Socialist Appeal - Marxism and Art

Marxism and Art

DVD REVIEW: Battle of Algiers (1966)

By Mr Discs
Thursday, 17 June 2010
In the first of a regular column where we look at DVDs which may be of interest to socialists, we pick up on a DVD reissue of the classic film, Battle of Algiers.

By Will Roche (a BECTU member)
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Copyright is in crisis. Photocopying, scanning, audio and video recording, computers and now the internet have all made it increasingly difficult for the owners of copyright to enforce their rights. There has been a renewed effort, such as the Digital Economy Bill, to restore the balance of power in favour of big business, but levies and legal penalties only serve to patch holes in an already leaky system. The flaw lies not in the technology, or in piracy or file-sharing, as corporations would have us believe, but in the very notion of copyright.

Robert Burns - Man, poet and revolutionary

By Alan Woods
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Robert Burns (1759-1796) the poet needs no further introduction. But Robert Burns the revolutionary democrat is another matter. It is a matter of great regret that nowadays it seems to have become the fashion among certain left circles in Scotland to renounce Burns. To some degree this is understandable. After his death, Burns was hijacked by the Scottish Establishment, who turned him into a harmless icon. On Burns' night each January, upper class Scotsmen in kilts (!) make use of the great man's anniversary to eat and drink to excess, declaim poems to the haggis, and generally make fools of themselves. This grotesque parody would, of course, have had Rabbie Burns splitting his sides with laughter. His poems, his politics, his philosophy, his life and his death - all bear witness against these stage Scotsmen and hypocritical Pharisees.

‘A slice of bloody cake for all! ...That’s what Brian Clough says!’

By Mark Turner

Tuesday, 06 January 2009

A review of The Damned United by David Peace

Why would socialists be interested in this book? Because it is a fictionalised account of a period in the life of one of Englands’ greatest football managers – the man destined to be England manager, but who never was.But not only was ‘Cloughie’ (Brian Clough) a great football manager, he was also a man who constantly challenged and criticised the footballing establishment; the club directors and chairmen, the FA and the powers that be generally.

Art and Politics In Our Epoch

By Leon Trotsky
Wednesday, 17 December 2008
“Art can neither escape the crisis nor partition itself off. Art cannot save itself. It will rot away inevitably — as Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slavery — unless present-day society is able to rebuild itself. This task is essentially revolutionary in character. For these reasons the function of art in our epoch is determined by its relation to the revolution.” Leon Trotsky, 1938.

Art and the Class Struggle

By Alan Woods
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
We publish here the transcript of a speech by Alan Woods on the subject of the relationship between Art and the Class Struggle. The speech was given at a Marxist Summer School in Barcelona (Spain), in July 2001.

Audio File: Marxism and Art

By Alan Woods
Friday, 29 August 2008
In May this year Alan Woods of the IMT spoke to a meeting of the Socialist Appeal in London on the question of Marxism and Art. Why should socialists be interested in culture in general? At first sight these things might appear secondary with millions of people around the world living in miserable conditions under capitalism. But If you can imagine a world without art, without music, without colour, rythmn and harmony - then you can imagine that life would be near intolerable, when the lives of workers are hard enough as it is. Alan also traces the development of art and class society from the origins of human society, where art, science and religion were all one, and prized much more than they are today.

Capitalist fetishism and the decay of art

By Alan Woods
Tuesday, 16 December 2003
Someone has said that one of the criteria for winning the Turner Prize is not to be understood. The philosophy behind this is: the less I am understood, the better the art.Yet the kind of art that wins the Turner competition also has merit. They have the merit of holding up a mirror to the society that produced them, and saying: “This is what you are, and this is all you are capable of producing.” These works point out to us that beneath the sleek, comfortable bourgeois surface of modern society, horrors are lurking: dead vermin, murder, death and decay.