Socialist Cultural Policy

What would a truly left-wing cultural policy look like? Would it be substantially different from what it is in current-day Europe? Would greater democratic control be introduced in the curation of artworks exhibited in museums and art galleries?

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Rather a loose definition. We're talking a post-revolutionary socialist government? Central planning? Succdem? Communism?

Well, I expected every tendency to offer their point of view. Definitely not sucdem tho.

This is actually one of my main gripes with socialism.
I come from Slovenia, a country who's entire culture was almost completely deleted by the Italian fascists and Nazis during ww2 (and already before ww2 in the slovene territories outside of the kingdom of Yugoslavia), so we are (at least I am personally) and remain, pretty paranoid about the destruction of languages and cultures. Compared to say, Americans, we're way more concerned about soft or hard ethnocides, who from my experience don't really understand the incredible value of cultural traditions, probably because they essentially live in a world where losing theirs can't be easily concieved.
So the point is that, when socialism was implemeted a broad push was made to "proletarize" culture. Peasant traditions and holidays were repressed as counter-revolutionary, easter, christmas and such holidays which were previously all about sharing and rejoicing were also eradicated (later paving the way for the disgusting americanization of holydays like this after socialism fell). The Ljubljana tramway was dismanteled and turned into scrap metal, because "tramways are a symbol of conservative urban bourgeois society", century old taverns and cafés where the intelligentsia gathered were closed down and the inteligentsia itself hunted down (Dachauski procesi, Vodetovski proces) and gulaged because of counter revolutionary behavior.
Slovene culture suffered greatly because of "proletarization" and it still baffles me how western socialists still support such practices.

first of all, i think that art is a great way of connecting people (wich may be part due to me being german and having read to much about aesthetic education), and i think that the elitism in the art industry doesn´t stem from the fact that it´s all "hurr durr it´s 2deep4u", but mainly the fault of the "Porky Training Camp"(TM) of a school system right now.
Also any kind of censory cultural policy like for example under stalinism is ultra spooked as fuck

Well I'd say the ML countries already proved just about everything that could go wrong with central planning, including distribbuting artistic budgets. Unless a State can somehow at the same time have central planning and be extremely democratic, one should assume that artists saying what the rulers want to hear will get preference, and dissidents get notin' at all. On the other hand, there's something to be said about the fact that works that stay away from politics can have the luxury of enjoying both artistic freedom and decent budget. George fucking Lucas of all people triggered a lot of fags last year talking about this: archive.is/s8gBo

Case in point: Tarkovsky. Even after he skedaddled from the USSR, he still depended on public dosh from Western democracies, which arguably was the only source that allowed for more artistic freedom than Soviet dosh. Like fuck Hollywood would ever have funded STALKER. The Solaris remake further drives the point: it only got funded because of the heavyweight names attached, but utterly flpped in the box office.

Why the fuck would they do that? This makes sense coming from a Khmer Rouge but not from a ML…

In an idealistic communist society, money is abolished and artists have nearly-unlimited resources and time to work with, no censorship, and people have enough free time to enjoy their work.

I don't know if such a society would be interested in protecting "traditions".
The art would certainly be quite avant-garde.

In a more probably socdem world it would probably mean social security for artists and funding to keep monuments alive.

You can start by making cultural spaces more available for both artists and visitors, you could easily repurpose churches to serve as theaters for amateur plays.


C'mon now. I don't believe this shit. The SU greatly expanded public transporation.

A policy of systematic destruction of "bourgeois" urban culture. Same happened in zagreb and Beograd, but they more or less recovered, Ljubljana remains without an urban inteligentsia culture to this day though.

But MLs aren't supposed to have anything against urban culture. If anything, they have beef with rural culture which they see as backwards and reactionary… but definitely not with city life. The only "leftists" I know of who disapproved of urban culture as bourgeois were the Khmer Rouge — who really were in a league of their own.

Dunno, my ideal socialistic State (thus pre-communism) would involve cybernetic economic planning, which admittedly has no room for arts budgeting. I can only assume that part of the State budget would be allocated for the arts, and that the body responsible for deciding the grantees would be as "radically democratic" as possible i.e. very temporary terms, horizontal rather than vertical decision-making, popular oversight over the decisions etc. Of course, this is all a hopeful scenario.

Have you ever been to a church
The accoustic is shit

Wtf am I reading

Are you ahmurican? Churches herebin italy has great acoustics due to centuries of architectural tradition. Honestly that user had a great ide on theater churches lol

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Am European
Churches are big and echo a fucking lot, they are good for sacred music and not much else

Also I dunno, maybe it's that I've been to mass a few times but I always feel quite intimidated when in a Church and I don't believe it would be good for the artists

You're a fucking retard

what culture?

You've never been to a Catholic church.

Removal of any rennet of commercialized culture.

One of the things that really bothered me about The ABC of Communism was that they called artists parasites or some such.

A lot of the elitism in the art world stems from The Society of the Spectacle. It was a huge influence on minimalism and hardedge abstraction for instance. That such art was seen as alienating to the public at large is a feature not a bug in this school of thought.

Plenty of small churches and also lots of churches used for secular, cultural purposes. Went to a Zizek talk in a big church once and to a classical concert in another.

that may be but if i recall correctly the society of the spectacle was written in the sixties and alienation from art started like a good 70 years earlier
i think the alienating happened when the object of art shifted from portraying something external to something internal, and really took of when the piece and it´s observer became the art which for whatever reason all these "hurr durr modern art is just a bunch of random crap a toddler could draw" brainlets don´t seem to be capable to understand

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I suspect philosphy will become more common for the avrege man to read.

All art will be fine art, all literature will be belles lettres, all music will be classical.

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Fugg better stay with capitalism

for starters: everyone who I've ever said "gets the wall", is going to get the wall.
that's about the only cultural policy you'll ever need, and that's all I'm going to offer.

See you on the wall comrade.

Really

bump for truth to slovenia

Genres will continue existing but they will branch out of the music studio, string quartets will play rock and power trios will play symphonies

bump

Socialism implies a State, so why no policy?

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Have a 24/7 online direct-democratic poll which allows people to nominate pieces of "art" to be banned and requires a simple majority within 7 days to enact the ban. The nominations could range from a single piece to an entire category or medium, as long as they are sufficiently well defined. Let people vote to repeal the bans, but require a 75% majority. Each successive flip-flop should require a greater majority.

Anyone caught creating or possessing banned art should be sent to the work camps for at least 5 years. There should be a 7 day grace period after each ban is announced before it is enforced.

Bans could be enforced automatically using computer algorithms.

Lel, State-sanctioned socialism art will be socialist realism, Anna the Proletarian novels, and boring standard classical music.


Please kys.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_neorealism

Basically no difference to Soviet Socialist Realism.

All that Euro stuff seems to be similar