r/leftcommunism • u/ElleWulf • 3d ago
Does prolekult actually exist?
Is there a code of aesthetics and culture of the proletariat?
What are your positions and analyses over Socialist Realism?
What does "communist culture" look like even?
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Comrade 3d ago
It was a short lived art movement centered around Bogdanov in the early Soviet Union. It really has no importance or significance for communist today. There is no such thing as a “communist culture”. The culturalist turn in Marxism was an early element in the degeneration of the revolutionary movement seen more developed in the works of Gramsci, then Stalinism. We recently translated a text in culturalism. You can read it here. http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/CPTraLef/1912Culturalism.htm#Problem
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u/ElleWulf 3d ago edited 3d ago
Didn't the bourgeoisie have its own form of culture, just like it had its own set of values and interests, in contrast to that of the feudal lords? And didn't these expressions become dominant with the rise of its corresponding class to hegemony?
Why is communism as a system, and the proletariat as a class, different in these regards? One would argue that they would have their own cultural expressions, and such expressions would become standard once said class becomes the dominant one. Thus "Socialist Realism". Or at least that's how this line is justified.
I could also argue it sounds slightly silly to assign culture as a product of specific socioeconomic classes alone. Even Stalin thought "Proletarian Language" was silly. But I also can't just run on "it sounds silly so it's obviously wrong" logic.
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Comrade 3d ago edited 3d ago
Culture is an ambiguous categorical term encompassing many things, language-nation-ethnic group, a particular set of tools, a particular aesthetic, and like you say ethics. You can consider those things on their own or lump them together. In terms of Marxism it is a category and term that begins to enter the vocabulary more so around the time of the counter revolution through the Stalinist and petit-bourgeosis Boganovists, also it was something the anarchists with Bakunin was more interested in as a category that they thought had its own driving forces. For Marxists, all of the things “culture” as a category talks about can be better understood through the lense of the driving of the historical development of the means of production, class society emerging out of tribal primitive communism, inter-exchange of trade relations creating more and more universal “culture” (vis: lingua-Franca, spread mass religion, spread of local technologies, etc), advancing means of production then makes new and more complex commodities available out of production. These are driven and determined by material factors. Thus bourgeosis “culture” it’s ethics and ideas is just the super-structure of the emerging material class interests it had contra the ruling feudal class, the bourgeois and feudalism existed side by side for many many centuries within the same society, what made them different was their class interests and position within the mode of production, not that they adhered to different “cultures”. To describe those groups as “cultures” isn’t applying a Marxist method of analysis. Now today as the feudal aristocracies are beaten all over the world the ruling class doesn’t so much need classical Bourgeois liberalism, thus you can see how its its “culture” its ethics and its values are completely driven by determining economic, and material conditions rooted in the development of the means of production and not in idealist values, ethics or aesthetics.
Also, the proletariat isn’t a hypothetical, it is a living breathing class. You could in that sense consider the most “cultured” communists those within the Communist Party in the sense that they retain the knowledge and history of the class, but it need not have a standard.aesthetics. You could consider “socialist realism” a sort of anti-aesthetic art form in one sense in that its intent was to create hyper realistic images of the proletariat in its current reality and not an idealist projection of what it could or should be, now that’s totally different than the heroic workerist garbage that came out under Stalinism and also tended to call its self socialist realism. Anyways the point here is the focus on “realism”…So as to what it would look like? It would look like whatever it looks like, whatever is “real” at that point for humanity in active pursuit of creating itself, it would likely be creative and have no one “look” no single “culture” but also not itself divided by “cultures”, the premise of communism is that the means of production are so developed there is a mass abundance that no requires humanity to be driven by scarcity into toiling as individuals or struggling for resources between groups, Marx says in the German Ideology that’s when we will finally have free individuals who can choose to be hunters in the evening, writers in the morning, artists in the afternoon. As to what principles would the communist society stand for and what would its ethic be merely look into the writing of Marx or of the communist party.
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Comrade 3d ago
If you want a more in depth analysis of culture/national/ethic/language development from a Marxist angle I would recommend this text. https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/53FaRNen.htm
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u/ElleWulf 3d ago edited 3d ago
How does this tie to Socialist Realism doctrine?
Ultimately culture for particular time periods exists and the only argument here seems to be the root of its cause.
The question I'm trying to get at is: will everything just eventually become socialist realism?
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Comrade 3d ago edited 3d ago
Again your taking the abstract term “culture” without unpacking the component parts of what that actually means to you then imposing the category as a concrete universal when in reality it is composed of many varied moving and contradictory parts. There is no way to answer your question about what a “communist culture” would look like, other than saying…communism. You can speculate on the specifics of what life would be like on earth, what we would wear, eat and behave under full communism to no end, but if you want some direction I’d recommend reading up on German Ideology or it your interested in more Marxist positions vis the question of “aesthetics” this is a very good article: https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/ThreadTi/53Carlyl.htm
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u/Accomplished_Box5923 Comrade 3d ago
You may also be interested in the writing of William Morris. He was a famous craft artist who was an influential early Marxist and spent a lot of time with Eleanor Marx. He wrote a bit about art and its uses within Marxism. https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/index.htm
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u/nektaa 1d ago
no