex internal structure, and moves in an unpredictable and seemingly random way between’ different points in Strindberg’s life, offering ‘the audience an open-ended process allowing for individual and varied reaction’ (LINK).

His 1999 film La Commune (de Paris, 1871) is political cinema at its best, and here Watkins attempts to counter the Monoform. Watkins identified that ‘the Paris Commune has always been severely marginalised by the French education system, perhaps because it is a key event in the history of the European working class.’

Watkins shot the film in black and white using digital video cameras in 13 days in an abandoned factory on the eastern edge of Paris in July 1999. There were over 220 people in the cast with approximately 60 percent of them having no prior acting experience.

In an effort to counter the Monoform, Watkins engaged in a democratic / collective experience during the filming; his overall objective was to present a collective voice, while the cast was involved in the film’s preparation, and during the filming itself. Watkins rarely has the cast framed in close-up as individuals, usually there are at least two or three people in the frame at the same time thus allowing a group dynamic to develop. The cast step out of their roles from time to time to discuss the situation in 1999, and its links to the events of the Paris Commune, contributing to the telling of their own history, and bringing out the modernity of the Commune. They would also discuss what they would say, how they might feel, and how they would react to the events of the Commune which were about to be filmed, externalising their true personalities and becoming the men and women of 1871.

Watkins brings the class struggle to the screen in his film of an attempt to create a better world. The Commune is not seen as a failure but the beginning of an idea of solidarity amongst people; he celebrates the Commune but its errors and its weaknesses are not hidden. The 375 minutes length of La Commune which runs counter to the Monoform ensured its complete marginalisation.

After La Commune, Watkins concluded ‘We are now moving through a very bleak period in human history... , sheer greed engendered by the consumer society sweeping many people under its wing, human, economic and environmental catastrophe in the form of globalisation ... have synergistically created a world where ethics, morality, human collectivity, and commitment ... are considered “old fashioned”... In such a world as this, what happened in Paris in the spring of 1871 represented (and still represents) the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia.’ He felt that La Commune should be seen as a tool for others to use in challenging the dominance of the ‘Mass Audio Visual Media’ (MAVM) industry.

Watkins sees direct links between the hierarchy and centralisation of the contemporary manipulative role of the MAVM and the globalisation of capitalism.  He sees the rationale for the internal lengths and structures of the ‘Universal Clock’ (timing TV programmes according to adverts) as entirely commercial; they contribute to a loss of history, the increase of hierarchical forces, and the passive acceptance of global capitalism. Watkins speaks of ‘exploitative, morally corrupt free-market ideology sweeping aside everything before it.’ In his view, the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ won’t reach its full potential unless it challenges the MAVM.

Watkins published his theories as The Media Crisis (2004), a passionate critique of the Monoform and the lack of debate around the production of new audio visual media forms. His rejection of the dominant Monoform style, and his objections to the oppressive media industry which pushes it, has led to most of his films being marginalised and neglected. Consequently, his work hasn’t had the exposure or influence it deserves. Despite this, his approach is echoed in films such as the critically acclaimed holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985) by Claude Lanzmann, which may be seen as counter to the Monoform. Shoah was 11 years in production and editing and released at a length of 613 minutes! Lanzmann used no historical footage, arranged many of the scenes, but not the testimony; the film was made without subtitles, voiceovers, questions and answers were kept on the soundtrack, along with the interpreters. Lanzmann matches the testimony to places, and the audience is encouraged to think about the historical actions of these men, but also the ethics of reflection.

With filming and editing technology now affordable to more people, and the internet as a means to distribute films without going through corporations with their own agendas, there is now more potential for people to produce films which express their own experiences and views.

Watkins should be recognised more among socialists not only for his critique of the power of the media, but also in suggesting a positive alternative style of film-making: docudramas largely improvised by non-professional actors, and a new way of organising society in opposition to global capitalism. His films concerning history, war, pop culture, the oppressive role of the state in capitalism, late 1960s radicalism, the Paris Commune, and the role of artists, are always relevant to socialists.

Mike Foster & Steve Clayton

Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker (2015)

Peter Watkins

From the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

To mark the 80^th birthday of film-maker Peter Watkins, we examine his unfairly neglected work.

Peter Watkins, the film auteur, has been subject to massive marginalisation of his work. His entire oeuvre has seemingly met with extreme disapproval by the state, the power structures in capitalism and its ideological support structure, the mass media. Watkins can be a difficult film artist but he is essential cinema, the pioneer of the faux docudrama where he dissects historical events, the present day, or the near future. He described himself as a libertarian socialist and campaigns against false, stale and authoritarian film-making.

In the mid-1970s, Watkins’ experience of film-making and his studies of mainstream cinema and television led him to develop his theory of the ‘Monoform’, the predominant style used by the ‘Mass Audio Visual Media’ (MAVM) industry. A film or programme produced in the Monoform would be edited with a rapid succession of different images which don’t allow the viewer long enough to digest and consider what they have seen. This style manipulates the viewer into interpreting the film according to what the film-makers determine.

This theory influenced how Watkins would make his films. For example, The Journey (1987) did attempt in its use of time, space and alternative structures to counter the Monoform. His later preference for lengthy films gave the viewer more time and information to consider the subject matter, although he recognised that non-monoform movies don’t have to be as long asThe Journey’s14.5 hours! His use of non-professional actors and improvised scenes (even before he developed the theory of the Monoform) were intended to give a voice to people outside the media industry.

His theory of the Monoform includes a discourse about the ‘Universal Clock’ which refers to the synchronisation and the global movement of the televisions in the world, calibrated anywhere, at any time, their programming constructed without meaning, context or feeling but fitting within time constraints determined by commercials.

The Monoform treats audiences as receivers, consumers, passive spectators when faced with news, television and film. People are trained to accept the mass media in a non-critical light as if the media is neutral  and informative. The Monoform precludes any critical analysis of technique, structure, or effect, and is based on pre-formed moulds, from which there is no real freedom. The public are viewed as inherently stupid so that it needs authoritarian, simplistic, rapidly-moving language forms in order to absorb consumer ideas from TV.

To counter the Monoform, Watkins advocates an organic relationship between the film-maker and the audience; using non-professionals furthers his cause of involving the public in a democratic media. Watkins has laid out new possibilities for meaningful audience interaction with media, not just for viewers and those involved in production, but on a personal level. He endeavours to remove the comfortable avoidance of reality inherent in conventional programming on television by challenging the mainstream media’s handle on the way we view the world through television and film. Watkins has wrought more truth from the faux docudrama genre than the documentaries of the so-called vérité school.

Watkins himself pioneered the docudrama genre of dramatising events in the style of newsreel footage, right from the early years of his career. In the mid 1950s, he was part of the Playcraft amateur theatre group in Kent. He acquired an 8mm camera and directed the group in short films set in the first and second world wars, and during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. By the early 1960s, Watkins was working as an assistant producer at the BBC. He had already noticed that ‘much of the commercial cinema in the 1950s and early 1960s, and television in general, felt extremely stilted and conventional, holding the public locked into set and authoritarian agendas’, and he wanted ‘to offer a way of countering the effects of soap-opera historical reconstructions and TV news broadcasts’ (pwatkins.mnsi.net/part2_home.htm). So, when he had the opportunity to produce his own film for the BBC, he built on his newsreel style, and Culloden (1964) was the result.

The film showed the 1746 battle between forces loyal to the Stuart and Hanover royal dynasties, and its aftermath, as if a TV camera crew had been there to record it. In less than an hour, over 2,000 soldiers were killed, and the victorious Hanoverian Duke of Cumberland’s troops then went on to hunt down any remaining members of opposing clans. One of Watkins’ aims was to draw parallels between the resulting destruction of the clan system and the American army’s impact on civilians during the then-current Vietnam War.

Many of the cast were non-professional actors, including descendents of those who fought at Culloden. This wasn’t just an artistic decision in order to elicit more naturalistic performances, but also a political statement. Watkins wanted his films to provide a voice for anyone, rather than the biased, unrepresentative media industry. The film received enthusiastically supportive reviews, especially for its pioneering techniques.

After Culloden, the BBC commissioned Watkins again, and he produced the 1965 harrowing, bleak, nuclear war docudrama The War Game, 47 minutes in length. It concerned a nuclear attack on Britain focusing on the North Kent area, and featured instant flash blindness, a firestorm, radiation sickness, widespread psychological damage and suicide. We see the Army burn corpses, the rationing of resources, police shooting looters during food riots, civil disturbance becomes a capital offence, and people are executed by firing squad. The cast was almost entirely made up of non-actors, and Watkins filmed in the style of a news magazine programme.

The BBC violated their own Charter when in September 1965 they screened the film to senior members of the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Post Office, the Military Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary to Harold Wilson’s Cabinet. As a result, the BBC suppressed transmission before the screening date in October 1965, stating ‘the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting, it will, however, be shown to invited audiences.’ A Parliamentary question in December 1965 ‘asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he made to the BBC concerning the Civil Defence film called The War Game; and why he exerted pressure to prevent its showing to the public’. But the Labour government denied any outside pressure on the BBC. There had also been pressure from Equity, the British actors’ union, who were angry that non-professional actors had been used.

The War Game was released to cinema in 1966, and picked up the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and a BAFTA. Hypocritically, the BBC picked up the awards although the BBC had also said the film was banned because it was an artistic failure! Today both The War Game and Culloden have been available for some years on DVD but it is difficult to obtain these films for theatrical screenings which is related to restrictions imposed by Equity. The BBC eventually broadcast The War Game twenty years later in July 1985 during the week before the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

The film essentially stated that civil defence policies did not prepare the public for a nuclear attack. Watkins said later that ‘I was interested in breaking the illusion of media-produced ‘reality’. My question was ‘Where is ‘reality’?’’ Watkins disassembled the fourth wall to uproot the MAVM complacency, and characters deliver direct Brechtian statements to camera. Patrick Murphy, a senior lecturer in Film and Television at York St John University, quotes Watkins: ‘The War Game and Culloden are signposts to a direction that TV could have taken, but refused. Television could have been a plurality of forms and processes.’ Watkins’ disillusionment with the way television programming was heading meant that he left the BBC and turned instead to film production.

His reputation as a talented new voice meant he could attract the backing of major studios such as Universal Pictures. This led to Privilege (1967), a docudrama about Steven Shorter, a manufactured pop idol of the near future. Shorter’s career is dictated by his management company, which is working with the government to distract his millions of fans from society’s problems. His stage act uses violence to provide ‘the public with a necessary release of all the nervous tension caused by the state of the world’. Shorter’s popularity with the masses means that he can be used to manipulate them. So when the state wants to promote religious and national unity, Shorter is rebranded as repentant and faithful. The singer Paul Jones from Manfred Mann plays Shorter, giving a tense, awkward performance which reflects how the character is trapped and unable to express himself.

Privilege was dismissed by contemporary reviewers as ‘paranoid, hysterical and unconvincing’ (Privilege DVD booklet), and was shown by few cinemas. Consequently, it has been largely forgotten, whereas it should be recognised as a lively and perceptive critique of the mass media’s power, echoing Herbert Marcuse’s views about consumerism as a form of social control. The directions that Watkins’ career would take next reflect his growing awareness of how the media industry stifles intelligent debate. The concluding part of our look at his work will follow in the next issue.

Mike Foster & Steve Clayton

Why The Light of Truth Should Be Extinguished. (1915)

From the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

There recently appeared a new weekly devoted to matters of interest to those who patronise the Cinema. Its title is "Film Flashes," and one of the plashes that illuminated its first number is reproduced below. It is worth noting as a manifestation of the class war: as one of the methods employed by the master class to suppress anything that would tend to enlighten the workers. The cutting follows.

We should regret to see exhibitors give much prominence to the new Metro picture, "The Bigger Man," recently exhibited at a trade show at the Shaftesbury Pavilion. "The Bigger Man" introduces the highly controversial subject of Capital and Labour, and shows a fight in progress between Strikers and Strike-breakers, which culminates in the appearance of a large body of troops under orders to fire on the mob. It is obvious at a time like this it would be very unwise, if not dangerous, to awaken thoughts of the old and bitter strife of past years, and we sincerely hope that Ruffells will reconsider their attitude in regard to the release of this picture. Many of the scenes, which are intended to contrast the great gulf existing between the master and man, are overdrawn and although these things may portray American labour life correctly enough, they are happily not true in regard to this country. (Italics mine.) 

Choice, isn't it?

In these days it is "very unwise, if not dangerous," to comment too freely upon the doings of our masters. (I believe it is considered treason even to whisper to your next-door neighbour that you always preferred Kiel butter to British waggon fat.) Else the writer would dearly like to quote from a few other sources, material is never wanting with which to confute the case for capitalism. Further that this the writer makes no comment, preferring to leave it to thinking readers to provide their own.

May Field

The Spanish Civil War Revisited (1995)

Film Review from the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ken Loach is a considerable film maker. He directed Cathy Come Home for BBC TV in 1966, and his credits also include the unforgettable Kes (1970), The Price of Coal (1977) and Hidden Agenda (1990) and Raining Stones (1993) - both winners of the Cannes Jury Prize. And now comes a film about the Spanish Civil War Land and Freedom (Curzon West End, Chelsea Cinema, Renoir, Screen on the Green and selected cinemas across the country from October) another Cannes winner and, by any standards, a major achievement.

Through an impressive flashback devise, Loach unifies life in contemporary Liverpool with Spain in the late 1930s. An old man collapses on a Liverpool housing estate. He has had a stroke and he dies on the way to hospital. His granddaughter, sorting out his things, finds an old suitcase with letters, clippings and photographs of the civil war. And as she reads them and reflects, her grandfather's story unfolds on the screen.

David leaves to fight fascism. He joins an international section of the Republican militia on the Aragon Front and is wounded. He is sent to hospital in Barcelona where he discovers that factions on his own side - the so-called communists - are more concerned with internal disputes than with fighting the war against fascism. david's war ends tragically. The Militia are disarmed by the Stalinist Popular Front (sic) and one of his comrades is killed.

The film works on many levels. As an attempt to tell a compelling story which captures something of the spirit of the times -  the revolutionary idealism of the Militia, the sickening poverty of Spanish peasants, the internal conflicts amongst the republicans, the unfolding story of David's love affair with Blanca and its tragic conclusion - this is a well crafted piece of film-making. But more than this Loach offers us a series of powerful political snapshots of Spain in the mid/late 1930s. He might have made an even more effective film if the dialogue had painted a clearer picture of the background to the war, but nevertheless this is a splendid film  - a substantial piece of political story telling which will have great interest for socialists.

There are perhaps three defining moments. First, a fascist-held village is captured and the villagers meet to discuss what to do with the land. Jim Allen's script and Barry Ackroyd's camera linger over the fascinating, heated discussion. The villagers are united only in their opposition to fascism. Some want to move towards common ownership of the land by collectivising farms. Others want to confiscate only fascist's land, and to divide this amongst the peasant community. Whilst a third group want largely to retain things as they are. The scene demonstrates what socialists already know: that there was no majority in favour of a socialist revolution in Spain in 1936, but rather the remnants of a coalition of anarchists, republicans, Stalinists and, so-called, revolutionaries.

Second, in the streets of Barcelona, David becomes involved in fighting between anarchists, Stalinists and revolutionaries. Later he tears up his membership card of the British Communist Party and, voice over, writes witheringly in a letter home of the betrayal of the revolution by the Stalinists.

Third, as David's coffin is buried his granddaughter gives the clutched salute of the Spanish Militia. Loach seemingly wants us to draw parallels between the Spanish Civil War and relevant actions which the working class might take in contemporary Britain. We are presumably to conclude that the ideas and actions of latter-day Spanish-style militants are relevant. Not so. The only actions which are pertinent to the working class revolutionary are those which are concerned with the enlightenment and empowerment of the class to which they belong, and the collective transformation of capitalism into socialism. Not for us a re-run of anything akin to the Spanish Civil War, no matter how heroic and well-meaning many of those who fought on the republican side might have been. We have a different war to fight: to enfranchise a socialist majority and, by so doing, to end all wars.

Michael Gill

The Radical Cinema of Peter Watkins

Cut and pasted from A Very Public Sociologist blog. The blogger, Phil B-C, is a member of the SP/CWI Trotskyist tradition.

Keele MCC heard from John Cook of Glasgow Caledonian University this evening. He spoke on the little-known work of the radical film maker, Peter Watkins. Watkins was part of the amateur film movement that grew up in the mid-late 1950s and found himself taken on at the BBC on the strength of his short film on the Hungary uprising, The Forgotten Faces. Released in 1961 it was, contrary to popular belief, among the very first films - if not the first - to pioneer the documentary-drama style. Rather than being a straight apologia of either side, it showed how revolutions are necessarily very messy, how circumstances can transform the downtrodden and oppressed into people fired by murderous rage. In one key scene, we are shown crowds coming under fire from uniformed snipers. When they surrender the people wreak bloody vengeance by crushing them beneath their heels and boots. As a tribute to Watkins style, when Forgotten Faces was shown to the founding chairman of Granada, Sidney Bernstein, he quipped "if we showed that film, no one would believe our documentaries anymore".

Having secured a position at the BBC he became the centre of controversy in 1965 with The War Game. This film imagined the dropping of a nuclear bomb on Kent and its aftermath. Immediately it was banned and remained so for 20 years. Watkins was convinced this decision was taken on political grounds, and was so disgusted by the experience that he left Britain in 1968, and hasn't worked here since. But the hallmarks of his film making had been established. The docudrama style (also seen in his earlier film, Culloden, which involved scenes where participants of the famous 1746 battle were interviewed by filmmakers), his preference for hand held camera work, and the casting of "ordinary" people, not professional actors, have continued to mark out his oeuvre from the mainstream.

Post-BBC Watkins has continued to make films outside of the conventional production process and on very tight budgets. Typical of this is 1971's Punishment Park. Inspired by the trial of the Chicago Seven, it is set in a future where subversives and hippies jailed for political offences get the chance to have their sentences commuted if they complete a desert wilderness course. All the while they're being pursued by law enforcement as part of their training in tracking, shooting, and apprehending suspects. The clip shown this evening's audience is taken from the trial scene. The defendants are arrayed before a tribunal and time after time the presiding judge disallows pleas and defences guaranteed under the US constitution. Contemporary criticism attacked Watkins for exaggerating the violation of basic democratic rights, but post-Guantanamo these seem rather quaint objections. The film itself was on general release in the states for four days until it was mysteriously dropped, so obviously somewhere the film spoke an uncomfortable truth to power.

Watkins' last major film is La Commune (Paris 1871). Filmed in 1999 the 200-strong cast was populated almost entirely by non-professional actors, and casting was done to type. The roles of the communards were taken by leftists and students, and the counterrevolutionary forces recruited from adverts placed in Le Figaro. Like previous work, in the battle scenes the film crew interview 'communards', who would alternate between acting as a participant and commenting on current affairs. Furthermore Watkins filmed La Commune chronologically so the actors knew what was coming and helped simulate a more authentic feel, albeit one anachronistically juxtaposed to interventions by modern media.

Throughout his presentation Cook compared Watkins to Ken Loach, arguing of the two the former was a more radical film maker. Though Loach is famed for the controversial nature of his subject matter how he makes and presents his work is far more conventional. Furthermore Loach's films are very clearly of the left. However, Watkins is a bit more problematic. He describes himself as a leftist, and a superficial acquaintance with the above films seems to reinforce that. But for Cook, Watkins' work is a comment on polarisation and the politics of hate. In Punishment Park for example, there are multiple scenes of the radicals and agents of the state attacking one another verbally and physically. There is a certain even handedness in their portrayal as reaction gets just as much time to put its case against subversion. The same is the case in La Commune - there are scenes capturing the Versailles troops berating and polemicising against the communards and leftism. In both Watkins manages to make visible the polarisation between the two - to take sides and start shouting (as he does in his role as a cameraman in Punishment Park) is to become seduced by hate. What is needed is some middle ground, a space for dialogue between the two antagonistic camps. Only then can real progress be made.

What to make of this? I don't think Watkins has retreated into the wishy-washy liberalism/populism that tries to be all things to all people. Instead it is a call to the left to realise the views of our opponents are as convincing to them as our politics are to us, that we should not forever hector or starkly oppose our views to theirs but rather take the time to address their concerns and win them over through persuasion. As he puts it, "the ideological left is as flawed as the right - any politics that doesn't take on the views of ordinary people is playing at politics".

                                                                                                                                         Phil B-C

Film and the Anarchist Imagination

Book Review from issue 54 of Organise, theoretical journal of the Anarchist Federation

Film and the anarchist imagination by Richard Porton (Verso 1999)

It's quite rare to come across an academic work with anarchism as its subject matter. It is rarer still to find an academic work that exhibits any in-depth understanding of the authentic history and developing theory of anarchism. Most academics don't get past calling the IWW the International Workers of the World. Those who do are usually happy to repeat the lies of the ruling class and to maintain the 'anarchist' caricatures that serve to maintain a false image of what we actually are.

This book, however, written by a teacher of cinema studies at the College of Staten Island in New York, exhibits an unusually deep understanding and wide knowledge of the historic movement and the political arguments within anarchism. The author in fact sets out to consciously deconstruct the stereotypes of anarchism and anarchists that have appeared in both mainstream and 'alternative' cinema.

Extremely readable, the text rarely uses pretentious-git-speak to intentionally, or otherwise, obscure the core meanings of the arguments. The introduction gives a good historical background to the development to anarchist ideas during "¼ more than a hundred years of labour agitation and revolutionary struggles" (p2), and offers the reader who has not come across anarchism before an informative background to the subject matter of the book. It is obvious from the beginning that the author actually knows what he's talking about!

There are five sections: Anarchism and Cinema: Representation and Self-Representation; Cinema, Anarchism, and Revolution: Heroes, Martyrs, and Utopian Moments; Anarcho-syndicalism versus the 'Revolt against Work'; Film and Anarchist Pedagogy and The Elusive Anarchist Aesthetic. Each section can be read independently which makes it a great book to dip in and out of.

This reviewer must admit to not having heard of, never mind having seen, many of the films mentioned and it is fascinating to learn that Malatesta, for example, has been the subject of a highly sympathetic movie (Peter Lilienthal's Malatesta, 1971) or that Alexander Berkman unsuccessfully hawked a 'swashbuckling' screenplay based upon Nestor Makhno's life around Hollywood! It's also interesting to see how some film makers who consider themselves 'sympathetic' to anarchism have played a role in reinforcing the stereotype of the anarchist as irrational and impulsive, if not slightly mad (Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy, 1973 for example).

But far from merely being an encyclopaedia of anarchists in the cinema, the book discusses the contradictions within anarchist film-making and anarchists/anarchism as subject matter. Few perspectives aren't tackled intelligently and the research is exhaustive. Critics might suggest that this is a simply an academic exercise and that the cinema is Spectacular representation at its worst. However, to have such a clued-up and sympathetic text in circulation which may bring revolutionary ideas into areas where they don't usually see the light of day, can only be useful.

Try and get it into your local public or college library.