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Dr. Zhivago, Socialism and Art May Day 1959

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Dr. Zhivago, Socialism and Art May Day 1959 0FrlctAL PuBLICATION oF --rHe ~~HAW PARTY or ..ERiCA Vol. XVIII, No. a, Whole No. 310 Chicago, Ill., May 1959- ---------------------------------------------------------- Price 1 Oc a Copy DR. ZHIVAGO, SOCIALISM AND ART MAY DAY 1959 of The awarding the Nobel Prize and think only within society and The first of May, known as-May for many workers, "the greatest for literature to Boris Pasternak, as such his thinkfng is bound up Day, has been observed for many numbers," tl:lose who toil, sweat~ leading Soviet poet for his critical and determined mainly by his so- . yeaTs by the class conscious work- and are exploited but w'ho hardly novel, Doctor Zhivago, raised a cial environment and his under­ ers the world over as a day 'in_ receive enough in the. :llorm of huge cloud of literary dust radiat­ standing of it. Ideas ·are a reflex which to defiantly protest against wages to keep from starving. ing and fanning the fires of the of the objective material world. capitalist e,q>loitation and oppres- Another hi'g capitalist lie is the existing cold ~ar, intensifying the To the extent that they reflect sion. The capitalist class who hate assertion that in America there is political and social schisms. them correc.tly they correspond to and fear it do their utmost to dis- "free labor." And here again the Outside the Soviet Union, where it. Where reality has not been credit it, and denounce it as a "red very opposite is the c'ase. The sim­ the book was not permitted to be properly understood idealistic fan­ holiday of foreign ori,gin." ple truth is that no one cim be published, it met with acclaim as tasy has resulted. Many artistic However, contrary to such capi- free who works for wages, because a great work of art, the author creations in the past concerned talist denunciations, May Day's he is in servitude to the person honored for his ·genius and cour­ mythological deities, gods, angels 'Otrigin has an American back~ who pays him. It is disguised slave­ age. In the United States it has ·and spirits which devolved around ground. It arose out of the early. ry. The so-called "free laborer" !been on the No. 1 best seller list the mysteries of natural forces. militant class struggles between sells himself by fractions, every for many months. Constant de­ These misunderstood forces pro­ ·capital and labor, the stru.g.gle for day, 8 hours or more of ihi!s life, nouncement of the Soviet Union vided the material, the basis for better working conditions, increas- through the sale of his labor power has been the order of the day for the artist's •concept and expression. ed wages, shorter working hours, t1o the owner of the means of pro­ its so-called stifling of art, the in­ Today nature no longer provides the 8-hour day movement. This duction, the capitalist. In return dividual spirit and creativity. At such mystery.. Science is learning culminated in the recommendation for his labor power the worker the same time, within the Soviet ever more about it. Science em­ of the American delegates· attend- gets a wage, which is a mere frac­ Union, Pasternak and his work has ploys the materialistic approach ing the international Socialist con- tion, a1bout onMifth on the aver­ been shunned, castigated and de­ which assumes nature's objective gress held in Paris in 1889 that the age, of the total valu~ he produces. nounced for· its individ.uatlsm, and existence and priority. - first of May ·be set aside as a day The capit·alist appropriates the distortion of social reality. From the materialist standpoint of working class solidarity and in- greater part, in the :form !O!f suxplus The Pasternak affair is not the art is not pure. It assumes specific ternational demonstration against value, out of which he gets his first of its kind nor will it be the forms in its ·evolution. Nor is it capitalist exploitation. profit. This is what we mean when last. It is one of a series where an individual matte·r but a ·social Hence May Day is also known we say that workers under capital­ writers, composers, scientists, in a matter or product, part ·and parcel as the International Labor Day. It ism are e~ploited through the word, intellectuals h a v e been of human existence whkh it re­ is ·a day not only of celebrating wages system. !brought to heel, given a going-over flects. The individual artist does lalbor's victories won, but also of But it might 'be contended that for bourgeois tendencies or devia­ not create in a vacuum--Jbut out observing results, of mistakes and the modern wage-worker is "free" tions from the socialist path. In of the material at hand. It is no ·gains made, IOf renewing inspira- to quit his job and work for any­ such times of heated controversy accident that the ·ancient poets tion for future action. It has a one he chooses. There is no deny­ and differentiating opinions it is sung the praises of the emperors; revolutionary objective, the com- ing that he is "free" to do that. well to get down to the basic ques­ or that the painters in the days of plete overthrow of the capitalist However, he cannot quit the whole tion of the relation of art to society feudalism stressed the religious system by the organized might of class of lbtuyers of his labor power, in general and that of art to so­ theme; or that the heroes in the the working class, thereby ending the capitalists, unless he wants to ciali:sm in particular. 1 old operas were dukes and noble­ the exploitation of man by man renounce his own existence. As How free is ·art and the artist? men. That was the social environ­ throughout the world, and usher- the saying goes: a worker must What is the meaning of free cre­ ment in which they lived and were ing in the new classless society. find a job if he wants to eat. affected by. ativity or the stifling of it~ In It is ·a historical fact that cap- But as soon as a worker gets a referring to art here we indude Like philosophy, politics and italism has long outlived its use- job, that does not guarantee him its many forms of expression, lit­ morality, art is determined by the fulness and is ·already in its last real security. He can be discharged erature, music, painting, architec­ economic character of society or stages of decline. Already in one- from it any time his master, the ture., sculpture, etc. They are the its mode of production. Wherever third of •the world it has been capitalist, sees fit or decides that fine arts in contradistinction to the society has already developed swept by the revolutionary broom it is no longer profitable to employ industrial arts. We might call art class division, there art like the into the rubbish can of history. him. a language. The writer, poet, mu­ rest of the social superstructure In the ·remaining two-thirds of the In fact, that is what has recently sicians or painter each expresses takes on a class character. world, because it has only brought happened in the United States. The his thoughts thru a specific me­ misery and insecurity to the toil- present 4 to 5 million unemployed Under capitalism .the individual dium. To the extent that the artist ing masses, it is rotten ripe to be workers are those who had :been artist or writer may not even be is free., he is still limited and de­ overthrown. discharged from their jobs by the conscious of it, yet inadvertently pendent upon his surrounding en­ We see then, how history itself capitalists. That thishappeneddur­ he finds himself, thru training and vironment, of which he himself is has refuted that big lie of capital- ing the business recession only education, class contact and de­ a part; secondly by the materials ism, the contention ·by its pen pros- proves the fact that the capitalists pendence upon the upper class for and equipment he has to work titutes that it !brings about "the engage in business not to provide sale of his product, lin!ked to a with (since all art is subject to an greatest good for the greatest num- jobs ,for woll'kers but to profit defense of the existing order. The evolutionary and technological de­ her." The very opposite is the case. through exploiting them. alternative is failure and social velopment); and thirdly the sub­ It unpopularity. · creates extre~es of wealth and Even if the recent pick up of jective or intellectual_development poverty, enormous fortunes for •a business continues there wiH still of the individual artist, his under­ His product, an intellectual pro­ handful of greedy idle parasites, be millions of workers unemploy­ standing of man's relation to na­ duct, takes on the commodity the multimillionaires and billion- ed. It so- happens that the capital­ ture and to man himself. form, and brings in a price like aires who have monopolized the ists found it more profitable to Man is not only an individual economic products. Hence a writer means of production, and; at the replace these workers with rna- but a social product. He can live (Continued on page 2) same time, poverty and insecurity (Continued on page 2) z:.. ----------------------------------~P~R=O=L=E=T~~==IA=N~·~N~E~W~S---------------------------------M~a~y-1_9_59 MAY MY 1951 DR. ZIIVAGO, SOCIALISM AND ART · · ) f-ood, ·st.eel, ·and '(Contmued from page l ~.1! the steel work- (Continued from Page 1) bOurgeois indwidualism, or so- ers -bei.n.a'~'-'- denied.
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