Lenin and the Cultural

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TERRY EAGLETON reviews "Lenin and the Cultural Revolution"

By 'culture'. • Lenin is norm- she is blind to ally thinking of the second-of tions of its cultu! civilisation, which must be "elaborating placed under proletarian govern- culture which, n ment. tion of society' Claudin-Urondo dislikes this clases, will beco too: she accuses Lenin of treat- all mankind' i ing science and technology as the 1st All-Rus ideologically neutral forces conference).

She doesn't quite go to the ment indeed. ridiculous lengths of claiming seriously, then, that technology is "bourgeois' tical trick, the but she does quote without culture will be n criticism Bogdanov's demand extension to a for a 'proletarian mathematics the culture the which prefigured some of the create now, in more absurd 'scientific' severe backward integrate the skills of bourgeois society will be, i experts into the proletarian fashion the cultu Lenin and Trotsky deemed of fact that social In 1918, Lenin remarked that whereas it was much easier for the Russian working class to start the revolution than it was for the West European working classes, it was much more difficult for them to continue.

The irony Lenin had in mind related to the problem of 'culture"

The Western working classes, ideologically dominated as they were, were in a 'state of cultural slavery': revolution would mean breaking with the powerful cultural and ideological machine which a developed capitalism made possible.

But once that break had been made, the culture of Western capitalism-in the sense of its advanced knowledge, civilisation, science and technology -could be appropriated by the proletariat as a basis on which to build socialism.

Endangered

In Russia, the situation was the reverse: given the lack of a developed 'civilisation' in the Western sense, the state ideolagical machine was less powerful, and revolution therefore easier; but once that revolution was made, it was severely endangered by the lack of the developed forces of modern civilisation.

It is clear from this fact alone that Lenin regarded 'culture' as being of the highest importance to the making and sustaining of the revolution.

By 'culture' he meant not so much works of art, but knowledge, literacy, and modern technology; without the harnessing of. . such forces, the building of socialism was put in dire peril.

"We must", he declared, "take the entire culture that capitalism left behind and build socialism with it.

"We must take all its science, technology, knowledge and art. Without these we shalt be unable to build communist society"** Carmen Claudin-Urondo is unhappy with Lenin's attitude. It suggests to her a too uncritical stance on Lenin's part towards the inherited culture of capitalism, which she contrasts with the policy of Proletkult.

Proletkult was an independent organisation for the creation of a 'pure' proletarian culture, led by the idealist Bogdanov and opposed by both Lenin and Trotsky.

Fiercely sectarian, dogmatic and at times culturally ultraleftist (some members rejected the whole of past culture out of hand), Proletkult demanded that the proletariat recast culture 'in the crucible of its own class consciousness' Claudin-Urondo approves this as a revolutionary transformation of culture, in contrast to what she sees as Lenin's pro- the massed forces of developed gramme of merely extending an already existing stock of culture to the masses.

Transformation

Proletkult was certainly correct to see the process of building a revolutionary culture in Russia as one of struggle and transformation.

But so did Lenin: all of his considerable writings on literature (work significantly not mentioned by Claudin-Urondo) stress the need to reinterpret the artistic culture of class-society from a working-class viewpoint. quackery of the Stalin era. (Lenin's celebrated articles on Tolstoy are a precise example.

But there is a difference between 'reinterpreting' electrification from the same view. point.

supreme importance to the revolution's success.

Proletkult • was a prime example of a familiar Marxist deviation: the reduction of class position (the political positions taken by an individual in theory and practice) to class situation (the social class to which an individual belongs).

Hence its sectarian assertion that 'the bourgeois specialist is psychologically. incapable of serving the interests of the proletariat, and its divisive hostility to the peasantry.

Bordered on mystical Claudin-Uron do also ignores the fact that Pr oletkult's cultivation of 'pure i proletarian consciousness' ofter n bordered on the mystical-p roletarian conTrotsky sciousness as a ni ew religion; and the contradicral programme.

That progran nme centred on proletarian vith the destruc's division into me common to (Declaration of ssian Proletkult which can be merely taken over. This is a ver y curious stateIf it is taken by some dialecfuture socialist 1o more than an ill mankind' of proletariat can conditions of Iness, mass illiteracy and econ omic underdevShe also seems to support elopment. Proletkult's workerist refusal to The culture of classless in contradictory ure of a class. revolution-an integration which Proletkult tr rus ignored the list culture, fa Russian peasants from being the 'extension of the inevitably partial, class-based culture of a struggling revolutionary proletariat, will in fact be created in the whole process of struggle towards the abolition of social classes.

There is no sense in which future socialist culture can be simply 'read off' from revolutionary proletarian culturequite apart from the fact that such a revolutionary proletarian culture', given the material deprivation of the Russian working class, was for the most part merely a pipe-dream of the Proletkultists.

Trotsky's resolute opposition to Proletkult receives a resounding silence in ClaudinUrondo's book.

Postponement

For Trotsky, the attempt to create a proletarian culture and project this into the far future signified a postponement of the drive to build the classless society of communism.

It was, in effect, a refusal of the perspective of permanent revolution at the level of culture.

The task of the proletariat, for Trotsky, was not to consolidate its own class-culture; it was to strive to abolish classes altogether, and so lay the basis for a quite ditterent, and in many ways unforseeable, form of culture in the future.

In the second half of this book, the meaning of ClaudinUrondo's attack on Lenin's cultural views become beautifully clear.

It is, in fact, nothing less than a convenient way of attacking the whole basis of Leninism itself.

She launches the usual petty-bourgeois assault on What Is To Lenin Be Done?, which she distorts to suggest that Lenin believed that 'consciousness comes from knowledge, and not from practice' Material conditions She bemoans Lenin's encouragement of specialists in the production process, with hardly a word about the material corrditions which necessitated this, and hardly a hint of an alternative programme.

She suggests that Lenin's belief that large-scale industry is essential to the building of socialism is simply one more example of his uncritical attitude to capitalist culture, without quite committing herself to a 'small is beautiful' or 'back to the market garden' And though quotation after quotation from Lenin reveals how acutely conscious and candid he himself was about the objective contradictions of building socialism in the Russian situation, it is all seen somehow as a question of Lenin's own 'mistaken' views, rather than of those contradictions themselves.

Lenin and the Cultural Revolution valuably airs an aspect of revolutionary activity which is too often ignored.

But it also churns out a number of stock anti-Leninist opinions which would be better ignored.

Footnotes

*Speech at 4th Conference of Moscow Trade Unions and Factory Committees, Collectea Works, vol. 27.

**The Achievements ana Difficulties • of the Soviel Government, Collected Works, vol 29.

Lenin (left) playing Bogdanov at chess

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Women from Crossroads march in protest at police raids on their camp The working class Police harrassment at Crossroads in such particular struggles must aim to dore on there al points for the defence and extension of the political independence of the class.

The mission of the agents of the big bourgeoisie is to undermine this development, demobilise the proletariat and chain it to illusory reformist demands.

These collaborators have speeded and zigzags in a desperate bid to maintain credibility before a militant proletariat.

committee o fans che pale of a maste Ten launched the names me power or tie masses in their drive for control of the vast township. clique of opportunists, manage Motlana, to combine 'left' speeches to the masses with brotherly advice to the bourgeoisie at university symposiums.

Political agility

His political agility IS matched only by Buthelezi leader of the significant Inkatha movement, who pened Inkatha membership t Il blacks, after returning from . tour of the USA.

The fight • polițical estroy these pretenders can l successful only through revolulethod: that clearly pose the illusions they have far been able to create:

This fight forms part of the