People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 33
August 19, 2012
|
Vol. XXXVI
No. 33 August 19, 2012 |
On the Occasion of Golden Jubilee of Deshhitaishee
Sitaram Yechury
The following is
the text of the
speech delivered by Sitaram Yechury, Polit Bureau member of
the CPI(M) in Kolkata
on August 16, 2012 on the
occasion of Golden Jubilee of Deshhitaishee.
REVOLUTIONARY
congratulations to the
I
The importance of
the Party paper can
never be undervalued. Vladimir
Lenin who
provided leadership for ushering in humanity’s transition from
capitalism to
socialism had in 1901 said in “Where to
begin?”: “In our opinion, the starting-point of our
activities, the first
step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us
say, the main thread
which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop,
deepen, and extend
that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian
political newspaper.
A newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot
conduct that
systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in
principle, which
is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general
and, in
particular, the pressing task of the moment … Never has the
need been felt so
acutely as today for reinforcing dispersed agitation in the
form of individual
action, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by means of
generalised and systematic
agitation that can only be conducted with the aid of the
periodical press…
Without such a newspaper we cannot possibly fulfill our task –
that of
concentrating all the elements of political discontent and
protest, of
vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat.”
Further he says:
“The role of a
newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination
of ideas, to
political education, and to the enlistment of political
allies. A newspaper is
not only a collective
propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a
collective organiser.”
Later in “What is to be done?”, Lenin says: “This
newspaper would become part
of an enormous pair of smith’s bellows that would fan every
spark of the class
struggle and of popular indignation into a general
conflagration. Around what
is in itself still a very innocuous and very small, but
regular and common,
effort, in the full sense of the word, a regular army of tried
fighters would
systematically gather and receive their training.”
II
Many, however, say
that the
civilisational advances of the 20th century, particularly the
scientific and
technological advances, have so completely transformed the
situation that
instantaneous communication is today possible in a manner that
would be
incomprehensible at the beginning of the 20th century. The emergence of
radio and television with
the latest invasion of cyberspace and cell phones, some argue,
has rendered the
newspaper as an obsolete means of communication. Therefore, they
would ask if there is any
point in recollecting Lenin’s views on the Party newspaper.
Notwithstanding
these advances, the
importance of the Party newspapers does not merely remain but
has grown
multifold to meet the current challenges. In every age and
time, the ruling
classes have always consolidated their class rule by
exercising an ideological hegemony
over contemporary society.
As Marx and
Engels said, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every
epoch, the ruling
ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of
society is at the
same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has
the means of
material production at its disposal, consequently also
controls the means of
mental production so that the ideas of those who lack the
means of mental
production are on the whole subject to it. The ruling ideas
are nothing more
than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations;
dominant material
relations, grasped as ideas: hence of the relations which made
the one class
the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The
individuals composing
the ruling class possess among other things, consciousness and
therefore think.
In so far therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the
extent and
compass of an historical epoch, it is self-evident that they
do this in its
whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of
ideas, and regulate the
production and
distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas
are the ruling
ideas of the epoch.” (German
Ideology,
Moscow 1976, p. 67 emphasis added.)
It is this hegemony
of the `ideas' of
ruling classes that as Gramsci explains is not enforced merely
by the State.
The State is only the "outer ditch" behind which stands a
powerful
system of "fortresses and earth works", a network of cultural
institutions
and values which buttress the rule and domination of the
ruling classes.
Under capitalism,
while culture as an
ideological formation bolsters the rule of capital, the forms
of culture go
through a process of commodification, as everything else in
society. Much has
been written about this process and needs no repetition. The
cultural products
of capitalism are aimed at achieving social control rather
than expressions of
social creativity. The exchange value of these products always
supersede their
use value. This, of course, does not hold for those cultural
products that
emerge from dissent and opposition to capitalism...The
cultural hegemony that
such a globalisation process seeks is expressed in the need to
create a
homogenisation of public taste. The more homogenous the taste
the easier it is
to develop technologies for the mechanical reproduction of
`cultural products'
for large masses. Commercialisation of culture is a natural
corollary of such
globalisation.
Viewed in terms of
class hegemony,
the culture of globalisation seeks to divorce people from
their actual
realities of day to day life. Culture here acts not as an
appeal to the
aesthetic, but as a distraction, diversion from pressing
problems of poverty
and misery. Consequently, it seeks to disrupt the energy of
the people and
their struggle to change and improve their miserable
existence. As Michael
Parenti says, "A far greater part of our culture is now aptly
designated
as "mass culture", "popular culture", and even "media
culture", owned and operated mostly by giant corporations
whose major
concur is to accumulate wealth and make the world safe for
their owners, the
goal being exchange value rather than use value, social
control rather than
social creativity. Much of mass culture is organised to
distract us from
thinking too much about larger realities. The fluff and
puffery of
entertainment culture crowds out more urgent and nourishing
things. By
constantly appealing to the lowest common denominator, a
sensationalist popular
culture lowers the common denominator still further (media
page 3 culture).
Public tastes become still more attuned to cultural junk food,
the big hype,
the trashy, flashy, wildly violent, instantly stimulating, and
desperately
superficial offerings.
"Such fare often has
real
ideological content. Even if supposedly apolitical in its
intent, entertainment
culture (which is really the entertainment industry)
is political in its impact, propagating images and values that
are often
downright sexist, racist, consumerist, authoritarian,
militaristic, and
imperialist." (Monthly
Review,
February 1999)
Media culture that
globalisation
promotes is starkly exposed by the manner in which it
underrates or outrightly
ignores people’s protests and their conditions of miserable
existence. For
instance, the very day when team Anna was
holding their hunger strike on issue of corruption, over two
lakhs of workers at
the call of the All India Trade Unions had marched to the
parliament in Delhi
protesting against price rise and corruption.
While the former hogged the headlines and dominated the
electronic
media, the action of the working class was largely ignored.
Adding insult to
injury, the Times of
India, in an
obscure page carried a small news item bemoaning the traffic
disruption caused
by the worker’s rally in the country’s capital!
Yet again, in July this year, the five-day dharna by
the Left parties
demanding food security for our people was again largely
ignored while team
Anna’s movement that finally fizzled out taking place next to
the Left parties
dharna, once again hogged the headlines and the electronic
media
attention.
Nearly a hundred and
fifty years ago,
Marx in his analysis of capitalism made a very penetrating
observation.
"Production not only provides the material to satisfy a need,
but it also
provides the need for the material. When consumption emerges
from its original
primitive crudeness and immediacy -- and its remaining in that
state would be
due to the fact that production was still primitively crude –
then it is itself
as a desire brought about by the object.
The need felt for the object is induced by the
perception of the
object. An object d'art creates a public that has artistic
taste and is able
to enjoy beauty – and the same can be said of any other
product. Production
accordingly produces not only an object for the subject,
but also a subject
for the object. (Karl Marx, "Introduction" to Economic Manuscripts
of 1857-58)
(Emphasis added.)
The billions of
dollars spent
annually on advertising are creating the `subjects' for the
`objects' that the
system churns out. Likewise in culture. The audience is first
created to
receive a product of mass consumption. The homogenisation of
public tastes is
thus created through an advertisement blitz that dullens if
not erases critical
faculties. It is not therefore, as though, this `culture' is
catering to
people's taste. Tastes and ideas are being created to accept
uncritically the
`culture' that is being churned out.
How does one then
combat such a
cultural onslaught? An onslaught that drives away truly
popular people's
culture. At the first instance, it is necessary to bring back
on to the
cultural agenda people's issues, whose obfuscation and erasure
is the raison d'etre
of the culture of
globalisation and communalism. This is paramount to counter
the cultural
hegemony that they seek.
III
The current
situation in which we are
conducting our political activities today is dominated by
imperialist globalisation.
The CPI(M) 20th Congress Ideological
Resolution notes:
“The ideological war
to establish the
intellectual and cultural hegemony of imperialism and
neo-liberalism has been
on the offensive during this period. Aided by this very
process of
globalisation and the vastly elevated levels of technologies,
there is
convergence of information, communications and entertainment
(ICE) technologies
into mega corporations. This monopolisation of the sphere of
human intellectual
activity and the control over dissemination of information through the
corporate media is a salient
feature of this period that seeks to continuously mount an
ideological
offensive against any critique or alternative to capitalism.
The cultural
hegemony that such a globalisation process seeks is expressed
in the need to
create a homogenisation of public taste. The more homogenous
the taste, the
easier it is to develop technologies for the mechanical
reproduction of
‘cultural products’ for large masses. Commercialisation of
culture is a natural
corollary of such globalisation. Viewed in terms of class
hegemony, the culture
of globalisation seeks to divorce
people from their actual realities of day to day life. Culture
here acts not as
an appeal to the aesthetic, but as a distraction, diversion
from pressing
problems of poverty and misery.”
The
development of ICE technologies
and the control over them, also allows imperialism to develop
and maintain
sophisticated surveillance technologies. Such technologies are
being
increasingly used to monitor, influence and sabotage a large
variety of popular
movements that challenge the hegemony of imperialism.
For instance, the
mega corporation
Time had earlier merged with the entertainment giant Warner
Bros. The
information giant American Online Ltd (AOL) has now acquired
Time-Warner at a
cost of $ 164 million to become the largest ICE conglomerate
in the world.
Rupert Murdoch now commands a combined news, entertainment and
internet
enterprise which is valued at $ 68 billion. Likewise, Walt
Disney has now
acquired Marvel (of Spiderman fame). The cultural products
that are universally
created are bombarded across the world garnering phenomenal
profits. As
recently as in January 2011, Comcast Corp has completed its
takeover of NBC
Universal, creating
a $ 30 billion media
behemoth that controls not just how television shows and movies are made, but
how they are delivered
to people’s homes. Comcast, the No. 1 provider of video and
residential
internet service in the United States (with over 23 million video
subscribers and nearly 17
million internet subscribers), acquired a 51 per cent stake in NBC
Universal from General
Electric Co. The newly created joint venture is
called NBC Universal LLC and its assets include NBC
broadcast stations,
cable channels like Bravo, USA and E!, the Universal movie
studio as well as
theme parks among other assets.
Some instances in
the Indian context:
Reliance Entertainment (formerly known as Reliance BIG
Entertainment) is a wholly
owned subsidiary of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group,
its media and
entertainment business, across content and distribution
platforms. The key content
initiatives are across movies, music, sports, gaming, internet
and mobile portals,
leading to direct opportunities in delivery across the
emerging digital
distribution platforms: digital
cinema,
IPTV, DTH and Mobile TV. Reliance ADA Group acquired Adlabs
Films Limited in
2005, one of the largest entertainment companies in
Such mega
corporatisation of media is
playing havoc with distorted dissemination of information and
deliberate
campaigns of disinformation. The
rise of
the phenomena of `paid news’ shows the extent of
commercialisation of
media. Truth and
objectivity are the
casualties that buttress the hegemony of the ruling classes.
IV
This monopolisation
of media as a
weapon of ideological hegemony that the ruling classes unleash
needs to be
combated much more aggressively.
New
ideological postulates like post-modernism are aggressively
propagated. Its
main thrust, as with all other
anti-Communist ideological expressions of the past, is the
negation of classes
and, hence, of class struggle.
It seeks
to compartmentalise society in terms of ethnic, regional and
other micro
identities and, thus, disrupt the unity of the exploited
classes. Such
theories, therefore, weaken the class
unity of the exploited people and, thus, buttress the class
rule of the
exploiters.
The Party newspaper,
along with other
forms of media, today has to
rise to
meet such challenges and, therefore, act as a powerful weapon
in the hands of
the revolutionary
forces to propagate
their ideas, to organise the exploited classes and, thus, to
strengthen the
struggle
for creating a society free from all forms of
exploitation – socialism.
I am confident that
Deshhitaishee will
continue to play its role
and will rise to effectively meet and combat the current
challenges.
