Popular Culture & Class Struggle

*Popular Culture & Class Struggle*

What constitutes so-called "popular" or "low brow" culture, i.e., those aspects of culture which occupy the general population, as opposed to “high brow” culture (classical music, avant garde art, theater, opera) which is generally viewed as being produced by and for a “cultural elite,” changes over time but has often been defined to include a wide variety of activities and media, from daily life activities (patterns of family interactions to television and schooling) to special events (carnivals, comic books), film (grade B, drive-in), theater (street) and literature (romance novels, westerns, science fiction). While these two terms: popular culture and high brow culture have not generally been given class specific definitions, there has been a tendency among Marxist critics to understand popular culture in terms of the amusements and life styles of the working class and high brow culture in terms of those of the wealthier leisure classes, e.g., the bourgeoisie in capitalism.

Historically, Marxists have generally distinguished between those aspects of popular culture which have been produced by working people themselves, e.g., folk art, tales or music, and those aspects which have been produced for them, e.g., commercial television, advertising, arcade video games, film and music. This distinction is usually associated with a valorization of the former — as being authentic expressions of mass creativity — and deprecation of the former — as being mechanisms of cultural pacification and domination. Indeed, the Marxist literature dealing with culture has had two distinct strands: one rediscovering and celebrating manifestations of “authentic” grassroots culture, the other elaborating a detailed critique of the mechanisms of cultural domination via consumerism and the society of the spectacle.

Unfortunately, these two strands of work have largely stood outside each other, whereas, what we need is a recognition and analysis of how these two forces interact to produce the cultural world that surrounds us. For while it is true that some working class intelligences and imaginations have been harnessed to the task of crafting manipulative cultural experiences, be they passivity inculcating spectacles or order inducing lessons in consumption, work discipline or allegiance to authority, it is no less true that much of this work of domination involves desperate attempts to deflect, redirect or otherwise nullify dangerously antagonistic cultural innovations created by rebellious spirits unharnessed by any of the existing capitalist mechanisms. As a result, a great deal of popular culture of all kinds contains conflicting currents of critical revolt against the status quo as well as attempts to neutralize and tame such currents.

One of the spheres of culture in which these conflicts are most clearly played out is popular music. From traditional folk and country music through rhythm & blues to modern jazz and all the permutations of rock & roll, we can find these conflicts shaping the lyrics, musical styles and evolution of popular music. At the one extreme are overt “protest songs”, such as those so popular during the cycle of struggles of the late 1960s in which civil rights and anti-war militants wrote, sang and played music aimed to mobilize social movements against existing institutions and policies. At the other extreme is such commercialized, mechanical music as disco or Muzak designed purely for manipulation and profits. In between, and even to some extent within these extremes, we find an endless variety of mixtures of intentions, roles and effects. Shaping these mixtures are, on the one hand, the creativity of song writers and musicians reacting to, or with, and often against, the world that surrounds them; a creativity that restlessly and repeatedly breaks out of old forms and styles and thought patterns to craft new reactions and interventions. On the other hand are the forces of capitalist commercialization and its tools of ideological warfare.

Educated in a ruling class culture, Marx illustrated and buttressed his arguments in Capital with a wide variety of pithy quotes from classical authors, from Aristotle to Goethe — which helped give him a reputation for being extremely erudite as well as extremely radical. Understood within their context, these quotes often not only illuminate Marx’s analysis but also add considerable humor to his presentation. When it comes to reading Capital, however, especially when reading it at the beginning of the 21st Century as opposed to situating it in the 19th Century, I find it as amusing to draw on the various moments of critique in contemporary popular culture, especially in music, as to search out modern counterparts to Marx’s classical references. For this reason I have included in this study guide, and may sometimes play in class, a wide variety of more or less contemporary folk and rock songs which provide both an auditory illumination of the text and demonstrations of how the relationships that Marx treated are, unfortunately, still with us today.

In the same spirit I have included a variety of graphic art — political cartoons, comic strips, graffiti, advertisements and so on — which also reflect the continuing pertinence of Marx’s analysis in our present. These various moments of popular culture are presented without commentary in this study guide so that you can simply enjoy them in their immediacy. I will provide more or less detailed commentary on various of them in class lectures. Again and again, in many different forms, styles and media, the illustrations included can easily be seen, and understood, as manifestations of a pervasive resentment of and rebellion against the most fundamental social mechanism of capitalist domination: the imposition of work.

The first of these illuminations are out and out protest songs: Pink Floyd’s "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" and “Another Brick in the Wall” from their famous concept album The Wall which protests the deadening effects of school and teachers on students’ creativity and freedom, and two songs from Jimmy Cliff’s film The Harder They Come which express the anger and determination of a young Jamaican who has recently moved from the countryside to the city and discovered the myriad mechanisms both for exploiting people and for hiding that exploitation behind pious ideological veils. Despite the fact that all three of these songs have been commodified (packaged and sold for a profit -- on recordings and at concerts) they have also been vehicles for the international circulation of bottom-up struggle. “Another Brick in the Wall” has been banned in numerous countries around the world because of the chord it strikes in the hearts of school children and students who, again and again, adopted it in their own struggles. One particularly dramatic example of this occurred in the black township of Soweto in South Africa where, during a student strike against apartheid, thousands of black children sang this song while facing off with the South African police across barricades. A clip from the film version of The Wall is now available on You Tube or you can just listen to the music below.

Another Brick in the Wall

We don't need no education.

We don't need no thought control.

No dark sarcasm in the classroom.

Teacher leave them kids alone.

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education.

We don't need no thought control.

No dark sarcasm in the classroom.

Teacher leave us kids alone.

Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone!

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Wrong, do it again!

Wrong, do it again!

If you don't eat your meat,

you can't have any pudding!

How can you have any pudding

if you don't eat your meat.

You! Yes, you behind the bikeshed,

stand still laddy!

(ringing)

Pink Floyd, The Wall,

Capitol Records, CDP 724383124329 , 1979.

In the case of "The Harder they come" and "You Can Get It if You Really Try" from the movie/soundtrack The Harder they Come, by containing some of the most poignant and passionate moments of reggae music along with a story line that retells in allegorical and poetic terms the whole history of primitive accumulation, the film has circulated the struggles of the West Indian poor far beyond the confines of the Caribbean, bringing understanding as well as the spirit of resistance to people all over the world. (For background see the book by Campbell cited below.)

You Can Get It if You Really Want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

Persecution you must bear

Win or lose you've got to get your share

Got your mind set on a dream

You can get it, though harder them seem now

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

I know it, listen

Rome was not built in a day

Opposition will come your way

But the hotter the battle you see

It's the sweeter the victory, now

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

You can get it if you really want

But you must try, try and try

Try and try, you'll succeed at last

You can get it if you really want - I know it

You can get it if you really want - though I show it

You can get it if you really want

- so don't give up now

Jimmy Cliff, The Harder They Come,

Mango/Island Records, CD 162539 202-2, 1973.

soars still higher in the air, they can fly high in the air, they become separated form their origin and they acquire a life of their own, an independent existence."

Marx here is talking about religion and philosophy, but we could also add art. And he continues: "These have a prehistoric stock, a prehistoric origin." In other words they have deep roots in the human consciousness, going back for hundreds of thousands of years, if not longer. "They are found already in existence and taken over in the historical period."

In other words, the roots of art lie deep in our collective subconscious, to use a psychological term - it goes back into the remotest periods of history and pre-history, just like religion. Now, if one looks at the first forms of art the first thing to see is that very little has survived. A lot of this art would have been in perishable material: wood and bone or even human skin, that is, tattoos. I see some of you have got tattoos. Obviously you want to go back into pre-history! This kind of art has almost completely disappeared, although they have found the frozen body of a pre-historic woman in Siberia, with a very elaborate tattoo on her body.