Cooler Reds Will Prevail
23rd February 2010, 10:57
I was watching Alain Badiou's interview on HardTalk some time ago and I recall him saying something to the effect of "faith can be a wonderful thing sometimes" and wanted to know how comrades felt. How much do we "believe" in the possibility of revolution, and how much do we just assume its possibility because of a materialist understanding of the world/history?
Without directing offense at my Trotskyist comrades, I was having a discussion with someone not too long ago about art and culture influenced by different communist tendencies, and I noticed the significantly higher level and amount of art and cultural development developing from Maoist influence as opposed to Trotskyist. I was thinking to myself if this has as much to do with each theorists understanding of the role of art/culture in society or whether it is affected by a certain embrace of inspirational "faith" that objectively DOES exist in Maoist theory. Can people be motivated to create beautiful works of art (visual, audial, etc.) purely from materialism, or does faith in the people serve this purpose better? Does Trotsky embrace any form of this faith that I'm not recognizing?* I'm sure that the fact that Maoists have held state power plays quite a large role here, but I don't think it can account for the entirety of the difference. Anarchism seems to create very prolific art and culture as well, which would be worth digging into. Stalinist M-L was able to create a lot of art, albeit very limited in scope and obviously funded by the state. I'm not familiar with much contemporary art coming from or inspired by Marxist-Leninists outside of those with state power.
But beyond art, how do you feel we should approach this type of faith in the revolutionary movement?
Discuss.
*This is not to suggest that there has not been any artwork inspired by Trotsky's ideas, it just seems significantly less prominent and common.
Without directing offense at my Trotskyist comrades, I was having a discussion with someone not too long ago about art and culture influenced by different communist tendencies, and I noticed the significantly higher level and amount of art and cultural development developing from Maoist influence as opposed to Trotskyist. I was thinking to myself if this has as much to do with each theorists understanding of the role of art/culture in society or whether it is affected by a certain embrace of inspirational "faith" that objectively DOES exist in Maoist theory. Can people be motivated to create beautiful works of art (visual, audial, etc.) purely from materialism, or does faith in the people serve this purpose better? Does Trotsky embrace any form of this faith that I'm not recognizing?* I'm sure that the fact that Maoists have held state power plays quite a large role here, but I don't think it can account for the entirety of the difference. Anarchism seems to create very prolific art and culture as well, which would be worth digging into. Stalinist M-L was able to create a lot of art, albeit very limited in scope and obviously funded by the state. I'm not familiar with much contemporary art coming from or inspired by Marxist-Leninists outside of those with state power.
But beyond art, how do you feel we should approach this type of faith in the revolutionary movement?
Discuss.
*This is not to suggest that there has not been any artwork inspired by Trotsky's ideas, it just seems significantly less prominent and common.