Mass Media after Capitalism: towards a Proletarian Culture?

Abstract

In the first five years after the revolution in the Soviet Union, a fierce debate raged in the leading bodies of the government and the press over the status of what was called ‘proletarian culture’. This was one of the many debates on policy of all sorts which Tariq Ali alludes to elsewhere in this volume. Unfortunately that debate was not terminated by experiment and practice (where all such discussions ought to be resolved) but by the deadening hand of Stalinist orthodoxy, which within a decade had imposed ‘socialist realism’ by state edict over all fields of cultural work. I want to resurrect that debate.

Art can turn corners so much more rapidly than Policy. Use it as a ferret, not as a four for pulling the State Coach — nobler as the second role sounds.

John Berger¹