By Sitaram Yechury
(The following is the text of the speech delivered by
Sitaram Yechury, Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M) in Kolkata on August 16,
2012 on the occasion of Golden Jubilee of Deshhitaishee.)
REVOLUTIONARY congratulations to the West Bengal state
committee of the CPI(M) for successfully completing fifty years of publication
of the Party weekly Deshhitaishee. This
golden jubilee has come facing many trials and tribulations imposed by evolving
contemporary political developments that had demanded many a sacrifice of life
and limb of thousands of our comrades.
Revolutionary red salute to our martyrs.
It is, indeed, a matter of immense satisfaction that we are today
commemorating this golden jubilee.
I
The importance of the Party paper can never be
undervalued. Vladimir Lenin who provided
leadership for ushering in humanity’s transition from capitalism to socialism
had in 1901 said in “Where to begin?”: “In our opinion, the starting-point of
our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or,
let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to
develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an
All-Russian political newspaper. A newspaper is what we most of all need;
without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and
agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of
Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment
… Never has the need been felt so acutely as today for reinforcing dispersed
agitation in the form of individual action, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by
means of generalised and systematic agitation that can only be conducted with
the aid of the periodical press… Without such a newspaper we cannot possibly
fulfill our task – that of concentrating all the elements of political
discontent and protest, of vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the
proletariat.”
Further he says: “The role of a newspaper, however, is
not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and
to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective
propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser.”
Later in “What is to be done?”, Lenin says: “This
newspaper would become part of an enormous pair of smith’s bellows that would
fan every spark of the class struggle and of popular indignation into a general
conflagration. Around what is in itself still a very innocuous and very small,
but regular and common, effort, in the full sense of the word, a regular army
of tried fighters would systematically gather and receive their training.”
II
Many, however, say that the civilisational advances of
the 20th century, particularly the scientific and technological advances, have
so completely transformed the situation that instantaneous communication is
today possible in a manner that would be incomprehensible at the beginning of
the 20th century. The emergence of radio
and television with the latest invasion of cyberspace and cell phones, some
argue, has rendered the newspaper as an obsolete means of communication. Therefore, they would ask if there is any
point in recollecting Lenin’s views on the Party newspaper.
Notwithstanding these advances, the importance of the
Party newspapers does not merely remain but has grown multifold to meet the
current challenges. In every age and time, the ruling classes have always
consolidated their class rule by exercising an ideological hegemony over
contemporary society. As Marx and Engels
said, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch, the ruling ideas:
i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same
time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material
production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental
production so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production
are on the whole subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the
ideal expression of the dominant material relations; dominant material
relations, grasped as ideas: hence of the relations which made the one class
the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals
composing the ruling class possess among other things, consciousness and
therefore think. In so far therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the
extent and compass of an historical epoch, it is self-evident that they do this
in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as
producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas
of their age; thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.” (German
Ideology, Moscow 1976, p. 67 emphasis added.)
It is this hegemony of the `ideas' of ruling classes
that as Gramsci explains is not enforced merely by the State. The State is only
the "outer ditch" behind which stands a powerful system of
"fortresses and earth works", a network of cultural institutions and
values which buttress the rule and domination of the ruling classes.
Under capitalism, while culture as an ideological
formation bolsters the rule of capital, the forms of culture go through a
process of commodification, as everything else in society. Much has been written
about this process and needs no repetition. The cultural products of capitalism
are aimed at achieving social control rather than expressions of social
creativity. The exchange value of these products always supersede their use
value. This, of course, does not hold for those cultural products that emerge
from dissent and opposition to capitalism...The cultural hegemony that such a
globalisation process seeks is expressed in the need to create a homogenisation
of public taste. The more homogenous the taste the easier it is to develop
technologies for the mechanical reproduction of `cultural products' for large
masses. Commercialisation of culture is a natural corollary of such
globalisation.
Viewed in terms of class hegemony, the culture of
globalisation seeks to divorce people from their actual realities of day to day
life. Culture here acts not as an appeal to the aesthetic, but as a
distraction, diversion from pressing problems of poverty and misery.
Consequently, it seeks to disrupt the energy of the people and their struggle
to change and improve their miserable existence. As Michael Parenti says,
"A far greater part of our culture is now aptly designated as "mass
culture", "popular culture", and even "media culture",
owned and operated mostly by giant corporations whose major concur is to
accumulate wealth and make the world safe for their owners, the goal being
exchange value rather than use value, social control rather than social
creativity. Much of mass culture is organised to distract us from thinking too
much about larger realities. The fluff and puffery of entertainment culture
crowds out more urgent and nourishing things. By constantly appealing to the
lowest common denominator, a sensationalist popular culture lowers the common
denominator still further (media page 3 culture). Public tastes become still
more attuned to cultural junk food, the big hype, the trashy, flashy, wildly
violent, instantly stimulating, and desperately superficial offerings.
"Such fare often has real ideological content.
Even if supposedly apolitical in its intent, entertainment culture (which is
really the entertainment industry) is political in its impact, propagating
images and values that are often downright sexist, racist, consumerist,
authoritarian, militaristic, and imperialist." (Monthly Review, February
1999)
Media culture that globalisation promotes is starkly
exposed by the manner in which it underrates or outrightly ignores people’s
protests and their conditions of miserable existence. For instance, the very day when team Anna was
holding their hunger strike on issue of corruption, over two lakhs of workers
at the call of the All India Trade Unions had marched to the parliament in
Delhi protesting against price rise and corruption. While the former hogged the headlines and
dominated the electronic media, the action of the working class was largely
ignored. Adding insult to injury, the Times of India, in an obscure page
carried a small news item bemoaning the traffic disruption caused by the
worker’s rally in the country’s capital!
Yet again, in July this year, the five-day dharna by the Left parties
demanding food security for our people was again largely ignored while team
Anna’s movement that finally fizzled out taking place next to the Left parties
dharna, once again hogged the headlines and the electronic media attention.
Nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, Marx in his
analysis of capitalism made a very penetrating observation. "Production
not only provides the material to satisfy a need, but it also provides the need
for the material. When consumption emerges from its original primitive
crudeness and immediacy -- and its remaining in that state would be due to the
fact that production was still primitively crude – then it is itself as a
desire brought about by the object. The
need felt for the object is induced by the perception of the object. An object d'art creates a public that has
artistic taste and is able to enjoy beauty – and the same can be said of any
other product. Production accordingly produces not only an object for the
subject, but also a subject for the object. (Karl Marx,
"Introduction" to Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58) (Emphasis added.)
The billions of dollars spent annually on advertising
are creating the `subjects' for the `objects' that the system churns out.
Likewise in culture. The audience is first created to receive a product of mass
consumption. The homogenisation of public tastes is thus created through an
advertisement blitz that dullens if not erases critical faculties. It is not
therefore, as though, this `culture' is catering to people's taste. Tastes and
ideas are being created to accept uncritically the `culture' that is being
churned out.
How does one then combat such a cultural onslaught? An
onslaught that drives away truly popular people's culture. At the first
instance, it is necessary to bring back on to the cultural agenda people's
issues, whose obfuscation and erasure is the raison d'etre of the culture of
globalisation and communalism. This is paramount to counter the cultural
hegemony that they seek.
III
The current situation in which we are conducting our
political activities today is dominated by imperialist globalisation. The CPI(M) 20th Congress Ideological
Resolution notes:
“The ideological war to establish the intellectual and
cultural hegemony of imperialism and neo-liberalism has been on the offensive
during this period. Aided by this very process of globalisation and the vastly
elevated levels of technologies, there is convergence of information,
communications and entertainment (ICE) technologies into mega corporations.
This monopolisation of the sphere of human intellectual activity and the
control over dissemination of information
through the corporate media is a salient feature of this period that
seeks to continuously mount an ideological offensive against any critique or
alternative to capitalism. The cultural hegemony that such a globalisation
process seeks is expressed in the need to create a homogenisation of public
taste. The more homogenous the taste, the easier it is to develop technologies
for the mechanical reproduction of ‘cultural products’ for large masses.
Commercialisation of culture is a natural corollary of such globalisation.
Viewed in terms of class hegemony, the
culture of globalisation seeks to divorce people from their actual
realities of day to day life. Culture here acts not as an appeal to the
aesthetic, but as a distraction, diversion from pressing problems of poverty
and misery.”
The development of ICE technologies and the control
over them, also allows imperialism to develop and maintain sophisticated
surveillance technologies. Such technologies are being increasingly used to
monitor, influence and sabotage a large variety of popular movements that
challenge the hegemony of imperialism.
For instance, the mega corporation Time had earlier
merged with the entertainment giant Warner Bros. The information giant American
Online Ltd (AOL) has now acquired Time-Warner at a cost of $ 164 million to
become the largest ICE conglomerate in the world. Rupert Murdoch now commands a
combined news, entertainment and internet enterprise which is valued at $ 68
billion. Likewise, Walt Disney has now acquired Marvel (of Spiderman fame). The
cultural products that are universally created are bombarded across the world
garnering phenomenal profits. As recently as in January 2011, Comcast Corp has
completed its takeover of NBC Universal,
creating a $ 30 billion media behemoth that controls not just how
television shows and movies are made,
but how they are delivered to people’s homes. Comcast, the No. 1 provider of
video and residential internet service in the United States (with over 23 million video subscribers and nearly 17
million internet subscribers), acquired a 51 per cent stake in NBC Universal from General
Electric Co. The newly created joint venture is
called NBC Universal LLC and its assets include NBC broadcast stations,
cable channels like Bravo, USA and E!, the Universal movie studio as well as
theme parks among other assets.
Some instances in the Indian context: Reliance
Entertainment (formerly known as Reliance BIG Entertainment) is a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, its media and
entertainment business, across content and distribution platforms. The key
content initiatives are across movies, music, sports, gaming, internet and
mobile portals, leading to direct opportunities in delivery across the emerging
digital distribution platforms: digital
cinema, IPTV, DTH and Mobile TV. Reliance ADA Group acquired Adlabs Films
Limited in 2005, one of the largest entertainment companies in India, which has
interests in film processing,
production, exhibition and digital cinema. Having won 45 stations in the
bidding, BIG 92.7 FM was India’s largest private FM radio network. Big Cinemas
is India’s largest cinema chain with over 516 screens spread across India, US,
Malaysia and Netherlands. The chain caters to over 35 million consumers. BIG
Cinemas has established leadership in film exhibition in India with 253 screens
and accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of box office contributions of large
movies. The company forayed into the
largely untapped video rental market in India by acquiring Big Flix and started further expansion. In
April 2008, Reliance Big Entertainment acquired DTS Digital Images, a digital
film restoration company based in Burbank, California. On 15 July 2009,
Reliance Big Entertainment and Steven Spielberg announced a joint venture with
a funding of $ 825 million. Recently, Big 92.7 FM launched a radio station in Singapore
considering 8 per cent of the population residing there is Indian. On January 15, 2010, Reliance
reportedly joined the bidding for MGM. On April 5, 2010, they acquired a 50 per
cent stake in Codemasters. Reliance had
invested about 26 billion rupees in Eenadu Group's regional TV channels when it
announced the deal with the TV18 group's Network18 on January 3, 2012. Reliance holds a 100 per cent economic
interest in five ETV regional news channels and five ETV general entertainment
channels. It also owns a 49 per cent economic interest in ETV Telugu and ETV Telugu News.
Such mega corporatisation of media is playing havoc
with distorted dissemination of information and deliberate campaigns of
disinformation. The rise of the
phenomena of `paid news’ shows the extent of commercialisation of media. Truth and objectivity are the casualties that
buttress the hegemony of the ruling classes.
IV
This monopolisation of media as a weapon of
ideological hegemony that the ruling classes unleash needs to be combated much
more aggressively. New ideological
postulates like post-modernism are aggressively propagated. Its main thrust, as with all other
anti-Communist ideological expressions of the past, is the negation of classes
and, hence, of class struggle. It seeks
to compartmentalise society in terms of ethnic, regional and other micro
identities and, thus, disrupt the unity of the exploited classes. Such theories, therefore, weaken the class
unity of the exploited people and, thus, buttress the class rule of the
exploiters.
The Party newspaper, along with other forms of media,
today has to rise to meet such
challenges and, therefore, act as a powerful weapon in the hands of the revolutionary forces to propagate their
ideas, to organise the exploited classes and, thus, to strengthen the struggle
for creating a society free from all forms of exploitation – socialism.
I am confident that Deshhitaishee will continue to
play its role and will rise to effectively meet and combat the current
challenges.
