‘Forbidden Fruits’ and the Communist Paradise: Marxist Thinking on Greekness and Class in Rebetika

‘Forbidden Fruits’ and the Communist Paradise: Marxist Thinking on Greekness and Class in Rebetika
YIANNIS ZAIMAKIS
24grammata.com/ ρεμπέτικο

24grammata.com / free ebook (κατηγορία: επιστημονικές μελέτες)

[κατέβασέτο]

Introduction
A deep-seated belief in the inevitable advent of a utopian communist society prompted the Greek Leftist intelligentsia to pave the way for the oncoming radical transformation of society, rescuing people from the “jail” of capitalist injustice. Considering themselves the avant-garde of the progressive movement, leaders of Marxist opinion had the strong sense that it was their duty to “humanize the masses”2 and to inculcate class-consciousness among the proletariat. Invoking various antithetical and evolutionary schemes, they were involved in a furious debate amongst intellectuals of all political inclinations about the cultural character of Greek identity—a debate that lasted from the late interwar period to the
mid-1980s, and, to some extent, persists today.
In this essay, I examine rebetika texts drawn from the plethora of the writings that have been published in numerous dailies, magazines, and books since the 1930s. Some of them have been re-printed in later studies or collections.3 The publication of the Vlisidis’s anthology of rebetika texts with 2396 references and brief descriptions of relevant writing has increased the availability of such sources.4 Furthermore, I rely upon Vlisidis’s well-documented study of the discourse of the Greek Left.5 It is an important reference for scholarly work on rebetika, which has proliferated during the last decades.6