On Cultural Revolution

     Lenin writes very little about the cultural revolution. He says, in On Cooperation, that “Strictly speaking, there is “only” one thing we have left to do and that is to make our people so “enlightened” that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the cooperatives, and organize participation. “only” the fact. There are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve this “only", there must be a veritable revolution—the entire people must go through a period of cultural development.” For Lenin, the cultural revolution is an event which succeeds the social and political revolution, an event that raises the consciousness of the people, that “enlightens” them. It is, for him, a necessary step in the growth and development of socialism. He says that “it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the cooperatives through NEP. At best we can achieve this in one or two decades. Nevertheless, it will be a distinct historical epoch, and without this historical epoch, without universal literacy, without a proper degree of efficiency, without training the population sufficiently to acquire the habit of book reading, and without the material basis for this, without a certain sufficiency to safeguard against, say, bad harvests, famine, etc.—without this we shall not achieve our object.” 

In order to get the people to effectively organize into cooperatives, Lenin thought it necessary that they must first be educated and learned. How this will come about he does not say, nor does he mention the contents of such education. This is a part of what will be discussed in this article. But another thing must also be discussed; that is, what is the significance of the cultural revolution today? What would a hypothetical American cultural revolution look like? It may seem unnecessary to discuss these questions now, for our social revolution is nowhere in sight, and certainly won’t happen for many decades. Yet, despite this, I believe the answers to these questions will help make us more aware of our current social and cultural situation, and more aware of what must be done to change it. 

First, how do we define cultural revolution? What is it? Put simply, the cultural revolution is an event which, as was mentioned earlier, succeeds the political and social revolution. The social revolution is a material revolution. The cultural revolution is a purely ideological revolution, a psychological revolution (this is not to say that the social revolution is not at all ideological; it certainly is. But the cultural revolution is purely ideological, focused purely on ideology and culture). It is a revolution in the realm of education, communication, cooperation, religion, and psychology. It is a revolution which sweeps away the petty individualism of liberal capitalism and replaces it with a strong communitarian ethic of solidarity. It is a revolution which sweeps away the superstitious mysticism of religion and replaces it with the reason and rationality of enlightenment thought. Thus, throughout the course of this revolution, it will be necessary, as Lenin suggests in On the Significance of Militant Materialism, “to translate the militant atheist literature of the late eighteenth century for mass distribution among the people.” Voltaire, Diderot, La Mettrie, all must be translated and taught to the people at schools for both children and adults.  It is also essential to teach thinkers such as Democritus, Epicurus, Locke, and Feuerbach, to firmly ground the people in materialist and empiricist philosophy (all alongside Marx and Engels of course).

During the cultural revolution, remnants of old bourgeois society must be totally annihilated, including cultural relics such as statues. A certain number of statues can be preserved and put in museums; the rest, including old confederate statues, must be destroyed as a symbolic break with the past.

The cultural revolution is also a queer revolution, a sexual revolution, in which old norms are shattered and new norms are created. Thus, it is necessary that the people are taught Butler and Edelman, Deleuze, Guattari and Foucualt. 

In order to foster queerness and push against heteronormativity, it will be necessary for pride events and queer liberation marches to be a common occurence. At such events there must be very few limits as to what is permissible. Leather, BDSM, and other such kinks must be allowed full display at such events, all in order to push against the current cultural norms. Militant queerness must be at the forefront of the new sexual revolution. Counter protests and marches, such as straight pride marches and events, must be strictly prohibited and cracked down on. Such events are counter-revolutionary, and so are the people who support them. 

In order to defend these events and crack down on anti queer activity, it will be necessary to form what we will here call queer gaurds or pink gaurds, who will be composed entirely of armed volunteers from the queer community who will attend these events to ensure that no counter-revolutionary violence is perpetrated against the attendents. These queer gaurds will stand alongside the red gaurds as defenders of the workers’ state, and in particular defenders of the queer community.

Another thing that will change during the revolution is the family relation, or, more precisely, the relation parents have to children and the state. Children, being the product of not only the parents, but also of society in general, belong not only to the parents, but also to society, to the state. Thus, the task of the education of children will fall not on the shoulders of the parents, but rather, on the shoulders of the state. It will be necessary to set up universal public schools for children of all ages, similar to what we have now, the only difference being that public school will be totally compulsory; that is, private school will not be an option, nor will homeschooling. All parents must relinquish the right to be the sole educators of their children and recognize the supreme authority of the workers’ state in such matters. 

This will not only prevent parents who, simply put, are not qualified to be educators from corrupting the minds of their children, but will also free up parents and give them more time to perform other forms of productive labor needed by society. 

This reduction of the power of parents over children will be a large step forward in our goal, that goal being the total abolition of the nuclear family. 

Citations

Lenin, V I. On the Significance of Militant Materialism, 2002, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/12.htm.

Lenin, Vladimir. On Cooperation, 2000, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm.