Wez
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‘So enjoying Wagner would convert a socialist to racism, and enjoying medieval art would make him go and get baptised Catholic?’
How is it possible to have a rational debate with someone who comes up with such nonsense? I must simply repeat that an exclusively emotional/aesthetic response to art is superficial and tells you nothing about what has informed/conditioned our perception of what is beautiful and how this effects political and moral values etc. I am amused by the idea that anything produced by the Frankfurt school could be compared to anything ‘right wing’ – not that socialists recognise the efficacy of such a right/left perspective anyway.
‘Except when you destroy and soil the art of the past you also insult and destroy the memory of the workers and artisans who created it. Socialism is to be the maturing of humanity, not the iconoclasm of angry lefties.’
Another irrational tirade against a non existing enemy. We should all be allowed to stand back from our emotional/aesthetic response to art and examine it critically. It’s easy to love the beautiful and that’s why it can be so manipulative and destructive.
‘One can even draw panels showing Crusaders without supporting or condoning the Crusades.’
But that’s the only reason they exist at all – as propaganda condoning violence in the name of European hegemony.
‘Who is to tell me I am not to have access to medieval art or Catholic chant because of the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade and the burninf of heretics? Is a socialist society going to burn books and outlaw Wagner and the New Testament? I ask again, are you for the bulldozing of 12th century cathedrals and the Potala Palace or Nostre Dame? You don’t trust me to listen to the Greek Liturgy in case I rush out to lynch Jews? I have this news: i’m a socialist who will fight anyone wanting to destroy the things I love on the plea that pre-socialist society produced them.’
TM – There you go again – you really are a master of the non sequitur and the creation of straw men. Who said anything about you not having access to certain art works or that they should be banned? My query is about the value of trying to divorce certain works of art from the ideological motivation for their creation and enjoying them purely aesthetically. Surely that merely renders them hollow and superficial – the stuff of contemporary ‘entertainment’.
Is it possible to rip art out of its political and cultural context and enjoy it for its aesthetics only? Can we listen to Wagner without acknowledging the racist and nationalist ideology that informed it and which it seeks to promulgate? Isn’t the purpose of art to communicate ideas and emotions? If the ideology that motivates some specific art work is reactionary shouldn’t we reject it however beautiful it might be?
‘So can a socialist appreciate the beautiful in art, literature and music of a religion whilst discarding its beliefs and historical iniquities, the facts of which s/he knows and will tell of.’
TM – But it’s not as simple as that – aesthetics can be used to subvert and pervert the political and moral values of the working class. The beautiful in art so often disguises an ugly ideology (Christianity, Fascism etc.) and is one of the most powerful propaganda tools available.
Furthermore, Christianity did not come from “the Dark Age hordes” the Romans despised. It was the Romans who were Christians and who set out to convert the “hordes.”
That was Gibbon’s point, it was the adoption of Christianity by the empire that helped destroy Rome from within. So do you agree or deny that contact with Muslim culture stimulated European Medieval development courtesy of their preservation of the knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome?
Of course, I know there are many, maybe most, Marxists – especially those arriving from Left groups and parties, who read very little apart from Marx and Engels, and never look into any research or knowledge realised after and since Marx’s death.
I would not consider such strange individuals as Marxists.
TM – I think it was rather more than just personal hygiene that was lost but also medical science, philosophy, astronomy, many technologies etc. Historians make the point that it was the cultural encounter with the Muslims during the crusades (Spain as well as the Levant) that enabled Medieval Culture in Northern Europe to begin to flourish culminating a few centuries later in the Renaissance. Phrases like: Medieval, Renaissance and The Dark Ages have become very unfashionable but I think it is important to emphasize that history does not always develop smoothly and progressively if only because this was one of the great erroneous criticisms of Marxism.
TM – Once again in your revisionist fervor you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nobody is claiming that we should ‘malign 1,000 years of human generations’ or that ‘these centuries were static and not vibrant’ but the loss of some material culture after the Roman withdrawal is undeniable. Many historians still support Gibbon’s contention that Christianity was one of the most reactionary ideologies that the world has ever suffered and that it helped to destroy Rome and inhibited cultural development in Northern Europe in contrast to Muslim culture etc. Cultural development is not smooth and progressive in all societies at all times as your statement ‘alive and moving’ would suggest.
The Saracens were shocked and amazed at the smell, habits, medical ignorance etc. of the European crusaders. Is this not a testament to the loss of material culture after the Roman withdrawal from Northern Europe in the 5th century that instigated the ‘Dark Age’ and continued into the Medieval period?
You’re both forgetting the ‘Dark Ages’ that took place between the Roman departure and the arrival of William the Bastard in this country. With such shadowy figures like King Arthur and Ragnar Lodbrok it is one of my favourites although now much maligned by modern historians.
rodshaw – I’ve always considered organised sports as the only legitimate place for competition so I wouldn’t expect the games themselves would change much. Of course there wouldn’t be any financial pressures to win – just bragging rights. Although when it comes to ‘international’ competition I don’t know how that would be organised in a world free of nation states.
L.B. -I’m interested in how you would seek to counter ‘dominant narratives’ like the one associating socialism with the Bolshevik revolution? I attempted to do this with reference to ‘authenticity’ some time ago and would be interested in your thoughts: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2013/2010s/no-1304-april-2013/authenticity/
LB – ‘If we try to apply our will on nature, a dialectic will, or some idealism- nature will counter that, and ignore our mere postulations- rolling right on as it has done’
Of course the dialectic is a human construct – just as the paradigms of science are. Its use is only viable if it explains observed phenomena successfully – which in the Marxian context it has done spectacularly.
