Radio and the Working Class

Radio has spread enormously over the course of time; if you add family members and black listeners to the official figure and only assume that each listener listens to the broadcasts twice a week, there are still over a million people sitting at their headphones or loudspeakers every evening. And of this million, 90 to 95 percent are proletarians! That must give us pause for thought! Radio has thus become the most powerful tool in the hands of the ruling class, a great power, even more powerful than the cinema and the press. Under the cloak of “neutrality”, the poison of the bourgeois mindset is drilled into the workers' brains every evening. Here are just a few examples of what this “neutrality” looks like.

In April, Georg Büchner's “Leonce and Lena” was performed in Berlin. Büchner was a revolutionary of his time, a radical democrat. As a 21-year-old, he took an active part in the political struggles in Hesse in 1834 with a weapon in his hand, published the indignant pamphlet, the “Hessischer Landbote”, with the motto “Peace to the huts, war to the palaces” (long before Marx and Engels), was arrested, fled and died in exile in Zurich in 1837 at the age of 24 as a result of the ordeal. His most powerful work, “Danton's Death”, will certainly be familiar to many comrades. Even though “Leonce and Lena” is his tamest work, almost an idyll, many a comrade was surprised to read it on the Berlin program. But what was broadcast was so distorted by violent deletions that it was unrecognizable and even right-wing bourgeois magazines - such as “Funk” - were outraged by these distorting, tendentious deletions. Siegfried Jakobsohn (employee of the “Morgenpost”) didn't know how to say a single word about the revolutionary Büchner during the introductory lecture, instead he spent 10 minutes trying to prove connections between Büchner and Shakespeare in intellectual pranks!

On the day of the naval battle off the Skagerrak, a corvette captain Matthiae gave a lecture on this subject on Berlin radio. When you consider that the British were also able to hear this lecture, you have to wonder at the audacity with which this gentleman dared to turn the actual events into their opposite. He claimed that the German fleet had been searching for the enemy for months, but that the enemy had never made it out of the safe harbor. Finally, the British fleet had been successfully confronted. The English fleet had been defeated here for the first time in 200 years (!). The English fleet had moved out as quickly as possible during the night. The exact opposite is true. As can be seen from the official German work on the naval battle off the Skagerrak, the German fleet was forced to fight against its will by the English. Although the British lost some ships during the battle, the Germans did not, all German capital ships were completely incapacitated by nightfall. The next day would have brought the complete and utter destruction of the German fleet. In order to cut off the German fleet's retreat, the British had laid a mine barrage in front of the North Sea islands and positioned themselves with their fleet in the only remaining return route for the German fleet, off Heligoland. In order not to lose all the ships, the German naval command preferred to take the dangerous route through the mine blockade of the North Sea islands. The small cruisers were sent ahead, five of which were blown up by mines, and this sacrifice of ships (which cleared the mines out of the way) and human sacrifice allowed the wrecked capital ships to retreat. And whoever was no longer at sea the next day was the German fleet. It goes without saying that in addition to this historical lie, Mr. Korvettenkapitän also indulged in the worst kind of nationalism and chauvinism. Since speeches for the Berlin radio station must be available to the station's management in advance, it is clear that this falsification of history was broadcast to the world with the knowledge and will of the station's management.

A lecture on “The economic significance of consumer cooperatives” was to be held in Dortmund on March 30. (We do not want to comment here on this lecture problem itself, but only to show that radio is used by the ruling class as a means against the working class - even against the social democratically oriented). This lecture was fixed in the programs. However, as the lecture time approached, the announcer announced that the lecture “had to be canceled due to technical problems” and would be held on another day. However, it later turned out that this excuse was a hoax and that the lecture had been canceled by the management of the broadcasting company on the orders of the chambers of commerce. Instead, on June 23, the managing director of the German National Union of Commercial Employees gave a lecture on “Cultural Problems of the Trade Unions” at the Westphalian broadcasting stations!

On most stations, so-called morning celebrations are held on Sunday mornings, in which clerics of all kinds let loose their outpourings. In Berlin, these morning celebrations are leased to the Protestant church synod!

But enough examples. They could be multiplied. They clearly show what the “neutrality” of broadcasting is all about. Let's not even mention the “Deutschlandlied”, the lectures on “Ertüchtigung”, “Deutschtum im Auslande”, and so on. The countries where this mask of neutrality has been dropped, like in Holland, are even more pleasant. There is a Roman Catholic Broadcasting Association, a Christian Broadcasting Association and a Workers' Broadcasting Association, each of which has to broadcast the evening program of the Dutch station Hilversum once a week.

The general strike in England showed what a powerful means of struggle the exploiting class has with radio. Right at the beginning of this strike, all the stations in England (about 20 in number) were confiscated by the government. As the English newspapers were unable to appear as a result of the strike, radio stepped in. Five times a day, mendacious “victory reports” were broadcast to the world in an attempt to undermine the morale and fighting spirit of the struggling workers. On the other hand, the beginnings of a new kind of international solidarity of the working class became apparent. As English radio was closed to the working class, the Dutch Workers' Broadcasting Association used its evening to transmit true reports of the strike situation in English through the Hilversum station (which is very well received in England)!

A section of the working class has recognized the class character of radio and, united in “workers‘ radio clubs”, is calling for its own “workers’” stations.

Is this the right way to go? No! What can a “workers' station” offer? Proletarian art? That is still in its infancy. In the musical field it doesn't exist at all, in the dramatic field it is only just beginning. It could only be a - bad - copy of the bourgeois stations. Lectures were all that remained. But what about? Natural sciences, history, art, viewed from the standpoint of historical materialism. But already here the opposites in the working class would clash; even more so in the field of political economy and politics. The contradictions, which are historically rooted in the different degrees of maturity of the proletariat, in the resulting ability to recognize social conditions and necessities. Just as it is impossible to create a single press organ for all proletarian organizations, it is equally impossible to bring them to peaceful cooperation under one “channel”. Class fighters and class traitors can never stand on the same platform. Quite apart from the fact that the bourgeoisie will never grant the working class a propaganda opportunity on such a scale.

There are already some “workers' stations”. In Vienna, in Switzerland and in America (Chicago). For the reasons outlined above, however, they are doomed to infertility. Sooner or later, a “workers' station” will also appear in Germany - or rather a shadow image of itself; only for short waves and only for telegraphic traffic outside broadcasting hours!

But should the working class now sit idly by and leave this means of struggle of such immense importance to the enemy? No, on the contrary! They should put it at their service. But without illusion! No proletkult radio, no workers' radio, but political radio, as a major party newspaper, as a means of propaganda to spread revolutionary ideas to rouse the masses! This is not to be achieved by bargaining with the ruling class, but by fighting against it. Spain was the first to take this path. The military dictatorship there, which brutally suppresses the press and workers' organizations, is powerless in the face of a secret broadcaster that regularly corrects the government's lies on an almost daily basis. Months of efforts by the police and soldiers, electrical technicians and radio engineers have not been able to discover this secret transmitter. It is not at all the case that the transmitters can be “tracked down”, as the relevant authorities repeatedly claim (in their own interests). This only applies at sea and on flat land, where there are only a few radio installations and the antennas can be counted. In the big city with its sea of antennas, however, the direction finding method fails completely. So there is a secret transmitter in the Leuna factory that functions as a radioed company newspaper. However, the Prussian police once succeeded in confiscating a “secret” transmitter. That was in Halle. However, it wasn't spotted, but seen, because it was at an exhibition of the Workers' Radio Club and was publicly demonstrated there.

Practice will show how far it will intervene in the movement and in what precise form. One can already see the development: radio will become an - illegal - means of struggle of the revolutionary working class, but not the carrier of a “proletarian culture”. It can only assume this role after the proletariat has seized power. Then, of course, it will play the greatest role: it will bring light into the most remote hut, make humanity feel solidarity and advance the higher development of humanity with giant strides.