ABSTRACT
Since the Content of Leisure activities represents a touchstone for disinterested culture, it seems necessary to analyse this content if we want to obtain a conception of general culture corresponding to the individual personality’s need to blossom freely in today’s society. 2 For too often, definitions of general culture are set down in an a priori manner as a function of the works of the past or the normative system of an elite, without taking into account the real or potential cultural values that emerge from the actual experience of different cultural milieux. We do not think that the cultural values required for carrying out a vast operation of cultural development outside the school system can be supplied solely by avant-garde or academic culture. Avant-garde culture is the expression of creators’ need for innovation. It is irreplaceable for the purposes of creation, but unsuitable for ensuring the physical, intellectual and artistic blossoming of millions of men in the next twenty years. Hence we are opposed to the viewpoint of Dwight MacDonald and of certain avant-garde critics when they express judgements on popular culture which show, as far as the concrete problems of mass-level cultural development are concerned, their ignorance of what might actually be possible.
