THE SCENE: A board meeting, somewhere at the BBC Bright young producer (BYP): Hey, I know. Let's do programme!
All (groans): Oh, come on. another arts programme.
BYP: No, no — not like the others. This is a brand new talking about — an arts programme for the masses!
All (eyebrows raised amid mutters of disbelief): Come on, serious. What do the masses know about art?
BYP: Well, that's exactly it. Nothing. So this will be an introduction to what is meaningful, relevant, valid in the modern arts world. You know evervone can be in louch win tne vibrant artistic forces in our society.
Ordinary people will be able to talk about what's being talked about, and know all the right names. And we'll cover all the subjects that... that Hardnosed executive: ...That Is that what you mean?
BYP: Well, yes. Money and taste -definition endeavour and motivation there possibly be?
Scriptwriter: Maybe something there, but I see a problem in presentation. I mean, what papers do the masses read?
All (in chorus): The Sun. The Daily Star. The -Scriptwriter: Exactly. So how can you get people who read big headlines and words interested in aesthetic enterprise, intellectual debate..?
An, 1 was coming to that. That's one of the features that'll be different about this programme. No item will be more than three minutes the average span of the working class man. Female studio manager (dutifully): What about woman?
BYP: Yes, you're right. Better make half the items two minutes long. All (except female studio manager): Guffaw, guffaw! Ho, ho, ho! Scriptwriter (puzzled): But what can BYP: Well, I thought we could begin exhibition. I mean, people like cars, don't they? Established _director:
Shakespeare? Can't without a bit of Shakespeare.
concept I'm you can't be • SO make could you've got serious critical reviews, concentration working class all very well, What about service we'd be doing have the arts Years of the lower classes.
All this experimental nonsense is but imagine what a bringing the voice of the golden bard to the crude BYP: You want Shakespeare, I'll give you Shakespeare. Here we are — two of plainly-clad conspirators Julius sounding like a local Labour Party branch meeting, just to show the old boy writes for everyone.
Caesar Then add a bit about the Royal Shakespeare Company BYP: 1 know she would.
loved him...
Hardnosed them!
the street wants!
Scriptwriter:
BYP:
London about?
the masses.
FADE Seberg being proletariat.
on book, Power narrowly the skilled and semi-privileged layers from the proletariat, as movement. and embodies highly conclusions. it is. at the same time books, and contains an cementing social relations.
encourage of theoretical antagonist productive Marxist writer.
trouble - to show that art and money don't always go hand in hand..
Female (a little wearily): What about BYP: A lady interviewer I think Hardnosed executive: Someone to turn on the men...
Female: And that the women will - how about giving them a touch of royal. Jane'd love to do something for the masses. I'm sure She met a dustman once and just executive: Lady Jane Wellesley! Are you kidding? Even Radio 4 think she's too highbrow for BYP: Nonsense. She's the perfect girl for the part. Beautiful, hard to get, a trifle classy — that's what the man in Okay, how about classical music. Now that's something I just can't see you slipping through to them while they' re swigging their pale ale and eating their winkles Well, everyone's heard of the Symphony Orchestra, haven't they? And I don't mean we have to play music — not at all. Let's and Jane can talk to him Established director (scoffing): What Stravinski? The woodwind section? Modern versus baroque? something that will appeal directly to everyone identify with. We must bring the arts right to their own front doors. I've got All (sighing): Don't tell us! You're going to ask him about football...
JEANSEBERG THE CIA have admitted that they ran a campaign of slander against Jean the French actress who committed suicide recently...
The brash and ruthless CIA Should scrape and clean away the rust And take the deadly dirty away — So Truth and Justice in the dust, And Faith and Freedom in decay, Can read the text 'In God We Trust' Throughout the plastic USA N. Racine Jaques, 1979 could properly be considered members of the Poulantzas resolution of these questions of class analysis might seem to embody a strict Marxist purism. Paradoxically this paved the way for a move away from Leninism in his last and Socialism The defined proletariat of Classes in Contemporary Capitalism was evidently too slender a social force to be capable of throwing up new ruling institutions; the best that it could do was to develop factory councils which would be a valuable complement to the activities of the workers parties in parlamentary assemblies.
•lissing concept in Poulantzas' later work is that of the 'collective worker', the social basis for the strategy of revolutionary socialism. Indeed, by allowing too much weight to 'authority relations' within the capitalist factory, Poulantzas was led to exclude many This concept of the working class; he also excluded workers in the sphere of social reproduction again the consequence of underestimating the potential collective political capacity of the proletarian But although State, Power and Socialism political original and challenging work by Poulantzas. It is more clearly and simply written than his other.
much stimulating discussion of such topics as the principles of bourgeois legality, and the role of ideology in The early death of Nicos Poulantzas is a sad loss for the left; even though revolutionary Marxists were obliged to differ with many of his conclusions, his work as a whole helped to new . interest in Marxist investigation of the political domain and to combat the all too frequent resort to militant economism as a substitute for socialist politics He will be sorely missed both as an unsectarian and as a highly