The logical conclusion to Priestley's argument concerning cultural democracy is the establishment of an elite who will select the cultural fare of the mass of the people—a course which was followed assiduously by Herr Goebbels and his more shadowy prompters. Por despite that of repeated Nazi remark—"when I hear the word culture I cock my revolver"—we must realise, clearly and finally, that there was a Fascist culture. That features of this culture were anti-Semitism and the barbarous experimentation of the concentration-camps merely helps us to an explanation of the basis of culture.

The Basis of Culture.

Let us go back to the beginning. Man is a tool-using animal: in other words, the basic condition of human existence was labour. The development of labour meant a closer drawing-together of men into society, which required the growth of means of communication. Language, music and the dance arose from the necessity for intercourse between men as a result of the problems posed by the growth of the labour-process. The solutions primitive men evolved to these problems are the primary basis of human culture.

With the development, of class society, and the resultant division of labour—which became final with the separation of the mental and the manual worker—the idea was naturally born that culture had no basis in the real world, but a separate and private existence of its own. The curious situation thus arose that men's ideas, while fundamentally dependent on the activity of men and shaped by it, were regarded as independent modes.

This meant that whatever class was dominant at a given stage of society was almost fatally moved to perpetuate this illusion. The spreading of a culture based in the working people would mean reversal of the established culture; and, provided the economic and other relations of men were so tending, the overthrow of the dominance of that class. The philosophy of Plato is inseparable from the existence of the leisured classes of slave society. Protestantism is essentially an aspect of the rise of the bourgeoisie. Marxism arose as the expression of the bitter experience of the working-class.

Priestley's division between "political democracy" and "cultural democracy" is therefore unreal. Men's political ideas, just as their philosophies, legal systems, religions and arts, are all the products of human activity, all an inseparable unity expressing the social relations of men. The "common man"—be he farmhand, labourer or factory-worker—has not the opportunity to enjoy that culture which attracts the delicate fancy of Mr. Priestley. Our "political democracy" leaves him free to do so, of course, just as he is "free" to smoke the same cigars as Mr. Churchill or buy a Rolls-Royce.

There can be no culture of, by or for the people until there is democracy of, by and for the people. Priestley's political democracy is bourgeois political democracy: his cultural democracy is bourgeois cultural democracy. Considerable work has been done—in New Zealand via the WEA and Community Centres—in "taking culture to the people," but this process has precisely the limitations mentioned above. Too much free discussion leads to too many opinions at variance with the ruling norms. In Hollywood films, Mr. Priestley says, "it is far more important to write a successful dance tune than to compose a symphony." Yes, it is more important, for the American ruling class, that Americans write shoddy dance tunes rather than revolutionary Ninth Symphonies. And remember that these same shoddy dance-tunes are the bourgeois prostitution of revolutionary negro jazz.

Socialist Realism

During the whole history of class society the predominant cultures have been largely alienated from the people. But in times of revolution, when other classes have called on them as allies, the influence of the people on culture has been most marked. Without the support given the rising bourgeoisie by the mass of English labouring men, there would have been no Shakespeare, no Milton, to star our cultural history. And if, today, Shakespeare and the people are far apart, we may thank Shakespeare's bourgeois students, who have removed his work from its basis in the life of men, and spirited away its revolutionary content.

In wishing to remove the influence of the people from culture, Priestley necessarily removes the basis of culture. Apart from the growing trends towards socialist realism in the bourgeois world, the only country where culture is truly of the people is the Soviet Union—and it is not Soviet musicians who write the dance-tunes to which Mr. Priestley objects.

Nor does the Soviet citizen recognise any fundamental difference between culture, science and politics. Culture is not an art and literature created by specially-gifted individuals, but the inherited experience of mankind in its struggle with nature and the real world, an experience modified and developed in the course of history at a guide to action and a joy in action.