their relations to their social conditions.
For a revolutionary, this means two things. I means that art quite oflen provides us with an insight into the way ideologies actually work which is available to us in no other form. This is what Engels meant when he remarked that Balzac's novels had given him a deeper understanding of French history than all the coonomists and political theorists put togetber.
It isn't that the role of art is exactly АВТОР РЕЖИССЕР О. ДОВЖЕНІ ЗІМ.ІЯ historians, to give us a "knowledge of historical conditions': the artist is quite free to "falsify history, invent things that never happened, give full rein to fantasy. But in doing so — since the artist is always rooted in certain historical conditions — the work of art will give us the 'feel' or 'experience" of life ar that particular historical point, and thus contribute to a scientific analysis of the workings of ideology.
No work of art, or course, will give us i 'complete picture of the historical conditions from which it was proCULTURAL REVOLUTION If art transforms rather than merely "expresses" ideology, then it's possible to me it to transiorm ideology in a revolutionary direction. Of course, art in itself won't bring about revolu tionary change; but it can become part of that process of "cultural revolution' in which women and men experience their social conditions in new forms, and thus are impelled to change their real social relations, It's at this point, however, that we areled on to the second issue: that of the material basis of artistic production in a particular society. I may well write a "revolutionary novel next week; but the obvious retort that springs to mind is — so what? Who will publish it, read it, study it? My novel will become a commodity to be sold on the market like any other; it will reach a mere handful of mainly middle-class readers; if it's successful, it may be bought up by the capitalist communications media, or made part of a university literature course to help educate the ruliog class of the future The conclusion is that we can't change consciousness through art without simultancously trying to change the social relations of artistic production. We don't just need new messages; we also need new media, which will break our of ruling-class cultural institutions — the arl-gallery, concert-hall, elitist theatre transform the relacions between artists and audiences.
NEW TECHNIQUES This, indeed, was the major insight. of the greatest revolutionary artist of all, Bertolt Brecht. Brecht didn't just write revolutionary" plays; he actually transformed the shape of the theatre and the nature of acting. Mayakovsky, the great Bolshevik poet, didn't just write Marxist poems: he developed new techniques by which to recite his poetry to mass proletarian audiences.
This isn't to argue that what we need is a "proletarian culture". For it's in the nature of capitalist oppression that the proletariat is culturally deprived; and thus no genuinely revolutionary cul ture can be merely an expression' of working-class experience, It needs rather to be an intervention into working-class experience, transforming it in a revolutionary direction by the use of new techniques which strip "high art' of its sacred privilege and create new cultural relarions between women and men.
Only by the overthrow of the capitalist state can this process be properly developed; but it's one which can be begun in the present. It's to this task above all that revolutionuties working in the cultural field must address themscives
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 22 June 1977 p.14