Trotsky on Art and Literature - North London AWL branch meeting
Submitted on
Red Rose, 127 Seven Sisters Road, near Finsbury Park tube (Picc/Victoria)
North London's AWL branch meetings are open to all. At the moment we are doing a series on the life and work of Leon Trotsky. This week the focus is on Trotsky's writings on Art and Literature
“Before the proletariat will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat. Let us also not forget that the upper layer of the bourgeoisie passed its cultural apprenticeship under the roof of feudal society; that while still within the womb of feudal society it surpassed the old ruling estates culturally and became the instigator of culture before it came into power. It is different with the proletariat in general and with the Russian proletariat in particular. The proletariat is forced to take power before it has appropriated the fundamental elements of bourgeois culture; it is forced to overthrow bourgeois society by revolutionary violence for the very reason that society does not allow it access to culture. The working-class strives to transform the state apparatus into a powerful pump for quenching the cultural thirst of the masses. This is a task of immeasurable historic importance. But, if one is not to use words lightly, it is not as yet a creation of a special proletarian culture.”
Suggested reading: Literature and Revolution (1924) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/index.htm.
Short reading: Chapter 6: Proletarian culture and proletarian art.
For more info contact David Broder - 07828 844695/davidthetrot@googlemail.com