According to Leon Trotsky, “even a successful solution of the elementary problems of food, clothing, shelter, and even of literacy, would in no way signify a complete victory of the new historic principle, that is, of Socialism. Only a movement of scientific thought on a national scale and the development of a new art would signify that the historic seed has not only grown into a plant, but has even flowered.” For Trotsky, and a range of very different figures such as Mao Tse-Tung, Alexander Bogdanov, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Oscar Wilde, Adorno, Horkheimer and Jean-Luc Godard, a Marxist revolution required not merely a political and economic transformation, but also a cultural revolution. In this session we will be joined by Shalon van Tine and Doug Greene, who are currently collaborating on a book on Marxism and Cultural Revolution in order to discuss themes and issues related to this topic.
Shalon van Tine is a PhD student in cultural and intellectual history at Ohio University and an adjunct professor in the humanities for University of Maryland’s Global Campus.
Doug Enaa Greene is an independent communist historian, who is the author of Communist Insurgent: Blanqui’s Politics of Revolution and A Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism.
