Comrade ‘S.B.’ greets the arrival of television with the cynicism it deserved in this remarkably on point and prescient critique.

‘Television—A New Weapon for the New Imperialist War’ by S.B. from the Daily Worker. Vol. 7 No. 143. June 14, 1930.

TELEVISION is now a fact. Like all great inventions born amidst the chaos and isolation of scientific research in capitalist society, it came like a bolt from the sky, with all the padded atmosphere of “magic” and “wizardry” that ushered in the telephone, the phonograph and the radio.

To the working masses these inventions come indeed like miracles born of wizards’ brains. The wide gap which divides them from the monopolized realms of science and at is glaringly obvious here and is the result of an ever more defined division of labor in society with a class “top” and “bottom.”

The Sunday magazine sections of every capitalist paper carry loud and boisterous articles on the “blessings of our modern life” with all the marvels of science at the reach of the humblest of Americans. Think of it, television in your own home!

In the United States, too, the “means of mental production” are the monopoly of the ruling class.

Anarchy in the sphere of science is an extension of the disorganization and chaos inherent in capitalist economy.

The sound film came along one day, coached and fed by the late Sam Warner. Thus a whole industry was thrown out of joint. Today there are some ninety-four different patented sound systems. The same is true of the color film and also of a much simpler innovation, wide film.

And so with television. Hollywood is already hysterical. Soon its “big bosses’ the former haberdashers, wholesale cloth-spongers and storekeepers will be tearing at each other’s throats. Already they have put their feet in the new field. But the air has long ago been monopolized by the giants: A.T.T., R.C.A., Western Electric and General Electric. In the next two years we will witness the complete merging of these engineering trusts with the financial powers of the screen. By the very nature of television the motion picture barons will be at a disadvantage in all this.

And just as today you are able to listen to Will Rogers under the auspices of Squibbs Dental Cream, so tomorrow you will have the possibility of both seeing and hearing Greta Garbo or Rowdie Vallup under the auspices of the Kwiktie Shoelace Corporation. The glorious wedding of art, science and advertising.

A Wall Street synthesis.

But what is the more serious aspect in the coming of this mighty photo-electric eye?

Not an invention is made–even a minor one–but that its adaptability to war is immediately considered and perfected. This is especially true in this period of frantic preparation for the impending explosion. In a previous article we have shown how the sound film is exploited to perfect the war machine. In the case of television this is even more the case.

The same day that the enlarged television projector was demonstrated in the laboratories of the General Electric Co. at Schenectady, Dr. E.F.W. Alexanderson, its inventor, said to the assembled newspapermen:

“What will this mean in the war of the future, when a staff officer can see the enemy through the television eyes of his scouting planes, or when they can send a bombing plane without a man on board, which can see the target and be steered by radio up to the moment when it hits?”

Dr. Alexanderson, with all the perspicacity of his specialized brain, visualizes another valuable aspect of his device:

“Television will be a great asset to politicians. The day is likely to come when candidates for president of the United States will campaign by television.”

A supreme method for bringing capitalist propaganda into the worker’s home.

A weapon superior to the newspaper, more effective than the film, more efficient than the radio!

Such is science in the hands of militant American imperialism.

Television broadcasting will be of two kinds. Motion pictures will be broadcast from master film prints with synchronized sound and talk and “real” events will be transmitted through the medium of radio cameras.

The first method will correspond to the so-called entertainment film as we know it in the movies. The second process will amount to an infinite extension of the present sound newsreel or documentary film. This will be the medium which then as now will have the advantage of being most effective from the psychological standpoint. Its power lies in that its authenticity can never be questioned by the onlooker.

Comrade Leon Moussinac, no doubt the ablest living authority on motion picture theory!long ago established it as axiomatic that “in the motion picture the feeling of reality is indispensable for the creation of emotion.” This “feeling of reality” is the very essence of picture facts, as the Soviet director, Vertoff, calls filmed documents. In this respect the film created on the basis of an artificial scenario is infinitely inferior to powerful documents like “Turksib,” “Shanghai Document” or the average newsreel. Another advantage of the documentary film as a propagator of ideas is its extreme flexibility. The television camera will lend itself to the same authentic lies as the motion picture camera.

In 1924, during a public discussion in Moscow, Dziga Vertoff revealed an heretofore unpublished statement by Lenin urging the complete transformation of Soviet Russia’s motion picture repertoire on the basis of the documentary or “unplayed” film. What would Lenin have said about television, he who considered the movies “the art which for us is the most important.”

Technology has given the answer to the long-standing controversy of fact versus fiction in the movies. Television has uncanned the film. Television has rendered the acted film amateurish and backward.

In the Soviet Union such an invention would be used to raise the cultural level of the workers and peasants. It would be applied for the advancement and true progress of the formerly oppressed national minorities. For that same purpose they are now using the movies and the radio at the present time. There television will be used to help build socialism and a better world for the laboring masses.

Here it will be used for “entertainment” and for bombing planes; for commercial advertising and for capitalist politicians.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n143-NY-jun-14-1930-DW-LOC.pdf