06.12.2001

Banning papers and culture

After being thrown out of the venue for selling the Weekly Worker and Republican Communist, I attended the debate on 'Socialism and culture' between Mark Brown (Scotland on Sunday journalist) and Kevin Williamson (SSP drugs spokesperson).

Comrade Brown robustly argued that every aspect of culture in society should be accessible to all and should not be the domain of the wealthy and privileged classes. Socialists should neither reject nor deny the existence of bourgeois culture, but should adopt the dialectical approach of Lenin, who advocated the masses building their culture on what already existed and had gone before.

He alluded to Brecht's assertion that art was the distorted mirror of society and should enable us therefore to see the world differently, an important and useful tool for socialists.

Comrade Williamson's contribution dealt mainly with music and films, ridiculing the Hollywood obsession with the triumph of good over evil. He urged that all participants in cultural activity should challenge and oppose the status quo wherever necessary and that culture could be a tool of non-conformity. He saw the working class not as a cultural class but as an socio-economic group within society, who suffered, even in cultural terms, from attempts by bourgeois culture to express ideas which were not in the interests of the working class.

Ronnie Mejka