Proletarian Culture and Revolution

Issue 2 of ‘Proletarier’ contains an essay by comrade Steinhauer on the subject: ‘Proletarian Ideology’, which concludes with the demand that the party must free up forces for the cultivation of proletarian ideology. The reason given by Steinhauer is that a proletarian culture would be possible even before the victory of the proletariat, and Steinhauer refers to the solidarity of the workers against the bourgeoisie as its basis. Furthermore, the fact that even in the bosom of the feudalist order, the culture of the modern bourgeoisie developed before the bourgeoisie possessed political power, is cited as further proof of the possibility. In view of the attitude of the trade unions, which, out of self-preservation, educate the working class to bourgeois thinking and undermine workers' solidarity, Steinhauer claims it is necessary to put a dam against this from the beginning. That a simple proletarian ideology, cultivated through literature, lectures, recitations, theatre, etc., and through work in the Union (editor's note: probably AAUD) and youth, could work “so that proletarians can no longer fall prey to bourgeois ideology. We must place people into the struggle of the times.”

It is not the purpose of this essay to merely chop up Comrade Steinhauer's remarks. However, right at the beginning we would like to point out a phrase in the article and on which the suggestions are based: we ‘must’ and we ‘want to’. Of course, you can ‘want’ a lot. And from a Marxist point of view, you also have to ‘want’ the impossible in order to achieve the possible. But this last sentence is only true in the sense that the party, despite the impossibility of overthrowing capitalism according to its will, must nevertheless strive to overthrow it because it is the only way to save the proletariat from falling into barbarism, and because the objective development is moving in this direction. In view of the state of mind of the proletariat, it is a momentary impossibility, and yet because it is the only possibility,  it is  therefore a necessity; not a utopia-that is decisive! According to the interpretation of the term ‘will’ in the revolutionary sense, an attempt should now be made to prove that the demands contained in St.'s article cannot be realised and are therefore a utopia.

A comparison of bourgeois cultural development with proletarian development is inconceivable. The culture of a ruling class is always an outgrowth of the property relations and the economic system on which the order of the ruling class is based. The rule of the modern bourgeoisie does not demand a change in the capitalist property relations, but merely a political recognition and realisation of the capitalist class that has matured within the capitalist feudalist property relations and a sharing of power with it. The outward expression of this is the bourgeois revolution, a process that can take place quite comfortably if it is sufficiently mature. The rising bourgeoisie, as the forerunner of the working class, either seeks to overcome feudalist resistance with the help of the working class in order to turn against the proletarians after victory, or feudalism itself collapses as a result of external shocks - as in Germany - and becomes the whipping boy for the policies dictated by modern capitalism. Or it still serves as decoration, as in England. But bourgeois culture and ideology and feudalism are not irreconcilable opposites, because the property relations on which they are based are not either. Despite all the class prerogatives of feudalism, which it often defends to the last, this development takes place on the basis of private property. Capitalism merely breaks feudalistic shackles. The culture of the bourgeoisie is not fundamentally different from that of feudalism, it is merely the expression of the respective capitalist development. From feudalism to capitalism is a line from which it is difficult to determine where feudalism ends and capitalism begins. At a certain degree of development, there is merely a distribution of power relations corresponding to the changed property relations (due to the emergence of modern industry). 

The proletarian revolution, the proletarian class, is not striving for a change in property relations, but for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production altogether! This ‘expropriation of the expropriators’ cannot take place under the bourgeois property relations and within them. Proletarian culture as an expression of the intellectual life of the class, which sets itself the task of wresting private property from the ruling class, of expressing it in the artistic and propagandistic field, is either the reflex of the will of the working class to act, in which case it is preceded by action. Or it is a mirage, a figment of the imagination, a fixed idea that has arisen in sentimentally and enthusiastically diseased minds, but not a proletarian culture and ideology. Proletarian culture can only arise if there is a proletarian ideology, and this can only exist if this ideology, this realisation, is followed by action. If this is the case, then there is no great cultivation of this ideology or culture, but then there is first of all a completely ‘uncultivated’ revolution, and through the revolution the first steps towards a new culture. The will of the broad masses to tackle the gigantic tasks of the proletarian revolution under the most difficult conditions with the unshakeable will to win requires such a degree of self-denial, solidarity, contempt for death, daring and heroism that this cannot be described in any beautiful poems. And these qualities for action are such a cultural height that can never be achieved through ‘nurturing’. Workers' first serious battle against their executioners is the first step towards the moral rebirth of the working class and liberation from bourgeois “culture”. And without this will to fight and the fight itself, all the beautiful care is of no use, the forces that are supposed to bring the proletariat closer to this goal are only fragmented and instead of awakening the hard will, the prose of revolution is used, deeds are sung that are not done. 

So much in general terms. A closer look at the development of the revolution within the democratic republic, we find confirmation of the old truth that in this sense, too, there can be and is no compromise with capitalism. The path to achieving progress in terms of the cultural advancement of the working class and the proletarian offspring on the soil of the capitalist democratic republic is not yet complete, but its outcome is already clear to anyone with insight. Let us take the ‘secular school’. Many may be under the illusion that it is a ‘cultural substitute’ in the field of general education in the sense of the class - just don't look any deeper! It is certainly a step forward in the dialectical process of the trials and tribulations of the proletarian revolution, but one of the many ‘steps forward’ that can result in two steps backwards because many proletarians are so blinded by this illusion, this ‘achievement’, that they hesitate all the longer to tackle the root of the problem. 

The ideological content of the Christian school is religion. This is banned from the secular school. Religion is the explanation of things for the proletarians in the interests of the profit economy. It is a means of stabilising and reproducing the stupidity of people, especially children. But it fulfills the primitive desire of children, educated according to a method that excludes all criticism, for an explanation of the processes of life and history. What explanation, what method of enquiry, what result does the ‘secular school’ substitute for religion? None! Its content is hollow and empty. On all occasions when it has to take a stand on certain things (Christmas, graduation, ceremonies etc.), on certain events in the field of morality, law, the general behaviour of those dismissed, it borrows from religion and carefully removes the word ‘God’ from the reheated rapturous mush. This is then ‘fighting against religion’. The preached morality is the morality of the bourgeois class, the preached right, the right within the law. The recommended behaviour is that of the democratic subjects. The place assigned for further education, trade unions and public schools. 

Can things be any different? No! It cannot be otherwise because the democratic state only tolerates the ‘secular schools’ if they fulfill their duty as compliant prostitutes of this state. Furthermore, it cannot be otherwise because the method of explanation for the processes of life and history can only be historical materialism. Don't misunderstand: every layman knows that children should not be fed indigestible lectures at a time when the urge for truth cannot yet be awakened. But at the first attempts at orientation, the answer should follow. The method of introduction is merely a question of practice. Is it carried out? By whom? Where the teachers themselves are petty bourgeois and the class struggle and materialist conception of history are a closed book to them? The intellectual bankruptcy becomes obvious to anyone with insight. It becomes clear to anyone with insight that the human children who receive their first intellectual and general scientific training there are hopelessly lost if they do not have the support of their father or mother to help them over the cliff, to awaken political understanding in them and then to lead them to the organizations that enlist them in the class struggle army. And how many parents are there who fulfill these requirements in their meager hours? Try a discussion in a parents' meeting and you will learn that the petty-bourgeois teachers are in fact the expression of petty-bourgeois parents who - not always out of ill will - but out of pure incomprehension, express their displeasure at this kind of “bickering”. And where the intellectual key to overcoming a problem is missing, nothing helps. The method of learning basically remains the same, despite a few hours of ‘work lessons’. The fight against the ‘Pfaffenschule’ is exhausted in the time freed up by the cancellation of religious instruction and the even greater overburdening of the children; to a large extent with unnecessary ballast, and thus more to ‘achieve’.

Where the creative revolutionary spirit of the working class itself is missing, where the locomotive of history returns to its starting point, all attempts at cultural upward development are deprived of their spiritual basis, and what remains is an empty neighbourhood with a nice company sign. An individual may try to assert his position as the last remaining representative of class consciousness, but he will either be forced to compromise by the prevailing conditions, by the balance of power, or he will be ‘dismantled’ in the truest sense of the word.

The cultural endeavours of the working class in the artistic, above all musical, field have a long history, more long than ultimately glorious. The ‘workers’ choral societies’ are for the most part so supra-bourgeois that they differ culturally from the bourgeoisie itself only in their bourgeois lack of culture. The reasons for this are obvious. When it comes to ‘cultivating culture’, ‘politics’ must be eliminated in order to make ‘progress’ at least in ‘this area’. In the end, the guys sing wherever they go and wherever they stand, and with the ‘apolitical’ attitude, the irreconcilable opposites expressed in the song itself are irrelevant. They sang about the black-white-red flag during the war, the black-red-yellow flag after the war and even have a soft spot for the Russian revolution. Just as it is required. Attempts to escape this quagmire were made during the first stormy months and years of the revolution. However, the fetish belief in revolutionary music automatically and inevitably led to the decomposition of ideology. Only someone who has heard a revolutionary piece of music that was absolutely at the top of its game in terms of music and singing, and - barely or not yet recovered from the shock - has seen the same people shouting nasty things, can judge the enormous spiritual corruption correctly. All this has and can have nothing in common with proletarian culture and proletarian ideology, and any attempt to raise this level must fail because of the unanimous rejection of any discussion of principle. And yet, where would the milieu be from which to draw, and whom should be drawn? The result, seen again and again and from all sides, is that just as little progress can be achieved in political or economic terms by means of reformism, this is just as little the case in the cultural sphere. It should already be clear from the above that the concept of ‘solidarity’, which G. St. as the basis for the development of proletarian ideology contains the opposite of what it should actually be. The existing solidarity is not based on the principle of class struggle, but on the negation of class struggle. We completely disregard the material and physical possibilities that are so casually attributed to the proletarians, where the burden on the individual is already almost unbearable today. We believe we have shown that the path to revolutionizing the minds leads precisely through the destruction of this basis, even if many of the ‘workers’ cultural associations’ will continue to swim along at the top, singing and “apolitical”, even during the fiercest struggle of the classes. But the forces that provide the constantly renewed impetus lie elsewhere than on the ground of this solidarity. It is the revolutionary energies that have been forced by economic events to burst the organizational framework of these organizations, including the trade unions and parliamentary parties, and know only one goal: the struggle for power. The reservoir that absorbs these forces is the General Workers' Union, the leader of the classes, the party! What is left then that we can ‘nurture’? The circle of class-conscious workers who are already fighting with us in rank and file? They no longer need to be held together and encouraged by special poetic edification. They will work in this direction and find the means to do so within the given framework, depending on their strength and in accordance with the respective necessity, also with regard to propaganda. But always with the aim of awakening and clarifying class consciousness and emphasizing that the victory of the proletarian class requires action.

Because, to emphasize another truth, albeit one that is not often spoken: A revolutionary worker who is materially able to do so will be able to separate the kitsch from the solid in bourgeois concerts and theaters with his own instinctive understanding and, if he feels the need for it, he will also be able to edify and strengthen himself in his own way. A worker, however, who lacks class consciousness, sees in proletarian performances only the poverty caused by them, in what is offered only a meaningless gesture, and prefers to go to the cinema. The ‘Proletarian Theater’ in Berlin has taught us this in practice. Let us keep our forces together until the proletarian giant stretches itself again, and let us ensure that it stretches itself very soon and breaks the shackles that are to condemn it forever to servitude, then we will also work practically on its moral and cultural rebirth through the proletarian revolution.

Adam Scharrer 

1925

Stijn
M.S.