F. F. F. F. F. F. F. What's the point of art, or literature or poetry? Are these pursuits just the

frivolous luxuries of bourgeois life?

Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, would certainly not have agreed.

He wrote in his book, literature and revolution, that bourgeois poetry, of course, does not exist,

because poetry is a free art, and not a service to class.

From the vantage point of the early Soviet Union, Trotsky argued against the creation of a proletarian art movement.

Communism, being a class of society, there was no sense in artwork affirming some particular

class interests. Instead, he said, art in art But none of us live in communist societies.

So what is the function of art in a capitalist society for those who wants to get out of it?

What role does it play in struggle?

Or in the work of becoming a person more generally?

In another episode on our series on class, Nijal Alasa and Julia Jax

talk to the historian Mark Stephen about politics of art and the art of politics.

Revolutionaries he points out, including Karl Marx, Shegavara and Franz Fanon, have reached literature in the darkest moments of

revolutionary struggle alongside their manifestos, field manuals and rifles of course.

What's the importance of art to resistance?

We live in a world where arts, culture, and the literary world are increasingly depoliticized.

Can literature really be separated from the political and

material conditions it arises out of? Today we are joined by Mark Stephen to

discuss his new book, Class War, a literary history, and an attempt to answer this question.

Mark Stephen is senior lecturer in 20th and 21st century literature at the University of Exeter.

He's also written books about poetry and horror films.

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