The number of artistes joining the struggle led by the Socialist Party is increasing ceaselessly.

We have musicians, singers, dancers, actors and actresses, sculptors, painters and so on and so forth being selected as local government and parliamentary candidates in various parts of our country to stand on the Socialist Party. This is very pleasing.

In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Peasant and working class, poor people’s literature and art are part of the whole struggle of the humble by the humble for the humble; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front.

All our literature and art are for the masses of the people, and in the first place for the workers, peasants, police officers and soldiers; they are created for them and are for their use.

Our literary and art workers must accomplish this task and shift their stand; they must gradually move their feet over to the side of the workers and peasants through the process of going into their very midst and into the thick of practical struggles. Only in this way can we have a literature and art that are truly for the workers and peasants, a truly poor people’s literature and art.

Our duty is to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the exploiters, and that they help the people fight the exploiters with one heart and one mind.

In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic. There is the political criterion and there is the artistic criterion; what is the relationship between the two? Politics cannot be equated with art, nor can a general world outlook be equated with a method of artistic creation and criticism. We deny not only that there is an abstract and absolutely unchangeable political criterion, but also that there is an abstract and absolutely unchangeable artistic criterion; each class in every class society has its own political and artistic criteria. But all classes in all class societies invariably put the political criterion first and the artistic criterion second. What we demand is the unity of politics and art, the unity of content and form, the unity of revolutionary political content and the highest possible perfection of artistic form. Works of art, which lack artistic quality, have no force, however progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose both works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and the tendency towards the poster and slogan style which is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic power. On questions of literature and art we must carry on a struggle on two fronts.

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend should be the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and a flourishing socialist culture in our country. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts should be settled through free discussion in artistic circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.

It is said that an army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.

Fred M’membe

February 13, 2021.