to those who idolize European culture and art....
"The advanced countries have been creating their culture by the opportunity they have of living at the expense of billions of oppressed people."
- Lenin
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*sigh*
stop idolizing the oppressor's! just stop.... they got what they got through violence and exploitation.... their books, their paintings, their scultures, their architecture was built from:
1. wood/gold/silver/marble from South America/Africa/Asia/Hawaii/Philippines/Indochina, etc...
2. labor of the colonized, freeing up the time of the aristocratic class...
3. labor of said european country (it's own workers/peasants)
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"We must be clear that even aesthetics are class partisan, that society conditions our tastes, values and norms about what is beautiful and what we should love. Ruling class bourgeoise aesthetcis promote fear, alienation, submission, depravity: culture and values based on the supremacy of property ownership. The ruling class seeks to enforce its own image upon the world, its ideology and world view, as well as to keep the people in a state of confusion and impotence with a host of fads and trendy diversions, but never to offer clarity about exploitation and oppression.
Revolutionary art must be artistically powerful and political revolutionary. It must inspire a spirit of defiance, or class and national pride to resist domination and backward ideology. Revolutionary art must energize and humanize; not pacify, confuse and desensitize. This is the liberating function of art, freeing the imagination and spirt, yet focusing us to our revolutionary potential."
- Fred Houn