GIOVANNI BALDELLI nevertheless, for it gave form to social Instincts, and of!ered ·· opportunitles to satlsfy them. When Marx spoke of allenatlon he meant that the proletartan was not only denled the enjoyment of most of the material goods resultlng from h1s exploited labour, but also that he was excluded from the less tangible, yet not less preclous goods of social living, in fact from the culture of the soclety of whlch he was supposedly a member. Wlth advanced and compulsory education now extended to lncreaslng numbers of people, and wlth prlnted matter, tele- · vision and various forms of entertainment penetrating into the lives even of the poorest, lt would seem that culture ls no longer the prtvilege of the few, but it is being fully democratized. Yet the word «allenatlon> has never been so toplcal, whlle May 68 en France, and similar movements elsewhere, particularly ln the United States, have shown the culture issue to be more keenly felt than that of class division and, s1gnlf1cantly, more by professionals, students, and intellectuals in general, than by the so-called proletarians. What ls happening is that culture, by being progressively commercialized, politicized, and instrumentallzed, by havlng become an lndustry, the business of professlonals, speciallsts and general purveyors, is ceaslng to be culture any more. Big States, big urban conglomerations, big flnancial empires, big buildings, big factorles, big schools and universities, all force people together who have Uttle 1n common except the lnterests, usually not theirs, whlch force them together. Such assemblages of people do not deserve to be called societies. What a culture does is to allow each person to see his image reflected in that of his soclety, and that of h1s society reflected 1n hlm. What goes today under the na.me of «culture> does not fulfil this prerequislte, unless the image lt reflects be one of dislntegration. Now what anarchlsm wants 1s to restore man to hls full sociabllity. It wants h1m not only to enjoy, but also to contribute to, the ethlcal capital of his society. That means that all the modes and matertal of his culture must not be distr1buted and prescribed by some centre specially deslgned for the purpose, and as jejune of social warmth and meaning as he hlmself is left to be. The anarchist concem with ensurlng that man ma.y reallze hlmself as a social belng is part of the posltivity of anarchlsm, whlle the. communist retention and exacerbation of the capitallst process of designification of society and adulteration of culture appears negative and, not less than capitallsm, to be rebelled against. This positivity of anarchlsm cannot easily be argued against for what it is, but lt is strongly argued against for what it does, 112
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