The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.42           November 25, 1996 
 
 
Music Does Not Spark Revolutionary Struggle  

Several weeks ago, Militant reader Ian Harvey raised several criticisms of an article in the Militant on the death of Tupac Amaru Shakur. Harvey's letter was published in the November 4 Militant under the heading "Is rap revolutionary?" The article he questioned, "What's behind rap artist's murder?" appeared in the October 7 Militant. Rap artist Shakur was fatally wounded in a September 7 drive-by shooting and died a week later.

"Taylor completely dismisses the importance of rap music," Harvey wrote. "It is true that Tupac didn't come as far in his political evolution as Malcolm [X] did, but that has everything to do with something Taylor never mentions, however. Capitalism always and necessarily appropriates forms of subversive cultural expression to increase its profits." Rappers like Tupac Shakur don't "have a message that will do much to train and inspire potential revolutionaries among their listeners" but "that means very little to the youth that listen to them," Harvey asserted. "The subversiveness of rock and roll and rap can serve sometimes as an impetus to revolutionary politics in youth," he stated.

Claiming that Shakur was headed in a revolutionary direction is not factually accurate. None of his actions as a public figure points to such a trajectory. It is at best wishful thinking, but it leads to something much more damaging to the working class fight for Black freedom. It distorts what a revolutionary is, and promotes petty bourgeois arguments that success under capitalist society - that is, making money as a businessman, albeit Black - qualifies one as a political leader.

While Harvey describes Shakur as a "potentially revolutionary young fighter," Shakur did not participate in, nor was he helping to advance any political struggle. He simply reflected in his lyrics a piece of the reality that many young people, especially young Blacks, see and experience today. This includes hating the cops and abhorring racism. Shakur's experience as a Black man, however, does not make him any more of a revolutionary than actor Bill Cosby. Tupac Shakur's rap, even if it was "revolutionary" sounding, wouldn't mark him as a class struggle fighter. A decision to fight for revolutionary change, coupled with concrete actions to put into effect one's ideas are the best gauges. This judgment is no insult or slander to Shakur, it merely describes him as what he was - a successful artist and businessman.

Malcolm X became a revolutionary leader only when the development of his political consciousness, flowing out of experiences during the explosive social movement for Black rights in the 1950s and 60s, brought him into leading the struggle for Black freedom in his time in a revolutionary, anticapitalist direction. Before that, Malcolm Little was immersed in criminal activity - not the type of person political fighters would approach, orient to, or have relations with. It was only when Malcolm completely broke with this lifestyle that it became possible for him to rise to the caliber of leadership, and integrity that made him a menace to the exploiters the world over, especially the capitalist rulers of the United States. Looking to anti-social or lumpen elements as a force for revolutionary struggle harms working people and the struggle for Black rights. These bourgeois elements prey on the working class and are dangerous to working people.

Working-class fighters, of course, don't reject the possibility for those inspired by a rising social movement, or struck by one or another of the atrocities of capitalism, to break with parasitical behavior and join the class struggle.

Harvey argues that this class view "means little to the youth that listen to" rappers. He underestimates the potential of young people to embrace revolutionary ideas. Youth, however, have been at the forefront of working-class struggles throughout history. A young Karl Marx and Frederick Engels drafted the Communist Manifesto. It was a young Thomas Sankara who helped lead the revolution in Burkina Faso, and young rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba led many of the columns of the Rebel Army that brought U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista to his knees in 1959. In recent years, young people have poured into the streets in actions for Quebec independence and Irish freedom. And Chicano and Latino high school and college students converged on the U.S. capital October 12 to join others in demanding equal rights for immigrants.

It is simply not true that political discussion on revolution "means little to the youth." Malcolm X, pointing to examples of youth taking the lead all over the world said, "young people are the ones who most quickly identify with the struggle and necessity to eliminate the evil conditions that exist." The revolutionary leader cited the "powerful example in the young simbas [lions] in the Congo and the young fighters in South Vietnam" as lessons for youth in the United States on world revolutionary struggle.

Finally, Harvey says that "rock and roll and rap can serve sometimes as an impetus to revolutionary politics." This is a false premise. No art form has ever been the vehicle by which a revolution is ignited. Music and other art forms are influenced by the class struggle, not vice versa. This is why strike songs can have progressive social content, but few would argue that a strike hymn, as opposed to a company offensive that drives workers to the point where they fight or lose dignity, sparked a labor rebellion.

Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky explained in his book Art and Revolution, published by Pathfinder, that the "Marxist conception of the objective social dependence and social utility of art, when translated into the language of politics, does not at all mean a desire to dominate art by means of decrees and orders. It is not true that we regard only that art as new and revolutionary which speaks of the worker, and it is nonsense to say that we demand that all poets should describe inevitably a factory chimney, or the uprising against capital." Trotsky also guarded against the other extreme. "However fantastic art may be," he said, "it cannot have at its disposal any other material except that which is given to it by the world of three dimensions and by the narrower world of class society."

- BRIAN TAYLOR  
 
 
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