ABSTRACT
This chapter explains Lindsay's most distinguished contribution to Marxist theory was the intricate, shamelessly speculative but utterly ingenious body of ideas contained in A Short History of Culture. The cultural vision corresponding to the Communist Party's new political programme, The British Road to Socialism, was a concerted rally of the national culture. In a highly influential address to the Seventh Congress entitled 'The Working Class against Fascism', the Comintern's president, Georgi Dimitrov, insisted that fascism had to be defeated in the sphere of culture as well as the sphere of politics. At the core of A Short History of Culture is a startlingly counterintuitive argument about the nature of primitive communism. A Short History of Culture's third argument about the role of science under primitive communism pertains to the sphere of ideology. Implicit in books like A Short History of Culture is the belief that works of art effectively reinforce plebeian values by articulating them with unusual force and clarity.
