The Progressive Cultural Movement

The unique contribution of the Marxist Cultural Movement has been that artistic creation and appreciation is no more confined to the intellectual elite. The growth of the organised working class and peasant movement, together with the movements of other sections of the working people, had awakened the millions of toilers not only to political consciousness, but uplifted their aesthetic sensibilities and creative talents. Ideology and politics cannot be either divorced from, or mixed up with, the production and appreciation of works of art and literature - a fact which was forgotten by us, the political activists, or our opponents in the fields of arts and literature.

E M S Namboodiripad