ASSESSMENT OF THE CULTURAL CONGRESS OF HAVANA
E.J.Hobsbawm, writing in The Times Literary Supplement of January 25, draws some important conclusions about the new mood among intellectuals in the Western imperialist countries and the colonial world on the basis of observations at the Cultural Congress of Havana, held January 4 to January 12. The opinions of the University of London professor on this subject carry weight in view of the solid reputation he has Sebabti shee as a Marxist labor historian.
The Havana gathering "symbolized in a curious way a return to the mood of intellectual commitment which was characteristic of the 1930s, and a break with that which was characteristic of the post-
war 1940s and 1950s."
The new mood includes a critical
attitude toward bureaucratic regimes. As’
Hobsbawm puts it:
"Not that the intellectuals as-
sembled in Havana were unconcerned about
cultural freedom in the liberal sense,
i.e., the right not to be told by orga-
nizations and ministries, let alone by
policemen, how and what to write, paint,
compose or research; the right to avoid
dictation even by revolutionary mili-
tants. ‘In the days of rough and hard
struggle, the muses are silent', said
Mehring, quoted by a Peruvian delegate
who disagreed passionately. ‘Let us
then', said an Egyptian, 'if we want to judge the genuineness of any revolution. see what it does with its universities. Let us see whether the professor claps more than he lectures and whether he writes scientific articles or telegrams of support.' One of the ablest men at the congress, René Depestre of Haiti, praised Cuba precisely because ‘here art and literature are not confined to the direct support of ideology and politics’, and one of the most spontaneously applauded speeches (by a Uruguayan) defended the revolutionary 'intellectual' against excessive encroachments by the 'man of action'.
In complete contrast to this, Hobsbawm points out, in the fifties, intellectuals holding such views would have been tempted to see intellectual freedom as the key question’and the Communist regimes as the main danger.
This mood has changed. "In the 1960s it has become evident, at least in large parts of the world, that the defence of intellectual freedom can be conbined with resistance to another, and at present greater, danger. As Fascism united the intellectuals in the 1930s, so the United States united them at Havana, though one notes with relief that nobody even tried to pretend that the two were or are analogous."
To Hobsbawm, the "most interesting fact" about the congress was the denonstration "that an extraordinarily wide and heterogeneous collection of intellectuals can today be mobilized on the common ground of support for the Vietnamese, for Cuba, for the movements of liberation in the 'third world' and not least, for the Negro and anti-war movements in North America against the government of the United States. The situation of the 1950s has been reversed."
The composition of the gathering, which was attended by some 500 delegates and observers from seventy countries (China did not send a delegation), was quite heterogeneous, with the exception of the delegations from regimes sympathetic to Cuba which tended to be carefully selected supporters of the establishment. "This was a gathering of the francs-tireurs and guerrilleros of culture so dear to the Cubans rather than of disciplined battalions or even platoons, and one of the most extraordinary things about it was that, after a week of debates which were not merely quite unconstrained but seemed at times to verge on the anarchic, the final documents were voted in peace and unanimity. It was a tribute to the competence and moderation of the Cuban rapporteurs and chairmen flanked by tactful but unimpeachably revolutionary co-chairmen from Vietnan, Korea and similar countries."
This outcome was all the more inpressive to Hobsbawm in view of the fact that the congress was composed of genuine intellectuals. Such assemblies nowadays are likely to consist of "all the possible cultural and political avant-gardes, and ranging from the simple hostility to the American war in Vietnam, which is (except perhaps in Britain) the common denominator of all, through relative moderates like the European Communists to the embattled guerrilla and would-be guerrilla fighters of the far left."
As decisive evidence of the nonexclusive character of the congress, Hobsbawm cites the presence "of that fringe of dottiness which is so engaging a part of the left. One Chilean painter described his occupation as 'pataphysician'. The commissions listened to a ringing call for Wilhelm Reich and better orgasms (from a Frenchman), to defences of the authentically revolutionary nature of German dadaism -~ as distinct from neodadaism (from Mozambique), to attacks on female chastity (by two Cuban ladies). A group of French and South American surrealist Trotskyites made a physical assault in the name of André Breton on the Mexican painter Siqueiros, amid cries of ‘Cuba Si -- Siqueiros No'."
The setting of the congress facilitated the work of reaching common agreement on the final resolutions.
"Cuba was, of course, an ideal location for such a discussion," Hobsbawm observes. "It is not only an embattled and heroic country, though as Castro himself observed, a long way second to Vietnam, but a remarkably attractive one, if only because it is visibly one of the rare states in the world whose population actually likes and trusts its government. Moreover, the free and flourishing state of cultural activities at present, the admirable social and educational achievements and the endearing excursions into anti-materialist utopia, can hardly fail to appeal to intellectuals. The shelves of the shops may show large gaps, but telephone calls are free. Petrol is rationed, but the state (if that is the right word for an institution which lacks constitution, parliament and most of the other things an old-fashioned lecturer in political theory would look for) provides posadas where couples can go to make love. The visual arts are unexpectedly brilliant, given the unvisual tradition of the country, witty, entertaining and above all public. Those who do not like the place are free to emigrate. The propaganda of some mass media is balanced by the relaxation of others. 'I have listened to the radio', observed one delegate from the older socialist countries, and it plays nothing but songs of love. Not love of the country; not love of the mother; love of some lover.' In such an atmosphere
the intellectuals were able to discuss the problems of Asia, Africa and Latin America and their own with considerably fewer mental reservations than elsewhere.
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There were five commissions: Culture and National Independence, the Integral Growth of Man, the Responsibility of the Intellectual, Culture and Mass Media. Problems of Artistic Creation, Scientific and Technological Work. They ranged over a broad field in their discussions. There were certain recurring themes, however, which Hobsbawm singles out for comment.
“Perhaps the most interesting was the problem of developing a genuinely autochthonous culture in underdeveloped countries; interesting both for the acute analyses of the process of cultural penetration under colonialism and neocolonialism it produced, and the very general rejection of the simple nationalist-populist response to it. As Mammeri Mouloud of Algeria put it, the intellectual of the Third World 'finds himself faced with the double necessity of assuming an inherited culture and using an acquired culture', but neither can be simply put on like a ready-made suit. ‘Traditional culture', the product of a ‘cultural system which is already in part disrupted', cannot be the basis of the new culture, whatever can be preserved of it. Attempts to make it so either fail, as in sub-Saharan Africa, or produce the espectaculos folkléricos of the modern tourist trade, or the even more dangerous ‘accelerated indigenization of the violence and tribulations of other times' of which M. Depestre of Haiti spoke with comprehensible feeling. On the other hand, certain elements of traditional and popular culture -- Dr. Belail Abdel Aziz of Morocco suggested that the concept of community in the Maghreb might be one such -- could be essential parts of any anti-capitalist society, or any society unwilling to subordinate itself entirely to the logic of technology."
An uncontrolled process of creating technicians also tends to isolate intellectuals, sometimes as a privileged stratun.
"The enthusiasm about revolution in the Third World is in part due to the fact that it appears to provide a way out of these difficulties. A remarkably interesting and confident paper by Mario de Andrade analysed the cultural aspects of the guerrilla war in Angola in this sense, observing both the integration of the évolué intellectuals in the new nation and the rejection both of cultural as- .Similation to Portugal and of 'the songs of the old negritude' in the poetry of the struggle. To quote M. Depestre yet again:
"*Revolution creates the condi-
tions of a true cultural mutation. That
is why in the Third World...the revolu-
tionary experience is the only valuable
foundation of the "“cogito". It provokes
an exalting coincidence between thinking
and social being. To make a revolution
is the first historical evidence and the
first cultural value which brings us to
a new postulate of reasoning: I make the
revolution, therefore I am, therefore we
are....We cease to be the zombies of his-
tory.'"
The problems under discussion at
the congress concerned intellectuals of
the imperialist countries as well as the
colonial areas. The problems are common
ones and therefore the European and North
American contingent, which was about as
large in size as that from the underdevel-
oped countries, did not at all play the
role of a sympathetic claque. Thus, in
discussing the cultural imperialism of
the United States, "British statistics
were as widely used by Third World spokes-
men as Latin-American ones to illustrate
the gravity of the brain drain, and
Encounter figured in the discussion along-
side Mundo Nuevo." In general, "the situa-
tion of intellectuals as a social group
is not dissimilar in the First and the
Third Worlds; the unrepresentative nature
of most East~European delegations made it
hard to judge whether this also applies
to the Second."
Another recurrent theme was the
relationship between the activity of guer-
rilla forces and intellectuals. It was
agreed "that even in the Andes the public
activities of intellectuals cannot be con-
fined to carrying machine-guns." On the
other hand a Yugoslav delegate reminded
the congress of "the forgotten fact that
European intellectuals are not unacquaint-
ed with guerrilla activity."
Rich as the discussion was, the
most instructive aspect of the congress
to Hobsbawm was what it showed about the
mood of the international intellectual
community as a whole. There "has been a
remarkable reversal of the politics of
the intellectuals in the past fifteen
years; a more surprising development in
some ways than their mobilization in the
1930s."
The mobilization of the intellec-
tuals in the thirties "took place against
a background of depression and economic
breakdown as well as of Fascism and
aggression.
Today the mobilization of the in-
tellectuals occurs against a background
"of technological triumph and economic
progress -- inadequate, modest but real
even in most countries of the Third
World."
The deliberations and conclusions of the Cultural Congress of Havana were thus of unusual significance.
"The protest of the congress was not merely one against the violence and aggression of the United States, and against the inability of the affluent society in the developed world to solve the problems of the majority of the human
A MEMENTO FROM
Paris
The Cultural Congress of Havana had nothing in common with those conformist assemblages of bootlickers so often gathered together by the Stalinists and their successors. However, this note is not about the congress as a whole but only about an incident not without its own flavor and significance.
Some of the members of the French delegation had not forgotten Siqueiros' part in a machine-gun assault on Trotsky's home in Coyoacan, Mexico, a few months before a Stalinist agent succeeded in murdering the great revolutionary leader.
They raised a small scandal over the presence of Siqueiros at this congress. The poetess, Joyce Mansour, walked up and gave him a kick that, according to
race. It was also a protest against its
success, a vote for Havana's combination
of humanity, enthusiasm and pleasure,
even amid austerity, and against the city
of Mahagonny-Miami across the water. Most
of the intellectuals at the congress had
seen that future. Most of them doubted
whether it worked. But whether it worked
or not, they did not like it and their
presence in Havana said so."