Marxism Reading Group: Will the Revolution Be Televised?

Is politics really downstream from culture, or vice-versa? Marxism has often been dismissed for its supposed inability to explain the world of art and culture, with its reductionistic base-superstructure model. In the era of Stalinism, writers and artists were simply branded as “bourgeois”, often with dire consequences. But Marxism also contains within it a rich tradition of cultural analysis, seeking to situate art and literature in its full social and historical context.

What are the politics of culture? Will the Revolution be televised?

Readings:

• Lucien Goldmann, Toward a Sociology of the Novel

• Mikhail Lifshitz, “Leninist Criticism”

• Raymond Williams, “Marxism and Culture”