Comments on: Forcing culture down peoples’ throats

By: Renegade Eye

Renegade Eye — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:39:40 +0000

I agree with the direction of your post.

By: Nathaniel

Nathaniel — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:07:03 +0000

That was a very amusing video, especially the rousing renditions of Mozart and Beethoven. Although this post dealt with non-socialist revolutions, I think it is very important for Marxists, who recognize the importance of culture and its connection to possibly reactionary social forms, to avoid making the step to imposition of “revolutionary culture”, which is often Eurocentric (and idealistic) anyway. Real revolutionary culture will never be imposed by a commissar of culture. Although theoretically the imposition of some “revolutionary culture” is easy to decide against, in practice it comes up along with other abuses in “actually existing socialism.”

I have yet to read the debates around “Proletkult” though, which would be helpful on this question. Although not necessarily the people’s culture, I know there is a poster from the Russian Revolution that says, “Preserve ancient buildings” or similar (don’t have the time to find it at work.

It might be good to have examples of bottom-up “revolutionary culture” in history. I suspect you have some examples from Nicaragua, Louis, if you haven’t already made a post about such a topic.

By: Peter Byrne

Peter Byrne — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:17:29 +0000

“The bottom line is that cultural change must not be enforced.”
This is a moral proposition we all ought to support. But there’s also a practical question. Can cultural change be effectively enforced? Yes and no. European authoritative regimes couldn’t stop being penetrated by jazz and afterwards by rock music. But the Kemalists managed to impose Western classical music on Turkey. This was mainly Ataturk’s doing. As military attache in Bulgaria he’d been overwhelmed by the glamor of the Sofia opera. In the plans for the new Ankara, 15 years later, there was a new modern opera house.

It surprised me that the headscarf ban in Turkey was not decried only by religious people. The students I spoke to who were against it never invoked reasons of religion.For them it was a question of freedom to wear what they pleased.