You can read the original German version here.
Contents:
Introduction
Comrades,
We recall the Third Party Congress of our party at the beginning of this year. We recall the numerous motions calling for an improvement and a standardisation of our agitation and propaganda work — particularly in the cultural sector, in which it was called for to “give cultural work greater weight in propaganda work,” to pool the available opportunities and resources, and to gear the party towards making use of them.
These motions were included in the Central Committee’s report, which was unanimously adopted by the party congress, under the section entitled ‘The Party’s Immediate Tasks.’ Point seven of that section reads: “Step up revolutionary agitation and propaganda”:
It is essential that the Party further improves its agitation and propaganda, that it launches a relentless struggle against the culture of the exploiting class, which is hostile to the proletariat, that it sets its own folk art — in the form of our agit-prop troupes, amateur drama groups, choirs etc., that it mobilises progressive cultural workers to defend our progressive national cultural heritage.
If we look at this demand from our party congress today, some nine months later, we must conclude that we have scarcely taken a single step towards realising it. What is working, what is going well, is that the party’s literary activity — be it the work on Roter Morgen, the theoretical organ, the publication of key materials, leaflets, brochures and books, the guidance of publishers, printers, distributors and bookshops, and the training and guidance of the entire literary apparatus has been standardised, is subordinate to the Party and is accountable to it. Even if there are still shortcomings here and there.
Where we have not yet succeeded in achieving this standardisation, though it is urgently needed, and where great uncertainty still prevails, is the sector of agitation and propaganda, which extends into the arts and the cultural sphere. No sooner had the leadership fully recognised the importance of establishing and working continuously with agit-prop troupes, revolutionary theatre groups, folk dance groups and choirs, bands and marching bands, film groups and so on, than they energetically set about guiding and standardising them through the Central Propaganda Department. The reason for this is, on the one hand, the underestimation of culture — this important front of the class-struggle, as Lenin described it — and, on the other hand, the aforementioned uncertainty, which manifests itself in not knowing how to judge this or that in art and culture from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint.
There is no doubt that if one wishes to form a front, if one wishes to launch a relentless struggle against the culture of the exploiting class that is hostile to the proletariat, one must know the lines of the front, one’s own positions and those of the enemy, and one must know both their weapons and ours. As responsible comrades in the agit-prop sector, it is important that you acquire special knowledge — for example, on the relationship between art and the base and superstructure.
Art and literature, whose works are the product of the reflection of a given society’s life in the human mind, represent a form of understanding reality that cannot be replaced by any other. Through their vivid reflection of human relationships and conflicts, they are capable of evoking particularly strong emotional impressions that have a profound influence on people’s actions within society.
Two National Cultures
As we know, there can be no literature or art that stands above the classes and is independent of politics. Comrade Lenin said in his work ‘Critical Remarks on the National Question’:
There are two nations within every modern nation… There are two national cultures within every national culture… The elements of democratic and socialist culture are present, if only in rudimentary form, in every national culture, since in every nation there are toiling and exploited masses, whose conditions of life inevitably give rise to the ideology of democracy and socialism.
We can also see this clearly in the literary history of our people, of our nation. Where else but on the side of the people, the exploited working masses, can we place the works of revolutionary-democratic writers such as Georg Büchner, Georg Herwegh, Heinrich Heine and Georg Weerth, who, according to Engels, was “the German proletariat’s first and most important poet”? Where else but on the side of the proletariat, the revolution, and socialism do artists and writers such as Käthe Kollwitz, Friedrich Wolf, Erich Weinert and the greatest German playwright of this century, Bert Brecht, stand? Who else but the proletariat, fighting for its liberation, did the revolutionary cultural and agitprop movement of the 1920s and early 1930s serve?
But that is only one side of the coin. For Lenin goes on to say:
But every nation also possesses a bourgeois culture (and most nations a reactionary and clerical culture as well) in the form, not merely of “elements,” but of the dominant culture. Therefore, the general “national culture” is the culture of the landlords, the clergy and the bourgeoisie. (V. I. Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question, 1913)
Bourgeois art during the era of the rising bourgeoisie differs qualitatively from that of its decline, the period of imperialism. Whilst the former was still linked to popular creativity, its artists produced not only historical and ephemeral works but also exemplary works of lasting significance for the subsequent stages of historical development, whereas today’s decaying, parasitic bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries produces art and literature which, in its lack of ideas, its formalism and its decadence, can scarcely be surpassed. It is equally reactionary, misanthropic and anti-aesthetic.
Let’s just take a look at the decline in the field of fine art. There, using felt, grease and plaster, the Düsseldorf art professor Joseph Beuys transformed a children’s bath into an “art object.” When, during a travelling exhibition, citizens of Leverkusen, failing to recognise the uniqueness of this artwork, restored the Beuys bath to its original state so as to use it as a beer cooler and two other Beuys art objects — a stove and a plastic bucket — were damaged, the owner, as the lender of these “artworks,” sued the city of Wuppertal, with the result that the court awarded him compensation of 165,000 DM. Or what is one to say about the 1,000-metre-deep hole that the American Walter de Maria had drilled on Friedrichsplatz in Kassel for around 800,000 DM as a “work of art” and “food for thought” on the occasion of this year’s ‘Documenta’? Or the other “artworks” at Documenta — the two iron and wooden walkways over 100 metres long, the liquid honey pulsating through kilometres of plastic tubing, the brush-stroke painting by the Englishman William Turner, the tiled room by the German Hans-Peter Reuter, the wallpaper intended as pictures, the chunks of rock and pieces of metal in every nook and cranny — all for a total of 5,000,000 DM in taxpayers’ money, which is what Documenta cost this time.
No wonder that this capitalist orgy of junk and trash also met with the approval of the modern revisionists in the GDR, who, in their ‘Berliner Zeitung,’ in which six of their artists were also exhibiting, noted in detail that an endeavour to develop a new realistic visual language could be traced through all sections of the Documenta. Since, as is well known, one hand washes the other, West German art critics were not stingy with words of praise for the exhibiting GDR artists. Thus, “Stern” wrote that the works of the two Leipzig painters Werner Tübke and Wolfgang Mattheuer have “little to do with class art anymore. Rather, these painters, too, are seeking new positions.”
How true! If one looks at their paintings, one discovers the same degeneracy in content and form, except that their new positions are the old ones — those of capitalism.
“Art From the Dump”
No wonder that more and more working people are outraged by this “art from the rubbish tip”, which cities and local authorities fund out of their tax money. That they are maturing into self-help against such works of art and are increasingly forcing the city bigwigs — even if the latter whinge and see in this “alarming traits of totalitarian thinking,” as the director of the Pfalz-Galerie in Kaiserslautern does — to withdraw these products of capitalist decadence from circulation. Whilst it is still relatively easy for working people to recognise the degeneration of bourgeois art in the field of the visual arts, this proves more difficult for them in other areas.
Contemporary art — which emerged after the Second World War — can be broadly divided into three categories. First, there is the highbrow art of the so-called “elite,” the so-called “upper classes.” L’art pour l’art. Navel-gazing by a select minority, an ‘intellectual, spiritual’ upper class of society. Exclusive, abstract content and exaggerated forms. This art, which we encounter, for example, in theatre performances and concerts, is generally incomprehensible to the masses. It leaves them cold. Moreover, what worker under capitalism is in a position to attend a theatre performance or a concert after a gruelling day’s work? Quite apart from the fact that he cannot possibly afford the high admission prices. But even a large proportion of the so-called elite, the upper ten thousand and their petit-bourgeois imitators, attend exclusive theatre performances and concerts by some famous musician solely because the admission price is high, the musician is ‘in,’ because one must be seen, because the bourgeois dandies want to show off their wardrobes.
The second trend, which is most actively promoted and propagated by the bourgeoisie, is so-called mass culture or mass art. Capitalist commodity production has, as Clara Zetkin said, produced an “after-art,” an entertainment industry designed to distract and numb the masses. In doing so, it has erected a barrier in the path of the people’s journey towards the appropriation of their true, authentic cultural heritage
Capitalist greed, and even more so the anti-national cosmopolitan imperialism, waged a veritable campaign of destruction against folk art. In place of the heartfelt folk song of the homeland, this misanthropic imperialism substituted the sentimental tearjerker, the pop song unique in its lack of substance; in place of meaningful dances and dance music, pop, rock and degenerate jazz — which can only be endured with a spiritual spark and which incite ecstasy; in place of the clean, honest, community-oriented sentiments of the peoples, a revelry in murderous frenzy and gangsterism à la Hollywood.
What pours out day after day from newspapers and magazines, trashy literature and penny dreadfuls, the cinema, radio and television, this propagation of selfishness and brutality, porn and pop, murder and terror, is intended to turn people into extreme individualists, to prepare them for fascism, for a new imperialist genocide. The latest ploy, the propagation of the beauty of death, the invocation of calamity and catastrophe — particularly in books produced in the USA, but also in Western Europe, and above all in films — is nothing other than a variation on the Flood myth, which all the world’s religions have used to discourage revolutionary and progressive people, to train them in passivity and resignation to their fate.
The aim of this whole cultural circus — glitzy on the surface, accompanied by lavish advertising, treated as a commercial enterprise, and supported and financed by the bourgeoisie — is to confuse, befuddle and numb the masses; it is an attempt to turn ordinary people into passive consumers of poisoned bourgeois ideas and to make their consumption a necessity, a habit. They are to be lulled into complacency, kept away from political and social struggle, plunged into apathy and intellectual emptiness, and driven into a meaningless existence.
Attempts to Corrupt the Youth
In particular, the bourgeoisie is keen to influence young people. This begins with the content of children’s games, continues through the millions of copies of Cornic Books, and extends to the penny magazines, which also appear week after week in millions of copies, featuring various adventure, crime, spy, Western, science fiction, soldier, romance and other series, in which quarrels, disputes, fights, violence, crime, revenge and retribution are almost always an essential component of the stories is quarrelling, strife, fighting, violence, crime, revenge and retribution.
In both comic books and pulp magazine series, the hero is portrayed as someone who has the right to trample ruthlessly and cynically over mountains of corpses in order to uphold ‘law and order.’ There is no regard for other people’s feelings, or for society as a whole. What is glorified is the individual act of brutality. A typical example of this is the character of ‘Superman,’ who appears in various guises – as a magician, a cosmonaut, a detective, a fighter, etc. — and who emerged from Nietzsche’s concept of the superman.
Another important factor in the impact these magazines have is that the positive, strong, successful characters are almost exclusively tall and blond, mostly Americans or Western Europeans, whilst the negative characters are either savages, ape-men, Black people, Jews, Native Americans, Italians, Chinese or Japanese. Children and young people are thereby led to classify people into higher and lower categories.
The consequences of these Cornic and Groschenheft series, which are further fuelled by the daily press, radio and television through their graphic depictions of murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and other crimes, are a steady rise in crime committed by young people and children. It is by no means rare any more for children to murder other children or even adults. An atmosphere of willingness to commit criminal acts is being created, practically complete with instructions on how to go about it.
The bourgeoisie employs every means at its disposal — the mass media, art and literature, as well as schools and the church — to corrupt the youth and the masses. Under the guise of art, which is supposedly apolitical and non-partisan, knowing no social prejudices or ideological obligations, as Comrade Enver Hoxha said:
…the cult of void content and ugly form, of the despicable and horrible, is created. The principal heroes of decadent, modernist art are murderer s and prostitutes, and its themes immorality and social pathology. Its banner is irrationalism, liberation from “reason.” Its ideal is the primitivism of the caveman… Every day, “new” schools and trends, which resemble innumerable religious sects and heresies, appear. Nevertheless, they have a common philosophical basis: idealism, with all its endless refinements . This is also the essence of those trends which, at first sight, appear to be leftist, radical protests against the official bourgeois society and its culture and morality. (E. H. Hoxha, Intensify the Ideological Struggle Against Alien Manifestations & Liberal Attitudes Towards Them, 1973)
So says Comrade Enver Hoxha. And that brings us to the third trend, the contemporary modernist culture of the bourgeoisie, the so-called anti-culture or anti-art, which is supposedly created in ‘left-wing’ circles in protest against bourgeois culture. Anti-authoritarian education, children’s clubs, housing communes, the ‘gammel’ look, Pop Art, etc. all belong to this trend. Representatives of this movement, who claim to be opposed to traditional society, its art and culture, and its ethical and aesthetic norms, say, for example, that there is no need for sentimental and tearful music. But what do they put in its place? The most primitive, disharmonious orgies of noise and beat in the relevant shacks and discos. Their supposed protest against bourgeois society usually ends up in movements such as the hippies, the flower children, the Jesus People and other even crazier religious sects, from which only their managers profit.
The bourgeoisie is by no means opposed to this trend, this so-called ‘anti-culture.’ It suits them down to the ground, for it keeps people, especially the youth, away from revolutionary action, from the true struggle for their liberation, in order to numb them, to drive them into a life of mental idleness, inner emptiness, full of superstition, without ideals or prospects for the future. By propagating this particular culture for the youth, the bourgeoisie attempts to drive a wedge between young and old, seeking to prevent their revolutionary unity. Common to these three trends, with all their ‘isms’ and currents, is the philosophical basis of idealism.
Revisionist Cultural Decay
What is acceptable to the bourgeoisie in the West is equally acceptable to the new bourgeoisie in the East. The degeneration of culture, art and literature in the revisionist countries began with a departure from the method and fundamental principles of socialist realism, with the denial of the fundamental principle of proletarian partisanship, with the dragging through the mud of the heroic spirit and communist heroes, with the preaching of de-heroisation, pacifism and bourgeois humanism, with the fear of war, of any war.
Modern revisionists peddle the philosophy of survival at any cost and openly advocate capitulation, glorifying traitors and defaming heroes. In their works, they preach that — in order simply to survive and save one’s own skin — it makes no difference whether one becomes a traitor, an agent or a lackey.
Their writers make no distinction between just and unjust wars. Consequently, they proclaim that “war is our common enemy” and write, as in Asejev’s collection of poems ‘Harmony’: “So that the whole world doesn’t lie in ruins, down with war!”
Their reactionary theory of human nature is rooted in the same denial of the class character of society. They proclaim that human nature is common to both oppressors and the oppressed, even though every Marxist-Leninist, every communist, knows that there is only one human nature with a class character, but no human nature that transcends the classes.
In parallel with the revisionist degeneration of their countries, counter-revolutionary tendencies began to appear ever more openly in the literature and art of the revisionist countries; these later became intertwined with overt chauvinism and nationalism, and with the preaching of religion and mysticism. The modern revisionists also increasingly threw open the floodgates to the degenerate bourgeois culture of the West. They imitated it and spread it among the youth, the intelligentsia and the masses in general. We need only cast a glance across the border into Germany to see this. Instead of further developing and promoting the combative social cultural heritage of the German people, above all the working-class, it is today suppressed by the rulers of the GDR. Workers’ songs and theatre have been squeezed out of the GDR’s film and television programmes in favour of a revisionist, Western-style show business and the Monday film melodramas. Or let us look to Poland, where the Church continues to wield considerable influence and where bourgeois cultural decadence, with all its degenerate forms, right down to striptease, is making a joyful comeback.
Bourgeois art — and in its wake, revisionist, decadent art — makes use of all the old, hackneyed, unsellable stock items, simply changing their packaging: the distortion of reality, dehumanisation, anti-ideologisation, apoliticism, hermeticism, the distortion and dissolution of form, the de-heroisation, the suppression of any commitment and the like — these are the excrements that the bourgeoisie expels in great variety.
In doing so, the two imperialist superpowers seek to impose US imperialism through cosmopolitanism and the propagation of its so-called “way of life,” and Russian social imperialism through its thesis of the ‘internationalisation of culture,’ to destroy the cultural traditions of smaller nations, the national spirit of their art and culture.
Both cosmopolitanism as an ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie, which rejects the right of nations to national and state independence, which preaches the renunciation of national, patriotic traditions and national culture, as well as Brezhnev’s thesis on the ‘internationalisation of culture,’ which amounts to practically the same thing, serve to render the peoples who defend their independent state existence and their national culture ideologically defenseless.
Historically, this is nothing new. The imperialists, the conquerors, have always sought to create an art form that would make it easier for them to subjugate peoples. This was attempted by the ancient Roman militarists as well as the Emperor of Byzantium, the Italian fascists as well as the German Nazis, and the American and Russian imperialists alike. What the American feudal lords and bourgeoisie did to the national character of the cultures of the Native American peoples in both parts of the Americas, the Russian social-imperialists are now attempting to do to the nationalities of the Soviet Union, albeit in a disguised form.
Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasised:
The aim of the reactionary bourgeois concept of the “internationalisation” of culture and art, the idea that “the stage of national schools has already been superseded” is to eliminate the cultures of other peoples. (E. H. Hoxha, Intensify the Ideological Struggle Against Alien Manifestations & Liberal Attitudes Towards Them, 1973)
It follows inevitably that all peoples, but especially those who have freed themselves from the yoke of imperialism and colonialism, must be particularly vigilant against the cultural aggression of the two superpowers, US imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. That they must mobilise all their forces to develop and enrich their national culture.
Defend the Progressive
National-Cultural Heritage
However, this does not apply only to smaller nations – a lesson we ourselves had to learn following the Second World War. The ideology of cosmopolitanism was strongly supported by the resurgent West German imperialism, which was sailing in the slipstream of US imperialism. The Social-Democrats, and more recently the modern revisionists, were particularly prominent in this regard, who attempted to smuggle this imperialist commodity into the labour movement as a kind of substitute for proletarian internationalism.
As early as in our theoretical journal ‘Deutschland dem Deutschen Volk’ of February 1974, the party stated:
In its quest for hegemony, US imperialism has waged and continues to wage a systematic struggle against German national culture and the national cultures of the other European peoples. In doing so, it has been and continues to be supported by the West German governments from Adenauer to Brandt. It wishes to destroy them so that the Germans forget that they are German, and that they possess a great past as an independent and gifted nation. It, like the other, the social-imperialist superpower of today, wishes to educate the German people to. (KPD-ML, Deutschland dem Deutschen Volk: February, 1974)
Fighting against the cultural aggression of the two imperialist superpowers means, for us today, fighting to defend our progressive national cultural heritage! Mind you, the progressive heritage, but by no means every cultural heritage. Thus, we adopt all that is good, all that is useful and valuable to our cause, from the culture of the past — both national and world culture — whilst sweeping away all that is conservative and reactionary. But this too takes place in the struggle through an ideological selection in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism.
To achieve this, however, it is necessary that we bring our comrades, that we bring the working-class, closer to art and culture even today. In her essay ‘Art and the Proletariat,’ Clara Zetkin warned against seeing in the proletarian class-struggle nothing but the desire to fill one’s stomach:
This world-historical struggle concerns the entire cultural heritage of humanity; it concerns the possibility of the development and expression of full humanity for all. (C. J. Zetkin, Art & the Proletariat, 1911)
And Comrade Lenin emphasised in his speech at the Third Komsomol Congress:
Proletarian culture must be the logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist, landowner and bureaucratic society. (V. I. Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, 1920)
Both Lenin and Stalin opposed and crushed the (Proletkult) art movement, which trivialised the Marxist conception of art and failed to grasp the need for a critical appropriation of the classical progressive cultural heritage. In his draft resolution on proletarian culture, Lenin stated under point four:
Marxism has won its historic significance as the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat because, far from rejecting the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, it has, on the contrary, assimilated and refashioned everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture. Only further work on this basis and in this direction, inspired by the practical experience of the proletarian dictatorship as the final stage in the struggle against every form of exploitation, can be recognised as the development of a genuine proletarian culture. (V. I. Lenin, On Proletarian Culture, 1920)
Yet, however fiercely Lenin and Stalin may have fought against the phenomenon of ‘Proletkult’, they repeatedly emphasised that it was by no means simply a matter of indiscriminate appropriation, but rather of critical appropriation – specifically of the progressive cultural heritage, the most valuable achievements of human culture. It was left to the modern revisionists, with the Soviets at the forefront, to extend this appropriation to the trivial as well as the reactionary cultural heritage of their nations.
This danger does not seem to exist in our party at present; rather, the opposite is the case. At the very least, there is a certain degree of uncertainty amongst our comrades as to how this or that aspect of our cultural heritage in literature and art should be assessed from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint. How else is one to understand the fact that, whilst this year’s issue of Roter Morgen featured two articles — one marking the 155th anniversary of Georg Weerth’s birth and another the 160th anniversary of Georg Herwegh’s birth — one searched in vain for an article marking the 150th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s death?
Embracing What is Valuable
Why? Because Beethoven wasn’t a communist? Not a poet of the working-class like Georg Weerth, or her conscious comrade-in-arms and honorary correspondent for the Internationale like Georg Herwegh? Is that the standard by which Roter Morgen measures the appropriation or appreciation of our progressive national cultural heritage? How does this square with Lenin’s call to appropriate that which was valuable in human culture? Or is Beethoven’s work not progressive and valuable? His opera ‘Fidelio,’ a hymn to freedom; his Ninth Symphony, a hymn to the brotherhood of mankind. Ultimately, Beethoven was a child of the French Revolution, as Romain Rolland described him, save for some of his reactionary views and opportunistic actions.
For us, the decisive factor in our assessment must be the work of the writer, the poet, the artist, and only secondarily their personal conduct. Thus, for example, Engels analysed the work of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac and demonstrated that this artist, whilst subjectively standing on the side of the reactionary class, could objectively, by virtue of his realistic work, expose its weaknesses and show that it is doomed to ruin.
Engels said:
Well, Balzac was politically a Legitimist; his great work is a constant elegy on the inevitable decay of good society, his sympathies are all with the class doomed to extinction. But for all that his satire is never keener, his irony never bitterer, than when he sets in motion the very men and women with whom he sympathizes most deeply – the nobles. (F. Engels, Letter to Margaret Harkness in London, 1888)
We see: despite his dreams of the rebirth of the feudal order overthrown by the bourgeois revolution, he contributed to the inevitable downfall of this class through his realistic portrayal of the parasitic nature of the feudal lords.
Or let us stay within the country. What of Mr. von Goethe? In his private life a repulsive philistine, yet on the other hand a genius. At times petty, at times colossal. By fighting against feudal science, philosophy and religion, Goethe contributed to the abolition of serfdom and to the consolidation of the emerging
and, for that era, progressive conditions of capitalism. Yet by defending the feudal order, he hindered the forward march of history. What did Engels say about him?
[There is a] persistent struggle in himself between the poet of genius, disgusted by the wretchedness of his surroundings, and the Frankfurt alderman’s cautious child, the privy-councillor of Weimar, who sees himself forced to make a truce with it and to get used to it. (F. Engels, On Goethe, 1847)
Goethe’s work contains immortal values, values such as those expressed in the poetic praise of the struggle for the freedom and independence of the people (Egrmont), in the praise of the selfless fighters for the happiness of the people (Prometheus and Götz von Berlichingen), and in the truthful depiction of essential aspects of that era. They will always be of interest to humanity. Marx counts Goethe among his favourite poets. And Ernst Thälmann, in his reply to the letters of a comrade in Bautzen Prison, refers to Goethe and enthusiastically quotes the famous words from ‘Faust’:
Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.
Thus, only part of Goethe’s oeuvre can be attributed to the reactionary forces of the time — feudalism — whilst another, the more substantial part, belongs to the bourgeoisie of the time, which was progressive; and of this, what has survived and will continue to survive is that which is of value, that which still serves the people today and will continue to do so tomorrow. It outlived its time, just as did the work — the music — of Beethoven. As is well known, Lenin held it in exceptionally high regard.
I know nothing that would equal the ‘Appassionata.’ I could hear it played every day. Marvellous, supernatural music! (V. I. Lenin, as cited in in A. M. Gorky, Nikolai Lenin: The Man, 1924)
This is how Lenin spoke of one of Beethoven’s most significant works, his music, which largely reflects the struggle for liberation of working humanity, of the people, and their dreams of justice.
So why, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his death, is there not a single word about Beethoven in Roter Morgen? Why do we leave it to the class enemy, the bourgeoisie in the age of imperialism, to lay claim to him in their eulogies? A man like Beethoven would certainly never have dedicated any of his symphonies to their decadent, decaying, parasitic existence. He, who as a republican admired Brutus and Napoleon. He had initially dedicated his Eroica to the latter, but he withdrew this dedication when he learnt that Napoleon had proclaimed himself Emperor of France.
Certainly, writers and poets such as Heine, Herwegh and Weerth are easier to assess, as their political stance was clearer than, for example, that of Herder, Klopstock, Goethe, Hölderlin, Eichendorff, Bach, Beethoven, Weber and Schumann. Yet even in the creative output and works of the latter, which are imbued with a quest for justice and a love for the people, there is much of value to be found that ought to be preserved and promoted. We must not fail to recognise that the struggle against the poison of bourgeois decadence and petit-bourgeois weeds constitutes only one, albeit very important, aspect of our responsibility, but that, beyond this, it is of great importance to fully exploit the wealth of human culture, to make use of all that is valuable and good which has come down to us from earlier epochs.
I know that this demand is difficult to meet. In the midst of the daily class-struggle, when do we ever have the time to read a work of classical poetry, let alone go to the theatre or a concert? And one must also bear in mind that what is presented there is often distorted and no longer reflects the views and intentions of its creators. In times when political oppression, fascistisation and growing terror prevail, who even thinks about the richness of human culture? We are, after all, glad when we fulfil our commitments, our daily political tasks. And even the Rote Morgen is, after all, no cultural magazine; in it, the culture section is a (so far still minor) sideline.
Promoting the Goal
And yet this view is mistaken. Why? Well, it fails to take into account what Clara Zetkin meant when she said that in the struggle one must not think only of filling one’s stomach, but also of the fact that this struggle is about securing “the opportunity for the development and exercise of full humanity for all.“
Or to put it another way:
Some comrades, when asked what they are fighting for, reply, “For the socialist revolution.” Some even omit the word “socialist” and simply say “for the revolution.” But what will a comrade take from such an answer? He will say to himself, well, the Communists are for violence, for revolution, but I personally am for peace, for a better life. But are we, then, against peace, against a better life? Of course not. So the answer is wrong. When asked: ‘What do you want? What are you fighting for?’, our answer must be: We are fighting against the exploitation of man by man; we are fighting for a world without want, poverty, hunger, torture, oppression and war; for a world in which no one need fear the dawn anymore; a world like a blossoming garden full of harmony, happiness and love; a world in which the creative forces of humanity can, for the first time, unfold fully and for the benefit of all; for the world of socialism, of communism. Only in such a world will we be able to fully fulfil Lenin’s call to appropriate and assimilate everything “of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture.”
Of course, when we answer the question of our goal in this way, we must never allow even the slightest doubt to arise that this world might somehow be handed to us on a plate. We must state clearly and unequivocally: whoever wishes to eliminate the exploitation of man by man, whoever wishes to establish socialism, must destroy the rule of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, smash their state apparatus and, upon its ruins, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. A dictatorship that is a thousand times ‘more democratic’ than our present so-called ‘free and democratic basic order’ — or, to put it plainly, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But eliminating it can never be achieved by peaceful means, but only through armed struggle, through revolution!
This is perfectly clear to our comrades too; there are no contradictions here, no wavering. Yet sometimes, I get the impression, there are still comrades who, when they hear words like “happiness” and “love,” regard them as bourgeois. When Comrade Stalin heard Maxim Gorky recite his enchanting fairy tale ‘A Girl and Death’ in 1931, he wrote: “This piece is stronger than. Goethe’s Faust (Love conquers death).” The idea of the triumph of life, the victory of love over death, which finds its poetic expression in Gorky’s fairy tale, prompted this remark by Stalin.
Comrades, we are not sectarians, nor blind fanatics, as the bourgeoisie would so readily have us believe. We are part of our class, human beings with all their joys and sorrows. Like them, we want to rejoice, be happy, love and live. Yet we know — and this is what makes us the vanguard — that this life is not simply given to us, that we must fight for it and that we must organise this struggle. Our willingness to give our lives for the cause of socialism does not spring from blind fatalism, contempt for humanity, pessimism or adventurism, but from our ardent love of life, our willingness to accept torture, terror and death for the happiness of our class, the people.
Making Use of the Past
In this struggle, literature and art are by no means insignificant weapons. Both that of the past and that of the present. That is why comrades, especially those working in this sector, must raise their own cultural level, acquire a thorough knowledge of the cultural treasures of the past and present, and be deeply convinced of the political significance of cultural work.
How should we make use of the cultural treasures of the past? Well, just think for a moment of one of our great poets, such as Friedrich Schiller. Think of the “first German political problem drama” (Engels). ‘Intrigue and Love,’ which bears witness to “a revolutionary height” that “bourgeois drama had never before attained and was never to attain again” (Franz Mehring), or of his debut work ‘The Robbers,’ consumed by hatred of tyranny. But even better — and more suited to our struggle for national liberation – is his folksy play ‘William Tell,’ which stands alone in German literature for its simplicity and naturalness.
With ‘Tell,’ Schiller succeeded in creating a true national play that marks the high point of classical German drama. It is not least ‘William Tell,’ which depicts the people’s struggle against foreign rule and for national self-liberation and unification, that has earned Schiller the honorary title of “the nation’s dramatist.” It is no coincidence that this particular drama is now rarely included in the repertoires of West and East Germany. Who can fail to recognise the contemporary relevance in the struggle against foreign rule, the superpowers’ quest for hegemony, and for the national unity of Germany, when hearing verses such as these:
Yes! there’s a limit to the despot’s power!
When the oppressed looks round in vain for justice,
When his sore burden may no more be borne,
With fearless heart he makes appeal to Heaven,
And thence brings down his everlasting rights,
Which there abide, inalienably his,
And indestructible as are the stars.
Nature’s primeval state returns again,
Where man stands hostile to his fellow-man;
And if all other means shall fail his need,
One last resource remains — his own good sword.
Our dearest treasures call to us for aid
Against the oppressor’s violence; we stand
For country, home, for wives, for children here!
That is a clear call for an armed uprising. As relevant then as it is now (not that it has to start tomorrow. Should we shy away from staging scenes like these using our own resources? But more on that later.)
Even more important than the literature and art of the past is the role of the new, proletarian art and literature in the class-struggle. Marx and Engels saw the fundamental task of proletarian art, developing under the conditions of capitalism, as being to shatter the prevailing illusions regarding the nature of these conditions and undermining the optimism of the bourgeois world by arousing doubts about the immutability of the foundations of the bourgeois order.
Vladimir Lenin established the principle of the partisanship of proletarian literature:
Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great social-democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working-class. (V. I. Lenin, Party Organisation and Party Literature, 1905)
As is well known, Maxim Gorky was the herald and founder of this art form. Vladimir Mayakovsky, Bertolt Brecht, Erich Weinert, Friedrich Wolf and others followed in his footsteps. They placed their work entirely at the service of the working-class — the most revolutionary class of the present day. In Gorky’s works, the conscious heroism and self-sacrifice of the proletariat fighting for communism were depicted for the first time. Thus, the proletarian art, which arose and developed within the bosom of capitalist society, is thus destined to play a tremendous role, together with the other forms of proletarian ideology (philosophy, political economy), in the destruction of the capitalist social order. [This is a mistake. There is absolutely no such thing as proletarian ideology, philosophy, or even political economy. The author meant to say “scientific method and worldview.” – Ed.]
So what, then, is our most pressing task on the cultural front?
Literature and art must be used as a weapon in the struggle for the interests of the proletarian class, as a means of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Proletarian literature and art are an indispensable part of the entire cause of the proletarian revolution. They are subordinate to politics, but in turn exert a great influence on politics. All the Party’s literary and artistic work must be subordinate to the revolutionary tasks set by the Party at a given time, and must support them.
Our Weapon, Socialist Realism
But what is the weapon we employ in the struggle against the cultural barbarism of decaying, dying capitalism? It is the art of Socialist Realism, which demands that the artist provide a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development. To master the art of socialist realism,
means to study Marxism-Leninism and apply it artistically.
History is full of struggles between different schools, movements and trends in literature and art. Yet the struggle between the art of Socialist Realism and bourgeois and revisionist art is unlike any of them. It is a struggle of a new kind, an integral part of the class-struggle, of the struggle of the revolution against the counter-revolution, a life-and-death struggle of healthy art against the dying art of the bourgeoisie and revisionism.
The bourgeoisie is up in arms about the art of Socialist Realism. They and their bought-off lackeys, who call themselves artists and writers, shriek: “You’re restricting artistic freedom, you want to force everything into a mould – where, then, is the freedom of the individual? Your Socialist Realism is merely a pale imitation of nature. You want to politicise art, but that would be its death.”
We reply to them with Lenin:
Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames and paintings, and prostitution as a “supplement” to “sacred” scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world-outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution. (V. I. Lenin, Party Organisation and Party Literature, 1905)
As for the issue of uniformity — of forcing everything into a single mould — we recommend that you visit an Albanian art exhibition just once. There you will see just how diverse the forms of Socialist Realist artworks can be. And as for your argument about it being a ‘copy of nature’, there lies a malicious intent to equate realism with naturalism.
The difference between naturalism and realism, however, is the same as that between painting and photography. A well-painted portrait is, by and large, identical to a photograph. And yet it is something entirely different from a photograph; in it, one senses the living person in all their vitality.
In contrast to naturalism, which shows only the negative aspects, the decay of bourgeois society, but through its sense of hopelessness effectively propagates despair and submission to the rule of capitalism, socialist realism focuses primarily on the new, the growing, the positive aspects of life, positive in the sense of the revolutionary struggle — for example, against fascism and reaction, against the quest for hegemony, the war policies of the superpowers, for socialism, for national independence, for the reunification of Germany. By placing the new, the growing, and the combative positive at the centre of artistic representation, Socialist Realism becomes the bearer and herald of the highest ideas; the works of art of Socialist Realism possess the highest ideological content.
As for the warning from our class adversary — that we sought to politicise art and were thereby contributing to its decline, to its death — it is motivated solely by the desire that our art should shed its socialist partisanship and thus become unsuitable as a weapon of the party, of the class.
It is clear that under the conditions of capitalism, in whose hands lie some 99.8 per cent of book and newspaper publishers, radio and television broadcasters, galleries, museums, theatres, cinemas and so on, the development of Socialist Realist art is extremely difficult and is practically limited to our own publishing resources.
In times of intensifying class-struggle, the bourgeoisie is cracking down not only on works of socialist realism, but also on those of critical realism. Thus, the Nazis burned not only the works of Bert Brecht, Erich Weinert and others on their pyres, but also those of Heinrich Mann, Tucholsky, Kästner and others. Critical realism is imbued with the pursuit — albeit an unclear, because unscientific, pursuit — of social justice. The great writers and artists of critical realism believe in justice, but they are unable to substantiate or underpin this belief scientifically. They do not grasp the historical role of the working-class and its vanguard, the Party. They are unaware of the practical development of the new just order, the socialist order, as is happening, for example, in Albania.
Socialist realism, on the other hand, does not stop halfway at social exposure. It is able to go further and make the decisive statement in a politically correct and positive manner: namely, to point the way forward through the revolutionary struggle of the working-class, in alliance with other working people, for the establishment of socialism and national liberation.
Work With the Most Advanced Cultural Workers
It is our duty as communists to establish links with these subjectively honest, progressive artists. Not to belittle their work or attack them because they do not yet point the way to a socialist solution, but rather to help them find this solution through professional and objective criticism. In doing so, we must not adopt a sectarian approach. The dilemma facing these cultural workers, insofar as they make a living from their work, is that if they wish to sell their works, they are subject to the laws of the capitalist market. We must call out to artists all over the world, as Maxim Gorky did in 1932:
You intellectuals, “masters of culture,” should have understood that the working-class, having taken political power into its own hands, will open before you the broadest opportunities for creative cultural work. (A. M. Gorky, To American Intellectuals, 1932)
The capitalist world offers — if at all — only one path to the capable individual: the path of the most unproductive squandering of their talent, the path of profit, the path of adapting their talent to the cheap tastes of the bourgeois public. Unless, that is, they are prepared to throw their whole being, their entire creative output, fully behind the struggling working-class and its revolutionary vanguard party, the KPD-ML.
Talent is, of course, to a considerable extent an innate quality; a person is born with certain seeds of talent. Beyond that, however, the most important and fundamental factor is the environment. Yet how many talents never come to fruition in our capitalist environment. The more, for example, musical creative work is instilled in the people, the more people will take part in this activity, and the sooner musical geniuses are likely to emerge. This systematic education of the masses in the arts, however, is only possible under socialism. Only under socialism does talent have any chance at all of developing to its full potential. One need only look at little Albania. How many talents, some of them outstanding, be it in music, painting, poetry, or as singers, actors, etc., has this nation of two and a half million people brought to full fruition since its liberation. Whilst the capitalist and revisionist world sinks into decadence and cultural degeneration, socialist Albania is experiencing a cultural flowering unprecedented in history.
The prerequisite for this, however, is that art serves the people.
Or, as Lenin put it in a conversation with Clara Zetkin:
Art belongs to the people. It must have its deepest roots in the broad mass of workers. It must be understood and loved by them. It must be rooted in and grow with their feelings, thoughts and desires. It must arouse and develop the artist in them. (V. I. Lenin, as cited in C. J. Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, 1924)
Comrades,
The Party Congress set us the binding task of improving our cultural work, which in practice means launching a revolutionary cultural front. This task falls within your remit. But how should we go about it?
The first question we must ask in this context is: Is there any basis at all for launching and establishing such a front? If we look at the relevant enquiries, proposals, letters and suggestions that regularly reach the central Agit-Prop Department, and recall the numerous motions on matters of culture and agitation and propaganda that were submitted to the Third Party Congress, we must come to the conclusion: The establishment of such a front is not only necessary, not only possible, but already long overdue. As a motion from Kiel puts it:“Everywhere there are contacts with progressive artists etc., who can effectively support the Party’s work through pictures, caricatures, posters and the like. It is just that these opportunities are not being exploited enough.”
But even if such contacts did not yet exist, as in Kiel, it would still be urgently necessary for us to establish them. Or are we to leave this crucial field to the modern revisionists, to the cliques? They, as we know, are throwing themselves into it. They try to steer progressive or relatively progressive artists — and by that I do not mean Biermann and the like — onto their bandwagon. If they occasionally succeed in doing so, it is not because those they have won over or recruited harbour great sympathy for the social-fascist practices in the GDR, but mostly because they fail to recognise the true nature of modern revisionists — be they the Moscow-oriented, the Eurocommunists or even the ‘Three Worlds’ advocates — as agents of capital within the working-class camp.
We Need a Revolutionary Cultural Magazine
And that brings us to the second question: how can we reach out to progressive cultural workers — and I do not mean only communists here — and unite them in a united front? We certainly cannot seek out every single one of them, which is why the creation of a cultural journal, as has already been called for in the motions to the party congress, is absolutely essential. It is necessary both as a collective organiser and as an agitator and propagandist.
But what should such a cultural journal look like? What we certainly do not need is a pretentious, petit-bourgeois, intellectualist, elitist journal — “from artist to artist,” so to speak — such as that published by the Rote Fahne group, not to mention the ramblings of the revisionists. What we need is a revolutionary cultural magazine, a magazine not only for the cultural workers themselves, but also for those interested in culture.
The main focus of such a journal should be:
- The struggle against bourgeois, revisionist cultural decadence, cosmopolitanism and the ‘internationalisation of culture’ as championed by the two superpowers;
- Preserving and nurturing our own progressive national cultural heritage;
- Promoting our own revolutionary art, the art of socialist realism;
- Representing the social and cultural-political interests of cultural workers;
- Promoting the art of socialist countries and revolutionary liberation movements.
The topics covered by this cultural magazine should include: general articles on cultural policy; fundamental Marxist-Leninist articles on cultural issues; reviews of television, film and theatre; book reviews; articles opposing imperialist cultural policy in school textbooks, the book market, television,
the press, magazines, the record industry and censorship; against Americanisation and revisionist cultural policy; in support of the preservation and promotion of our national cultural heritage, commemorative articles, short biographies, excerpts from works; series such as: ‘Art and Literature of Socialist Albania’, ‘Poets of the German Proletariat’; reports on and guidance regarding our own revolutionary cultural work, such as agit-prop troupes, revolutionary theatre groups, folk dance groups, film groups, bands and marching bands, choirs, posters, painting, photography, caricature; publication of our own poems, stories, novellas, plays, songs; social demands of cultural workers
etc., etc.
Such a combative cultural journal could undoubtedly serve to establish a broad organisation of cultural workers and, furthermore, influence the party’s cultural work in a creative way.
On the Work of the Agit-Prop Units
Comrades, what I said at the outset — that the Party’s entire cultural work must be centrally coordinated and directed — applies all the more, of course, to the activities of the agit-prop troupes. It is here that the lack of any exchange of experience is most evident. Alongside excellent performances and shows, there are those that would scarcely draw a crowd, let alone rouse the workers, our comrades, to struggle.
Overall, however, it has become clear just how right and how wise it was that the Party — in contrast to the ‘pop-festival culture’ of the modern revisionists — returned at an early stage to the revolutionary agitprop tradition of our glorious Party, Ernst Thälmann’s KPD. This was also evident in the praise bestowed by the delegation from our Italian sister party on the performance of the agit-prop troupes at the closing rally of the Third Party Congress. Praise, however, that we must return. Whilst the performances of our amateur theatre groups may be better, our Italian comrades are at least a few steps ahead of us when it comes to publishing a cultural magazine and establishing a progressive cultural
organisation.
It is quite true, as stated in the explanatory notes to a relevant motion submitted to the Eleventh Party Congress:
The existing amateur art groups, in particular the agit-prop troupes, have shown that folk art can be a powerful weapon in our struggle and that this weapon is very well received by the population. For wherever our groups performed, they were greeted with great enthusiasm. Particularly with the street agit-prop, the people have often shown that amateur art still matters to them and that they also understand our revolutionary songs and plays, which express their longing for liberation from exploitation.
And:
Unfortunately, this important art form is often treated as an afterthought, even though our amateur arts groups in particular could make a significant contribution to rekindling a love for our national culture.
Now, the preservation and the struggle to safeguard our national cultural heritage is certainly a key task in the cultural struggle of the entire party and, above all, of a progressive cultural organisation yet to be established. In practice, this work of application and preservation is carried out mainly by folk dance groups, choirs and, to some extent, by drama circles or revolutionary theatre groups.
The main task of the agit-prop teams, however, is to intervene directly and immediately in the class-struggle. To show what is at stake, what is currently on the agenda in the class-struggle, and what the class-struggle demands of the working-class. And to do so in such a way that the workers, as well as other working people, recognise what they must do to bring about the imminent problems to their final solution: the overthrow of the capitalist social order and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Of course, one must not take a clumsy and formulaic approach, for example by tacking a ‘red label’ onto every scene through the constant, stereotypical repetition of slogans such as ‘Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat’. The necessity of the overthrow of capitalism, the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus and the establishment of workers’ power must emerge compellingly for the audience from the content and progression of the play and the scene.
The agit-prop movement, by virtue of its topicality, concreteness and immediacy, is ideally suited to directly supporting the political struggle of the working-class and to being used as a weapon of the Party in the fulfilment of its political and ideological tasks. As stated in the report to the Third Party Congress, its activities, its scenes, sketches, songs and poems focus on the depiction of the current main fronts of the class-struggle, which are: the struggle against the constantly deteriorating situation of the working masses. The struggle against the increasing fascistisation and political oppression of the working people, against the constant erosion of the democratic rights of the people. The struggle against the hegemonic ambitions and the war policies of the two superpowers and for the national unity of Germany.
What a wealth of opportunities this presents for criticising the existing social conditions. Opportunities to attack the petit-bourgeoisie through irony and mockery, and to combat the class enemy with all possible vigour. For example, it is a matter of mobilising the working-class and the other working strata of our people against exploitation and rationalisation, wage theft and unemployment, environmental pollution and the fleecing of farmers; against increasing police and judicial terror, the Works Constitution Act and occupational bans, political persecution and the impending ban on their revolutionary organisations; against military manoeuvres and occupier terror, decadence and cultural reaction, etc.
It is already important to lay the groundwork for the works council elections next spring, which will demonstrate to our colleagues the need to fill the works councils with reliable revolutionaries. This naturally applies to the shop stewards’ committee as well. It is also important to clearly demonstrate to the appropriately organised colleagues the betrayal, corruption and ideological hypocrisy (reformism, co-determination, peaceful transition, etc.) of their Social Democratic and revisionist leaders, so that they slam their membership cards down at their feet. Even more important, however, is to convince the millions of progressive, the hundreds of thousands of revolutionary unorganised workers, who are not, or only slightly, contaminated by revisionist ideas, of the necessity of organising themselves in their revolutionary vanguard party, the KPD-ML.
Initiatives such as those recently developed by comrades in Hamburg from the Red Aid of Germany for the agit-prop group are certainly to be welcomed; under the working title ‘In the Claws of the State Apparatus,’ they have written a guide that shows how one should behave in the event of arrest by the police. Our agitation must be lively; a fresh breeze must blow from our stage. However, the impact must come predominantly from the agitational content and only to a very small extent from theatrical tricks. A good press scene must caricature the bourgeois press’s tendency to dumb down its audience, the formula of the five Bs: blood, breasts, legs, babies, prayer, by which the tabloid press is governed. It must expose the lies and pogrom-mongering of the Springer press and others, and set against them the revolutionary press that represents the interests of the workers, the ‘Roter Morgen.’
But even the staging of a scene such as “In the Claws of the State Apparatus”, for which the use of slides is planned, poses problems. It is ill-suited to the performances of the agit-prop troupes, whose main theatre of operations is the street, the markets, and so on. The main slogan of the agit-prop troupes, “Our place is the street”, naturally implies, to a certain extent, a limitation on their means of expression, since street performances predominantly require loud, striking and outward means.
Nevertheless, within the framework of the agit-prop movement, the performances of the Agitprop troupes are not separated by walls from other artistic genres, such as revolutionary theatre, workers’ choirs, recitation and film. The boundary between them and other fields of art, folk art and mass cultural work must be fluid. One must analyse which scene, which play is better suited to the street and which is better suited to the hall, which of course does not mean that the agit-prop troupes should not also perform in the hall. This is particularly true if their strength lies in satirical cabaret scenes, recitations and the like. The more extensive the programme of the individual agit-prop troupes, the greater their scope for variation and their potential for deployment. Alongside the agit-prop troupes, however, revolutionary theatre — less simplistic, realistic, proletarian drama, as it tends to stimulate reflection — is also an excellent means of class-struggle
The Revolutionary Theatre
We can see the revolutionary impact that theatre can have by looking at the history of bourgeois theatre, for example in the performance of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ during the days of the Revolution in 1789 or ‘The Mute Girl of Portici’ during the August Days of 1830. The impact was so powerful that, following the performance, the audience took to the streets in protest, destroyed a rival printing house, and set fire to the homes of the Minister of Justice, the Chief of Police and hated journalists.
Revolutionary theatre — as its name suggests — has nothing to do with bourgeois theatre societies or intellectualist studio theatres. It is a theatre of struggle that does not confine itself to criticising today’s capitalist social order, but rather points to the in the emergence of the proletariat as a fighting, rising class, destined to deal the deathblow to the existing social order, points the way to the revolutionary solution. It is intended to proclaim Marxism-Leninism on stage by applying it to the concrete, present-day conditions. Our plays and scenes are revolutionary only if their effect is unambiguous, so that it is clearly expressed: there is only one path for us, that of the revolutionary class-struggle, the armed proletarian revolution, the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus, and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship.
Mind you, we are talking here about the effect. It is not as though anyone would get the idea of explaining scientific socialism from the stage. That would not be theatre. What was said about the agit-prop troupes applies here too: the truth of Marxism-Leninism must emerge from the play, from the characters’ actions. The difference between the performances of revolutionary theatre and those of the agit-prop troupes lies less in the content, but rather in the form, in the manner of presentation. For the agit-prop troupe on the street, it may suffice, if necessary, to characterise the capitalists, the bigwigs with a pot-bellied figure and a cigar; for a theatrical performance, this is insufficient. Here, the role of capitalism in the class-struggle must be demonstrated through the behaviour of individual characters, without necessarily having to personify capitalism at the same time.
What should we perform? At this present stage, as the first revolutionary theatre groups are being formed, the one-act play is particularly suitable material. However, even the one-act play must be properly structured by the author, both artistically and dramaturgically. But as there are hardly any experienced revolutionary authors at present, we have no choice but to intensively develop our own talents and, moreover, to draw on existing one-act and multi-act plays from the history of the German and international labour movement. When selecting plays, we must strongly caution against a hasty reach for the classics. Only groups that have been performing together for some time and are supervised by a competent, professionally trained artistic director and comrade should venture to tackle a classical play, or even just a single scene from one.
Once the play has been chosen, the next important task for the revolutionary theatre group is the ideological preparation of the production and the staging of the play. A good production, a serious engagement with the play’s content, can help even a less valuable play to achieve impact and success. Conversely, a failure to recognise the play’s social purpose and the scene will lead a poor production to convey the wrong social message.
Whilst the revolutionary content of the plays, scenes, poems, etc., takes precedence in the performances of both the agit-prop troupes and the theatre groups, the utmost attention must nevertheless be paid to the artistic calibre of the groups in order to enhance the impact of the performances. In connection with the performances, the groups must systematically address a number of important artistic and technical issues. Acting exercises and etudes will constantly improve their acting skills. The acquisition of clear and refined language is essential for the members of the groups. Perhaps an unemployed professional actor could be consulted on these matters.
Comrades, some of you might now say: agit-prop troupes and now revolutionary theatre as well — who on earth is supposed to manage all that? Well, firstly, performing in an agit-prop troupe does not preclude performing in revolutionary theatre, and vice versa. Secondly, we must recognise that through our performances we not only intervene in immediate political events to resolve current tasks in accordance with the motto ‘A fist in the face of the class enemy,’ but also that our acting awakens people’s artistic interest and encourages them to get involved.
The people, the working-class, have always been driven to artistic expression — including on stage. One need only think of the numerous drama groups that existed among the working-class and in rural areas in years gone by. It was left to capitalism to systematically destroy this spontaneous amateur artistic activity. Our task is to reawaken this artistic aspiration, above all amongst the working-class, and to channel it towards their own liberation.
If, as stated in the motions for the Third Party Congress, the agit-prop squads are still often “treated as step-children, merely as an afterthought,” or if “a certain stagnation” has now set in within the agit-prop movement, this is undoubtedly due to an underestimation of the significance of the agit-prop movement in the class-struggle by the relevant leaderships. a certain stagnation’ has arisen, this is most certainly due to an underestimation of the significance of the agit-prop movement in the class-struggle by the relevant leaderships as well as by the Central Committee. Comrades active in the agit-prop sector — be it in the agit-prop troupes, revolutionary theatre groups, marching bands, and workers’ choirs — are, if they wish to do their work well, fully booked. Their “free time” is filled with rehearsals, performances, and meetings. Added to this are the regular evening meetings and political training. They are true cadres of the working-class, for agit-prop and revolutionary workers’ theatre are no mere pastime, but the most vibrant and effective form of agitation for the class-struggle.
In accordance with their importance, and where local conditions permit and where it is politically expedient, the core group of comrades within an agit-prop troupe or a revolutionary theatre group should form a basic unit. For their party work consists of implementing the party’s political line and programme within their sphere of activity, and that is public artistic agitation and propaganda.
Naturally, every comrade, every member of an agit-prop troupe or a revolutionary theatre group should possess a certain degree of acting ability. And everyone should make a thorough assessment of their abilities before deciding on one or another area of amateur artistic work. For more, even if the basic talent is present, a wide range of experience and prolonged practice are required to achieve good results in the work. To this end, it is necessary to organise the exchange of experience among the existing agit-prop troupes as effectively and as quickly as possible
Preparing for the Agit-Prop Competition
One obvious way to achieve this would be an agit-prop competition, an event at which the agitprop teams come together to determine the winner — our best agitprop team at present — through a series of comparative contests. However, winning is only one aspect; what is more important is the exchange of experiences and ideas between the groups, with the aim of raising the agitational standard of the individual teams. Furthermore, such an event could also serve to attract new recruits to the agit-prop movement. I propose that the competition be held at the beginning of next year (February or March) to allow the individual groups sufficient time to prepare.
As regards the competition rules, the duration of each group’s performance should be limited to between 25 and 35 minutes. Within this time, the following programme should be performed, although the length and order of the individual pieces are left to the discretion of the groups:
- The staging of a play or a scene depicting current events in the class-struggle;
- Performance of a protest song from the German or international labour movement;
- A performance of a protest song, either written and set to music by the performer themselves, or with new lyrics set to an old melody;
- A performance of a short pantomime depicting events from the class-struggle, in which props and sound effects may be used as aids;
- Recitation of a poem, either from the tradition of the German labour movement (Brecht, Weinert, etc.) or one of your own.
(The style of performance, tempo and type of instrumental accompaniment are left to the groups.)
How and in what form — whether satirical, militant, striking, cabaret-style or similar — the individual sections are presented is up to the groups. New compositions, poems and songs should reflect our revolutionary struggle, the struggle for a united, independent, socialist Germany.
What needs to be assessed is the ideological and political content and the artistic form. How has the group succeeded in presenting the party’s policies, line and programme in a way that is accessible to the masses, and in showing workers and labourers a way out through their concrete problems? How did they succeed, building on the revolutionary tradition of the working-class, in effectively portraying the necessity and inevitability of the socialist revolution?
As regards the composition and rules governing the jury, these — along with the detailed competition rules — will certainly be issued to the rank and file by the Agit-Prop Department at the earliest opportunity. In my view, it would be a good idea to allow the meeting participants, as well as the jury, to have a say in judging the quality of the entries. Let us develop our agit-prop troupes, our revolutionary theatre, and they will help to awaken the creative forces slumbering within the working-class and the people, and mobilise them for their own liberation!
Of course, the agit-prop movement does not consist solely of our agit-prop troupes and the revolutionary theatre groups (yet to be established), but also of our marching bands, music groups, folk dance groups, choirs and so on. It would be desirable and welcome — given their mobilising effect — to press ahead swiftly with the establishment and expansion of our bands and marching bands. Anyone who has experienced how the windows open and people step out of pubs when a marching band leads our demonstrations through the streets knows how much this heightens the public’s attention to our agitation and propaganda in this regard. What use is a colourful, lively procession with many banners and flags if people do not look out of their windows and hear and read the slogans?
Unfortunately, comrades, to this day there is only one functioning marching band, the Hamburg one. And even that one is sometimes still a bit lacklustre. How about reviving the shawm bands here too, in keeping with our party’s revolutionary tradition from before 1933? I am aware of the difficulties involved in procuring the instruments, but even these could be overcome if there is a will to do so. Incidentally, I propose that our marching band should also take part in the agit-prop competition — outside the competition. However, should there already be two or even three marching bands or bands by then, there is certainly nothing to prevent a competition between them.
Drawing Inspiration From the People
In this context, too, the issue of the forces will arise once again. And I can only repeat: the forces are there. There are many people who have a keen interest in acting, making music and dancing. When the Agit-Prop Department in one town recently set up a folk dance group, it was itself surprised by the interest shown, particularly by many young people. Young people returned who had previously left the Red Guard because “nothing was happening there.”
Why is that? It is because people also have a certain need for entertainment. The boy wants to get to know a girl, and at this particular age the need to dance, to move and to express oneself is especially strong. We must take this into account. In the field of dance in particular, it is a worthwhile task to creatively revive and further develop the old, forgotten folk dance heritage.
That is not to say that folk dance groups must be set up immediately and everywhere. Sometimes it may also be appropriate to join existing folk dance groups (such as those in Bavaria, the Black Forest, etc.) in order to work towards our political aims within them. Naturally, we are not opposed to ballroom dancing either, as it meets the needs for entertainment and relaxation. With the bourgeois revolution, rural dances — that is, folk dances — also became established as ballroom dances of the bourgeoisie: all manner of contra dances such as the Anglaise, quadrilles and the circular dances waltz, polka, schottische, Rheinländer and galop. Even in the age of imperialism, through the dissolution of the communal form, the short, partly open figures, which are performed in any direction without close spatial connection to the other couples or even the partner, as in the tango, foxtrot, samba, rumba, etc. Nevertheless, we are not against them.
What we are firmly opposed to, however, is the convulsive, frenzied twitching of limbs that accompanies those disharmonious, over-the-top cacophonies that call themselves dance or music. It is no coincidence that working people referred to the recently deceased multimillionaire Elvis Presley as “the crybaby.” The role that characters like Elvis are meant to play in capitalist society was commented on by the ‘Bild’ newspaper on 19 August 1977 in a rather frank manner:
He made jazz for white people! And in doing so, he created the conditions for the Beatles and all those rock giants and pop dwarfs who subsequently rode his wave. Why was Elvis Presley loved by so many? Because he never questioned society – his explosions on stage were always followed by a return to the normal state of bourgeois life. (Bild-Zeitung, Elvis Killed Two Girls in Front of his Villa, 1977)
That is what the bourgeoisie and its revisionist lackeys value: a youth that, whilst letting off steam in pop and rock ecstasy, always returns to the “normal state of bourgeois life.” Five hours of intoxication for forty hours of drudgery, assuming one has a job at all. Capitalist greed and, even more so, anti-popular cosmopolitan imperialism have launched a veritable campaign of destruction against folk art, and the modern revisionists, with their rock and pop festivals, have shamelessly gone along with it. Wretched creatures of their capitalist masters.
I have already said that we have nothing against entertainment. Entertainment in the true sense of the word is always an important element of art. Friedrich Engels once said of the function of the popular novel:
The popular book has the task of cheering, reviving and entertaining the peasant when he returns home in the evening tired from his hard day’s work, making him forget his toil… but it also has the task… of clarifying his moral sense, making him aware of his strength, his rights, his freedom, and arousing his courage and love for his country. (F. Engels, German Volksbücher, 1839)
In this sense, as Engels intended, we too must organise our social evenings. Evenings to which we invite the working people, our colleagues. Such relaxation does the comrades themselves good from time to time. It can provide a boost and new strength for further struggles. We cannot constantly talk about the fact that exploitation and the pressure of work are increasing in the factories — which is indeed true —
yet in the practicalities of daily life take no account of this. Let us organise such evenings or even afternoons with music and dance, songs and sketches, scenes and recitations, making them so colourful and varied that, on the one hand, they cheer people up, invigorate and delight them, offering them relaxation from their hard work and daily stress, whilst on the other hand educating them in class hatred, hatred of their exploiters and oppressors, as well as love for their class, their people and their homeland, so that they instil in them the courage, strength and determination to take up the struggle for their final liberation.
In this regard, folk art and proletarian art are important tools. In its finest traditions, folk art has always been progressive and revolutionary. Whether Hans Sachs’s carnival plays sang a dirge for medieval mysticism, or whether the German people sang satirical songs about Napoleon during the Battle of the Nations in 1813, whether the awakening proletariat proclaimed its heralded “Despite all this,” or whether the finest sons of Germany propagated the aims of the labour movement in the agit-prop groups after the First World War, the songs, dances and plays of the people were always the gravediggers of the old order and the midwives of a new social development. Like no other, the agit-prop movement of the 1920s and 1930s contributed to the emergence of a large number of revolutionary songs and poems.
Capitalism has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate, its fundamental hostility towards art — including folk art — by attempting to replace it with mass-produced kitsch. At certain times, however, when the working-class and the masses spontaneously protest against the increasing decadence and cultural reaction of the bourgeoisie, the latter attempts, in a demagogic manner, to make use of elements of folk art and to exploit the pure sentiments of the people for its own ends. A typical example of this was Hitler’s fascism.
As you know, during their so-called ‘struggle period,’ the Nazis presented themselves to the working-class as emphatically revolutionary, speaking of ‘breaking the shackles of usury,’ fighting the ‘plutocrats’ and advocating ‘socialism’. They had no qualms about stealing folk songs and battle hymns from the labour movement and setting their own lyrics to them. Even their later national anthem, “Die Fahne hoch,” was originally a communist battle song. They skilfully knew how to appeal in their songs to the enthusiasm, fighting spirit and willingness to make sacrifices of the youth.
Just as skilfully, whilst supposedly progressive left-wingers — so-called ‘armchair communists’ — debated the merits of Dada, Surrealism and other ‘isms,’ they placed themselves at the forefront of the struggle against capitalist cultural decadence, as expressed precisely in such movements. Demagogically, they waged a struggle against so-called “degenerate art,” in order to use this struggle as a pretext to simultaneously attack the works of progressive and communist writers and artists.
Of course, Hitler’s fascism, as a legitimate offshoot of the monopoly bourgeoisie and of capitalism, was incapable of creating an art of its own. Admittedly, it did at times promote folk dance and song and reduced the price of theatre tickets, but where it itself appeared in a ‘creative’ capacity, it produced only the crudest naturalism against a backdrop of ‘blood and soil.’ The Blubo style, like the gigantism of Nazi megalomania, was nothing other than another form of cultural reaction by capitalism in its highest stage, imperialism.
Whilst, on the one hand, we wage the struggle against the cultural reaction of capitalism – as our comrades in Kassel did during this year’s ‘Documenta,’ to the applause of the public – we must, on the other hand, promote or revive folk art; we must replace capitalist cultural barbarism with revolutionary, proletarian art and literature. Just as the bourgeoisie in the imperialist phase of capitalism — both the old in the West and the new in the East — is no longer capable of assuming the leadership of the nation, so too is this the case in the cultural sphere. Whatever it, its hired scribes, brush-torturers, noise-scenery-makers and atonal wretches may produce, it is the congenial expression of its inevitable downfall.
For us, however, this means: just as it is the duty of the working-class and its revolutionary vanguard party to strive, even today, before the advent of socialism, to take the lead in the nation, so too is it their duty to go on the offensive on the cultural front and to rally the working-class, the working people and progressive cultural figures into a consistent struggle against capitalist cultural barbarism, for the preservation and nurturing of our national cultural heritage and folk art, and for the creation of realistic art and literature oriented towards socialism.
The Film: An Important Tool of Agit-Prop
Now, for us, writing and publishing (provided one has the energy for it) progressive, revolutionary stories, novellas, poems, etc., is relatively easy; even painting a picture in the style of Socialist Realism or composing a song in that vein does not require great resources. But where art requires greater financial resources, such as in film, let alone television, things become difficult for us. As far as television is concerned, our influence will have to be limited to making personal contact with the authors of relatively progressive programmes — which are few and far between — in order to win them over to our side, to the side of communism.
In general, political work among the staff and technicians of radio and television stations is an extremely important matter, for it is they who, when the time comes for the socialist revolution, will be able to provide invaluable assistance.
Today, alongside the millions of copies of the press, it is the three great Fs — film, radio and television [German: film, funk, fernsehen – Ed.] — with which the capitalists attempt, in their own interests, to bribe, buy and fabricate public opinion; with which the bourgeoisie attempts, in a daily barrage round the clock, to deceive, demoralise and make a mockery of the masses it exploits and oppresses. Today, television — since it combines the suggestive power of film with the means of radio — is undoubtedly the bourgeoisie’s most important means of directly shaping public opinion.
This in no way detracts from the film’s continued significance. What Comrade Lenin said in 1922 in a conversation with the then People’s Commissar for Education — when he described film as the most important of all the arts — still holds true today. While this was already true of silent film, its impact has been further enhanced by the addition of sound, noise and speech, as well as colour, when these are used correctly, that is to say, in a manner appropriate to film.
There is no doubt, as experience shows, that the use of films has a very powerful effect in terms of agitation and mobilisation. Judging by this, our agitation and propaganda currently have too few films at their disposal. At present, the only films available through the Party are ‘Sascha-Film’, ‘Red Rockets’, the film about the Third Party Congress and ‘Heroic People’, a Cambodian film.
Shall we watch other films such as ‘Fiery Red Years,’ ‘The Red Women’s Battalion’ and others from the People’s Republic of China, ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ ‘October,’ ‘The Mother,’ the Gorky trilogy and others from the Soviet Union, ‘Kuhle Wampe’ or the good old DEFA films of socialist realism such as ‘Council of the Gods,’ ‘The Last Harvest,’ ‘The Condemned Village,’ ‘The Invincibles’ and others, or even the anti-fascist ones such as ‘The Murderers Are Among Us,’ ‘The Checkered Ones,’ ‘Rotation,’ ‘Stronger than the Night,’ we must turn to bourgeois distribution companies or those of the revisionists, or even to the state film distribution agencies. This is, of course, not pleasant, and there is by no means any guarantee that the socially critical or revolutionary content of the films has not been restricted or distorted by appropriate cuts. Nevertheless, we must also make use of these opportunities – as has already happened in a few places – to obtain good films. For experience shows that considerably more people attend film screenings than if we merely invite them to lectures or meetings or call on them to attend.
It follows logically, then, that we should not simply screen a film, but organise a film evening with an introduction and a discussion afterwards. Perhaps we could also offer literature related to the film. In every larger town, there should be a comrade who knows how to operate film projection equipment. Showing the film also requires good preparation: advertising in workplace, district and Red Guard newspapers, possibly also in bourgeois advertising papers, town gazettes or local newsletters, distributing leaflets, flyers and so on.
The best course of action would certainly be to establish a party-owned film distribution company which, in addition to the films mentioned above, also acquires Albanian and other progressive foreign films. It is irrelevant under what name this distribution company operates. The fact that this has not yet happened, as well as the apparent decline in the party’s film work — which initially showed promise — demonstrates an underestimation of the importance of film as an excellent means of agitation and propaganda. Added to this was an often sectarian approach towards progressive filmmakers and cultural workers (insofar as such people existed at all), which benefited counter-revolutionary circles such as the GRF.
As for making our own feature-length films, we know that this is currently impossible for us. On the one hand, because of the high costs involved; on the other, because we would not be able to get such films of socialist realism shown either on television or in any of the cinemas. Theatre is much easier in that respect, as it requires nothing more than the stage and a few props.
Although we may not be able to produce feature-length films, we know that even through the medium of short films and agitprop films, it is possible to achieve outstanding, mobilising effects. In my view, the potential of this area of filmmaking — the art of film, 16mm or Super 8mm film — is far from having been fully exploited. The prerequisite, however, is that one knows what one is doing. Before you start filming, you should at least draw up a rough sketch, a treatment or a short script.
The film about the Eleventh Party Congress has drawn a number of justified criticisms from the party rank and file. Criticisms included poor camerawork, overly dry commentary, shots that were too long, an overemphasis on the Red Pioneers whilst the Red Guard barely features, a lack of crowd scenes, and so on. Above all, it was criticised that the inspiring mood and combative atmosphere of the party congress were not conveyed, and that the political content of the film did not do justice to the political significance of the party congress.
Comrades, a party congress is, after all, a significant event in the life of a communist party. Wouldn’t it have been appropriate to give this some thought beforehand? Instead of simply filming the proceedings in a rather unimaginative way, they could have started when the comrades from the various regional branches set off: how they board the buses at night, still half-asleep, the number plates of the buses from the north, south, east and west, the rolling of the wheels, how slowly the morning dawns, the silhouette of Ludwigshafen, BASF, the buses pulling in, and so on and so on, and then, increasing the rhythm in the film editing, the event itself, the combative, enthusiastic mood of the masses right up to the climax, the expression of international solidarity by the sister parties, the finale, which must once again vividly demonstrate the strength, the deep confidence in victory, which the comrades took away from the party congress.
That is how it could have been, the Party Congress film, or something similar. What would have been important is that there had been a concept, a vision of how the unique content of this Third Party Congress – which, with the adoption of the programme, represents a significant milestone in the development and history of our party – could have been given a fitting form. A film like this must not simply be shot; it must be composed. The camera must have ideas. Why only long shots, at most a medium shot, why not a close-up? Does the form mean nothing at all?
Similar to a film — because image and sound are linked — yet not quite a film, there is an agitprop tool that we have not yet used: the audio-visual presentation. Whilst it cannot achieve the same powerful impact as a film — not least because the images are static — it is preferable to a lecture or a talk without images or slides. Its advantage lies in the fact that even where there is no good speaker to explain the slides shown, a proper commentary is provided. In both the audio-visual presentation and the slide lecture, one should be careful not to try to cram too much into a presentation. For example, slide lectures or audio-visual presentations on ‘Workers’ Power in Albania,’ ‘The Electrification of Albania,’ ‘Albanian Culture’ etc. – are preferable to a lecture on Albania in general. So here too, you need a concept first, before you start snapping away haphazardly. And don’t just snap, but take photographs.
On Content and Form
In literary and art criticism, there are two criteria: a political one and an artistic one. In every class society, the ruling class always places the political criterion first and the artistic one second. The proletariat must, above all, judge whether a work is good or bad according to its own political criterion. What we demand is the unity of politics and art, the unity of revolutionary political content and the most perfect artistic form possible. Or, as Engels said: The “political tendency and its artistic mastery must form a unity.”
For us, this means that studying Marxism-Leninism does not exempt us from this, but rather obliges us to have a thorough grasp of our subject and to master good style and form. This starts with something as simple as a leaflet. Not only must the content be good and the language lively, vivid and accessible to the people, but the form must be right too. Things have certainly improved, but there are still the odd leaflet whose layout and printing are careless and sloppy. Sometimes one gets the impression that the layout artist believes it is ‘proletarian’ to scribble headlines by hand in scrawled letters, rather than taking the trouble — even if it takes longer — to use Letraset or Transotyp letters. This naturally applies to works and neighbourhood newspapers as well. Distributing sloppy, grubby leaflets is an insult to the recipient.
How does a colleague react when handed such a leaflet; what is his first impression? Negative. Even if he doesn’t throw it away straight away, he approaches it with a certain, justified prejudice even as he reads it. Anyone who produces something so slapdash — what could they possibly have to say? It is not for nothing that the bourgeoisie tries to portray the so-called K-groups, to which it counts us, in the eyes of the public as: sloppy, dirty, chaotic, long-haired, living in communes, etc. In this way, it attempts to defame communism and is directly supported in this by the circles to which this negative image largely applies as well.
We must shatter this image. This means that we must distinguish ourselves from the various cliques not only through our correct, principled Marxist-Leninist stance, but also through our correct, disciplined and upright conduct in public. We have already succeeded in this to some extent. Both in our demonstrations and in the conduct of our agit-prop squads and newspaper sellers, we distinguish ourselves from the cliques. This is also noted and appreciated by the population. When we consider how long it took for at least a large part of the working-class to grasp the difference between us and the modern revisionists, we also see the difficulties the working-class faces in distinguishing between us and the objectively counter-revolutionary circle-thicket, especially as the differences are deliberately obscured by the bourgeoisie. We should therefore not miss any opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the circles ideologically, politically and in form.
In recent years, the party has succeeded in projecting a unified, distinctive image in its public appearances. With our symbol of the hammer, sickle and rifle, we have clearly distinguished ourselves in the eyes of the working people from the modern revisionists (the Soviet ones) and, moreover, emphasised the revolutionary element: the necessity of the armed seizure of power by the proletariat and its allies. Through the Spartacus star, we draw on the revolutionary tradition of Spartacus Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the KPD of Ernst Thälmann, and through the colour combination of black (hammer, sickle and rifle), red (the flag), and gold (the star), we draw on the tradition of the Peasants’ War and the 1848 Revolution.
Although we have standardised flags, symbols, badges, stickers and so on, we have not yet succeeded in achieving this standardisation — this distinctive public image — everywhere; for example, in the uniform design of our leaflets. Thus, there are still comrades for whom a leaflet is not a leaflet unless the first page bears in oversized letters — larger than the headline — the letters KPD-ML, along with, of course, the hammer, sickle and rifle. And even that still looks completely different from place to place.
What the comrades are thinking is a complete mystery to me. Perhaps they believe that the size of the letters will convince their colleagues of the necessity of a revolutionary party of the proletariat. What can happen, however, when distributing such leaflets is that colleagues — who always see only the same leaflet header with the large letters KPD-ML — reject the leaflet with the remark: “I’ve already got one.” The crux of the matter, however, seems to be that the comrades are not always clear about the meaning and purpose of the various agit-prop materials such as leaflets, posters, works newspapers, stickers, etc.
The Newspaper in the Class-Struggle
I do not wish to dwell here on the official organ of our party, the Roter Morgen. It is and remains our sharpest weapon in the class-struggle, the principal means of our agitation and propaganda. However, as the central organ of our Marxist-Leninist party, given that reading it requires the reader to have a certain knowledge of concepts such as imperialism, revisionism, capitalism, classes and class-struggle,
dictatorship of the proletariat, etc., it will only be possible to reach a smaller, the most progressive, the most revolutionary section of the working-class as regular readers. Certainly, this section will grow as the class-struggle intensifies, and the editors of the Roter Morgen must not for a moment slacken in their efforts to to write in a lively and accessible style, and to explain complex matters simply. Yet the Roter Morgen is precisely not what one understands by a mass-circulation newspaper, as was, for example, the ‘AIZ’ (‘Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung’) before 1933, whose circulation rose to 500,000 between 1924 and 1931, and it cannot become one without losing its character as the central organ of the Party.
I have nothing against a mass-circulation newspaper similar to the AIZ. Better today than tomorrow. But even if we could solve the difficult problem of finding suitable journalistic staff for this, experience teaches us that the absolutely essential distribution channel via newsagents remains closed to us. But why set our sights so high as a weekly workers’ magazine? Let’s start small for now. Heartily and fresh. Who should stop us from gradually expanding the youth newspaper, or the youth magazine, the central organ of the Red Guard, into a mass newspaper. Lively and combative, youth-oriented and revolutionary. Why not use the means of photomontage, caricature, artistic photography, visual storytelling, poems, reports, short stories, etc. Let us hope that the Rote Garde’s youth magazine — as decided at the Eleventh Party Congress — will now appear soon, so that it may fulfil its task of leading the progressive, revolutionary youth into the struggle, familiarising them with the Party’s line and ensuring a constant influx of new and revolutionary forces into the Party.
What about the other agit-prop publications? First of all, there are the regularly published newspapers for workplaces, local communities, neighbourhoods, young people, farmers, the armed forces and other groups. Their primary task is, based on workplace and local practice — on events in the factory, the neighbourhood, the armed forces, the school or university, the working-class, working people and the youth — to explain the Party’s policies and to try to mobilise them in concrete action to fight against the capitalist social order. This naturally requires a steady, firm foothold in the workplace and a deep connection with the masses. For example, a workplace newspaper without a workplace party cell, without firm, permanent links within the workplace, or a neighbourhood newspaper without a local cell actively working in that neighbourhood, is unthinkable.
This agit-prop medium consists of genuine, small-scale newspapers published at regular intervals — monthly, bimonthly or quarterly. Just like larger newspapers, they may publish special editions on specific occasions. The newspaper masthead, which must relate in some way to the publication’s scope, should ideally not exceed a quarter of the size of the front page. The headline, which generally covers a topic from the workplace, the business, the neighbourhood etc., should — like the subheadings — be typeset in Letraset. The shortcomings of a few newspaper headers (workers who looked like gorillas, etc.) have since been rectified. A good, graphically appealing header is the newspaper’s calling card.
The advantage of this type of agitation and propaganda lies in the reader’s familiarity with the issues covered in the newspaper; it lies in the regular publication, which fosters a closer connection between the reader and the newspaper — and thus with the party or the Red Guard; it lies in the fact that these party newspapers usually cover a variety of topics and can be presented in a more light-hearted manner: political jokes, cartoons (only if they are well drawn), crossword or syllable puzzles with current, political or workplace references (for example, ‘popular foreman from Hall A’) and so on.
The Leaflet: A Very Important Means of Promotion
Unlike workplace and local newspapers, the party’s leaflets (whether A4 or A3 folded) generally deal with just one topic. Exception: during elections or other occasions where the party promotes its manifesto, or parts of it, in brief form, focusing on relevant points or demands. The great advantage of the leaflet lies in its timeliness; it enables the party to counter attacks by the class enemy at short notice, even in large print runs, to convey its own views and its own line to the masses, and to deliver a concentrated blow.
This requires the shortest possible time between the drafting of the leaflet, the layout, the printing and the distribution. Modern printing technology, with ever smaller and easier-to-use offset presses, makes this easier for us, and the aim should be that in every location where there is a small offset press, several comrades should be able to operate it properly. (Which does not mean that the printer has to change all the time.)
Under no circumstances, however, must the speed of publication be at the expense of content and form. Quality always takes precedence over speed in this regard. But what does ‘quality’ mean in the context of a leaflet? There are still comrades who believe that the more of the party’s programmatic statements a leaflet contains, the better it is. If they do not find everything — the nature of capitalism, imperialism, the crisis, the growing threat of war, the role of modern revisionists, the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus, the armed revolution, etc. and so on — in a single leaflet, then it is worthless, or they even label it as revisionist. It is they who are revisionist here, for they prevent the working masses, who do not understand such leaflets, from labelling them in a negative sense as “propaganda” and throwing them unread into the bin, from becoming acquainted with the policies and views of their Communist Party. It would only be consistent if these comrades were to propose publishing the party’s programme — starting from the first page — in the form of leaflets.
But they obviously fear making themselves look ridiculous by doing so.
Comrades, a party leaflet — unlike Rote Morgen — is aimed at the broad masses of working people. It is specifically distributed outside factories, at railway stations, in markets, in working-class neighbourhoods and in rural settlements. We must take their level of consciousness as our starting point in order to raise it to a higher level; we must build on their experiences in order to impart new insights to them. Whilst this applies quite generally to all our agitation and propaganda, it applies particularly so to the leaflet with its mass circulation.
We mustn’t overwhelm people. And two A4 pages can’t really hold that much text. Hence the rule: one leaflet, one topic. A topic that is addressed from a class perspective, taking into account relevant aspects such as the growing rise of fascism, the crisis and impoverishment, the threat of war, and so on. A couple of good recent examples of this were the central leaflets ‘Tomorrow, You’ll be the Terrorist’ and ‘Mass Murderer on the Run.’ In these, drawing on current events — the death of Ponto and Kappler’s escape — the reactionary nature of capitalism and the increasing fascistisation were exposed in simple language that the masses could understand.
“But we don’t have any comrades who can write such leaflets,” I’m already hearing from quite a few regional branches. That simply cannot be true. Everywhere there are comrades who are capable of writing leaflets that are not abstractly theoretical, but class-conscious and accessible to the masses. It is often precisely workers, comrades of proletarian origin, who are well-suited to writing such leaflets. One simply has to seek them out and encourage them. But I have already witnessed precisely the opposite. There, the “theorists” pounced on comrades who had written such leaflets, because they allegedly contained a “political error”. On closer inspection, however, this “error” usually consisted of the fact that, in their view, this or that point had not been sufficiently developed or was missing. A comrade who has experienced something like this once or twice will understandably – even if he doesn’t say so – think: “Go to hell, just do your own thing in future on your own.” Certainly, such leaflets will occasionally contain genuine political errors. But even then, one does not pounce on the comrade in a petit-bourgeois manner with “What have you done now?”, but rather attempts, through helpful, comradely criticism, to correct the error in order to avoid future ones.
In any case, before you start writing a leaflet, you should, as with other forms of agitation and propaganda, draw up a plan. The comrades in charge of the leadership, the cell, etc., should sit down briefly with the comrade who is to write the leaflet to discuss its content in detail. This avoids having to rewrite it later. (Remember, a leaflet is not a novel; it is only two pages long.) Once the leaflet has been written, a final check and approval must take place.
When we say that the leaflet’s strength lies in its relevance to current events, this does not preclude us from, for example, publishing propaganda leaflets on topics such as “Down with the dictatorship of capital” etc., particularly when the bourgeoisie is once again indulging in a campaign to extol its “free and democratic basic order.” Yes, one could even develop a series of leaflets in which the party addresses, in a form accessible to all, issues that are unclear to working people but which move them. Key leaflets that can be used by the party grassroots, the cells, as required.
About the Shape of the Leaflets
As for the layout of the leaflets, it can be assumed that the main heading — the headline — and, to a lesser extent, the subheadings, are of great importance. It must catch the eye. It must encourage people to read it, whilst the subheadings serve as the thread running through the leaflet. Ideally, the main headline and subheadings, when read on their own, already form a concrete political statement and indicate the content of the leaflet.
Why, then, is the headline so important? In answering these questions, we must take into account people’s reading habits and the sensory overload that bombards them every day and every hour through television, radio, the press, advertising, and so on. Whether we like it or not, that is the reality. We need only look into our letterboxes in the evening; they are overflowing with advertising. How much of it — entire newspapers — ends up unread in the bin. And even at railway stations and outside the gates of large factories, there is often a huge crowd of leaflet distributors and newspaper sellers today, all of whom call themselves ‘Communists’ and try — more or less insistently, and mostly intrusively — to foist their opportunistic wares on our colleagues, So that today a large proportion of our colleagues are already fed up and won’t take anything at all.
We’ve all been through it. As long as we, our comrades, were still standing alone (apart from the revisionists in some places) outside the factories and at the train stations, selling the Roter Morgen and handing out leaflets, a good rapport gradually developed with our colleagues. It was only when the mostly student circle distributors — often still looking like tramps — turned up that the confusion began. Many colleagues, who had only just learnt to distinguish between us, the Marxist-Leninists, and the modern revisionists, now gave up in the face of the multitude of circle distributors calling themselves “Communists.” “Why don’t you sort yourselves out first?” was often their reply from then on.
Nothing – since they are not prepared to accept the unity demanded by the workers, unless one unconditionally submits to their opportunist views, their opportunist policies and line — illustrates more vividly the role of the various circle leaders, which they objectively play as henchmen, as agents of the bourgeoisie or of the modern revisionists — which amounts to the same thing — than this development. We have indeed shown true patience in the negotiations, in the discussions with, for example, the leaders of the GRF. How many hundreds of pages of paper were filled in an attempt to achieve unity with them on correct Marxist-Leninist positions. In vain? Not quite. We have won over a number of revolutionary comrades from their organisations and, above all, gained a fundamental insight: it is an illusion, a misjudgement of the divisive nature of these organisations and the purpose of their founding, if we — based on our own sincere striving for unity — attribute the same to them. Experience has taught us: there is only one unity that serves the German proletariat and the German working people — that is the unity of all Communists, of all Marxist-Leninists in the KPD-ML; that is the unity of the German working-class under the leadership of its Communist vanguard party. But this unity is forged in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism and its revisionist, opportunist henchmen of all shades.
Comrades, please excuse this digression from the topic. What I also wanted to say is that in our agitation and propaganda — including our leaflets — we must stand our ground against a deluge of bourgeois and revisionist propaganda and advertising clamour. How, for example, can we ensure that our leaflet, once in the letterbox, does not end up unread in the wastepaper basket?
First and foremost, by ensuring that our leaflets and our agit-prop materials stand out positively from other bourgeois advertising materials in terms of their form, their layout and the way they address the recipient. A two-colour leaflet is better than a single-colour one. One printed in neat typewritten text or clearly legible type is better than one that is sloppily written, full of errors and crossed out, or set in small, compressed
letters.
But isn’t that a formalistic approach to agitation and propaganda? Isn’t the content of the leaflet more important than its form? Certainly, but what use is the best content if it goes unnoticed, if it doesn’t even reach people in the first place? Comrades, we have the ‘best content’ that has ever existed in the history of mankind: Marxism-Leninism. That is why it is our absolute duty to bring it to the attention of the masses in the best possible form.
To illustrate this with a simple example: a confectionery manufacturer — for instance, the maker of Mozartkugeln — will not exactly offer its products to consumers wrapped in grey packing paper (they wouldn’t buy them in the first place, and so wouldn’t know how good they taste); instead, it will choose attractive, colourful and appealing packaging for his goods. However, attractive packaging without the right contents is equally pointless. You can fool the consumer once, perhaps twice, but not in the long run. This shows that form is not everything, not the most important thing. Despite their pompous, flashy, colourful packaging and form, despite their sophisticated advertising psychology methods, the bourgeois mass media will never succeed in deceiving the people in the long run.
Now that we have found a clean, simple and appealing layout for our leaflet that makes a positive impression on the reader, we must capture their attention with the headline. But what if the letters “KPD-ML” appear there in large letters, a few sizes larger than the headline? Does that entice them to read on? Is it really the case that the masses are eager to find out what the party has to say to them? No! At present, there are still not many who know the party well, who know what it wants, what it stands for, and who therefore read its material. So what will happen to the reader who sees the letters KPD-ML? The majority will say: “Oh, the Communists!” And they will throw the leaflet into the bin unread – although this remark does not necessarily stem from anti-Communist resentment — but quite simply from negative experiences with revisionist practices, which – entirely in line with the bourgeoisie — are equated with Communism.
But what if the same passer-by reads the headline (please fold the leaflets accordingly): “Tomorrow, You’ll be the Terrorist”? Given the anti-terrorist hysteria stoked by the Federal Republic, they’ll pause for a moment: “Why am I the terrorist tomorrow?” — In other words, their interest is piqued, and they start to read. With that, we have achieved what we set out to do. Now it is crucial that the first few sentences of the leaflet are already so interesting to him that he continues reading. So no clichés, but facts, realities. Build on what is familiar to him, what he instinctively feels — but cannot express or put into words.
The working masses, particularly the working-class, possess a sound consciousness. They strive for socialism – despite negative experiences caused by the betrayal of the revisionists. For example, on the basis of its historical experiences, the working-class is by no means opposed to the use of revolutionary violence, even if it rejects individual terror ‘because it achieves nothing’. In expressing this view, however, it faces massive ideological terror from the bourgeoisie and its revisionist henchmen, who attempt to intimidate it by every means possible. Our task is, in our leaflets and in all our agitation and propaganda, to affirm, deepen and summarise all the correct views of our comrades, and to direct them towards the Party’s strategic goal: the creation of a united, independent, socialist Germany.
However, when writing headlines, one must not fall into the opposite trap of resorting to the kind of sensationalist tactics typical of the *Bild* newspaper. As communists, our readers would rightly hold that against us. The content of the leaflet must live up to what the headline promises. Thus, the somewhat sensational-sounding headline of the leaflet “Mass murderer on the run” was entirely justified and even well done, for what else is SS-Kappler, with his over 300 executions of hostages, but a mass murderer? Nevertheless, we must be careful. Neither exaggerate nor underplay. It is certainly worth spending a few minutes thinking about the headline: how will the reader react to it? After all, every leaflet that is thrown away costs the workers’ hard-earned money. And it is our duty to invest every penny, every mark that we spend on our agitation and propaganda in such a way that it yields the greatest possible benefit for the revolution, whether in the short or long term. No comrade, no leadership can therefore justify it if leaflets are not distributed, are left lying around and become obsolete.
Should the name of our party, its emblem, and the letters KPD-ML be omitted entirely from leaflets? By no means! After all, the reader wants to know who is behind the leaflet. And not only that: every leaflet — unless it calls for a meeting, announces a workers’ gathering, or promotes the Roter Morgen — must include a contact address (for example, the party office), which the reader can contact. This does not always have to be the person responsible for the leaflet (imprint). This information is usually found at the end of the leaflet.
But these too — particularly the party name and emblem — should be standardised graphically by the central agit-prop department. If this were to happen, the party name and emblem could also be used on the front page in a subtle manner, in a font size slightly smaller than the headline. Particularly in the case of an agit-prop tool that is still far too rarely used by the party, the party’s name and address should appear at the top of the first page of the personal letter sent by the district cell to its neighbours. These letters can also be produced quite well in small print runs using simple duplicating machines.
The Importance of Stickers and Posters
Alongside the smaller party newspapers published in workplaces, neighbourhoods and so on, the leaflet plays the most important role in our written mass agitation and propaganda. Its significance will — should the party, as is currently the case, be increasingly forced into illegality — grow even further. The same applies to another agit-prop medium: the sticker. Whilst the Rote Morgen, workshop and district newspapers, leaflets etc. familiarise the working masses with the Party’s policies and line, the stickers have the task of drawing the masses’ attention to the Party time and again, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions. For a time — in the years 1970–71 — their distribution was also quite brisk, but then gradually petered out, so that if one walks through our cities today, one can hardly find a single party sticker.
Why is that? Well, partly because the central authorities lost sight of this agit-prop material, and partly because there were practical difficulties with the previous adhesives. They were cutting corners in the wrong place. Nobody has enough saliva to moisten 50 adhesive strips in a row — not to mention the unpleasant taste in the mouth. And using a sponge hasn’t worked out either. Why not — as our sister parties do – use self-adhesive paper (with a peel-off film)? Only the best will do here. The stickers need to stick properly and not fall off at the first sign of rain. The following mistakes were made here in the past:
- Poor-quality, non-adhesive paper that fades quickly was used;
- The stickers were often far too large; as a rule, they should not exceed 6 × 8 cm in size; a size of 5.2 × 7.4 cm is also sufficient to make better use of an A4 sheet (16 stickers);
- The graphic design was often poor.
Here we can learn from our comrades in our Portuguese sister party. Some of their stickers are superbly designed, so that they are not only stuck up but also collected by many people far beyond the party’s own ranks. The only argument that might be made against this type of superior, multi-coloured, self-adhesive sticker would be that they are more expensive than the old ones and might therefore be stuck up less often.
I believe the opposite will be the case. Even if we sell the stickers for 5 pfennigs apiece. Firstly, they are easier to stick up. You can always keep a few stickers in your pocket and wait for a good opportunity. Secondly, you’ll be pleased if the sticker stays stuck not just for a few days, but for weeks and months. (There are also ways to extend their sticking time.)
Let us summarise: leaflets designed to provide working people with quick, immediate information on the party’s views and policy, and stickers intended to publicise the party’s name and key slogans to tens of thousands of people, are — alongside Roter Morgen — the party’s most important means of propaganda as legalisation increases. But what about posters?
Posters generally have the same drawback as stickers made from poor-quality paper. They are exposed to wind and weather, fade quickly, become unsightly and fall off — if they haven’t already been torn down after just a few hours. At present, their use really only makes sense where one can be certain they will remain in place for a longer period, i.e. on temporary signs, notice boards, billboards, for occasions such as elections, May Day, major events, etc.
As for the graphic execution and artistic design of our posters, we have not yet reached dizzying heights — at least not when compared with posters from earlier periods of the labour movement. This was also evident in our poster competition, where, alongside a few good entries, a great many poor designs were submitted. One of the main mistakes here is that far too much is crammed into a poster. A bewildering profusion of details — both images and text. All of this is a complete misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of a poster.
As a general rule, the content of a poster must be clearly legible from a distance of approximately 8 metres. This determines its design. This means, for example, that apart from the large letters KPD-ML, only very little text — perhaps a single word, a very short sentence, or a very brief slogan — can be used if the image is to stand out at all. The best approach, of course, is for the image or graphic to express what we want to say in a way that is recognisable to everyone without words. Here, there are no limits to the artistic possibilities available to our graphically talented comrades. And posters can not only be put up, they can also be displayed at exhibitions, sold as prints, and so on.
Another means of agitation and propaganda, which we have so far barely utilised, is what is known in China as “Dazibaos” and in Albania as “fletërrufe,” translated as “flash cards.” Why not use such “flash cards” — that is, small posters ranging in size from A4 to A3 with large characters that people can read easily — in appropriate locations, where people have to wait and have time to read — at railway stations, bus stops, etc.? Whether the letters are set, Letraset-applied or painted in neat handwriting by talented comrades, whether they are printed on offset presses, produced using screen printing or, for smaller print runs, simply photocopied, must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Under no circumstances, however, should the letters be smaller than 20-point (text = 6 mm), so that they can still be read clearly from a distance of one to two metres. Here too, the outer frame, which remains constant, should be standardised centrally. Perhaps a border, with a star, hammer, sickle and rifle in the top left — and KPD/ML in larger letters in the bottom right. It is certain, however, that the ‘flash letters’ will also gain in importance as legalisation progresses.
The Necessary Technical and Artistic Skills
So much – albeit rather incompletely – for the significance and the issues surrounding content and form in some of our agit-prop materials, such as leaflets, stickers, posters, etc. Whilst content is indeed the most important thing, a certain technical skill is always required in design and layout (for leaflets, newspapers, etc.), as well as artistic mastery (for posters, theatre plays, songwriting, filmmaking, poetry, etc.), in order to achieve the necessary unity of revolutionary political content and the most perfect artistic form. This naturally also applies, or indeed especially, to relevant publications, e.g. poems, in the Roter Morgen.
I know how difficult that is – I’m all too familiar with the hassle of ‘poets’. Many a person who has just discovered that ‘Wiesel’ rhymes with ‘Kiesel,’ ‘Not’ with ‘Gebot,’ and ‘Ton’ with ‘Revolution’ suddenly fancies themselves a poet and starts rhyming away, without realising that in poetry, too, there are rules, laws and skills that one must know, master and observe. With a painter, one assumes that he has mastered the theory of colour; a sculptor must know his material. He must, for example, know in which medium the combative stance of a revolutionary he wishes to sculpt is better expressed – in granite, clay or bronze. No one would consider themselves a bricklayer if they could not lay a simple bond. Yet people always consider themselves poets, even if they do not know what alliteration or assonance is.
It is also the editor’s task to play an educational and supportive role here. This naturally presupposes that at least one member of the editorial team possesses certain basic artistic knowledge and an understanding of form, and is able to help young, talented comrades — within limits, through guidance and advice — to improve their skills, or even once to say emphatically: “You’d be better off giving up bad poetry and writing good prose; that will serve our revolutionary cause better.” The article competition in Roter Morgen has clearly shown that there is no shortage of talent worthy of encouragement within the party.
As Marxist-Leninists, we know that a certain level of technical skill is necessary for writers and artists. Lenin sharply criticised the idea of completely neglecting the form of a work of art and regarding only the content as decisive. Works that lack artistic quality have no power, however progressive the political sentiment may be. But technical skill is merely a means and a method and can never replace the source.
If the writer or artist is isolated from the lives of the masses, their work will be like a tree without roots. No matter how great their technical skill, they will never be able to produce a revolutionary work that serves the people. Even politically reactionary works may possess certain artistic qualities. Yet the more reactionary their content and the higher their artistic quality, the more harmful they are.
That is why, when it comes to literature and art, we must wage a two-pronged battle: both against, and primarily against, works of art that convey false political views, and against the neglect of form — the ‘Proletkult’ — which, whilst expressing politically correct views, is artistically weak.
To illustrate what genuine folk art is, I would like to conclude by quoting a work of proletarian amateur poetry, the poem by Comrade Ernst Puchmüller, which he, a worker, wrote in early 1945 at Waltheim Prison in Saxony:
March of the Political Prisoners
When, freed from fascist terror,
We march through towns and villages,
Marching in spirit by our side
Are the dead who ever accompany us
Forward, Ernst Thälmann, Andre and Lön Scheer
And thousands of fallen comrades — and more!
Take up your rifles — workers’ army!
When the sun of freedom smiles upon us once more,
No more wars destroy humanity,
The final sacrifice made in the struggle,
When lies and hatred no longer rule,
Then, from the ashes, free from prison and serfdom
The Socialist World Union will blossom
Take up your rifles — Workers’ Army!
When, upon the ruins of times gone by
We build socialism,
Ready and eager to serve,
We look forward to a happy future,
Then cheers and songs rise up from the factories
A mighty chorus of symphonies to labour!
Take up your rifles — army of workers!
Then it came, that glorious time,
For which we fought and suffered,
Chained, ready to die,
He entered the dungeon.
So take heart, comrades, the hour is drawing near,
The hour of freedom, the hour of action!
Take up your rifles — workers’ army!
“Take up your rifle — Workers’ Army!” That is and remains the central slogan of the socialist, world revolution. Yet the rifle is not the only weapon with which we fight. The other weapon is the word. It is our revolutionary, our Marxist-Leninist agitation and propaganda. It shows the working masses the way and the goal. Without it, they will not recognise the absolute necessity of taking up arms, of smashing the bourgeois state apparatus, in order to establish the proletarian dictatorship upon its ruins. In this sense, literature and art too must be weapons that drive breach upon breach into the ranks and bastions of the class enemy, giving the people the courage and strength to bring the struggle for a better life — a life
free from the exploitation of man by man — to a victorious conclusion.
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