Wojtek Sokolowski:
> I prefer Virgil to Pol Pot or Mao - populist revolutionary credentials of
> the latter notwithstanding.
Well, now, certainly. Neither Pol Pot or Mao were very good at composing top-of-the-line Latin poetry. On the other hand, Virgil being a outstanding ass-kisser of the Imperium and its leading personnel, maybe there isn't that much of a choice between them ideologically.
> But the broader point is that by objective standards, bourgeoisie did
> create a better society, a better culture, a better economy, and a better
> life than any other social class. The only problem is that it kept these
> goodies for the members of its own class, instead of letting the workers
> take advantage of them. These goodies enjoyed only by the bourgeoisie was
> the grand prize in the class struggle.
The bourgeoisie created a better culture, by some measures, but only within the context of capitalism, and did so in part by stealing culture, and the opportunity to preserve and develop it, from the lower orders. So I think what we have is a movement of cultural activity from here to there, rather than a creation _ex_nihilo_. This is why, if the working class is handed bourgeois culture, high or low, as I said it must accept it in subordination, just as it must subordinate itself to the bourgeoisie in the workplace if it wants to accept the terms of capitalist production. In the case of culture, if not the workplace, there is some concomitant impoverishment.
A good example of this is what happened to White popular music between, say, 1880 and 1930. First listen to the radically weird Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, which, although it was collected from records made in the late 1920s, really reflects the popular music of an earlier "folk" era, and then go on to, say, a Hank Williams collection. Between the two, a huge breadth of the spectrum of expression has disappeared. Why? Because the bourgeoisie wanted to make money, and the way to make the most money under the conditions of the early recording and music publishing industry was to find a few best-selling styles and obviate everything else. The industrialists stole a tenth of the treasure and threw the rest away.
Needless to say (well, maybe not), the possibility of evolving complex and sophisticated forms disappears from a culture which has been vandalized in this way. No more Bachs and Vivaldis growing up from the rich earth of vernacular practice.
> My problem with the culturalist Left is that it lost its sight from that
> prize, and then redefined the goals of the struggle in terms of populist
> symbols and cultural identities. ....
But this is simply further bourgeoisification of the gutted remains, not an actual interest in or even tolerance of popular culture. Fortunately, judging by what I hear in the streets, the folk are now almost completely immune to it.