There Can be No Proletarian Art Under the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie: A statement of intent
Marxist analysis of not only current events, but of media is necessary for the framing of the world. The lens which we see the world of media, be it visual art, film, literature, or otherwise has been taken under by the right wing bourgeois interests which run the United States. As of typing, the Marvel cinematic universes, as well as the Disney amalgam of properties have as close to a monopoly on popular media than has been arranged in my lifetime. The Disney corporation has swallowed media properties the world over and has a stranglehold on what is produced and seen by the populace of the United States and the world at large. Outside of Disney, there exists competition which is equally corporate and steeped in bourgeois values. There exist filmmakers, authors, poets, and artists of all stripes who oppose this strangulation of media production, but good luck finding them thriving or even able to publicly publish their work to a platform which enters the popular consciousness on the level of one Marvel film.
In his seminal and necessary work, “Myth Today,” Marxist theorist Roland Barthes states that there is no true proletarian art which can exist in the modern French world. This text was published in 1957, and still applies to the US in 2022. The bourgeoisie have won, however temporary their rule may be, and they have effectively stamped out counter-cultural media which serves the masses. No proletarian art may exist as, culturally, the bourgeoisie have wiped out any semblance of what that may look like. This is a necessary fight to win after the revolution. A revolution cannot win without another equally brutal and necessary cultural revolution. It is because of this that we must analyze the bourgeois art form as it is today and recognize it as the reactionary force it is. The United States will fall, whether due to the will of the people or the will of the climate that it is destroying, and with it must also fall its bourgeois domination of art and cultural matters.
We must as Marxists oppose this dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over culture. We must recognize this world as one where the proletariat is not allowed to create art without the oppressive thumb of capital at its throat. This blog will be house to articles deconstructing the bourgeois media which we are inundated with every day, rather than envisioning a fantasy world which has not yet come to pass. The goal is to understand what we must fall in opposition to, rather than go through our fiction of what the world might be like after an idealized revolution. This vision of proletarian art would be flawed, and incomplete due to the total domination of culture by the bourgeois class. Such matters also seem individualistic and selfish to propose in a time where many of the ranks of proletarian cannot still eat, or have adequate housing for themselves or their children. It would be selfish to dream a dream of art while the question of feeding the masses goes unanswered. This is why this blog will house current Marxist analyses of art, and showcase genuine standouts in artistic merit which seek to oppose bourgeois dominance as much as they can in a world so thoroughly dictated by the bourgeois class.
The bourgeois class even has a stranglehold, though this is a proxy consequence to the strangulation of artistic merits, on the generation of personal projects such as blogs, YouTube videos, Twitch streams, and all other independent content creation. This is not to say that attempts are not made in these fronts to oppose capitalism on their platform, but the domination of the bourgeoisie causes each of these platforms to require artists to participate in their own exploitation. Artists on Patreon, for example, must spend time not just promoting their work, but their benefits and perks for joining the ranks of a patron. They are forced to do this by the need for housing, food, clothing, and the necessary safety which capitalism commodifies. Commodification in this way necessitates a gig economy for artists, filmmakers, and writers who choose to eschew traditional capitalist modes of production of their art by means of self publication. This necessitates not only the participation in the capitalist goal of wealth accumulation, but also alters content in a way which is still able to be sold. To be clear, this is not a moral failing of the artists, filmmakers, and writers themselves, but rather a necessity of living under the oppressive thumb of capital. We cannot blame these creators for this process which they are forced into in order to have the life that they would like to live. Similarly, we cannot ascribe the domination of culture by bourgeois interests to these individuals, though some of them within the same space may prefer to lick a boot to pay their rent. On this note, we must avoid the classification of art in this way which segregates the art into sections of “good and bad” politics. Every piece of art, whether intended or not, is produced under conditions of the bourgeoisie. This is what Barthes means when he says that no proletarian art can exist.
We must oppose bourgeois dominance in this way by seeing their art for what it is and calling it as such. As Marxists, we will not apologize for the displacement of our cultural relics. We must oppose capitalism on all fronts, including cultural. The corporations monopolize what we are served, and capitalism is the mode by which we are kept not only in our lives and our work, but our cultural interests as well. This domination of the bourgeoisie over every portion of our lives must be fought with the same fervor which we fight against the tools they use to oppress us. Above all, we must remain optimistic. One day the bourgeoisie will be hung with the rope they sold us, and once this happens, we must forge a new culture forward for the proletariat by any means necessary.
-Smelley, September 24th 2022