Just because I already have a political position doesn't mean I won't reproduce a somewhat contrarian viewpoint, such as on alternative culture: http://rottenelements.blogspot.com/2...e-culture.html What's in it for us? The 'alternative culture' of German social democracy and the forward march of The Rotten Elements (I) I regard myself basically as neutral and commercial. Take a pair of pliers, you can make it unpleasant for anybody. It's how I was bought up... From small acorns. Back in December 2008, Ben Lewis of the CPGB interviewed Lars T Lih in the Weekly Worker. Lih made the following statement: 'A classic study of the SPD is The alternative culture by Vernon Lidtke. The book describes how the SPD used everything from an extensive party press to choral singing societies in order to inculcate the proper socialist outlook. In many ways, the Soviet Union is the SPD writ large, and Lidtke’s title could be used for a study of the Soviet era.' I would contend that if you listen to CPGB members at meetings and informal gatherings, that this idea of the 'alternative culture', presented in a largely positive and uncritical form, has become the operative one when CPGB members confront issues of cultural production. Such judgements have a more explicit political underpinning. The 'alternative culture' is, of course, a product of the centre tendency in the SPD, and thus the centre tendency in the Second International, which is critically lauded (for good reason, in some cases) by Mike Macnair's Revolutionary strategy book. This may (or may not) explain why Lars T Lih's positive assertion has been left unchecked and left to the whiles of mere circulation. Surely, it's worthwhile to dig into the Lidtke work and explore what exactly using this history as a positive model to be emulated might entail? The CPGB, like the vast majority of the far left, has a history of sharing a basically Stalinist attitude to cultural production. In classical mechanical materialist stylee, artifacts were abused, manipulated to wrench out whatever narrowly political point the organisation felt was pressing down on it at that particular moment. When this came under attack (from groups such as The Rotten Elements), leading CPGB members flipped over into vague metaphysical ponderings on genius, beauty and the like, which left 'safe' artistic 'fellow-travellers' fawned over and the process of art unexplainable. Popular Frontism lives! Don't mention Kant... I'm glad to say that we weren't without influence in this sphere but only really to the extent of pushing the above attitudes underground (not surprising, in that we have been told that, in darker moments, the CPGB leadership has viewed us as an 'anti-party' grouping). There is, of course, the Red Mist venture, which does seem to have worked out that the ideological ram raids of the past are counter-productive (literally, in this case) but has obviously reached an easy accommodation with the organisation that spawned it (approving mentions in the WW). Rather, it is the duty of these comrades to declare out-and-out war on shit ideas (and to listen to 'Subhuman' by Throbbing Gristle every day for a year until cured). The point (I think) behind these meanderings is to suggest that when this notion of the 'alternative culture' got dumped, seemingly uncritically, on top of the wreckage of these other 'ideas' and attitudes, it made me nervous. In the second exciting instalment, I will be raising up this 'alternative culture' through Lidtke and exploring its actual meaning. I will also recount to readers an erotic dream I had about Unity Mitford and antique bed linen. Say what ye like, John, but it's never dull...
http://rottenelements.blogspot.com/2...ulture_16.html What's in it for us? The 'alternative culture' of German social democracy and the forward march of The Rotten Elements (II) Semolina séances in the remains of the day. I slunk out in backstreets with a machine that I, like, invented. It run on clicks (click, click, click) and synchronised random menstrual cycles. Beware that my dad thinks a click is something that took over Hook Norton Cricket Club circa 1995... All quotes below are from Vernon Lidtke The alternative culture: socialist labour in imperial Germany Oxford University Press, 1985 What is the meaning of this 'alternative culture' of the German SPD in the era of the Second International that, as previously argued, has become such a touchstone for CPGB members? Lidtke defines this broadly as 'an alternative culture in which organised workers could fulfill their needs for companionship, sociability, recreation, learning and aesthetic satisfaction' (p3). Lidtke rightly rejects the instrumentalist practices of assessing this movement by its formal absorption of this or that Marxist principles or through the prism of the SPD's ignominious collapse of 1914. The author rejects the idea of seeing this 'culture' as a 'subculture', arguing that imprinting it with this label cannot do justice to the 'alternative' culture's interaction with the dominant culture of imperial Germany, arguing that 'the border lines between the two realms were at some point scarcely discernible' (p4). Nevertheless, Lidtke does believe the socialist movement was 'creating a world of its own' (p9) and that it did represent a genuine threat to imperial Germany. What was interesting to me (and a surprise, because I thought the precise opposite would be the case) is the attitude shown by the 'alternative' culture's practitioners toward existing working class culture: 'Social Democrats did not believe, for the most part, that there was much of value in what workers already had. Socialists glorified the proletariat unceasingly, but in practice they did not recommend that a future socialist culture should take over the mores, customs, behaviours and cultural values as they existed in the way of life contemporary workers... Social Democrats did not seek to draw on the existing working class culture ... as a source for the cultural endeavours of the labour movement... (p19). Rather, Lidtke argues, the working class brought their existing culture into socialist festivals and so on. I think there's a slight theoretical problem here of situating 'Social Democratic' and 'worker' culture at arm's length. But, nevertheless, this is quite a striking state of affairs, given that the current Marxist left is saturated with the opposite idea i.e. that you abstract a lowest common denominator of what exists and concentrate this back onto your interaction with 'the class', meaning that your 'practice' thus becomes perceived as a form of oppression. So far, so good, but in practice these good intentions only created something much more contradictory and diffuse (and I'm reading this from Lidtke's sympathetic account). In his summation of the 'alternative culture' he argues: 'As participants in those secular rituals, members of the party, trade unions, singing societies, and gymnastic clubs, to name only the most obvious, generated togetherness on a massive scale' (p199). Lidtke says further on: 'The genius of this alternative culture lay in its capacity to synthesise the particular interests and needs of proletarians with principles of universal humanitarianism' (p201). To be blunt, this seems like lauding nothingness. It is not the job of Marxists to simply reproduce the proletariat (in whatever oppositional guise) to make some kind of cultural gluepot that can be rode roughshod by future bureaucrats. That 'Marxists' have spent much of the last century on this project of realising the proletariat, and seemingly not to abolish it (i.e the communist project), is a particular ignominy. And synthesising the 'needs of proletarians' with 'humanitarianism' seems like some ghastly prequel of Popular Frontism. CPGB members need to think very carefully before attempting to trade this political currency of the 'alternative culture'. Yes, it would be good if an approximate culture existed among the contemporary left (fat chance of that) but it can't be merely adopted. This message will be mercilessly hammered home in the next exciting instalment, which will look at Lidtke's examination of the SPD's literary and theatrical culture.
Interesting articles, thanks for posting them. The language was a bit obtuse, but still made an interesting point. It's certainly true that orthodox Marxist-Leninists tend to see culture solely as a means to reinforce socialist values, if not in theory, then in practice.
Well, there's my Theory thread on alternative culture, and various Trotskyists are expressing hostility to the material.
