 Perhaps the first thing that we should do here is to give an explanation. Why discuss art? I'm sure one or two people have thought this. Why discuss art? What relevance has art got to the revolutionary movement and to socialism? Do we need art? Is art necessary? And I must say that there's one thing that really makes me annoyed. It makes me very angry, as a matter of fact. Is this idea which seems to be floating around in some circles, unfortunately, that workers are not interested in culture, that the workers are not interested in art and philosophy and things like that. They're only interested in fighting for higher wages, better conditions, trade unionism. Class politics as it is incorrectly called. Bread and butter politics as they express it is often used. Now this so-called workerism, I have to tell you, is very far from any experience that I've had at the working class. And what it shows is actually a petty bourgeois contempt for the working class. That's what it shows. Something that makes me very indignant indeed. I'll be blunt about it because I feel strongly on this subject. Only a petty bourgeois snob from university circles with no experience of the working class could ever think something like that. Now of course we know that we don't idealise the working class. The working class is not a sacred cow. I'm personally very well aware of that. Of course there are different layers of the working class, which of course has been educated under conditions of slavery and capitalism, which tramples on the any creative spirit which exists in the population at large. Yes, there are some workers who are more backward, ignorant, reactionary even. Oh yes, that's true. And also the workers that are more advanced, different layers. Yes, but we do not adapt ourselves as revolutionists. We don't adapt ourselves, my friends, to the prejudices of the most backward elements of the class, to the lumpen proletariat, to use the accurate expression. I'll be, I'll call it spedish, but you know the working class has got a face and the working class has got an ass. We don't follow the ass of the working class. We base ourselves on the most conscious elements. You see, there's a problem isn't there? And I think this comes to the heart of it. I see this all the time in the university circles, in these smart asses, the so-called post-modernist crowd, you know. Insofar as they consider the working class at all, they regard it as just one other, among many others, who are oppressed, a sort of oppressed class. Poor things, poor devils. We should feel really sorry for them, shouldn't we? Well that's not how I see the proletariat. I don't see it like that at all. Marxists do not see the workers as the most oppressed people in society. We see the working class, let's be clear about this, as the only creative class in society. Oh yes, that class which creates all the wealth of society upon which everything else is based, culture, art, everything else is based. And there is, you better believe it, there is, among the working class there's a striving, I would say in almost everybody, everybody, from birth if you like, there is a spark of humanity, a spark of creativity, which is seeking an outlet. There's a thirst, actually. People who are ignorant of the workers don't know this. But it's a fact, I've seen it so many times. There's a spark there which is waiting to be ignited. You know, my friend John McNally, who gave a marvelous speech yesterday, I thought on trade unionism, he made a very important point. He made the point, and it's a fact, that in every strike, this is an amazing thing, in every strike there's always the elements of a revolution, you know that. A strike, oh yes, a strike is a microcosm of a revolution, all the processes are there. And in fact, in every strike you always say, I think John made this point, and he's quite right. You know that you thought we're backward, you thought workers would never respond, but never attended any meetings, never took any interest in politics, would never buy a paper from us and so on. Suddenly they become conscious, suddenly. Because a strike, it brings out in them the best. It brings out their humanity, their instinctive desire. For what? Not just for wage rises and so on. It's important, of course, to fight for. We fight for every possible improvement of the living standards of capitalism. Because without the day, let's be clear about it, without the day-to-day struggle for advance under capitalism, the socialists' revolution would be impossible. It's only through the experience of day-to-day struggle that the workers will look. Yeah, but it's more than that, you must understand. In the course of a strike, the workers cease to become slaves and become active, conscious human beings, conscious of their own dignity, their own importance, their own value, which is normally not seen. I've seen it myself, people can become transformed in the course of struggle itself. And the struggle for culture is part of the struggle for socialists' revolution. Oh, yes. We're not just fighting here for a crust of bread, the idea of bread and butter politics. That's reformist nonsense. We're fighting for something far more profound, a fundamental transformation of society at all levels, starting with culture. Yes, oh yes. And there is a striving for culture. You see this in every revolution. I wonder if I have time, I'll deal with this. How a revolution big, much more than a strike, of course. A revolution is a strike on a massive scale. And just look at the enormous uplift. Yes, a spiritual uplift. I'll give that expression. In any revolution, the French revolution is a case in point. It's got a very bad press, you know, terrible people, the Jackie Music killed people. They used the guillotine, so they did. Yes, they did. They made it a good job with the national razor, as they were called, to cleanse French society of this filth that existed. Reaction rubbish that existed, of course. They made it clean, sweet. But if the French revolution wasn't just dipping with blood and gore, it's something much more than that. And this was understood by the English poet. You know, this French revolution had a colossal effect internationally. Either the colossal effect on the intellectuals, or the writings of the artists, on the composers like Beethoven. Beethoven's symphony, look at the third set, the Eroica symphony. Or the Fifth Symphony, which I think is the French Revolution in music. I've got no doubt about it. Beethoven was quite clear. By the way, it's the anniversary of Beethoven. What a disgraceful misrepresentation of the greatest composer, I think, along with Bach of all times. And all these imbeciles, these clever intellectual imbeciles, who I despise from the bottom of my heart, these so-called intellectual ignorant imbeciles, all they had to say about Beethoven, this great revolutionary, a revolutionary in music and in politics, by the way. But they have nothing whatsoever to say. Is that he was deft? Did you know that? You didn't know Beethoven was deft? What a discovery. And that he was very unhappy in his love life. That's the end of it. A series on the British television, and that's all they had to say about poor Beethoven. They didn't mention the fact that here was a man that stood for the French Revolution. From the bottom of his heart to the end of his life, the Ninth Symphony was an indication of that. But that's another question. I don't want to go into details. To go back to England. What an impact it had on the English writers, the poets. Particularly Robert Burns, my favorite of all. A genuine revolutionary, by the way. All his life. But also Shelley, who Marx greatly admired. Byland, to a large extent. And Wordsworth in his... And Kolaris, but Wordsworth in his earlier days. He wrote this marvelous poem called The Prelude. And he was in France at the time. And he wrote The Immortal Lines. Which every comic should think about. Which really expresses what a revolution is. You know. I mean, I was in Russia to digress for a moment. I studied Russian in university. Russian Philology, Language and Literature. And it appears the thesis. I was in Moscow in 1970. That was under the Stalinist regime and the Brezhnev. And I chanced to meet an old woman. An old lady, she was very old. She'd been... During the revolution, she'd been to her school teacher, I think, on the Volga. And this poor old woman, she was bowed down with a life of suffering. She spent 14 years in the Stalinist concentration camp. 14 years, imagine. She wouldn't speak about that. Didn't want to speak about it. But one day I asked her, I can't remember her name. I said, what did you think about the Russian revolution? And, you know, I'll never forget this. This woman's face full of suffering and the lines of suffering. Her eyes lit up. They lit up. And she said in Russian, you can't imagine what this was like. You've got no conception of what it was like. She said, It's difficult to translate that into English. It means an uplift. A spiritual uplift. That's what a revolution is, my friends. A spiritual uplift of the people. You know, workers crowded into the Bolshoi theater to listen to operas, which they never had a chance to do. Workers break, soldiers in their great coats. You can see pictures of this. That's what a revolution is about. Not just about the crust of bread. And words worth to go back to what I was saying. So wonderfully, beautifully in his poem, The Prelude, he wrote the following. Blist was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heavy. What a wonderful way of expressing the impact of the uplift of the revolution, the spiritual uplift that it, and the effect that it had on all thinking people everywhere. Oh yes, the working class, I've got that spark. There, seeking an outlet, you could get a belief that striving is there, of course. I speak from my own background. I happen to come from a very poor working class in South Wales. My grandfather, George, was, he was a steelworker, a template worker, and a communist, a lifelong communist. And in my house, I can tell you, there was always classical music. Italian opera in the Benyamino Gilly was regarded, the Italian tenor was regarded as God. And the house was full of books. I've still got some of them behind me on the shelf. My grandfather had the origin of species by Charles Darwin and anti-during by Frederick Engels and so on. So don't tell me please that workers are not capable of acquiring culture because they are. I'll tell you something bluntly. For my sins, I spent seven or eight years in an elite university, Sussex University in those days in the 60s. It was only just to open that it was more difficult to go to Sussex than to go to Oxford and Cambridge, I'm telling you. There were only 300 students there. We had one-to-one tuition, you know. And you see this, these are surrounded by these so-called intellectuals. When I became a post-graduate, I had privileges. I had the right to eat in a canteen. Special care. Oh yeah, there weren't supposed to be any such things here. This was not generally known. We were all supposed to be equal, you see, these progressive liberal types, all equal. We're all the same, yeah, sure. So the staff had a special canteen, very nice, clean, tidy, weightless service. We served you at the table. The food was much better quality than downstairs in the student canteen. And cheaper, yeah. So I thought, well, this can't be bad. I'll give it a try. I think I went there twice. And then I went down to eat with the students again. Why, not because of any particular moral scruples or egalitarianism. No, because I could not stand the trivial conversations of the tables surrounding me by these so-called intellectuals. No, no, no, my friends, no. Talk to me about intellectuals and academics is the sore point. And I'll tell you that something else. I don't idealize the word for this. I will tell you this. In the course of my life, I'll be talking about what half a sensory of political activism is more than that. 60 years, I think. I've been active in this movement. And I'll tell you, I have found more genuine culture. Seriously, I found more genuine culture, genuine culture among workers, active workers in particular than I ever found seven years in the so-called elite university. But we'll leave that subject to one side. Let's go back to the opening question, which remains unanswered. Why should we take an interest in culture? What days are today? What days are today, Jack? Remind me. Oh, it's Sunday, isn't it? The Lord's Day. And as comrades who know me know, I like to quote the Bible, you know. And you know what the Bible says? It says many beautiful things, many wise things. The Bible says, Man shall not live by bread alone. Ah, yes. Man shall not live by bread alone. Can you imagine a world without art, without music, without colour, without poetry? Can you imagine such a world? I think such a world will be very difficult to tolerate. A grey world, emptied of all genuine human content. That's what you're talking about. That's, of course, what the accused us of, you know. The enemies of socialism are sure. And the socialism will all go around in blue boiler suits and, I don't know, listen to military marches or something like that. No, no, no, no, no. No, art is important, you know. It is important. Even now, many people, many ordinary people, working-class people if you like, are quite passionate about music. I won't say what sort of music. Or the cinema, you know, they go to the films, or even the stuff they put on television, the dramas and things like EastEnders and so on. Yeah, all right, fair enough. It is bad art. It's bad art. But it is art of a sort, isn't it? It is art of a sort. Can you guess what you're talking about? Nonetheless. And without these things, by the way, without these things, the life of most people, most workers' life is boring, tedious, monotonous, dreary, hard work. The amount of hours that they spend in work is so many hours out of their life. So much time wasted as far as the human content is concerned. And without these things, without the prospect of something greater than that, something more than that, life would be quite intolerable, as a matter of fact. And Trotsky, paraphrasing the Bible, wrote an article, a wonderful article. I think you find it in a collection, a marvellous collection which you should read, called Problems of Everyday Life, where he writes about the workers in the early days of the Soviet Union, a marvellous work. There's an article, the title is very striking. Not by politics alone. That's the title that Trotsky put. You know, I sometimes think that some of our commerce, at least perhaps many of them, are too narrow. I have that impression sometimes, unfortunately, that we don't take sufficient interest in culture, art and things like this. This is wrong. This is wrong. And theory, if it comes to that, people talking about theory being abstract and so on, let me tell you, unless you have a grasp of abstract thought and abstract thing, you'll never get past the first chapter of capital. I'll tell you that. Free of charge. And the great Marxists, by the way, these great people, they were cultivated men and women. Marx and Engels actually wrote a lot about art and literature. It's not generally a realises of fact. There's a whole volume you can pick up, I don't know, you might still be in print. Marx and Engels on literature and art, I recommend it. Lenin also, his writings are full of references, particularly to the great Russian writers. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorgol and so on and so forth. Sartikov, Shedrin and so on. And Trotsky, of course, wrote a great deal of marvellous penetrating stuff about art, both before and during and after the revolution. You know, it's not an action. People who think that art is not important and what role can it play in the revolution. Look, why did Trotsky in 1939, what, 38? Was it 38? I beg your pardon, it was 38. He wrote a manifesto, actually, on revolutionary art, together with the French surrealist poet, André Breton. Earlier than that, he collaborated with Dégory Riviera, the great Mexican painter. Oh, no, he certainly thought that art was worthwhile. But let's go back to my earlier question, which is a bit more profound than that. Is art necessary? You know, some things in life are necessary. To stay alive, food is necessary. Clothes are necessary. A roof of your head is necessary. But is art necessary? Now, there's a great book again which I recommend to you, written by the Austrian Marxist, Ernst Fischer. I think we've written about 1950 thereabouts, I'm not sure. And the title of this book is The Necessity of Art. Now, that's a provocative thought, isn't it? I mean, art, after all, you may like it, you may dislike it, but is it necessary? Look, you've got art today in people's houses that are painted. It's a painting on the wall, probably in your house, or your mother's house, father's house. The painting on the wall has been there for years. Yeah, you never look at it. It's there as an adornment, as an ornament. That's certainly not necessary, is it? And yet, and yet, you see, there is something in art which is clearly inherent and necessary to our nature as human beings. You know, it's not an accident that art existed. It coexists with the origins of the human species of homo sapiens, sapiens. Oh, yes. Many thousands of years ago, in the cave art of Altamira and what's it? Blascoe and so on and so forth. Fantastic paintings, which in some respects, I think, in some respects have never been, as depictions of animals, have never been improved upon. Now, the interesting thing is this. Where is this art to be found? Okay. By the way, it's probably not true that our ancestors lived in caves. That's probably not true. They might have spent some time in caves, too. But as far as they did dwell in caves, it would have been in the outer part of the cave, where there was light and air and so on. Yeah, but those works of art are not to be found. They never to be found in those accessible places. On the contrary. Those paintings are to be found only in the deepest, darkest and most inaccessible parts of the cave. So whatever the function of this cave art was, and there could be some discussion about that, it certainly was not a mere adornment like the painting on the wall which I mentioned earlier. It's certainly not that. No, it was something important to these societies. It was necessary. Just imagine the scene, brother. Imagine the scene. Use your imagination for a moment. A man or a woman, we don't know. What could have been a woman? Crawling on their belly in spaces, barely big enough for them to crawl through in complete and utter darkness, lit only by the flickering light of a primitive lamp of animal fat. And with this, under these conditions, they painted the most marvellous works of art. Yes, and what's the content of this art? By the way, I think that picture is quite symbolic, perhaps of our whole existence, our whole history, isn't it? The struggle of humanity from darkness to light. That's a very interesting idea. And that really is what the revolution is all about. But what is the content of this early art? Now, here's an interesting point. I tell you what's not in it. No flowers, no trees, although there were plenty of flowers and trees around. No flowers, no trees. No vegetation of any sort. No human beings either. Well, insofar as there are, occasionally, the human figures do appear, but they're like matchsticks men. They're very poorly, poorly represented. Although these painters were quite capable of presenting forms, physical forms, quite accurately. Animals is the content. The sole content of this art is animals. And these animals are depicted very precisely. That's why showing a precise knowledge of anatomy, as a matter of fact. And I think as depictions of animals, I don't think they've ever been improved, and it's my personal opinion. And these are not any animals. It's not by choice. These are animals that were hunted. And we're talking here about hunter-gathering societies. It's not an accident. It's not all animals that are hunted, by the way. But usually they're animals that are big and powerful and strong and difficult to hunt. Bisons, mammoths, and so on and so forth. And of course this art was clearly connected to religion. Clearly connected with early religion. And rituals, which I have no doubt, whatever, were connected in some way, maybe indirectly, but in some way connected at controlling these animals and giving us human beings power over them. That was the idea. It may be an oversimplification. There's no question. That used to be drawn on that. But I do insist that there can be no question at all that the depiction of hunted animals with arrows and spears in them, it cannot be, that's to do with the hunting activity of these tribes. And these rituals, the rituals surrounding these ideas would be an important part of society. This was social art, by the way. Art that meant something to every man and woman, belonging to the whole of society. That's how art begins. And then, of course, 10,000 years ago, we have perhaps the most important revolution in the whole of human history. I'm referring to the Neolithic Revolution. About 10,000, 12,000 years ago. The greatest revolution, the transition from the early communism of the classless society of the early hunting gathering society to a settled agricultural way of life. And this was accompanied, of course, in the development of private property. Private property, land, and so on. A sharp division of society between rich and poor. And a corresponding revolution in art and religion. The state rises above society. The state dealt with this very well in his famous book about the origin of the family and private property. The state rises above society. At its apex, you've got the god-king or pharaoh, whatever you care to call it, who went to and is surrounded by a privileged caste of priests and state officials in charge of public works. And here you see a transformation of art and the emergence of a new kind of art, unlike anything that was seen before. Monumental art. Huge pyramids, palaces, temples, and statues of the gods. In other words, let's be clear about it. Here for the first time, art becomes the private property of the ruling class. And the masses, the great majority of humanity, are shut out, alienated, shut out of culture altogether. This art, of course this new art, is an art with a message. The message is quite clear from the surviving samples of this art. If you live in London, as I do, you take a trip to the British Museum, to the Central Gallery downstairs. The Egyptian Gallery, of course, upstairs. But downstairs, the Central Gallery, there's the remnants of a huge study of a pharaoh. I've forgotten which one it was. Doesn't matter. The arm alone is bigger, considerably bigger than the height of a man. Well, this pharaoh's long dead. He can't speak to us. And yet he still speaks to us. This man still speaks to us. The language of this study was clearly understood. I am big, you are small. I am powerful, you are weak. I am the pharaoh, the king of king, and lord of lords and so on and so forth. It's only one of the characteristics of this art. It's not 100% correct, but one of the main characteristics is its conservatism. With slight variations, this type of art remains fairly constant for thousands of years. And that's not an accident, because art is now the servant of religion. And religion is the servant of the state. And religious conventions determine the contents of art. The priests determine what can and cannot be depicted. It's true that there are flashes, occasional flashes of realistic portrayal of men and women. That's not the main picture. No, the big change comes with Greek art. I'm skipping a lot of stages. I can't deal with the entire history of art in half an hour, of course. For the first time we feel at home with this Greek art, because it shows the human figure in a realistic way. Fairly, not quite realistic, because it's idealized. But nevertheless, these are recognizable human beings, half animals as they were in Egyptian art. Recognizable, marvelous descriptions, beautiful descriptions of the human body of men and women. These depictions, of course, were wiped out, were eliminated in the Middle Ages, after the barbarians overthrew the Roman Empire. And culture was thrown back for a thousand years. I know that's not a fascinating word to say, but it's true nonetheless. The postmodernists say, the postmodernists try to tell us that there's no such thing as progress in history. Well, I beg to differ. I think there's a little bit of progress between the world of microbes millions of years ago and the world of Albert Einstein and Karl Marx, but that way this is my humble opinion. Yeah, they try to say that there's no such thing as progress, and no such thing as retrogression either. But there is retrogression, for goodness sake. It's true that the slave society of Greece, and let's remember that the culture of Greece and Rome, that it's wonderful philosophy, art, science, architecture, and so on, all this ultimately depended on the labor of the slaves. Let's not forget that, you know. And Aristotle, by the way, great philosopher, great, wonderful, wonderful mind. He actually wrote in his metaphysics a very important point. He said the following. Man begins to philosophize. My men, because they didn't consider women in those. He doesn't mind. He means the human race. Man begins to philosophize when the necessities of life are provided. And he goes on. Consequently, mathematics and astronomy were discovered in Egypt because the priests did not have to work. That puts it in a nutshell. That puts historical materialism in a nutshell, doesn't it? That's a fact. But anyway, let's go back to, we come back to that statement where Aristotle perhaps had been later on. But with the collapse of the Roman Empire, the slave society entered into its contradiction. It failed. For reasons I haven't got time to explain. The barbarians overran the Roman Empire, in the final push. It was already in the point of collapse anyway. And yes, human civilization was thrown back a thousand years. And these clowns, these post-modernists tried to deny that. They said, oh no, all cultures are the same basically. The barbarian culture was just as much as the Roman culture. Really, really tell that to the cats. Tell that to some fool who would believe it. You know, 1,000 years after the collapse of Rome, the only decent roads in Europe, roads I think is a fairly basic indication of culture, were Roman roads. There we are. The culture was forgotten, collapsed. And culture and art was controlled by the dictatorship of the Roman Catholic Church under feudalism. These beautiful pictures of the human body, for example, they were banned, they were prohibited, oh no, no. Because sex is a bad thing, you see. I don't know how the human race is supposed to survive if there goes sex, but there we are. That was the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, which held back culture for a thousand years. Even in the Renaissance, you get pictures with naked statues which were rediscovered then were covered up, private parts were covered up with fig leaves and nonsense and that sort. Because the human form and the human being was regarded as something sinful. Oh yes, yes. And these criminal ideas, they still persist, even in the present day is about the fact. The slavery of the human race, the suppression of all that is decent and genuinely human. I've got no time to deal with the Reformation, whether it was again. That was the bourgeois revolution. Oh yes, the Reformation paved the way for the bourgeois revolution. Of course that in turn had effects on art. Art was transformed. For the first time, for example, if you notice this, you probably didn't think about it. For the first time, you got portraits of realistic portraits of men and women. It wasn't the case before. They had to be religious and they had to be stylized and so on. No, no, no. Look at the wonderful paintings of remedies. Again, you'll find them in the National Gallery, some of them. Self-portraits as a young man and as an old man, they really are profoundly moving. You see here the development of old age and so on, suffering etched in his face and so on. There are other things I haven't got time to deal with this. Of course, the type of society is reflected in art. It's reflected in the classicism, for example, in France at the time of before the first revolution, where everything was rigid and dramas had to take place in one place for 24 hours and so on and so on. It's reflected even in the art of gardening. Yes, gardening also is the kind of art, isn't it? This is the Versailles of Louis XIV and the famous gardens. What do you notice about these gardens of Versailles? Geometrical, straight lines all over the... As if nature could be subjected to the absolute rule of the monarch. He decides everything. Even nature must be in a straight line, must be orderly, must be controlled and so on. All of this, of course, was swept away by the French Revolution, which I've mentioned, which was a great emancipatory... Despite what they say, the nonsense that they say, the slanders which they still say against the French Revolution, it was a colossal human emancipation which had effects throughout Europe. Now, I have to cut this short for lack of time, but in our own times, I would say the last century or so, we've got the Russian Revolution, which again, as this woman once told me, was a great emancipation. And contrary to what they say, the Russian Revolution, again was greeted and was welcomed by the great bulk of the progressive intelligentsia, the intellectuals and so on. Writers like Maloch, the symbolist, Mayakovsky, who joined the Bolshevik Party, known as the drummer boy of the Revolution, Yersenian and other people, artists like Larionov, directors like Mayor Holt, who was murdered by Stalin, Sastukovic, who I consider Dimitri Sastukovic, it's a product of the revolution that I consider to be the greatest composer of the 20th century and so on and so forth. This was an enormous flowering of culture, at least for the first 10 years after the Revolution, until, in turn, it was crushed, brutally crushed by the Stalinist counter-revolution. And, of course, let's be clear about it. Totalitarianism has got nothing to do with revolution and Bolshevism. And totalitarianism and dictatorship is the death of art. Art, in order to thrive and flourish, must be free, genuinely free. Without that, it's no good. The so-called socialist realism which was imposed by Stalin and the bureaucracy, it reduced art really, most of it, reduced the art of the trivial level of the kind of paintings you see in chocolate boxes in supermarkets, you know, this is the trivial, typical of the mentality, the Philistine mentality of the bureaucracy. But you see, art still plays, plays, can play a role in revolution. It did. It got the wonderful posters of the constructivist posters published at the time of the revolution by people like Mayakovsky, precisely. Well, let's take the Spanish Revolution. And here again, you see how pernicious and false it is to say that the masses, that the workers are not interested in art. You take a man for example, a great poet called Miguel Hernández probably never heard of him, a great, I think one of the two greatest Spanish poets, along with Federica Lorca, Lorca was murdered by the fascists in 1936. Miguel Hernández was again murdered by Franco and allowed to die anyway in the prison cell after the Franco victory. Miguel Hernández started life as a shepherd, a dirt-poor peasant, and he discovered that he had this spark within him to write, to express his soul, his innermost soul expressed in poetry, which he did, writing the most fantastic book, and I'll tell you what. Miguel Hernández, who supported the revolution 100%, visited the front line, went to the trenches, and the workers and soldiers and militiamen listened spellbound as they did to Mayakovsky in Russia to this wonderful poetry from this wonderful man who was murdered by the Spanish reaction. And while we're on the subject of Spain, I mentioned probably the greatest artist of the 20th century, probably Picasso. Yes, you've heard of Picasso, no doubt. Yes, of course you have. Did you know that Picasso was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party? Perhaps you didn't know that. Oh, yes. And he produced perhaps the greatest painting of the 20th century, Guernica. In 1937, the German and Italian fascists bombed a small village in which it's very important for the Basque people, the village of Guernica, destroyed it in a barbarism and remarketed slaughtering men, women, and children. And Picasso was so incensed by this act of barbarism that he went and painted a vast painting, a vast painting. It's huge. If you haven't seen it, you've seen reproduction. That's no good. Go and see the original in Madrid. And it causes, I'll tell you, it will transform you. You see this painting, it impacts you in black and white. It shows the reality of the barbarism of war. You know, a woman holding a dead baby in her hands with a howl, you can't hear it, but you can't hear it. This is a painting that screams at you, although it's mute. It screams at you, the horror of the situation after all these years. Dead bodies stewing on the floor, mangled bits and pieces of cadavers and so on. Warriors with broken swords, a horse which has been penetrated by a lance and a bull, a raging bull representing fascism. A light, that's the most, a light which flashes. This must be the effect when incendiary bombs are dropped. There's a flash of light and so on. Bringing death from above. Here is a remarkable painting and a remarkable document. Now, here's a question for you. Can great art be propaganda? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so because for one reason, art must have its own reason to exist. Okay? Art must express what is within the painter or the poet or the musician without any external pressure or instructions or orders or control, whether that's from the Roman Catholic Church or from the Roman Empire or from a fascist or Stalinist dictatorship or from a political party or from myself or anybody else. Nobody said tell an artist what to produce. It must come from within themselves. In the case of Picasso, yes, he was a member of the Communist Party but that wasn't the reason why he did this painting. Nobody told him to do this painting. It was not a cheap piece of propaganda. No, no, it came straight from the soul and expressed an indignation and a rage against the terrible injustice that exists. By the way, he actually said, I quote, I am a Communist and my party is the Communist Party. That's the exact words that he said. Now, I've got to draw on my remarks because comparing that and there are other things I've mentioned. My favorite artist of all times is the Frank is Goya, a Spanish, wonderful Spanish artist who again, we go to the Prado and he says, it's really wonderful. It's stunning and it's far, far in advance of his age. He's a man that lived through the horrors of the Napoleonic period, the wars and some of the terrible atrocities. And he wrote a series of etchings called The Disasters of War. I think that the Gerdnik comes from that origin. And his dark paintings, the early paintings of his life are full of sunshine and happy men and women and join themselves with guitars and festivals and so on. Here you have a dark period. His last paintings, the black period, he painted them on the walls of a house. I don't think he ever meant them to be seen by anybody. It's full of monsters and terrible suffering and the inquisition. Reaction, that's it. Reaction in a nutshell. Yeah, this is genuine art and it's art. Nobody is imposed this. It's not cheap propaganda at all. It's how a human being, like Beethoven's music also, it reflects his inner reaction of his soul, of his mind and heart and soul to the sufferings of humanity and what is art if it is not connected to the sufferings of humanity, I ask. How can an artist cut the idea, oh, art for art's sake, what are you talking about? What a meaningless expression, art for art's sake. It's like saying carpentry for carpentry, say, well, bricklaying for bricklaying is nonsense. Art must be for something. And artists don't paint for themselves, actually, they paint. And they must relate themselves to society to what is occurring. That's a clear fact. And what do we have now? What do we have now? Look at the degeneration of capital. Just look at it. Just look at it. At the lamentable spectacle of art and music and culture today. I don't care what anybody says. I know there's different opinions. There's, I got my own opinions. So I will defend those opinions. I'll state them bluntly. Art today is in a complete blind alley. Because the capitalist system is in a blind alley. That's a fact, a simple fact of them. Look at this wonderful painting that Picasso did. In the last few years, you've had terrible, brutal wars in Syria and so on. It's all terrible sufferings. Or the Congo, where 5 million people, men, women and children, were brutally slaughtered in those terrible manner. Where is the equivalent of Gaia's disastrous of war? Oh, Picasso's getting where is it? Instead of that, do you know what we have? I'll tell you what we have. An unmade bed. That's what we have in Britain. So-called Britart. Or a shark in formaldehyde. Now, I know what the message of Pablo Picasso's gadget is. What's the message of a shark in formaldehyde? I'll tell you what it is. It's a shark in formaldehyde. Okay. And it costs a lot of money, of course. These guys are making a packet. Out of this trivial art, it is trivial, my friends. And actually, I must say, I've got much time for art critics, but the most trenchant example of art criticism, I've ever come across in my life, was a few years back. There was a female Japanese artist, I can't remember her name. And she produced a wonderful work of art. It consisted of ash trays overflowing with cigarette ends and ash. And it was in the tate, the tate. I don't really have the modern in those things. Before the tate, modern was built. It was in the tate. And the cleaning lady came across it in the morning and she cleaned it up with the brush and pan. I think the Japanese artist was not very happy about it, but personally, I was highly amused. And what I'm saying to you is this, frankly, modern art today is in a hell of a state. It's just an impasse. Which is not to say that there aren't many talented young artists out there that could make a difference. Yes, but they're not allowed, are they? They don't have access to the necessary funds, art galleries or musical studios or recording studios and so on and so forth. They don't have this. Those that are in the hands of the big monopolies. And art has become big business. Poor Van Gogh, another great artist who I greatly admire. I don't think he ever sold a painting in his life. I think he sold one that was to his brother. That doesn't really count. He never sold a painting. And now they sell for millions and millions and much. And the other thing is this. They're sold to anonymous buyers. What happens to these great works of art when they purchase the millions and millions of pounds and dollars? Are they put on public display? No, they're lost. They're lost to the human race, which should have access to them. They're locked up in a bank vault for God's sake, as an investment, as a profitable investment. And this is that detail in and of itself tells you in the fact that the capitalist system itself is profoundly hostile to art. And that therefore art itself must be or to be profoundly hostile of the capitalist system. In other words, what I'm saying to you is that art itself must be revolutionary. And I would appeal. I don't know whether there are any artists in the school this weekend. I hope so. People that are in contact with artists will somehow get this message. But I appeal to you, you know, my friends and comrades, if you want to make art meaningful and give it a genuine meaning, then you must really consider the plight of the human race, the society in which you live, the terrible injustice. Are you really going to stand apart from that? Are you really going to say that your art cannot have any effect or mustn't represent this? If so, I must say to you that you and I will part company. Because no matter how skillful you are, I'll tell you, no, your art will be meaningless art. Trivial art. Art that has nothing to say to humanity with great art must do, has done in the past, will do in the future. I won't have anything else to say, except to say this, that the purpose of socialism, of course it is, it begins with the need to provide everyone with a job and a house and so on and so forth. Of course, those are the immediate aims. But that is not the essential aim of the social revolution. It is not. That's only the beginnings. It's only the foundations of the house. It's not the house itself. That socialism by freeing human beings from the humiliating dependence upon material things, the humiliating search after a job or the need to exist or food or whatever. Once we go back to what Aristotle says, man begins with humankind. Let's say humankind begins to philosophize when the needs of life are supplied and therefore it is sources for the first time we'll provide, first time in 10,000 years, we'll bridge that gap, down this Chinese war that alienates art and culture from the great mass of humanity. It will open the door of culture to the broad masses and therefore will revolutionize art itself and of course the masses also will produce great painters and writers and Rembrandts and Einstein and Marxists in the future and therefore opening the way to the development of culture on a far higher level than has ever been seen. As Trotsky put it, it will put communism will put all the great achievements of the past in the deepest possible shade and a new era of human civilization will genuinely begin.