COMMITTEE EXHIBIT No. 5-Continued The variations are slow and not rhythmic; there are periods of acceleration, others are measured and some even involve a retreat. COMMUNISM'S FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD We must also consider, as we have pointed out previously, that we are not before a pure transition period such as that envisioned by Marx in the "Critique of the Gotha Program, " but rather a new phase not foreseen by him: the first period in the transition to communism or in the building of socialism. Elements of capitalism are present within this process, which takes place in the midst of violent class struggle. These elements obscure the complete understanding of the essence of the process. If to this be added the scholasticism that has held back the development of Marxist philosophy and impeded the systematic treatment of the period, whose political economy has still not been developed, we must agree that we are still in diapers. We must study all the primordial features of the period before elaborating a more far reaching economic and political theory. The resulting theory will necessarily. give preeminence to the two pillars of socialist construction: the formation of the new human being and the development of technology. We still have a great deal to accomplish in both aspects, but the delay is less justifiable as far as the conception of technology as the basis is concerned; here, it is not a matter of advancing blindly but rather of following for a sizeable stretch the road opened up by the most advanced countries of the world. This is why Fidel harps so insistently on the necessity of the technological and scientific formation of all of our peopl and especially of the vanguard. COMMITTEE EXHIBIT No. 5-Continued DIVISION BETWEEN MATERIAL In the field of ideas that lead to nonproductive activities, it is easier to see the division between material and spiritual needs. For a long time man has been trying to free himself from alienation through culture and art. He dies daily in the eight and more hours during which he performs as a commodity to resuscitate in his spiritual creation. But this remedy itself bears the germs of the same disease; he is a solitary being who seeks communion with nature. He defends his environment-oppressed individuality and reacts to esthetic ideas as a unique being whose aspiration is to remain immaculate. It is only an attempt at flight. The law of value is no longer a mere reflection of production relations; the monopoly capitalists have surrounded it with a complicated scaffolding which makes of it a docile servant, even when the methods used are purely empirical. The artist must be educated in the kind of art imposed by the super-structure. The rebels are overcome by the apparatus and only exceptional talents are able to create their own work. The others become shame-faced wage-workers or they are crushed. Artistic experimentation is invented and is taken as the definition of freedom, but this "experimentation" has limits which are imperceptible until they are clashed with, that is, when the real problems of man and his alienated condition are dealt with. Senseless anguish or. vulgar pastimes are comfortable safety valves for human uneasiness; the idea of making art a weapon of denunciation and accusation is combatted. If the rules of the game are respected all honors are obtained -- the honors that might be granted to a pirouette-creating monkey. The condition is not attempting to escape from the invisible cage. COMMITTEE EXHIBIT NO. 5-Continued A NEW IMPULSE FOR When the Revolution took power, the exodus of the totally domesticated took place; the others, revolutionaries or not, saw a new road. Artistic experimentation took on new force. However, the routes were more or less traced and the concept of flight was the hidden meaning behind the word freedom. This attitude, a reflection in consciousness of bourgeois idealism, was frequently maintained in the revolutionaries themselves. In countries that have gone through a similar process, endeavors were made to combat these tendencies with an exaggerated dogmatism. General culture became something like a taboo and a formally exact representation of nature was proclaimed as the height of cultural aspiration. This later became a mechanical representation of social reality. created by wishful thinking: the ideal society, almost without conflicts or contradictions, that man was seeking to create. Socialism is young and makes mistakes. We revolutionaries often lack the knowledge and the intellectual audacity to face the task of the development of the new human being by methods different from the conventional ones, and the conventional methods suffer from the influence of the society that created them (once again the topic of the relation between form and content appears). Disorientation is great and the problems of material construction absord us. There are no artists of great authority who also have great revolutionary authority. The men of the Party must take this task upon themselves and seek the achievement of the principal aim: to educate the people. COMMITTEE EXHIBIT No. 5-Continued SOCIALIST REALISM BASED ON What is then sought is simplification. what everyone understands, that is, what the functionaries understand. True artistic experimentation is obliterated and the problem of general culture is reduced to the assimilation of the socialist present and the dead (and therefore not dangerous) past. Socialist realism is thus born on the foundation of the art of the last century. But the realistic art of the 19th century is also class art, perhaps more purely capitalist than the decadent art of the 20th century, where the anguish of alienated man. shows through. In culture, capitalism has given all that it had to give and all that remains of it is the foretaste of a badsmelling corpse; in art, its present decadence. But why endeavor to seek in the frozen forms of socialist realism the only valid recipe? "Freedom" cannot be set against socialist realism be、ause the former does not yet exist; it will not come into being until the complete development of the new society. But let us not attempt to condemn all postmid-nineteenth century art forms from the pontifical throne of realism-at-all-costs; that would mean committing the Proudhonian error of the return to the past, and strailjacketing the artistic expression of the man who is born and being formed today. An ideological and cultural mechanism must be developed which will permit cxperimentation and clear out the weeds that shoot up so easily in the fertilized soil of state subsidization. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MAN The error of mechanical realism has nol appeared (in Cuba), but rather the contrary. COMMITTEE EXHIBIT No. 5-Continued This is so because of the lack of understanding of the need to create a new human being who will represent neither 19th century ideas nor those of our decadent and morbid century. It is the twenty-first century man whom we must create, although this is still a subjective and unsystematic aspiration. This is precisely one of the basic points of our studies and work: to the extent that we make concrete achievements on a theoretical base or vice versa, that we come to broad theoretical conclusions on the basis of our concrete studies, we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of mankind. The reaction against 19th century man has brought a recurrence of 20th century decadence. It is not a very serious error, hut we must overcome it so as not to leave the doors open to revisionism. The large multitudes of people are developing themselves, the new ideas are acquiring an adequate impetus within society, the material possibilities of the integral development of each and every one of its members make the task ever more fruitful. The present is one of struggle; the future is ours. INTELLECTUALS NOT AUTHENTICALLY To sum up, the fault of many of our intellectuals and artists is to be found in their "original sin": they are not authentically revolutionary. We can attempt to graft elm trees so that they bear pears, but at the same time we must plant pear trees. The new generations will arrive free of "original sin". The likelihood that exceptional artists will arise will be that much greater because of the enlargement of the cultural field and the possibilities for expression. Our job is to keep the present generation, |
