Agitprop, Part 9
Radio, TV,
Film and Video
This item is concerned with
what generally falls under the description “broadcasting”.
A more descriptive phrase is
“one-to-many” communication. The model form is the mass-circulation newspaper,
developed in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Cinema as a mass
medium followed at the beginning of the 20th Century. Radio
broadcasting got under way in the 1920s. Television took off as a mass medium
in the 1950s.
Mass, one-to-many, broadcast
communication is therefore typical of the 20th century. All of these
media have been used by states to impose uniformity of thought and culture on
the population. They have all been used by revolutionaries, as well; but
typically, one-to-many communication is patronising and not conducive to
revolutionary thought, which as we know requires dialogue if it is to develop.
Only with the rise of the
Internet, with its possibility of “many-to-many”, or “any-to-many”
communications, has the broadcasting model been challenged. It has meant that
means of production and distribution of cultural artefacts on a mass scale are
now in the hands of individuals.
Consequently, all of the
media of broadcast communications, newspapers, cinema, radio and television are
in crisis. All have declined to a fraction of what they used to be at their
peak, and they are continuing to decline.
What has replaced them is not
yet a new communism of communications, although there have been periods when
something like a free-for-all has appeared to exist in communications, in what
we now call ICT (Information and Communication Technology).
In practice the Internet, and
the World Wide Web which is the protocol that we use on the Internet, has been
exploited by the bourgeois State as much as, or more than, it has been by
revolutionaries. The possibility of frictionless communication does not in
practice mean that production is being done by everybody. On the contrary, the
situation has exposed the reality that communications is always a
labour-intensive business. The ones who dominate in communications are those
who can mobilise the largest and best-co-ordinated body of individuals who can
be put to work on production. Capital can do this if it wishes.
Therefore what comes about is
in effect an Agitprop war, where those with the most consistent and the best
output will prevail. The revolutionaries, with potentially millions of well-motivated
volunteers, should be able to win. But in fact it is usually the money-bags
capitalists who win, because they can hire people quickly to get ahead.
What the revolutionaries need
in the first place are people who are capable of working the means of
communication, technically, artistically and ideologically.
At the same time, the
revolutionaries need to avoid mimicking the communication strategy of the
bourgeoisie, while stealing from it at the tactical level.
The bourgeois strategy is to
return as soon as possible to the condition of “broadcasting”, whereby the
fountain of national culture is effectively in their hands. The fullest
development of this model is the British Broadcasting Corporation, of which the
SABC is intended to be a copy. The SABC is supposed to set the tone of the
nation by centralised and country-wide communication. The fact that the SABC is
in a constant state of collapse, and the resultant furore that has continued
for many years past, reveals that the bourgeoisie and the middle classes badly
want a way to communicate with the masses, on their own (bourgeois) terms.
The revolutionary model, on
the other hand, is the Freirean model of dialogue. Therefore, film and video
are not good forms of propaganda for revolutionary purposes. Video locks people
away from one another, with each being held within a private channel of
connection with the screen. It is extremely difficult to generate a discussion
of quality from that starting point, if not impossible. Meetings that begin
with the showing of videos seldom take off.
A revolutionary communication
is a two-way communication. Revolutionaries must produce, as well as consume,
political culture. This is the theoretical basis of this Agitprop course. Agitprop
is not an add-on to political theory. It is in itself an indispensable part of
political theory.
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